Peace Corps in Nigeria

 

A review of A Snowflake in the Jungle – My two years in the Peace Corps Nigeria, West Africa, 1964-66, by James Jablonski, Publisher: Gravel Pit Press, 2025

    This memoir of time spent in Nigeria is not a snapshot. It is more a full-length feature film. The story is drawn from a daily journal and scads of letters home. It faithfully recounts Jim Jablonski’s – JJ as he was called by villagers - profound Peace Corps experience in a Nigerian village.  He was the only white man to reside in Affa - perhaps the inspiration for the title - and was given the task of creating a cooperative to grow and market vegetables.  The memoir traces the hurdles involved: convincing villagers to participate, securing the land, inputs and water, protecting the gardens from pests such as insects and wild cattle, the hard never-ending physical labor required, the vagaries of climate, and the difficulties of marketing.  But most important to the project’s success were the human interactions, the relationships built, the quarrels ironed out and friendships developed.  Jablonski chronicles these developments as they unfold.

    Throughout the book, the author muses about economic development and the difficulties of convincing villagers who are enthusiastic about an idea but are reluctant to do the work required to implement it. He judges that the pains of poverty are offset by rich relationships and spirituality. JJ learns much about Igbo culture, about the village hierarchy, about hospitality, marriages, burials and other ceremonies where cultural obligations take priority over modern logic. He observes the subordinate role of women.  He notes the dichotomy between the work ethic of school leavers who disdain physical labor and garden participants. He discusses the clash between traditional juju religion and Christianity but participates in both.  In summary, JJ becomes subsumed in village life. At first, they tolerated him, but because of his industriousness, came to appreciate him.

    This memoir will appeal to those who want the nitty gritty of what a day-to-day Peace Corps experience was like. Folks who served in West Africa will certainly want to compare JJ’s experience to their own.  Overall, the many anecdotes reveal a life changing experience for all involved – Jablonski certainly, but also his Nigerian friends, acquaintances, counterparts, fellow volunteers, missionary friends and government officials. That is what the Peace Corps is supposed to do.  Make a difference.

    Comment.  One cannot help but wonder, as does the author, whether the project can survive the absence of leadership provided by the PCV.  I believe that by their nature cooperatives have short life spans. Early success may keep them going but over time enthusiasm wanes, people move on, conflict arises and the venture expires.  That might have been the fate of JJ's cooperative but there was little time for internal dynamics to erode. Instead, the project was a victim of Nigeria's terrible civil war that reduced Biafra and Affa to ashes.     

 

Tropical Ice, Elephants and Adventure

 

A review of Outsider – A life with the Elephants and Mountains of Africa by Iain Allan, Vanguard Press, 2024

In this memoir Iain Allan retraces his times in Kenya from the 1950s to the present.  Originally from Scotland, he arrived in Nairobi as a preteen. There he found the stiff British Kenya culture stultifying. He did not prosper in school but found his niche in rock climbing. He honed this skill and summited Mounts Kilimanjaro and Kenya by the age of eighteen. Upon graduation he followed loves to England and Australia before realizing that his destiny lay in Kenya.

Once back home, Allan became a safari guide specializing in taking clients up Kilimanjaro and Kenya. On his own time, he pioneered climbing routes on those mountains and on other cliffs.  (Indeed, a good part of the memoir details just what was done and where. Rock climbers will undoubtedly find these descriptions fascinating.) Ultimately Allan started his own company called Tropical Ice that focused on adventure experiences on the mountains but also in the bush, especially walking treks through the national parks of Tsavo West and Tsavo East. 

The author recounts good safari stories of encounters with wild animals. He tells of conquests of mountains around the globe. Throughout he names people – friends and adversaries – encountered along the way.  He muses over changes in clients’ attitudes towards safaris ranging from enthusiastic flexibility in days past to demands for precise undeviating information today. He attributes this to the impact of modern information-on-demand culture. He also tracks the vicissitudes of Kenyan government policy regarding poaching. Finally, he notes with understanding and regret that Kenya’s burgeoning population increasingly puts pressure on the wild spaces and creatures that he loves.   

In sum Allan’s recollections constitute a good story; one well worth reading. People who know Kenya – its geography, people and challenges -  will enjoy his perspective. He called them as he saw them.  I learned a lot about rock climbing.  I especially enjoyed the passages about walks along the Tsavo River.  They brought back memories. My wife Connie and I participated in one of those excursions in 1983 with Iain and Mohamed as guides.

Review from The Literary Reporter

 

My African Anthology by Robert E. Gribbin is a vivid, multifaceted collection of stories and vignettes that transport readers into the heart of contemporary Africa.

With the keen insight of a seasoned diplomat, Gribbin captures the complexities, beauty, and challenges of the continent through tales that span everything from Gacaca justice in Rwanda to mysterious disappearances, rebel encounters, and mythic beasts. Each story pulses with authenticity, whether depicting the quiet strength of landscapes or the charged tension of political intrigue.

Gribbin’s prose is evocative, rooted in lived experience, and often poetic, as shown in his lush descriptions of acacia-scented air and towering mountains.

The collection is not just an exploration of Africa’s external realities but also of its spiritual and cultural soul. For readers seeking a deeper, more human understanding of Africa, beyond the headlines, this anthology offers a compelling, memorable journey into its many truths.

Secrets from Africa?

 

       My latest tale from Africa, Freida's Secret, is now available on amazon as both an e-book ($2.99) and a paperback ($13.99). I enjoyed writing this one. It starts with a recitation of the famous, but ill fated, expedition to relieve Emin Pasha and morphs into a story about his daughter Freida and subsequently the efforts of a former Peace Corps Volunteer to discover the secret. 

