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My Skinny Cow on an Anthill
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A Historical and Cultural Analysis of Women Land Rights in Kisii Count, Kenya, 1895- 1970
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My Roots
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Set among the Abagusii of Kenya at the onset of independence in Africa, Jeremîré Araka’s My Roots is an extraordinary story of postcolonial migration and the characters’ struggle to negotiate their existence in the disparate cultures that assailed Africa during and after colonization.
Otenyo, as Chief Ongoro’s first son, is the entitled heir to his father’s throne. Colonialism and Christianity, however, have infected native customs and traditions, especially among those who have attained formal education such as Otenyo and his sisters who have excelled in modern education undergirded by Christian values. Otenyo acquires outstanding credentials in America where he also meets and marries an American woman, jilting a childhood flame whom he had left – so far unknown to him – pregnant with a daughter. All the successes with education and in the professions, however, further alienate Ongoro’s children from their culture and traditions that have stood the test of time and served their society well. Torn between two worlds and rooted in neither, despite their academic success, their family faces mysterious deaths, countless ailments, baffling mishaps and many incomprehensible happenings whose solutions are deemed only explainable in the traditions of their people.
This story gives the reader insights into the accounts of an immediate pre- and post-independent African state and the journey that Otenyo had unseeingly set out into the distant lands and upon his return, but now in search of his roots. Will the search for his roots succeed? How will his people, who have long-awaited his return, receive him? What of his estranged fiancé, Keruboo? Readers will conclude this book with a sense of awe-inspiring amusement.
What others say about My Roots
“My Roots is a searing memoir painted on a leather that is a vivid, revelatory, thoroughly original and compelling account of postcolonial migration and the characters’ battle to negotiate their existence in the mosaic of cultures that assailed Africa during colonialism and immediate post-colonialism.” – Omwami Prof. Dietrick Kaijanangoma, Author, Analyst, Distinguished communication scholar, St. Augustine University of Tanzania, Mwanza.
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Oral Poetry in Africa :The Abagusii of Kenya
Oral Poetry in Africa: The Abagusii of Kenya highlights characteristics of African
oral traditions with particular focus on the oral poetry of the Abagusii of Kenya. It
shows that oral poetry in the Abagusii community covered every facet of life. The
community’s social-political and economic life, history, values, norms and customs
were stored in the oral poetry, in addition to proverbs, riddles and folktales. Notably,
oral poetry coloured the entire life of Omogusii and was sung during birth, initiation,
marriage and death ceremonies. This book documents the oral poetry of the
community in its original form, and in various versions that were practised or sung in
different parts of the region inhabited by the community. Further, the book discusses
the context in which this poetry was sung and explains some of the cultural practices,
norms, and customs that surround or motivated the composition of the poetry.
The advent of colonialism had ‘corrupting’ influence on the original poetry, more so
with the adoption of English words and phrases. This kind of poetry has not been left
out.
Aside from the general poetry and the book also captures emeino, the Abagusii
classical oral poetry. While the general poetry utilized improvisation as a technique in
its presentation and performance, the classical poetry was a fixed form that demanded
to be sung in its original form. Unlike the general poetry that, in its ephemerality,
invited additions and subtractions from the text, classical poetry was permanent in
text with no room for improvisation.
Oral Poetry in Africa: The Abagusii of Kenya is meant for students of oral literature
at university level. However, it can also be used by researchers of African oral
literature, culture, anthropology, history and sociology. Indeed, it is also good for the
general reader who is interested in the culture of Abagusii and African people, in general
Salted with Fire
Salted with Fire takes place in Kisii on the eve of Kenya’s independence. Central to the story is Dexter Conway, a colonial officer who will be one of the few to remain in Kenya. This suits Conway, who seeks a different life in the newly independent country. The tale begins with a mysterious train wreck. As the story unfolds, Conway becomes enmeshed with Kwamboka, wounded and hidden at Conway’s home by his servant, Maranga. Through Kwamboka, Conway’s relationship with Maranga takes a new turn.
In the surprising and suspenseful story, Arthur Dobrin reverses the effect of a changing world upon the lives of these people in Western Kenya
A Strange Twist and Other Stories
When Kangi joins a new school, he has no idea of the roller-coaster ride that awaits him. This chapter is riddled with experiences that are new and exciting. How will Kangi navigate culture shock, travelling, differences in beliefs, celebrations, responsibilities, hospital runs and even teeth decays?
Is there a way to find solutions to these ever-developing situations?
