Assal to Kilmanjaro on a bike?

 

A review of From Afar - One man’s human-powered adventure from the lowest point on the African continent to the summit of its highest mountain, a memoir by Kyle Henning, self-published, 2021.

 I enjoy African travel stories. In part this is because I traveled extensively in Africa including overland traverses of the continent from the Cape of Good Hope to Tangiers and from Mombasa to Doula.  I also often journeyed around East Africa, including Kenya’s forsaken northern deserts.  Finally, I too have stood on the salt shores of Lake Assal, the continent’s low point, and on the snows of Kilimanjaro, its highest. (Lake Assal in Djibouti, formerly the Territory of the Afars and Issas, provides the pun for the catchy title).  So, I was predisposed to like this memoir.

Henning was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, when he became fixated on a bicycle trip from Africa’s lowest point to its highest, i.e., Lake Assal to Kilimanjaro. He carefully planned, rode miles in preparation, acquired a suitable bike. Upon termination of his Peace Corps service – casting other alternatives aside - he put his dream into effect. Thus, the chronicle of the expedition begins. It was not an easy trip. It took a physical and psychological toll replete with second guessing about the quest, but he persevered. The memoir recounts numerous instances of challenges from people or equipment offset by unexpected generosity by strangers and friends alike.  Henning had a good eye for scenery, situations and events and describes them well.  Those stories are what combined to make the trek memorable.

The memoir is however, more than just the recitation of the trip it is also a record of Henning’s personal growth, of finding his way, floundering, and ultimately getting back on track.  A reader won’t be surprised to learn that he made it to the top of Kilimanjaro. 

 

The Delamere Chronicle - Life and Death in Kenya

 

A review of For Love of Soysambu -The Saga of Lord Delamere & His Descendants in Kenya by Juliet Barnes, Old Africa Books, Navaisha, Kenya, 2020.

The title says it all, this is a comprehensive documentation of the trials and tribulations – and successes – of the Delamere family of Kenya. The first Lord Delamere – D as he was called – set the stage with his outsized personality and utter devotion to making Kenya a viable entity, both agriculturally and politically.  D was an early settler arriving in what was to become Kenya in 1897.  D acquired vast tracks of land and spent the present-day equivalent of tens of millions of dollars over the next 35 years in trying to adapt the land to make it productive for crops and livestock.  Amidst many failures he enjoyed some successes and paved the way for others to succeed.  Indeed, he is the father of modern agriculture in East Africa. Prominently, he was a thorn in the side of the colonial government because he ardently agitated for European settler rights.  

Lord Delamere’s descendants: his son Tom, his grandson Hugh, his great grandson Tom, and great great grandson Hugh all inherited D’s mantle and mystique of aristocracy, money (whether or not there was any) and audaciousness. They all figure in this saga. They successively faced economic barriers posed by WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, Mau Mau, Independence, or present-day politics.  Under their various suzerainties, the home estate of Soysambu, several tens of thousands of acres in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, prospered or didn’t, but it remained the family strong hold which it still is today.

In addition to detailing the economics and politics of past years author Barnes strings the story along by focusing on familial relationships, multiple marriages, liaisons, and friendships. It behooves the reader to have some understanding of Kenyan history and its settler society: the Happy Valley crowd and Lord Erroll’s murder, in order to put the saga into context.  Lacking such context readers might well be puzzled by all the intertangled personages. Similarly, the book lacks maps. If one does not know Kenya’s geography, figuring out where the various properties are located is bewildering. A map of Soysambu itself showing the locations of the various abodes discussed would also be useful.

Author Barnes drew extensively on conversations with Hugh (D’s grandson and the current Lord). She splices his (and wife Anne’s) comments into the chronological stream as it progresses.  This provides a bit of a seesaw effect but certainly adds candid perspective.   

A penultimate chapter in the book covers two deaths perpetrated by Tom (D’s great grandson).  First a Kenyan official was shot when conducting an apparently illegal raid, thought to be a robbery. After months in prison, Tom was not prosecuted for the death. Secondly, a year later Tom and a companion shot at poachers. One subsequently died. Because of his lineage and the fact that he was white there was again much public bruhaha over the death.  Tom was convicted of this death and served time in prison. I found it interesting that in a book replete with hundreds of names of individuals who figured into the Delamere saga that author Barnes did not name the companion present during the second death. Certainly, Barnes knew who was there. The man subsequently testified at the public trial but is never named in the book.  Research reveals that the man was Carl Tundo whose parents lived on Soysambu and were friends of the Delameres and the author.  There is no explanation as to why he was not mentioned in the book.

Throughout the book the fate of the vast lands of Soysambu figure time and again. Is it a farm, a ranch, a game preserve, a bird sanctuary or what? In its current configuration the estate is legally a conservancy designed to protect wildlife while allowing some cattle ranching.  The surrounding area is increasingly subdivided into small barely viable plots.  Whether or not Soysambu can withstand the land hunger and political pressures of modern Kenya remains to be seen.   

In conclusion For Love of Soysambu is an intriguing book. It melds together history, scandal, politics, conservation, agriculture, and the changing spectacle of Kenya. I enjoyed it.   

