Finding Kony is here!

 I am pleased to announce the publication of my newest novel. It is entitled Finding Kony. Obviously, for folks knowledgeable about Africa, it is a story about Joseph Kony, the now long-missing messianic leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Under Kony's leadership the LRA arose in the mid-1980s to challenge Museveni's takeover of the Acholi homeland in northern Uganda. Channeling spirits, Kony appealed both to Acholi mysticism as well as their fear of Museveni's army to rally thousands to his cause. Despite initial success, LRA fortunes soon waned. Consequently, it turned to terrorism - violence against civilians, mutilations, pillaging homesteads, and kidnapping of children compelling them to become fighters or sexual slaves. Such actions soiled the LRA in the eyes of the world and it became a pariah. Yet it remained a fearful opponent.

After resolution of the civil war in neighboring Sudan in 2005, the LRA fled west from Uganda into desolate regions of southern Sudan, the Congo and the Central African Republic.  A military force from affected states joined by the United States carried the fight to those regions. Over the years under pressure the LRA wasted away and became defunct, but Kony, who had been indicted by the International Criminal Court, was never apprehended. He is still out there.   

This is the framework for my novel. My hero, Paul Simmons, a freelance journalist based in Kenya, pursues a quest to find Kony, and to interview him. Along the way he learns much about Kony, about the LRA, its victims, and its adherents. Complementing Paul's efforts is a parallel plot of murders in contemporary Uganda. It all eventually comes together even as Paul heads into the wilds of western Sudan on the trail of the elusive general.

The book is available from Amazon.com in both ebook and paperback.  Enjoy

Opportunity: If any readers of this blog volunteer to write and post a review of the book on Amazon or elsewhere, let me know in the comment section below and I'll send you a copy.

 

Explorers' Trials and Tribulations in the Search for the Nile

 

River of the Gods – Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile, by Candice Millard, Doubleday, NY, 2022.

 

River of the Gods is an in-depth investigation into the lives and psyches of explorers Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke.  The author did an astonishing amount of research and artfully employs quotations and citations from hundreds of letters, journals, and official records from the era.  The sheer amount of material available gives evidence to a pre-electronic culture where people wrote things down.

The two protagonists in this epic were men of strong views and towering egos. They connected first in an effort to explore the Horn of Africa. Failures and misunderstandings there festered for years and resurfaced later when the two joined to find the source of the Nile. Departing from Zanzibar with a huge caravan of porters, they headed into the interior of what is now Tanzania. Their safari was rife with obstacles, bad weather, insects, desertions, hostility from indigenous tribes, sickness, and inadequate supplies. Once on the shores of Lake Tanganyika they were determined to prove that it had a northern outlet which was the Nile.  They were unable to make that determination. Exhausted in spirit and body, and out of supplies they began the trek back to the coast.  While Burton lay ill, Speke mounted a trek to a northern lake.  He subsequently spotted Lake Victoria, which he named in honor of his queen, and proclaimed it the source of the Nile.

Returning to England the two bickered openly about the facts. Ultimately Speke was funded for a second expedition to determine the truth. Accompanied by James Grant he did circle Lake Victoria and verified that the Nile exited from it.  Even so, Burton and Speke’s personalities and standing in society continued to clash leading to a planned public debate in England on the issues. However, on the day prior to the encounter, Speke died in a hunting accident.

The value of this book is not so much its recitation of the facts of the explorers’ journeys, which have been well described elsewhere over the years, but in the in depth look at the personalities of the two men – their foibles, passions, strengths, and prejudices.  It is a fascinating study.

I have, however, several quibbles with the book. First the cover contains a photograph of Murchinson Falls on the Nile, a sight that neither Burton nor Speke ever saw.  Why imply that they did? Secondly, the author refers throughout to the lake as Lake Victoria Nyanza without noting that ‘Nyanza’ is a local term for lake. So, Lake Victoria Nyanza is ‘Lake Victoria Lake.’  Finally, she neglected to tell the after-the-fact story that the British colonial government erected a statue of Speke overlooking Owen Falls, where the Nile begins, with a plaque stating that Speke was the first man to ever see that sight. Shortly after independence the new Ugandan government dismantled the monument noting that Ugandans had been seeing the sight for centuries.

My quibbles aside, this is a book worth reading.

 

Abduction in the Serengeti

 

A review of The Lioness by Chris Bohjalian, Doubleday, NY, 2022

 

This novel is a thriller with an ostensibly simple plot. A group of movie stars is kidnapped while on safari in the Serengeti in 1964.  Alternating between flashbacks (mostly boring) to key moments in their lives, the protagonists struggle with their captors against the backdrop of vicious wild animals. Death lurks on all sides – from ruthless Russian captors or leopards, snakes, or hyenas. Plenty of people die.