Let us join Kangi in his adventures and see where it all takes us!
In this collection, the author has interwoven the core competencies of the Competence-Based Curriculum (CBC) into the stories to create circumstances that not only inform but educate on recurrent themes and topics in the curriculum and society. This is a fun way for the learner to engage and enjoy learning.
What Others Say
“I loved how the children’s issues were well intertwined with fun and exciting stories. It is an easy read for pre-teens and younger children. My daughter carries her copy with her every day.” - Hellen Wakonyo, Parent.
“This will supplement teaching a lot of environmental, science and creative content in my class. It is refreshing to see a writer who delves into the societal contemporary issues surrounding our children.” - Teacher Rukia, Thindigua Junior Secondary School.
Moraa and Miya the Cat
Moraa and Miya the Cat is a story about a particular cat named Miya. Miya was a birthday gift for Moraa from Auntie Ngeneke. Moraa loved animals and so she loved the present, but Mr. Bundi, Moraa’s father, was not so thrilled about having a cat in the house. As the story progresses, Miya the cat changes Mr. Bundi’s attitude toward her as she helps the family in many ways. She first alerts them about a theft that was happening in their home and later warns the family about a snake that almost found its way to the house. In the end, we see the father, Mr. Bundi, embracing Miya the cat and welcoming her as part of the family.
The story is good as it is interesting and teaches the value of giving people the benefit of the doubt. It encourages young readers to love and take care of pets.
My Safari Through Life: Extracts
Jahenda the Teenager Mother
Jahenda, the Teenage Mother is a coming-of-age story about Jahenda, the protagonist and a Form-two student at Chavavo Secondary school, who believes education is her key to success. Like most teenage girls, she vows not to be distracted by teenage love, but when Alan, a handsome and charming young man, shows interest in her, she is tamed by his charm and falls head over heels in love with him. Yielding to the temptations of love, Jahenda makes the biggest blunder in her life when she becomes pregnant and, as a result, is expelled from school, an outcome which derails her dreams for success. That is not all! She is shunned by most people in her rural community and must confront the stigma of having a child outside wedlock. To make matters worse, when Alan, the very young man responsible for her pregnancy, dies unexpectedly after a snake bite, this young mother finds herself at a crossroads in her life. What makes Jahenda’s story a compelling read, therefore, is her ability to harness her inner ambitions to emerge from her fix by doing the unthinkable and defying societal norms to save herself. What a cautionary tale! Will this teen mother’s last act be her saving grace?
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Coming of Age Strides in African Publishing Essays in Honour of Dr Henry Chakava at 70
The sixteen chapters in this book form a Festschrift in honour of Henry Chakava, the distinguished Kenyan publisher. With a Forward by Tanzanian publisher Walter Bgoya , his long-time collaborator in furthering the causes of independent African publishing, the topics cover the full range of issues in which he has been central over more than forty years.
His notable achievements include the first local buy-out of a British multinational publishing house, being one of the founders of African Books Collective and the African Publishers' Network, and participation in international counsels such as the Bellagio Publishing Network.
Amongst the contributors are prominent Kenyan authors Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Simon Gikandi and Micere Githae Mugo; Kenyan colleagues from the book trade world; close collaborators in Uganda and Nigeria, and some international colleagues.
The greatest range of the contributors are from within Africa. There are subject specific chapters on such issues as training, copyright, publishing in the digital age, and an overview of publishing at Codesria including the vexed issue of marginalisation of African language publishing.
Kikuyu District by Paul Sullivan
Brief Summary
Francis Hall's letters are among the earliest colonial record of daily life in British East Africa, now modern day Kenya. In 1892 Hall was posted to Fort Smith with orders to build 150 miles of road, to re-supply caravans between the coast and Uganda and to keep the peace between the Kikuyu and the Maasai.
His was a hard life in difficult, dangerous conditions and every day was an adventure. He was gored by a rhino and mauled by a leopard, which he strangled with his rifle, and survived bush surgery and frequent bouts of malaria.
While on leave in England he married Bee Russell, a colleague's sister, and they set up house together in Fort Smith. As the railway line approached, so the early European settlers started to arrive. But the railway was to change everything, and when Nairobi was established on their doorstep at the turn of the century, Fort Smith became redundant.
The government first moved the Halls to Machakos and then back to Kikuyuland to establish a new fort at Mbirri. Six months later Francis Hall was dead from black water fever aged 40. Mbirri was renamed Fort Hall in his memory and today the town is called Muranga. Kikuyu District is a fascinating account of the life of an early colonial administrator and settler.