    The search for Freida’s secret begins in 19^th century Africa, leads onward to Germany before and during the world wars and ends in Idi Amin’s Uganda.   African explorer Henry M. Stanley’s 1887 expedition to relieve beleaguered Emin Pasha, governor of Equatoria Province of Sudan foundered in the depths of the equatorial rainforest prior to arriving on the shore of Lake Albert where Pasha, and his daughter Freida, who were threaten by Islamic jihadists resided. After much dithering, they reluctantly decamped from Equatoria joining Stanley on a march to the coast. That is history, but what happened to young Freida as she carried a secret forward in life? A mixed-race child she was shunted off to Germany where she confronted the strictures of culture and Nazism. Her secret preserved until uncovered by an American research student in the 1970s.  He in turn set out for Africa to find the truth.  

    Author Gribbin weaves an intriguing tale that combines history and fiction. It is buttressed throughout by realistic descriptions of places – the horrors of the jungle, first sighting of the Mountains of the Moon, the slave port of Bagamoyo, steamship travel through the Suez, Hamburg during the Nazi era, Peace Corps travels in Tanzania, Idi Amin’s Uganda - and people – boisterous Stanley, enigmatic Emin Pasha, self-confident Freida and intrepid Gerson. In sum, it is a heartwarming tale that leads us to ask – what other secrets lie undiscovered?

Insight, Views and Advice from an Africanist

 

 A comment on Born in Kansas but made in Africa by Mark Wentling. Ebook off Amazon.

     Wentling had a long and storied career in Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer, Peace Corps staffer, USAID employee and contractor for various NGOs.  He has visited all of Africa’s 54 nations. (I’m jealous. I only have 46.)  Mark has written about thirteen books describing his experiences. Perhaps this is his last one. He goes back over well plowed territory to recount and relate pithy bits of conversations, mostly with Africans. These recollections are full of opinions, both theirs and Wentling’s, which collectively reveal a realistic cynicism about Africa – about culture, about the role of experts, about American development efforts – guided and misguided - about whites in a black land, and foremost about how interlocutors see themselves in their societies.

    If there are themes in this collection they are: home grown corruption complicates everything, development projects have a short life span, western ideas for agricultural progress are flawed.  Wentling harps on the last point. Africa’s food production has declined due to urban migration, poor soil quality, uncertain land rights, insufficient inputs, market issues, and limited irrigation.  Efforts to mitigate these constraints have not been very effective.

    The book is somewhat difficult to follow. Ostensibly organized along chronological lines by decades, nonetheless it jumps around forward and backward in time and across regions. You can be reading an anecdote from Niger in the 1970s and then be transported to Mozambique in the 90s.  Fortunately, there is no plot, just the stream of anecdotes and observations. 

    All told, I found the book to be interesting and truthful.  Wentling admits that the Africa he first knew is gone. He describes the past and his experiences well, but the continent is changing as are attitudes, policies and possibilities.  Increasingly decisions of what Africa is to become rest with its peoples.

The Horror of Ebola

 

A review of Crisis in the Red Zone by Richard Preston, Random House, 2019

Richard Preston the foremost author writing about hemorrhagic fever, especially Ebola, provides a blow-by-blow, day-by-day, chronicle of how the 2013/14 Ebola epidemic arose, grew, and swamped West Africa in disease and death.  He tells of patient zero, a child in Guinea, and tabulates how the virus spread via contaminated bodily fluids, specifically through traditional funeral practices and/or care for those infected.  At first no one in the medical establishment knew what they were dealing with, perhaps malaria, perhaps Lassa fever.  No one knew of Ebola in West Africa. When laboratories in the U.S. and Europe finally identified the virus as Ebola, the epidemic had already killed hundreds. Thousands more were to die.

The bulk of the book details the personal stories of the heroic work of front-line medical personnel in Kenema, Sierra Leone and their efforts to find victims, identify the virus, but mostly to care for the infected.  Preston writes of bloody medical procedures, the difficulty of working in protective gear, and the challenges of providing care in overcrowded unsanitary wards, as well as the need to counter community fears and suspicions engendered by so many deaths.  An additional challenge was the necessity to get the outside world to recognize the scope of the tragedy and to step up.

In order to put the 2014 outbreak in perspective, Preston remembers the first major outbreak in the Congo in 1976. Again, the author effectively employs personal vignettes in order to tell the tale.  In the Congo hundreds died before village communities there invoked the ancient rule, a practice of isolation and quarantine in which those infected were left to live or die. Either way the disease ran its course and did not spread further.

In addition to events in West Africa, Preston also details how individuals in the U.S. and Europe, the small community of folks who tracked dangerous viruses, worked to identify the virus, parse its DNA and begin to create an antidote.   Once one dose (of 7) was in West Africa, medical personnel there were confronted with the ethical issue of who should receive it.  ZMAPP vaccine was not used in Sierra Leone to save a key doctor but was used in Liberia to save an American doctor and a nurse.

By the time more vaccine could be produced, the terrible epidemic had largely run its course.  Two key doctors and thirty-seven nurses from Kenema Hospital numbered among the 10,000 dead in the region.

Preston concludes with a warning: with Ebola we were lucky! The world is not prepared for a lethal virus that could devastate the planet’s huge cities.  

Comment:  The book focuses narrowly on the early spread of the disease coupled with efforts in the U.S. to identify the scourge.  What is missing is an assessment of how governments of the three affected countries (Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone) acted, how the international community intervened, with what assistance and when.  I was the interim U.S. ambassador in Freetown in August and September of 2014 at the height of the epidemic. CDC had dozens of experts on the ground, to be followed by disaster team from USAID. Neighboring Liberia had more of the same including a belated U.S. military presence.  It did take some time, but finally the collective effort of many governments and organizations helped stem the tide.  As Preston correctly notes Ebola died out – this time – essentially because the ancient rule of isolation, quarantine, and no contact was implemented by the governments and communities affected.