The Africa setting, that is descriptions of the game reserve park are accurate, but geography is way off – equating an easy drive, for example, from the Serengeti to Albertville, Congo. Oops! that is hundreds of miles distant and there is a huge lake in the way.  The motive for kidnapping slowly leaks out as the novel moves forward. It is implausible, but it does keep the tale going. Afterall this is fiction.

The author inaccurately described a wrecked land rover when one character insists that another roll up the windows, so the dead inside won’t be eaten by scavengers.  Land rovers in the 1960s all had sliding windows, not roll-ups.  Similarly, the author describes a leopard attack that probably could never occur. But again, cut him some slack. It is fiction.

As improbably as the story is, I enjoyed the novel.

Election Saga, Bangui

 

I wrote this piece in December 2020 prompted by what had been going on during the past few weeks in America.  I submitted it to the Foreign Service Journal. It was finally published in the June 2022 edition as a Reflections piece.  

Election Saga, Bangui

     Election day in the Central African Republic in 1993 was busy. I sent all embassy personnel hither and yon as election observers. I too made the rounds of voting precincts in Bangui.

    Voters lined up and waited patiently for their turn. They then marked their ballot and stuffed into the box, always accompanied by a resounding “a voté”  - by a nearby poll watcher. Everything went smoothly.

    After closing the precinct officials and party poll watchers hovered around the counting table to ensure that ballots were correctly tabulated. Then the box was sealed and transported to the Supreme Court for the final official tally. Nonetheless, it quickly became apparent that incumbent President Andre Kolingba was destined to lose.

     Two days later, at mid-morning, I got a phone call at the office from Chief Justice Edouard Frank. “Ambassador,” he said, “They are going to kill me, if I start the count.”

    Whoa! I thought. “Sit tight, I’ll be right over,” I replied.

    There was too much at stake for the nation and for the process to let it collapse at the end.  I told my driver Robert to put on all the flags, and we drove to the Supreme Court. I found Justice Frank in his office. He was clearly shaken by the threat, emanating, he avowed from the presidency; but after calming down he realized his duty.

   With my support he agreed to go forward. So he and I, followed by the other justices, all in their judicial robes, walked across the courtyard to the court chamber. I took a front row seat, and the process of counting began. It proceeded without interference.

   Meanwhile I contacted my German and French colleagues. At least one of us was present for the entire count.  Kolingba came in fourth. (I was later told by a contact in the presidency that our presence in the court room had, indeed, caused a plan to disrupt the proceedings to abort.)

     However, President Kolingba, who had obviously been misled by his entourage as to his popularity, was not yet done.  That afternoon he emptied the prisons, apparently in hope to cause civil unrest so that he could declare martial law and nullify the election.

     A key part of this plan was to release former President Jean Bedel Bokassa who was president from 1966 to 1976, declared himself Emperor Bokassa I and ruled as such until 1979. Kolingba thought that the people might either rise up to support the aging mentally diminished monarch or revolt against him.  Either way, it could result in martial law.

     There were no uprisings, however. The city remained tranquil while thousands of prisoners in their prison-pink shorts headed home. Bokassa’s family moved him quickly into a protected residence, where he rusticated and eventually died.

     To his credit, Kolingba finally conceded. He acknowledged the validity of the results and the election of Ange Patassé as president. One of his final acts was to bestow the Order of Merit of the Central African Republic upon me, my French, German and European Union colleagues.

      Ironically, one of the first acts of President Patassé the next week was to award the four of us the same medal as a token of appreciation for our role in mandating the election. So, we each have two. 

 

Idina Sackville of Kenya's Happy Valley crowd,

 

A review of The Bolter by Frances Osbourne, Alfred Knopf, New York, 2008.

Since I read and review matters Kenyan. Following is a brief take on this book. It is a biography of Idina Sackville (written interestingly enough by her great granddaughter who knew nothing of her infamous ancestor until she (the author) was an adult). Idina was a sybarite who scandalized London and Kenyan society by her licentious behavior. She was married five times and seduced countless men.  She was the focal point of Kenya’s Happy Valley set in the 1920s and 30s and contributed enormously to its sordid reputation of infidelity, promiscuous sex, drugs, and alcohol.

The biography is a long list of Idina’s loves and liaisons, of her fallings-out with her family, her abandonment of her children, her travels, and her search for love and companionship. The recitation was too much for me. It was boring, especially the long descriptions of London society in the pre-and-post WWI era.

The Kenyan part was a bit more interesting on account of the setting and Idina’s efforts to farm in the highlands near Gilgil, but that too all revolved around the woman herself – her loves and entertainments.  This section provides some insight to what life was like for the rich group who settled in Kenya after WWI but evokes little sympathy for them.  It culminated in 1941 when Joss Hay, the Earl of Erroll and Idina’s long divorced 3^rd husband, was murdered just outside of Nairobi.  His death resurrected all the notoriety about the Happy Valley crowd - the infidelities and the intrigues. Idina attended the trial of Delves Broughton who was charged with the murder, but he was acquitted.