PCV Life in Kenya

 

A review of Jackson’s Kenya – A Peace Corps Story by Richard Otto Wiegand, www.safari-shamba-books.com, 2020.

 

I have long been awaiting a good Peace Corps memoir from Kenya. At last, one arrived in author Wiegand’s remembering his years in Kenya in the early 1970s.  Otto Wiegand was a dairy expert charged with improving animal husbandry in a half dozen of the Settlement Schemes in the trans-Nzoia region between Eldoret and Kitale.  As do most memoirs this one follows a hazy chronological order. The author recounts some events or anecdotes from the 70s and then updates them with a later observation or comment about how things changed or didn’t.  His Kenyan history of what went on around him is broad brushed, and accurate. It is not hard for the reader to put matters into that context.

More to the point, Wiegand’s reminisces about his life in Kenya are chock full of anecdotes about life in rural areas with rural folks. His guide to much of this was a man named Jackson, whom Wiegand employed as a cook, but who subsequently became a friend, Swahili teacher and guide to all things Kenyan – tribalism, corrupt politics, local customs, and culture. Wiegand’s experiences reflected a growing understanding of the environment he was in and with that understanding he became an increasingly effective volunteer. His recitation of the problems that small scale Kenyan farmers encountered clearly illustrated the complexities of economic development in third world countries. 

In addition to rural life, Wiegand recounts some of his travels and the young expatriate social context he enjoyed. All PCVs took advantage of East Africa’s magnificent possibilities – high mountains, terrific game parks, gorgeous beaches. The only error of fact I found in the book was geographical. Wiegand swaps the positions of Masaka and Mbarara, Uganda, in telling of a trip there. 

In summary, Wiegand does an excellent job of describing the life of a volunteer of that era in Kenya. He writes in a frank un-hyperbolic fashion that is a pleasure to read. 

A disclaimer – I was a PCV in the same part of Kenya in the years just before Wiegand arrived. We never met, but I installed the water systems on several of the Settlement Schemes – Ndalu and Kiminini - he worked as an extension agent. The memoir also mentions several volunteers from my group who hung on after I departed.

Gulu in the Rain

 

A review of I Miss the Rain in Africa by Nancy Daniel Wesson, Modern History Press, Ann Arbor, Mi, 2021. 

 

This memoir of Peace Corps service in Uganda in 2012/13 has the immediacy of a blog/diary from which it is drawn. Consequently, it is a cumulation of little horrors of third world poverty and ah-ha’s of cultural insight. Hyperbole characterizes the prose. Everything is reported in near breathless terms. That criticism aside, the author was a first-time visitor to Africa, and she was posted to a difficult place in a difficult time. 

Gulu, a city in northern Uganda was the locus of terrible troubles in the 1980s and 90s when the Lord’s Resistance Army terrorized the region, killing, kidnapping, looting and conscripting inhabitants. Many fled to the relative safety of the city but brought their personal trauma with them. This emotional climate then overlaid an urban environment where traditional values were already under siege from modernity.  Gulu was author Wesson’s posting. She worked for a non-governmental organization which promoted literacy.  Once she found her niche she contributed to the organization’s effectiveness.    She was especially proud of a program to develop libraries for children.

Much of the memoir focuses on the difficulty of life for a Peace Corps Volunteer: poor housing, urban noise, medical issues, food, weather, dreadful public transportation, and more.  Wesson was not an especially happy camper and called them like she saw them. Yet she recognized that Peace Corps was a lifechanging event and a learning experience for her.   I give her credit for hanging in.

The Peace Corps Gulu portion ends about half-way through the book. The remainder relates a bit back to it but continues with the author’s next life experiences.

Kudos for the Serpent

A review of The Serpent of the Nile from the Foreign Service Journal, November 2021.

 This taut thriller opens with Paul Simmons, a former Peace Corps volunteer who is now a Nairobi-based freelance journalist, being freed from captivity in South Sudan. Surprise: Someone doesn’t appreciate his dogged pursuit of stories of corruption, arms smuggling and human trafficking in that wartorn nation, the newest in Africa. But who? And who, or what, is the novel’s titular snake?

As Simmons gets caught up in the violence and intrigue that plague one of the world’s most desperate nations, Robert Gribbin introduces us to a kaleidoscopic cast that includes figures from the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army and some of their local victims, as well as government employees, British and American expatriates, missionaries and (fictional!) Embassy Juba personnel.

Set against the grim reality and history of the region, and drawing on the author’s decades of diplomacy in Africa, this novel accurately portrays the despair, hope and aspirations of South Sudan’s beleaguered people.

Ambassador (ret.) Robert Gribbin spent 35 years in East and Central Africa, first as a Peace Corps volunteer and then as a Foreign Service officer. He was posted to 15 African countries and served on delegations to the United Nations General Assembly and U.N. Human Rights Commission. He served as U.S. ambassador to Rwanda (1996-1999) and to the Central African Republic and occasionally takes on short-term assignments for the Department of State. He is the author of In the Aftermath of Genocide: The U.S. Role in Rwanda (2005), and novels: State of Decay (2003), Murder in Mombasa (2013) and The Last Rhino (2020).