A separate note: As U.S. Ambassador in the Central African Republic (1992-1995) I once visited the town of Mobaye, located on the Oubangui River across from Zaire.  The Ebola River and the mission of Yambuku where Ebola first surfaced in 1976 were nearby. Zairians often came to Mobaye for market and health care. While touring the local hospital I asked the doctor in charge about procedures for patients who had hemorrhagic fever. He said such people did not come to the hospital, instead they quarantined themselves or the village did, or neighboring villages did, while the disease ran its course. Clearly this was the ancient rule that Preston identified being implemented.

 

What is the link between food, Africa and happiness?

 

Following is my review of Food, Africa, and the Pursuit of Contentedness, by Mark Schultz, Backwood Basics Press, 2021, which I wrote at the behest of PeaceCorpsWorldwide.org and which is published on that site. 

    The title tells it all. This book is a memoir about Peace Corps service in Africa with side themes about food eaten there and the relative contentment of most citizens (and PCVs) with their lives.  No one had much but they made what they had suffice.  After Peace Corps, the book morphs into advocacy for fresh food for Americans through organic gardening and disdain for commercially produced sugar and fat filled foods.

    Schultz was a fisheries volunteer assigned in 1982 to Basse Kotto prefecture east of the capital city of Bangui, Central African Republic. The terrain of the region was conducive to the establishment of fishponds for growing tilapia. That was Schultz’s task. Convince farmers to dig ponds, help them do it, provide fingerlings and teach aquaculture.  A reader will learn lots about fish culture. What worked and why.  Beyond that the author’s descriptions of everyday life ring true for all who have served – insects, darkness, inquisitive children, always being the butt of the joke, crowded markets, motorcycle maintenance, malaria, the joy of growing understanding of culture, and even the thrill of an ice-cold coke.

    An astute observer of life around him, Schultz notes the difficulties of poverty in villages – inadequate nutrition, nonexistent medical services, subsistence agriculture, lack of opportunities, no monetary income - yet he concludes villagers were generous, sharing and content with their lives.  He contrasts that with the western quest for possessions, more and more of everything, including non-nutritious food.

    Returning from Africa in the mid-eighties, Schultz devoted himself to trying to find that balance of contentment he saw in villagers. He believes that a pathway to such harmony is fresh food via sustainable, organic practices. A bricoleur (handy man) at heart, Schultz fabricated, tested and operated several systems for fish or poultry production plus various greenhouse heating and irrigation systems.  Much “how to” is included in the book.

    In sum Schultz’s book is an interesting combination of an evocative portrait of a fisheries volunteer in the CAR and his later in life advocacy for contentment through wise eating. At first glance it seems to be an unworkable link, but it works. The Central African portions clearly provide the basis for the convictions and advocacy that followed.

 

Robert Gribbin built rural water systems as a PCV in Kenya in the late 1960s. He subsequently spent forty years with the State Department, mostly in Africa, including five years in the Central African Republic. He is the author of two memoirs In the Aftermath of Genocide – the U.S. Role in Rwanda and My African Anthology, plus five novels set in Africa.   

  

 

 

 

 

Interview with Robert Gribbin

 The following interview grew out of questions posed by a literary agent interested in my background and my writing. 

A talk with the author

Do you use a pen name?

No pen name, I use Robert Gribbin or Robert E. Gribbin

Why do you write?

As an American diplomat in Africa for forty plus years I wrote thousands of reports of meetings, visits, travel, political, economic and social analyses, policy studies and recommendations, and more.  The culmination of my official career was my memoir about the genocide in Rwanda.  I gradually transferred writing skills to anecdotes that could be published and to fiction.  In my retirement years I focused on novels and short stories accurately set in Africa and on stories for my grandchildren – whimsical magical stories for little girls and scary campfire tales for older boys.

What do you do besides writing?

Outside of writing, I stay connected to African and foreign policy issues. I am the family historian and genealogist. I enjoy golf and sailing. I built a log cabin along a river in West Virginia where I find peace.

What is your educational background?

 I earned a BA in history, cum laude with honors, from the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, (1968) and an MA in international relations from The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (1973). I successfully completed the Foreign Service Institute’s intense 20-week graduate level economic training program in 1977. I speak French and Swahili.

What are some of your publications?

I wrote In the Aftermath of Genocide: the U.S. Role in Rwanda, iUniverse, 2005, a memoir about service in Rwanda, the causes and effects of genocide, what the U.S. knew and did not know. I produced self-study guides for East Africa, South Africa and Liberia, for the Foreign Service Institute in 2000. An article Implementing AFRICOM: Tread Carefully was published in the Foreign Service Journal, May 2008. I published a novel, State of Decay, an Oubangui Chronicle Infinity Press, 2001, another novel Murder in Mombasa, smashwords.com, 2013, a third novel, The Last Rhino, iUniverse.com, 2020, a fourth The Serpent of the Nile, kdp.com, 2021, and a fifth Finding Kony, kdp.com, 2023. My latest book is My African Anthology, kdp.com, 2024. I authored a chapter entitled After the Genocide in The Crisis of the African State, Marine Corps University Press, and an article Twenty Years After Genocide for the online magazine of American Diplomacy.org. I also wrote an article entitled Ralph Izard – Commissioner to Tuscany, for Carologue, the magazine of the South Carolina Historical Society.  I regularly contribute fiction and lighter pieces about life in Africa to the Foreign Service Journal and book reviews to americandiplomacy.org and friendsofkenya.org. Finally, I won second prize in a PeaceCorpswriters.org contest for a six-word story. “Piped water frees girls for school.” I blog on African Reflections, www.rwandakenya.blogspot.com.

What is your writing routine?

