Wonderous Feet, Remarkable Journey!

 

A review of Out of Darkness, Shining Light by Petina Gapah, Simon Shuster, NY.

 

This imaginative and intriguing novel relates tales from the group of Africans who accompanied and/or were employed by Dr. David Livingstone on his final voyage into central Africa.  Livingstone died while on the journey. His team debated before deciding to carry his body, his maps, and papers fifteen hundred miles across forbidding terrain to the coast so that everything, especially the corpse, could be returned to England.

The novel is written in the voices of Livingstone’s companions. First his cook Halima, who cynically observes all around her, their foibles and motives. Secondly, the pious Jacob Wainright who struggles between leadership, Christian morality, and his own failings. Truly, these voices see Africa from their own perspective, and with great insight.  The mystery that is never satisfactorily unraveled is why? Why cart a desiccated corpse for months? Plausible explanations are offered as to why this disparate group would undertake such an arduous journey – loyalty, devotion to the doctor, fear, superstition, Christian faith, confidence in each other – but there is no definitive summation, just the complexities of what they did.

The plot aside, the novel offers a realistic glimpse of Africa in the latter part of the Nineteenth century. The slave trade was ever present. Its terror loomed over the land. Territories and villages were controlled by warlords or chiefs.  Negotiations were necessary for all travel, and no one could be hurried. The group dynamics of the bearers are intrinsic to the story.  The author invents marvelous scenarios of how they coped with the task before them and with each other.   

Author Gapah, a Zimbabwean, has done a remarkable job of weaving together the strands of known history with the fictional reality of how they did it. Out of Darkness, Shining Light is an impressive read.    

Kudos for Finding Kony

 

Robert Gribbin, Finding Kony: A Novel.  A review by Alan G. Johnston.  Note:  both Robert Gribbin and Alan Johnston were in the Peace Corps group that arrived in Kenya in October 1968.  They both spent many years in Africa.

 

On March 5, 2012, a U.S.-based NGO, Invisible Children, Inc., released a short documentary film called Kony 2012.  The intent of the film, meant for world-wide distribution, was to make the infamous Ugandan warlord, Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), so famous that he couldn’t hide.  The goal was to have him arrested and brought to justice by the end of 2012. The film quickly went viral, garnering more than 100 million views and becoming the most “liked” video on YouTube.

The film highlights the announcement by Barack Obama in October 2011 that the U.S. would be sending 100 Special Forces military advisors to assist the Ugandan Defense Force in the search for Kony.  The African Union quickly authorized a force of 5,000 military from Uganda, D.R. Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan to carry out the hunt for Kony, with communications, intelligence, and logistics support from the U.S. advisors. By this time, Kony and his LRA had fled from Uganda to somewhere in Central Africa.

In the end, the hunt proved futile, although the LRA as a fighting force was greatly diminished.  By April 2017 the United States concluded that the LRA no longer posed a threat to Uganda and the Special Forces were withdrawn.  This is where Robert Gribbin and his new novel, Finding Kony, steps in.  He calls on his protagonist, freelance journalist Paul Simmons, to take over the search.  Gribbin calls on his lengthy experience throughout Central Africa to provide an authentic context for this dangerous adventure.  We have met Simmons before as he risked his lifetime after time pursuing stories in South Sudan during a civil war (in Serpent of the Nile).  He is a Black American former Peace Corps Volunteer and now freelance journalist based in Mombasa, Kenya.  Once again, he gets himself into some very tricky positions interviewing victims of LRA atrocities in Uganda in search of hints as to how to find Kony. He eventually heads off first to Chad and then by land through Sudan into Central Africa, illegally crossing more than one border, in his search to find and interview Kony to find out what Kony has to say about his goals and motivations.

Gribbin is particularly adept at providing a realistic and convincing picture of the complex environment of embassies, customs and immigration agencies, UN organizations, peace-keeping forces, NGOs, traditional leaders, and para-military groups.  It is clear that Gribbin has visited refugee camps and knows his way around the isolated and dusty towns and villages through which his fictional journalist must track his quarry.

This is a tale of adventure intertwined with real world humanitarian issues and the quest for justice.  The International Criminal Court has indicted Kony for crimes against humanity.  Is that case any closer to being resolved?

4/17/2023

 

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.