Journey of a Lifetime Pilgrimage to Makkah by Mohamed Amin
This exquisitely beautiful series of books portrays the cultures, landscapes, fauna, flora and history of an individual country with over 150 stunning photographs and well-written and knowledgeable text.
Lavishly illustrated, this special pictorial record -- with lucid and absorbing text -- of the pilgrimage known to Muslims as the Hajj brilliantly catches the spirit and devotion of one of the world's great religious experiences.
For pilgrims this book will be an enduring reminder of that experience. For non-Muslims it stands as a moving documentary of a testament to faith.
We Came in Dhows by Cynthia Salvadori 3 volumes
Brief Summary
From the introduction: "This volume has been designed as a companion to Through Open Doors: A View of Asian Cultures in Kenya.
Although that book describes the historical background of the various Asian communities in Kenya, it has little information about individual people. This book is all about people."
Abrahams People a Kenyan Dynasty by Jane Barsby
Brief Summary
The book, all 400 pages of it, sticks largely to the script of facts but unlike many other biographies brings Abraham’s journey alive, saturated with anecdotes, narrating the many twists in the tail of Abraham’s life as if the author had been the proverbial fly on the wall at times.
Jane manages to find that perfect blend of what story telling should embrace, an embroidery of facts and at times a bit of fiction surely, giving readers of the book ‘Abraham’s People’ the impression of reading a novel rather than a dry story dictated entirely by time lines and actual events. Abraham’s escape route took him to Britain first, still as a young lad, before taking a leap into the unknown when he decided to first go to South Africa in 1901 to join up with his father, working his passage as a ‘grease monkey’ in the engine room before finally making his way to Kenya in 1903 at the age of 20.
The first chapters in the book are dedicated to the story of his forefathers, how they came to Lithuania where they first prospered and then suffered under increasingly intolerant rulers, leading up to the days when first his father had to flee for his dear life before, almost one by one, the rest of the family managed to make their getaway. It must have been in those days in Leeds, when a little acorn took root in Abraham’s mind, germinating along the way, taking shape and eventually becoming a vision taking visible shape.
His arrival at the port of Mombasa and the rail journey on the ‘Lunatic Express, aka as The Iron Snake’, his stepping off the train in Nairobi, back then but a depot for the railway, around which a town had just started to grow, his first meetings with contemporaries who were part of Kenya’s colonial history, all is meticulously captured by the author. Again it almost appears that Jane Barsby was present or else managed to train her looking glass back in time as she describes how Abraham met with Tommy Woods on arrival in Nairobi, who became a fast friend, or how Abraham made a quick 25 pounds profit on a land deal, which he struck with one of the Asian community’s icons Mr. Jevanjee and how he then ventured into business, farming, ranching and deal making, soon becoming part of the colonial Kenya’s ‘furniture’ too.
The author ably sums up Abraham’s business acumen when she describes him as basically a jack of all trades with an uncanny ability to smell money if it could be made somewhere by buying or selling, investing or trading, importing and exporting. As the chapters add up, more and more insight is given into the life Abraham lived, the setbacks he suffered and his almost throwing in the towel had it not been for Lord Delamare, the Kenyan colony’s leading aristocrat and an icon in his own right.
Dedan Kimathi The Real Story
Brief Summary
"To most people, Dedan Kimathi, the man who led the Mau Mau movement in Kenya’s forests in the 1950s to win freedom from the British Empire, has remained a shadowy and enigmatic figure.
Attempts to portray his heroic and fascinating life have produced varying results, ranging from historical distortion to artistic idealism.
ISBN:9789966498151
Author:Samuel Kahiga
The trial of Dedan Kimathi by Ngugi wa Thiongo and Micere Githae Mugo
The Trial of Dedan Kimathi, written in collaboration with Micere Githae-Mugo, is Ngugi’s response to colonialist writings about the Mau-Mau movement, which traditionally depicted the movement and its leader, Dedan Kimathi, as mentally unbalanced and vicious.
Ngugi and his collaborator choose to counter this image with a portrait of Kimathi as a man of great courage and commitment. This was how he was seen by many of the peasants and laborers of Kenya.
Imperial Reckoning The Untold Story of Britains Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins
Brief Summary
Britain fought in the Second World War to save the world from fascism. But just a few years after the defeat of Hitler came the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya - a mass armed rebellion by the Kikuyu people, demanding the return of their land and freedom. The draconian response of Britain's colonial government was to detain nearly the entire Kikuyu population of one-and-a half-million - to hold them in camps or confine them in villages ringed with barbed wire - and to portray them as sub-human savages.