I do not follow a set routine for writing. I sit and type any time of day or evening in my lower-level office when something is bubbling in my head.  When I get going, I can write for hours at a time. I pause often to edit and review.  I am motivated when I think I have a good story. I do not make careful outlines, but sketchy ones. I just let the ideas come to me. I write mostly for my own enjoyment. If I create something that others enjoy or learn from, so much the better.  As a retiree, my time is mostly my own. So, I can budget and focus on what I want to do, when I want to.

Tell about The Last Rhino.

The thought and theme for The Last Rhino grew out of my first novel State of Decay. I thought there would be some good adventure and a focus on conservation in a story set in the Congo. I carried two characters, Philippe and Ndomazi, from State of Decay forward.  The rhino part resulted from an earlier trip to Kenya where we encountered the last two remaining northern white rhinos at Ol Pejeta conservancy. I knew that their historic range included northern Congo and that Garamba Park there remained undeveloped.   The message was that wild Africa is under siege from lawlessness, inattention and poaching. There is, however, still time to reverse the situation.  The ending of finding living rhinos in the care of traditional people underlines the fact that modern is not always the best solution. Additionally, the story is about second chances and the need to take advantage when they occur.

The most difficult part of the book to write was how to put traditional Africans and their beliefs into a believable context for the story.  I liked the idea that the rhino embodied the spirit of the guardian of the people, so, went with that.

Who is your intended audience?

I am never quite sure who my intended audience is. Foreign Service personnel, returned Peace Corps Volunteers, and others who know Africa well enjoy the stories because they legitimately validate their experiences.  I think, however, that my readership is wider.  Anyone who is up for a good, somewhat exotic tale will enjoy the stories.

One of my key strengths is that the Africa I write about is the one that exists.  The situations, encounters, descriptions, people, geography and dialog are accurate. More than one reader has noted that my books ought to be primers for anyone interested in Africa because they are so true.

Do you have any new projects underway?

I am currently engaged in polishing up a new novel, entitled Freida’s Secret. It is, of course, set in Africa beginning during the age of exploration in the 19^th century and culminating with the discovery of a hidden treasure in the 20^th.  The historic part of the story tracks Henry Stanley’s 1880s expedition to relieve the beleaguered governor of Equatoria, Sudan, Emin Pasha. Pasha’s mixed-race daughter Freida enters the tale and the fictional part of the novel traces her life in Africa and subsequently in Germany during the Nazi era. Freida’s secret is finally discovered by a young America who travels back to conflict ridden Africa to retrieve the treasure.  

I do not have other projects currently in mind, although something may pop up. When and if it does, I am sure it will be Africa related.

How to contact you?

-      I have kept a blog www.rwandakenya.blogspot.com for years, and can be reached via it or at regribbin@aol.com. The blog does not get much traffic, and I have not been motivated to try to generate more.

An Amazing Memoir

 

Married to Amazement – a memoir, by Kathleen Coskran

     This intriguing book is based on a series of vignettes and reflections that provide insight into cross-cultural experiences and family life as well as spiritual meditations on what it all means.  The author remembers her time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ethiopia, as a PC staff spouse in Kenya, adopting a child in Columbia, visiting an adopted child’s family in Ethiopia, teaching in China, hanging out with beach boys in Kenya and more.  Throughout these encounters, Kathleen relates that tolerance, acceptance of differences and respect triumph over diverging values and misunderstandings. She writes candidly about family, especially elderly parents, noting that we take our parents for granted and don’t really know them well, until perhaps – and hopefully – at the end. Throughout Kathleens’s amazement and love for the world and those in it comes through loud and clear.

     Disclaimer.  I liked the book in part because I know Kathy and have appreciated her writing over the years. Additionally, I am mentioned – very briefly – in a Kenyan section as one of the sugar shack guys. Sugar shack because we three PCVs worked on projects in the sugar cane plantations.  Kathy has a keen eye for cross cultural issues and she bravely got herself entangled in some, i.e. the beach boys, Ahmed’s family, the Nepali orphanage, in order to gain understanding of the human condition. That she did, which this memoir ably demonstrates. It is a good read.  

Read This Book!

 

My African Anthology (available on Amazon) is a compendium of anecdotes, articles and stories that mirror years of living and working in Africa.  Beginning in the sixties with my first sojourn on the continent, the items both factual and fictional paint a compelling portrait of the Africa I knew.  From the Peace Corps Kenya era are snippets of Luo tribal consternation regarding America’s moon landing, competing in the Safari road rally, trouble with noisy bees, and a shape shifting terror.  From Bokassa’s Central African Republic - stories of a man lost in the forest, the president’s mistress, a search for gold, plus an eye-witness account of the lavish coronation. A later return to that beleaguered nation, recounts ambassadorial maneuvering to foster a fair election.

A travelogue entry traces road trips across Africa – Kenya to England in 1970 via the Congo and the Sahara – mud, broken ferries, pygmies, breakdowns, suspicion of being mercenaries, the desert, Tuaregs, land mines, etc. Then in 1991, Uganda to South Africa with family in tow through a changing political landscape to the new South Africa.

Kenya returns with vignettes from Mombasa – employing a witch doctor to cleanse a septic system, prostitutes protecting their turf, plus a mystery about a missing trove of rubies.   The scene shifts to Uganda in a novella entitled The Shriveled Hands, which is a tale of witchcraft, trafficking in girls, superstition about albinos and the impact of AIDS, plus a dash of terrorism.  Other stories in the collection include Gacaca justice for genocidaires in Rwanda, escaping Ebola in Sierra Leone, trouble in a refugee camp in Chad and a hunt for mythical beasts in the jungles of the Congo.

Serious articles include the gift of a watermelon in Djibouti, an analysis of AFRICOM, the U.S. military command for Africa, its successes and failures, and an update of the situation in Rwanda, twenty-five years after the genocide. 

In sum, this anthology focuses on different facets of life in Africa and pulls together a colorful portrait of a turbulent continent as seen by an astute outside observer.