Justice for Deborah

 

A review of American Taboo – A murder in the Peace Corps by Philip Weiss, Harper Collins, 2004.

 Following up my read of Every Hill a Burial Ground about a Peace Corps murder in Tanzania, a friend sent me this book about a Peace Corps murder in Tonga.

Indeed, there was a murder in Tonga, a very small Pacific Island nation, in 1975. Deborah Gardner, a Peace Corps teacher was murdered by a fellow volunteer, Dennis Priven. He even confessed. The saga, of course, was complicated. Deborah was a vivacious young lady, who enchanted all she met. Priven became smitten with her; enthusiasms she did not fully reciprocate. That seems to have been the underlying theme of the crime. She had other romantic entanglements but refused Priven.

The author painted a complicated scene of Peace Corps life in Tonga. It was a small place with many volunteers. They all knew each other and socialized together frequently.  Tonga is portrayed as a place where there were two types of volunteers – those who engaged in Tongan culture and those who disdained it, preferring the company of other expatriates.  The latter group and certainly some of the former often apparently engaged in drunken revelries and revolving relationships. It is not a pretty picture of Americans abroad. There is some, but not much revelation of what volunteers actually did or what contributions they made. Politically, however, the American presence was important to Tonga and vice versa. The Peace Corps was the tangible expression of America’s interest in the island nation. As it turned out, neither side wanted to lose that connection on account of a murder.

Everyone was, of course, shocked by the murder and the violence of it. Priven was quickly fingered and hunted around the island prior to his turning himself in. He confessed but said nothing further. The evidence was clear and incriminating: eyewitnesses placed him at the scene, his knife was the murder weapon and Deborah’s dying statement was that Dennis did it.

Tongan Peace Corps officials, with the backing of Peace Corps Washington, soon turned to facilitating, mounting and financing a defense of Priven, claiming that he was mentally impaired at the time. Truly, he was a troubled soul but was he crazy?  This defense took lots of maneuvering especially with psychological interventions at the trial but was ultimately successful.

All in all, American Taboo is a sordid tale where power and manipulation on the part of official Americans offset the delivery of justice under Tongan law. Tonga too was guilty of not wanting to hang an ugly American if the cost – justice for Deborah – was too high in terms of eliminating the Peace Corps presence and souring ties with the United States.  

Author Weiss did an astonishing amount of research for this book. Literally chasing down and interviewing dozens of folks who had little desire to relive these sordid events.  The book contains lots of details from overlapping and conflicting memories, after-the-fact justifications, and regrets. Sometimes it is too much. If, however, a reader wades through it all, the result remains disquieting; justice was not served.

Good review of new novel

 

Robert Gribbin, The Serpent of the Nile: A Novel of South Sudan.  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.

 

The last place that you want to end up is in a prison cell in some remote part of Africa, whether that cell is controlled by a rebel group, an opposition warlord, or a government.  Especially if you happen to be a journalist. Bad things happen in those cells. Yet that is exactly where we meet up with the protagonist of Robert Gribbin’s new novel, The Serpent of the Nile.  As he always does, Gribbin has used his lengthy experience in many parts of Africa, including South Sudan, to provide an authentic context for this tale of insurrection and intrigue in this unstable part of Africa.  By the time you have finished this short novel, much of which consists of a concise briefing on the history, culture and politics of South Sudan, you may feel ready to take up a diplomatic post in that country, but you will probably not want to do much investigative journalism there.

As it turns out, our as yet un-named journalist is soon let loose by his captor and led to the border by the captor’s son, Owino, so that the journalist can return to his base in Kenya to recover from this close call.  All the characters in this novel seem quite plausible, and Gribbin reviews a comprehensive list of foreign aid organizations, UN agencies, NGOs, and diplomats from across the globe that have assembled in Juba to somehow help build a new country.  The name Owino reminded me of my many Luo friends from Kenya who were serving in Juba as consultants and advisors; they even jokingly referred to Juba as “Little Kisumu.”  But after a short respite our free-lance journalist friend, Paul, who happens to be a Black American who served in the Peace Corps in Kenya and who can pass as a Kenyan when it serves his purposes, is back in Juba searching for a lead on some illegal Chinese dealings, a story that he can sell to the international press.

The main problem that I have with this novel is that it is too short.  It establishes a realistic context for the events of the novel, but three-quarters of the way through the book Paul is still not yet in the serious trouble that we know is coming.  A more elaborate rendition of the story would get us more invested in the characters and leave us even more astounded by the outcome.

It is quite possible to spend significant amounts of time in Africa and not realize the extent to which sorcery and various spirits have such a major influence for both good and evil.  Gribbin does not make that mistake.  The novel’s namesake Serpent of the Nile raises its head and has a practical impact at several key junctures in the story.  In fact, for many of the South Sudanese who we meet in these pages, their glimmer of hope for the future, in this otherwise forlorn country, rests in their eventual salvation by this very serpent.