From 1952 until the end of the war in 1960 tens of thousands of detainees - and possibly a hundred thousand or more - died from the combined effects of exhaustion, disease, starvation and systemic physical brutality. Until now these events have remained untold, largely because the British government in Kenya destroyed most of its files. For the last eight years Caroline Elkins has conducted exhaustive research to piece together the story, unearthing reams of documents and interviewing several hundred Kikuyu survivors.
Britain's Gulag reveals what happened inside Kenya's detention camps, as well as the efforts to conceal the truth. Now, for the first time, we can understand the full savagery of the Mau Mau war and the ruthless determination with which Britain sought to control its empire.
ISBN:9780805080018
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Digital Democracy Analogue Politics How the Internet Is Transforming Politics in Africa by Nanjala Nyabola
From the upheavals of recent national elections to the success of the #MyDressMyChoice feminist movement, digital platforms have already had a dramatic impact on political life in Kenya – one of the most electronically advanced countries in Africa.
While the impact of the Digital Age on Western politics has been extensively debated, there is still little appreciation of how it has been felt in developing countries such as Kenya, where Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and other online platforms are increasingly a part of everyday life.
Written by a respected Kenyan activist and researcher at the forefront of political online struggles, this book presents a unique contribution to the debate on digital democracy. For traditionally marginalised groups, particularly women and people with disabilities, digital spaces have allowed Kenyans to build new communities which transcend old ethnic and gender divisions. But the picture is far from wholly positive.
Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics explores the drastic efforts being made by elites to contain online activism, as well as how ‘fake news’, a failed digital vote-counting system and the incumbent president's recruitment of Cambridge Analytica contributed to tensions around the 2017 elections.
Reframing digital democracy from the African perspective, Nyabola’s ground-breaking work opens up new ways of understanding our current global online era.
Peeling Back the Mask by Miguna Miguna
Peeling Back the Mask is an insider's account from one of the Kenyan Prime Minister's former adviser detailing instances of corruption and fraud at the highest level of Kenyan government.
With massive online and media coverage, this book has become the spearhead of a national campaign to aspire to a new corruption-free Kenya.
This remarkable book generated twenty thousand hits on the publisher website within hours of its announcement and Google reports Miguna Miguna is in the top five subjects searched online in Africa.
Mukami Kimathi Mau Mau Women Freedom by Alice Wairimu Nderitu
In 1964, a newly independent Kenya was facing the uphill task of reconstructing herself into an African State. That reconstruction was called "Africanisation”.
As part of the Africanisation policy, my father, Vincent Nderitu, was posted to Sasumua Dam in Kinangop to take over from the British superintendents who were leaving the country.
Not long after he had arrived, he asked the foreman, Harun Musungu, to find out where he could buy milk. That was how he met Mukami Kimathi. My father was thunderstruck. Back home in Tetu, Nyeri, his home and Mukami’s were within a walking distance. My father knew her as a legend. She was a Mau Mau heroine, the wife of Field Marshal Dedan Kimathi.
My father began treating Mukami like an elder sister, fixing her fences and installing a water tank for her among other duties. When I was growing up, Mukami was the auntie through whose home we passed on our way from school; the one who made my brothers and I porridge and gave us red plums. She was not a blood relative, but we always thought she was.
Mukami and her children, Nyambura and Waceke, would often come to our home in the afternoons and I would read the newspaper to her haltingly. She encouraged me saying; "When you grow up, you will write as well as you read. One day, you should write my karugano ( story) because what is not written is forgotten.”
She wanted me to remind Kenyans to take care of the country the Mau Mau fought for.
Her lowest point was the 2007-2008 post-election violence and often said: "Because we fought the colonialists, Kenyans now have arrow roots, sweet potatoes, bananas and yam on the table. But instead of eating, they are fighting! I wish this generation of Kenyans from all ethnic communities would rally as we did and this time emerge with, instead of independence like we did, national unity!
In her story, Mukami shows us who Dedan Kimathi was as a father and husband. Her experiences provide an important complement to existing written records on Kenya’s history.
Mukami Kimathi’s prophesy that I would write her karugan is now a reality. The book, Mukami Kimathi: Mau Mau Freedom Fighter, was launched at the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi last evening. She was also proved right on another front; my sister Consolata Wakonyo became a pilot.