One reader said, “Now, I understand Africa better.” Another, “I thought the trafficking story was great.” A third, “I’ve recommended Grogan’s Trove to friends.”

Robert Gribbin has lived, worked and traveled in Africa for the last sixty years. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kenya, and later a diplomat rising to be ambassador to the Central African Republic and to Rwanda. Subsequently he served as chargé d’affaires in six more nations. He is the author of a memoir In the Aftermath of Genocide – The U.S. Role in Rwanda and five novels. He reviews books about Africa on his blog www.rwandakenya.blogspot.com.

A British Vet in Africa

 

A review of And Miles to Go Before I Sleep – A British Vet in Africa  by Hugh Cran, Merlin Unwin Books, Ludlow, UK, 2007

This is an intriguing memoir by a British veterinarian who practiced in Kenya in the 60s and 70s. Think -  All Creatures Great and Small set in Africa.  Author Cran moved to Nakuru in central Kenya in 1964 where he was employed as a poorly paid vet in a private practice. After several years he inherited the practice.   He dealt about half and half with big farm animals – cows and horses – and small critters, largely dogs. Most every intervention generated a story – cows had trouble calving, horses were susceptible to tropical aliments, dogs were bitten by snakes and on and on. Cran also treated wild animals from time to time, zebras, antelope and even a couple of lions.  The bulk of the memoir relates the trials and tribulations of such a life in often amusing  - sometimes excruciating  - detail. I learned a lot about cow entrails.

However, the value of the book lies in the authors vivid descriptions of Kenya’s inhabitants - the still ensconced, often quirky, European farmers contrasted with traditional tribal cattlemen, plus the new group of more modern Kenyans who were then taking possession of formerly owned European farms and ranches.  Such new owners included President Jomo Kenyatta. Cran noted the passing of a European way of life as the million-acre settlement scheme and other buyouts occurred. As a veterinarian he was called upon to certify the health of cattle when such buyouts occurred. His reporting of attitudes about land transfers add depth to understanding of what went on.  In addition to frankly depicting his European and African clients, Cran did not hesitate to caricature Asian owners of fierce watchdogs.  Apparently, Cran dealt with no normal people. He did, however, find the eccentricities and personalities of his clients to be either endearing or maddening - and was quick to say so.

Part of each encounter reported in the book involved travel from Nakuru town to outlying farms and ranches, some more than a hundred miles away.  Almost always this entailed driving over terrible roads and tracks that were dusty, rocky, potholed or, during the rainy seasons, seas of mud.  Since I was nearby in rural Kenya during part of Cran’s tenure, I sympathize with the frustrations and the breakdowns that such driving created.  But I also enjoyed Cran’s sense of adventure in his travels and his appreciation of the spectacular scenery and vistas that the Great Rift Valley displays.

Finally, in a digression about mountain climbing, Cran recounted his assent of Mt. Kilimanjaro in 1967. He and cronies went up the Marangu route from Tanzania. That is the exact same route I used in climbing Killy two years later. Cran’s description of the climb was perfect.  Sometime later Cran joined an expedition into the Ruwenzori mountains in Uganda.  His team made it into the central peaks and climbed several of them, including Mt Stanley, the highest.  I too once participated in a Ruwenzori expedition to climb Mt. Stanley.  Our routes were the same and the huts and features and fauna Cran described from his sojourn were exactly those I found in 1990. 

This book is a bit heavy on veterinary matters, but it was written by a vet. The Kenya setting is what makes it shine. Folks who know Kenya, especially during the time covered will find this interesting.

 

 

Death and Despair in the Congo

 

A review of All Things Must Fight to Live – Stories of War and Deliverance in Congo by Bryan Mealer, Bloomsbury, NY 2007.

    Journalist Mealer spent several years off and on in the Congo in the early 2000s. He went as a freelancer to cover the tribal wars in Ituri Province in the east. Extreme violence erupted there as ethnic tensions inflamed by the 1994 genocide in Rwanda spilled over into Congo.  Long simmering ethnic hatred, herders versus farmers, access to gold and coltan, interference by both Uganda and Rwanda, flared into ugly massacres and attacks.   Everything was compounded by the lack of central government authority, functioning institutions and especially the pervading corruption that characterized the Congo. Warlords and tribal leaders armed thousands of youths and turned them into savage killers and cannibals.  It was a horrific scene that a UN Peacekeeping presence barely affected.  

    So, the first third of this book is an ever-expanding recitation of gruesome atrocities that occurred in Ituri at that time. Mealer waded right in. He interviewed victims, leaders and reported on the crisis. His on-site reporting is compelling witness to the conflict and tragedy inflicted upon the people. However, the violence was in a far corner of the world, and nobody seemed to care. 

    After Ituri Mealer pitched up in Kinshasa from which he detailed the sad situation of the capital city in the months leading up to the 2005 presidential elections. Kinshasa was corrupt, venal, poverty stricken, and violent. Expatriate journalists banded together drank, laughed, bemoaned the situation, and defied the danger.

    The latter parts of the book are two travelogues. First upriver from Kinshasa on one of the last functioning riverboats. Mealer tells of the chaos of life on board – breakdowns and repairs, thousands of passengers, the daily carnival of life, the tropical heat and bugs, and mostly the exasperation, yet acceptance by the citizenry of the near total collapse of transportation infrastructure.  Mealer concludes this segment by biking the last 200 miles through the equatorial jungle. How crazy can you get?

    The final travelogue involved catching a barely functioning train from Lubumbashi in the south and taking it across the vast nation to Kalemie on Lake Tanganyika. The rail line is a remnant of a colonial era transportation network that bound the country together, but which has been neglected and in disrepair since independence. The author cataloged the journey, the people and problems – breakdowns, delays, derailments, etc. that he encountered along the way.