In sum Idina’s life was one of searching and, despite the money available to her, of always coming up short. It is a sad tale.  

Coming of Age in Colonial Tanganyika

 

A review of Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah, The New Press, NY, 2021.

 

Pulitzer Prize winning author Abdulrazak Gurnah of Zanzibari extraction sets this novel in Tanganyika in the years just before WWI. Arab merchants and slavers had wandered freely throughout the region for decades, but their predominance was giving way to harsh German and Belgian authority.  The story tracks Yusef, son of a small time Swahili storekeeper who is conveyed to “Uncle Aziz” a successful trader in repayment of a debt. Aziz takes the sensitive boy to his coastal enclave and apprentices him to a storekeeper. Later Aziz, who supervises months-long trading caravans that cross into the Congo seeking gold, ivory and rhino horn takes Yusef along. For hundreds of miles about a hundred porters carry trade goods such and cloth and beads through deserts, bush, and jungle.  Throughout the brutal journey Yusef is coming of age, growing from a boy to a man. 

The tale is well fleshed out with lots of dialogue and ruminations through which the author paints eastern Africa of the epoch.  For the most part it was bleak. Although the coastal area was civilized and comfortable, in the interior Arab/Swahili people are few and far between and always nervous about their status. They live precariously amongst the native tribes, ever denigrating black Africans as heathen savages. Women, especially well-off Arab/Swahili women, are isolated from everyday life and controlled by men. Because of his indentured status, the same can be said of Yusef.

The safari Yusef goes on is troubled by weather, pests, disease, betrayals, deaths, and hostilities. It was, in retrospect, one of the last such undertakings as the coming war and stronger German suzerainty would prohibit further journeys. Yet for his part Yusef is an apt observer and gradually a participant in the life around him. A true innocent at the outset, he manages to escape rape, (which the author leads the reader to believe will happen at any moment). He gradually discovers his own sexual and emotional feelings.  In the end he liberates himself from the legal, traditional, and other strictures of his youth and takes responsibility for his own fate.

The title Paradise is ironic in that bush Africa, to which it refers, was anything but. That being said, Gurnah paints a vivid portrait of a vanished period peopled with believable characters.  The book is an entertaining read and exposition of what once was. 

What do White Kenyans Think?

 

A review of Unsettled – Denial and Belonging Among White Kenyans, by Janet McIntosh, University of California Press, 2016.

This is an intriguing book. Written in dry academic prose as befits the academic study it is, nonetheless, it elucidates provocatively upon its theme. The author interviewed about 150 white Kenyans, some were remnants from colonial times and the rest their descendants, most of whom remain in Kenya and most of whom carry Kenyan citizenship. The idea was to find out what they think about themselves and their roles in the contemporary nation. And what they perceive as the legacy of colonialism that they must bear and deal with.

Author McIntosh wove the results of her interviews into chapters. First, dealing with the specter of being white in a tribally divided black country.  Were whites just another tribe? In some ways yes, but their wealth and legacy of power, still tends to set them apart. Secondly, McIntosh focused on land issues, specifically an ongoing effort by Maasai activists to reclaim white owned land in Lakapia.  White opinion was strong in perceiving that ownership, stewardship and improvements entitled continued white control, although younger respondents recognized traditional claims had merit, they were uncertain how such issues should be resolved. (I was disappointed that this chapter neglected any discussion of the million-acre scheme wherein at independence land was forcibly purchased from whites and transferred to blacks).  A third chapter revolved around the 2006 murder trial of Tom Cholmondeley, a prominent white Kenyan who shot a poacher. The brouhaha aroused against Cholmondeley spilled over into wrath against all white Kenyans, causing many of them to question yet again whether they still had a place in Kenya. A fourth chapter dove into personal friendships and romantic relationships between whites and blacks. Master/servant relationships were dissected, true cross racial friendships analyzed, and it was observed that previously taboo romantic liaisons are gaining wider acceptance, especially among younger respondents. A fifth chapter covered linguistic questions. During the colonial era, whites spoke a simple form of Swahili dubbed KiSettla, that was deemed belittling to black Africans.  Their children speak the Swahili language much better and are immensely proud of that achievement considering that it underlies their commitment to being Kenyan. A final chapter focused on the occult (clearly an interest of the author), its presence in Kenya and how it is perceived across racial divisions.  

In summary, Unsettled is an interesting read for folks who know Kenya and understand – at least intuitively - the plight of former rulers becoming a tolerated minority faced with an unknown future.