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"'Wisdom of the elders' presents conversations with over 70 elders of diverse background, education level, race and gender. One is none other than immediate former President Emilio Mwai Kibaki. Another is the widow of former freedom fighter Dedan Kimathi, while another is the grandmother of President Barrack Hussein.
Others are normal Kenyans living in villages, with no claim to fame or stature.
However, all those profiled have lived three score ten years and more and in the words of the Bible, have reached the age of wisdom.
Discussing how life was then and how it is today, their disparate views will inform and resonate as they provide a veritable history lesson."--Dust jacket flap.
The Wretched Africans: A Study of Rabai and Freretown Slave Settlements by Joe Khamisi
Brief summary
The Wretched Africans: A Study of Rabai and Freretown Slave Settlements.
This book is about the 19th century slave trade in Eastern and Central Africa. No one in the history of humankind has suffered the indignity, abuse and pain of slavery than the African. Over many centuries, millions of Africans were uprooted from their quaint villages in the interior of the "Dark Continent" and taken into slavery.
They were exported to the Americas, Asia, Arabia and a dozen other countries around the globe, to work in plantations, in the pearl industry, and as soldiers and domestic workers. Boys were castrated and made eunuchs and girls were sexually abused and forced into harems. Unfortunately, the African slave narrative - written mostly by Western historians and missionaries - has been contemptibly distorted to portray Europeans as the gallant saviors, the notorious slave traders as swaggering heroes, and the African captives as wretched victims of a horrible but regrettably inevitable human phenomenon of the time.
The truth has been loftily garbled or masked and the role of liberated Africans vastly under-represented. The Wretched Africans peels of what is beneath the Arab slave trade, unravels the racism and abuse meted against Africans by European explorers and missionaries, and lays bare the heroism and resilience of the African captives. It memorializes Africans who died in caravan trails, at sea and those who found freedom in slave settlements around the world. It is a must read for historians, researchers, students and the general public wanting to understand the truth about what happened to an estimated eleven million people taken captive from the east coast of Africa to the new world and beyond.
Rules of the Wild by Francesca Marciano
Brief Summary
A mesmerizing novel of love and nostalgia set in the vast spaces of contemporary East Africa.
Romantic, often resonantly ironic, moving and wise, Rules of the Wild transports us to a landscape of unsurpassed beauty even as it gives us a sharp-eyed portrait of a closely knit tribe of cultural outsiders: the expatriates living in Kenya today.
Challenged by race, by class, and by a longing for home, here are "safari boys" and Samaritans, reporters bent on their own fame, travelers who care deeply about elephants but not at all about the people of Africa. They all know each other. They meet at dinner parties, they sleep with each other, they argue about politics and the best way to negotiate their existence in a place where they don't really belong.
At the center is Esmé, a beautiful young woman of dazzling ironies and introspections, who tells us her story in a voice both passionate and self-deprecating. Against a paradoxical backdrop of limitless physical freedom and escalating civil unrest, Esmé struggles to make sense of her own place in Africa and of her feelings for the two men there whom she loves--Adam, a second-generation Kenyan who is the first to show her the wonders of her adopted land, and Hunter, a British journalist sickened by its horrors.
Rules of the Wild evokes the worlds of Isak Dinesen, Beryl Markham, and Ernest Hemingway. It explores unforgettably our infinite desire for a perfect elsewhere, for love and a place to call home. It is an astonishing literary debut.
The Politics of Betrayal: Diary of a Kenyan Legislator by Joe Khamisi
Brief Summary
The Politics of Betrayal: Diary of a Kenyan Legislator
In this provocative treatise, author Joe Khamisi catalogues the events that took place during one of Kenya's most important periods in history. This period began in 2002, when Daniel Arap Moi stepped down after twenty-four years as president of Kenya.
Khamisi reviews events up to the time when the country exploded in post-election violence in 2007 and the subsequent formation of the Grand Coalition Government between President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Amolo Odinga the following year.
Khamisi explores the leadership betrayals that he believes are responsible for the political, social, and economic rot that are pervasive in Kenya. He recounts how he helped a presidential poll loser in the 2007 elections, Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, capture the coveted role of vice president.
He also presents an in-depth analysis of Senator Barack Obama's visit to Kenya in 2006, as well as his own personal experiences with Barack's late father, who he describes as a person who "chain-smoked contentedly, drank copiously, and partied spiritedly." The Politics of Betrayal is critical reading for anyone who is interested in the transformation of Kenya from a one-party dictatorship to a pluralistic nation.
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