    Mealer paints a vivid portrait of the Congo, its peoples and its problems.  He found that most folks just accepted fate. They were worn out by life, tragedy, war, corruption, a collapsed economy, incompetent government, and left with little incentive, or ability, to change their circumstances. They just tried to survive.      

New Book Available!

My latest book is out! It is available on Amazon. I will write more about it later. Meanwhile, here is a blurb:    In My African Anthology retired ambassador Robert Gribbin draws upon almost sixty years of contact with Africa to spin tales, recount anecdotes, and air opinions.  Themes in this wonderful collection include trafficking in girls, a long missing treasure, Gacaca justice, fleeing from Ebola, searching for a legendary beast, the U.S. military presence, the emperor’s gold, captured by rebels, a Rwandan update, election sagas, and much more – dogs, golf, spirits and black magic.  In total the collection of pieces – both fiction and non-fiction, humorous and serious - paint a realistic portrait of Africa, its peoples and its issues as seen and experienced by an astute observer. The collection provides just the right mix of history and modernity, with deep insights into Africa.

President Moi's Personal Physician

 

My review of Heartbeat – An American Cardiologist in Kenya by David Silverstein, available from Amazon, 2023.

 David Silverstein was, as the title confirms, a cardiologist who pitched up in Kenya in the early seventies.  This book is his memoir starting with his childhood, education, medical school, a stint in Vietnam and then Kenya. He practiced in Nairobi and as the only heart specialist in the nation at the time attracted the rich and powerful who needed his services.

The book opens in the hospital emergency wards following the bombing of the U.S. embassy in 1998. That sets the tone for the story to come. The memoir is replete with brief case studies of individuals who required his medical services and a narrative of how more broadly viewed medical services in Kenya improved during the course of the past forty years.  (In fact, there was more medical recitation than I enjoyed, but those who are well versed in medicine will undoubtedly appreciate these sections.)

I did value Silverstein’s observations about Kenya’s political scene and its political elite. Many folks are mentioned but the two most prominent are President Daniel arap Moi and Attorney General Charles Njonjo.  Silverstein became doctor to both of them.  He saw them regularly and became friends with each. Since he was not involved with Kenyan politics, they had no agenda with him and his with them was medical, personal and supportive. Silverstein’s observations about the human side of the men rings true.

Silverstien portrayed Moi as a carefully spoken man who thought matters through before acting. Indeed, his observations of Moi add a dimension to the understanding of this complex leader.  Especially poignant was Silverstein’s care for Moi after he retired from the presidency and on into his last years.

 Anecdotes abound, for example, as part of the presidential entourage, Silverstien accompanied Moi on foreign trips. One such foray was into Iran, where Silverstein’s American citizenship and Jewish ethnicity, almost proved disastrous but instead turned into a good story.

Throughout the book, as is true with all memoirs, we learn about the author – what makes him tic, family issues, including two different sets of sons, and finally a wife to sustain him.  All in all, Heartbeat is an entertaining read, especially for those who knew Kenya from the seventies forward.

 

Castigation of the Raj

 

A review of Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux, Mariner Books, NYC, 2024

 

Theroux jumps back in time to take the actual sojourn of Eric Blair, later known by his pen name of George Orwell, in Burma in the 1920s and turn it into a novel.  Blair was a policeman for Britian, the imperial power of the country.  Theroux grafts onto the facts of Blair’s five years there to create a novel. Perhaps some of the internal machinations - places, people, and introspection - of the sojourn are drawn from records of the era.  But to his credit, Theroux exercises literary license in compiling a gripping and insightful novel.

Let there be no mistake this book is an indictment of the British Raj, of British rule in Asia.  Blair is a willing pawn in the oppressive imperial rule. Yet throughout, in his mind he questions most everything about his and his government’s presence in the Asian backwater.  The book tracks Blair’s thinking, his reactions, his rejections, his muses, his lusts, and his memories as the story progresses. Needless to say, Blair is a bundle of contradictions.  As with all of Theroux’s characters in his many books, no one is pure. All characters are complicated, and many are venal. That is certainly true in this story.  Theroux never seems to find many redeeming features in the people he creates.  This harsh criticism of people lends veracity to the story, but makes a reader wonder if the world is really that bleak?

There is no real plot to this book. It just tracks the five years that Blair spent in Burma. The reader wonders if the man will ever adjust or quit, but that is about it for suspense. 

Above criticism notwithstanding, I enjoyed the book. It is a well written page turner. It elucidates in fictional form a period in George Orwell’s life that helped shape his antiauthoritarian views that surfaced years later in Animal Farm and 1984.  More than that it cast a realistic perspective on British classism, racism and imperialism. We all need to learn from the past.

Terrific history of Kenya's Coast

 

A review of Kenya’s Swahili Coast – From the Roman Empire to 1888 by Judy Aldrick, Old Africa books, 2024.

This book provides a general overview of centuries of the politics and culture of Africa’s east coast. It is quite readable. Various sections cover key events, rulers, wars, squabbles, invaders, explorers, missionaries, and personalities. The sum is a good appreciation of what happened on the coast and how it evolved, prospered, and declined, until the end of the 19^th century. 

The east African coast was known to the outside world – Romans and Chinese – thousands of years ago. However, it became a more active trading destination during the spread of Islam. Various independent city states peopled by a polyglot of persons from Arabia, India, and Africa, who became known as the Swahili people, traded slaves, ivory, grain, mangrove poles and other products to and from Arabia and the Indian sub-continent via the annual change in the monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean.  The Swahili towns were trading entrepôts, they did not control the hinterland.  Little written has descended from this era, but ruins and oral stories indicate well-developed self-contained societies.

