Implausible Kenyan Story?

 

Review of Rare Earth by Davis Bunn, Bethany House, 2012.

    I seek out books set in Kenya and this one is, sort of. The author takes great liberties with geography and facts. (Okay, it is fiction so he can do this). He uses place names, but little is where it ought to be. Same with tribes. He places Ndebele people in Kenya, They are from Zimbabwe; also Angola appears as Kenya’s neighbor.  The author posits that the Luo people come from near what “the English call Kilimanjaro.” Wrong on two counts. Luos live nowhere near the mountain.  And, although the English may call it Kilimanjaro, that is what the local people named it.  Kilimanjaro means mountain of coldness in Swahili. Luos also end up in one of the camps, north of Elgon, again hundreds of miles from their homeland. Interestingly, for the sake of the story, Mt. Elgon erupts. That and drought cause thousands to flee to camps. Bunn calls them refugee camps, but they are really camps for internally displaced persons. But he needs them to be refugee camps so he can invoke a UN presence, and a shadowy American mercenary outfit.

    Another nitpick: the author continually refers to the heat, even at dawn, in Nairobi and the highlands near Elgon. Come on! Those regions are over a mile high. They are rarely tropically hot.  

    The overly dramatic plot revolves finally around the title – the discovery and corruption around deposits of rare earth.  The Chinese and corrupt Kenyans figure in the theft, coverup and violence that the hero, operating secretly on behalf of the U.S. government with the connivance of Israelis and Kenyan elders, finally uncovers and resolves. It is a bit of a stretch.

    I give the book a C-.  Nice try, the plot was passable, but the setting needed to be more accurate.