All that changed with the arrival of the Portuguese beginning with Vasco Da Gama in 1488. Better ships and weaponry enabled the European invaders to assert control of the coast. Stark evidence of Portuguese power is Fort Jesus in Mombasa. Completed in 1593 this bastion still dominates Mombasa’s old harbor.  Portuguese fortunes all along the coast waxed and waned as its garrisons struggled to govern the various towns and control trade with the east.

As Portuguese sea power gave way to Dutch and English prominence, its political control of the coast passed to Arab potentates from Oman and Zanzibar. In turn, the succession of Sultans often resorted to indirect rule, relying on local families to govern coastal entities.  The Mazrui family of Mombasa, for example, produced 10 successive liwalis (governors) who effectively controlled the key city for a hundred years.

Yet, as this book reports, never was everything peaceful and happy.  Squabbles, intrigue, fighting, ruling family dynamics, competition between the Swahili towns, loyalty to contesting overlords or protecting powers, economic fortunes – especially the devastating impact of the elimination of slavery – all combined to render the scene changing and complex.  Author Aldrick delves into this morass of confusion and provides a coherent compendium of key events and personages.

Comment: I lived in Mombasa for three years and got to know the author, and the modern city, and some of the past, but this book has many revelations. I enjoyed the vignettes about individuals.  I had not realized there were so many quasi-independent Swahili towns with their own liwalis.  Similarly, I learned that many neglected settlements like those on Pate Island were once important players.

This book is a must read for those interested in Kenya’s history. It provides a long-needed layman’s look at the storied past of the coast. 

   

 

Loss, Pain and Mystery in Uganda

 

A review of The Atlas of Forgotten Places by Jenny D. Williams, St. Martin’s Press, NY, 2017

 

This intriguing novel revolves around the Lord’s Resistance Army, the movement led by rebel warlord/messianic leader Joseph Kony that terrorized northern Uganda for decades beginning in the 1980s.  The author set her story and her characters accurately in the context of wariness and suspicion that typified the Acholi homeland in 2006, just after the fighting migrated to Sudan and the Congo. The Acholi people were traumatized by conflict. All were victims of one sort or another. Especially vulnerable were returnees, those who had escaped from the LRA.  Back home, they lived with the stigma of mistrust.  Rose, the best drawn character in this story, is one of those folks. She harbors memories, fears and secrets, which leak out slowly as the plot progresses.

The basic plot, however, involves the disappearance of Lily, a young American woman. Her aunt Sabine comes to Uganda to find her.  Has Lily simply disappeared or been taken against her will?  Sabine has lots of baggage from her earlier work in Africa, even in Uganda. Sabine investigates, perseveres, enlists others to help, and along the way confronts her own demons.  After-the-fact, the plot seems contrived, but it does push the tale along. There are several nice, unexpected twists as the story comes to fruition.

Author Williams’ strengths are in her descriptions of Acholi life and the introspections of her characters as they confront the obstacles before them.  

Readers will undoubtedly come away with improved knowledge of the trauma that Ugandans experienced. The personalization of that trauma via the characters of this story adds immeasurably to the impact of such understanding.

Disclaimer: As readers of this blog know I too am an author. Two of my books, The Last Rhino and Finding Kony, also deal with the predations of the Lord’s Resistance Army in the region. I commend Ms. Williams for getting it right in penning a significant contribution for outside comprehension of the terrible – and continuing - pains that afflict the Acholi people.

  

Opinion, Criticism and Satire

 

A review of How to Write About Africa – Collected Works by Binyavanga Wainaina, One World, New York, 2022.

 

Kenyan writer Wainaina is a puzzle. Outspoken, even outrageous, his métier is criticism and sarcasm. This is shown both in his fiction and his essays, which share this tome.  Wainaina spares no quarter in portraying excess human foibles, including greed or misplaced humanitarianism.  His satire bites deep and certainly reflects an obsession with pointing out erroneous western perceptions about Africa and Africans.  The title of the book comes from an early essay to that effect. Yet, Wainaina is an equal opportunity critic in that he also diatribes against the motivations of fellow Africans in playing to western stereotypes or in their relations with each other.  He delights in showing warts and all.  His characters are very human.

The fiction pieces allow the author to develop realistic but purposely overdrawn characters. I liked Ships in High Transit about tourists at the coast being bamboozled by folks pretending to be Maasai. Real truths about both sides emerge.  Equally entertaining is An Affair to Disremember. It is sort of a sad story about lives and expectations gone awry. 

Most telling of the essays is Beyond River Yei which is a report of a sojourn in South Sudan as part of an effort to eradicate sleeping sickness. In that piece Wainaina demonstrates legitimate chops as a feature writer.

Readers won’t want to miss key satires of How to Be a Dictator and the title piece How to Write about Africa.

Throughout the collection there is plenty for a reader to think about, muddle over, agree with, reject, or object to. That, in fact, is the author’s goal.  And, it is well accomplished.  

Coda: Nakuru born son of a Kikuyu father and a Ugandan Tutsi mother, after secondary school Binyavanga fled to South Africa where he began his writing career, and came out. Subsequently, he returned to Kenya to rattle cages there via Kiwani?, a magazine he published. Sadly, Wainaina died young in 2019.

Folly in Accra

 

Turquoise – Three Years in Ghana: A Peace Corps Memoir by Lawrence Grobel, HMH Press, 2022.

This is a candid memoir. I was offput by revelations of sex and drugs in initial chapters but reading on found that the totality of the chapters – not really chapters but sequential anecdotes or observations – began to build a comprehensive picture of the Ghana that Grobel experienced.  It was indeed a place that operated by its own set of confusing cultural constraints. Some were legacies of traditional village life, but others were mechanisms that modern Ghanaians developed to cope with each other within a corrupt system where getting ahead was the principal objective.  Sex, graft, nepotism, fatalism, humor, relationships, obligations, misunderstandings, all got mixed up in the quests of Grobel’s subjects: first to survive and then to thrive.

Author Grobel was a full participant in the scene around him and acute observer of it. His sketches of life and people in his life in Accra are trenchant. Some chapters are connected in a desultory manner, others stand alone.  Grobel was acutely aware of his foreignness and how that figured into how people saw and dealt with him and how he dealt with them.  He was generally sympathetic to Ghanaians but scathing regarding diplomats and outside do-gooders.  During his years in Ghana Grobel developed lasting friendships; one with a young man named Atar and another with girlfriend Akua. The saga of their interactions tracks throughout the book.

The overall impact of the memoir is to paint Ghana and Ghanaians in unvarnished terms. Despite Grobel’s cynicism, a genuine affection for Ghana and its people shines through.

Folly and Madness in the Congo

 

 

A review of The Last Expedition – Stanley’s Mad Journey through the Congo by Daniel Liebowitz and Charles Pearson, W. W. Norton, NY, 2005.

 The popular facts - In 1886 word began to spread that Emin Pasha, a German national who was the governor of Equatoria Province of Egyptian Sudan, was under siege by Mahdi jihadists who in 1885 had executed British Governor General Charles Gordon and stuck his head on a pole in Khartoum. The British public was outraged by this atrocity so rallied to support the relief of Gordon’s last remaining lieutenant.  Because the Mahdists controlled the Nile, an overland expedition was conceived designed to resupply Emin Pasha and to offer him an escape from the marauding jihadists. The best-known explorer of Africa, Henry Morton Stanley, was designated to lead the expedition.

It began to go wrong from the beginning.  The major decision that backfired was Stanley’s bullheaded determination to approach Equatoria from the west, that is starting at the Atlantic Ocean. The shorter alternative was from the east along the slave caravan trails from Zanzibar.  Stanley’s iron will prevailed and the column of nearly a thousand men – nine Europeans, some Sudanese soldiers, some Somali fighters and hundreds of Zanzibari porters, augmented by hundreds of African carriers – both hired and enslaved – began the 2000-mile journey from the mouth of the Congo River, up the river and its Aruwimi tributary. They hacked through hundreds of miles of oppressive, dank, dark, wet jungle to Lake Albert. Beginning in March 1887, they sought to transport hundreds of tons of ammunition, weaponry, and supplies as well as an eighty-foot-long metal boat. Materiel was divided into sixty-pound loads carried by men. Those who survived the rigors of the journey finally arrived at the Lake in December 1887.

The going was hell. Rivers became impassable. The Ituri jungle was impenetrable, and native tribes, including pygmies, cannibals, and indigenous slavers, were hostile. Harassment and conflict plagued the column. Food ran out and little was available. Men starved, were wounded, weakened, and became susceptible to disease. Hundreds died. Stanley badgered and berated his officers. He brutalized slackers and laggards, and had thieves and deserters hung. Given the almost insurmountable obstacles, it is amazing that the column crept onwards, seemingly empowered by Stanley’s unbending will.

Upon finally reaching Lake Albert, the southernmost part of Equatoria, Stanley and Emin Pasha finally met.  Each privately recognized the irony of Pasha rescuing Stanley rather than the other way around.  However, Pasha exercised diminishing control over his Egyptian troops who, at first, refused to believe that their sovereign the Khedive of Egypt had abandoned them.  Secondly, they opted to rebel against Pasha and his so-called savior Stanley. Pasha was a weak, indecisive administrator and while he dithered, Stanley returned into the forest to reclaim what was left of his rear column and supplies. That took a year!

Finally, back at Lake Albert Stanley set a deadline and Pasha realized he had no option. He had to leave. Another huge column set out for Zanzibar. This column moved excruciatingly slowly as well but did not suffer from the horrors of the jungle. Twelve hundred miles later on December 4, 1889, they arrived at Bagamoyo, on the Indian Ocean coast across from Zanzibar Island.  There during a joyful welcoming dinner celebration, Emin Pasha unwittingly stepped out of a second story window and smashed his head on the stones below. (Pasha survived but never left Africa). Stanley, who had more than enough of the dithering gentle soul, left him and returned to a tumultuous reception in England. 

Reality – The authors of this book recount the facts of the expedition but reveal the maneuvering, the backbiting, the antagonisms, the politics, the scheming, the betrayals, the bravery, the motives, the competence, the incompetence, and the character of all involved. The first narrative of the expedition was Stanley’s best seller In Darkest Africa. In that book Stanley painted himself as hero and protagonist without peers. In fact, Stanley was aloof, selfish, and haunted by his humble origins. He was motivated by the prospects for fame and fortune. He focused on results. He had no friends or colleagues on the expedition, only subordinates.

Later publications of letters, diaries and memoirs by his British companions cast considerable doubt on Stanley’s version of events, especially his leadership and management styles. The authors of the book used the various accounts of the expedition throughout the saga to paint an authentic portrait of the expedition, of its people, of the hardships, and of the decisions made and not made.  Especially revealing are the roles that Stanley’s British subordinates played. Indeed, without them – and Stanley gave them little credit in his opus – the expedition would not have survived.  Major Barttelot, William Bonny, James Jameson, Arthur Jephson, Dr. Parke, Lt. Stairs, Herbert Ward, and even notorious Arab slaver Tippu Tib, all played important roles in the expedition’s various fortunes.  Consequently, The Last Expedition provides contemporary readers with an accurate recitation of the reality of the expedition to rescue Emin Pasha. It is terrific readable history!

Afterword – Readers will note various citations, not just from Stanley, but from others mentioned above, employed to underline points in the text. Indeed, as the authors later explain, in the years after the expedition was completed, the contrasting points of view provided fodder for Britian’s popular press. The sanctimonious anti-Stanley hoopla certainly tarnished his reputation but could not refute the fact that he was the 19^th century’s most intrepid explorer.