Digging deep into shattering memories, Dallaire has written a powerful story of betrayal, naïveté, racism & international politics. His message is simple, undeniable: Never again. When Lt-Gen. Roméo Dallaire was called to serve as force commander of the UN intervention in Rwanda in '93, he thought he was heading off on a straightforward peacekeeping mission. Thirteen months later he flew home from Africa, broken, disillusioned & suicidal, having witnessed the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans in 100 days. In Shake Hands with the Devil, he takes readers with him on a return voyage into hell, vividly recreating the events the international community turned its back on. This book is an unsparing eyewitness account of the failure by humanity to stop the genocide, despite timely warnings. Woven thru the story of this disastrous mission is his own journey from confident Cold Warrior, to devastated UN commander, to retired general engaged in a painful struggle to find a measure of peace, hope & reconciliation. This book is a personal account of his conversion from a man certain of his worth & secure in his assumptions to one conscious of his own weaknesses & failures & critical of the institutions he'd relied on. It might not sit easily with standard ideas of military leadership, but understanding what happened to him & his mission to Rwanda is crucial to understanding the moral minefields peacekeepers are forced to negotiate when we ask them to step into dirty wars.

    They live in a beautiful house, with a caring family, and attend an exclusive missionary school. They're completely shielded from the troubles of the world. Yet, as Kambili reveals in her tender-voiced account, things are less perfect than they appear. Although her Papa is generous and well respected, he is fanatically religious and tyrannical at home—a home that is silent and suffocating. As the country begins to fall apart under a military coup, Kambili and Jaja are sent to their aunt, a university professor outside the city, where they discover a life beyond the confines of their father’s authority. Books cram the shelves, curry and nutmeg permeate the air, and their cousins’ laughter rings throughout the house. When they return home, tensions within the family escalate, and Kambili must find the strength to keep her loved ones together.Purple Hibiscus is an exquisite novel about the emotional turmoil of adolescence, the powerful bonds of family, and the bright promise of freedom.

    In God Has a Dream, his most soul-searching book, he shares the spiritual message that guided him through those troubled times. Drawing on personal and historical examples, Archbishop Tutu reaches out to readers of all religious backgrounds, showing how individual and global suffering can be transformed into joy and redemption. With his characteristic humor, Tutu offers an extremely personal and liberating message. He helps us to “see with the eyes of the heart” and to cultivate the qualities of love, forgiveness, humility, generosity, and courage that we need to change ourselves and our world. Echoing the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., he writes, “God says to you, ‘I have a dream. Please help me to realize it. It is a dream of a world whose ugliness and squalor and poverty, its war and hostility, its greed and harsh competitiveness, its alienation and disharmony are changed into their glorious counterparts. When there will be more laughter, joy, and peace, where there will be justice and goodness and compassion and love and caring and sharing. I have a dream that my children will know that they are members of one family, the human family, God’s family, my family.’” Addressing the timeless and universal concerns all people share, God Has a Dream envisions a world transformed through hope and compassion, humility and kindness, understanding and forgiveness.

    Along the way, the children encounter all sorts of animals including elephants, lions and monkeys, while counting from one to ten in both English and Swahili. The lively, rhyming text is accompanied by an illustrated guide to counting in Swahili, a map, notes about each of the animals, and interesting facts about Tanzania and the Maasai people. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of each book will be donated to the African Wildlife Foundation, to aid their wildlife conservation and community building efforts in Tanzania. (Softcover) 32pp;10.25 x 10 inches

    The first three books in Alexander MCCall Smith's beloved bestselling series, featuring Mma Precious Ramotswe, the traditionally built, eminently sensible, cunning proprietor of the only ladies' detective agency in Botswana, are now available in a beautifully designed boxed set.

    Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, a psychologist who grew up in a black South African township, reflects on her interviews with Eugene de Kock, the commanding officer of state-sanctioned death squads under apartheid. Gobodo-Madikizela met with de Kock in Pretoria's maximum-security prison, where he is serving a 212-year sentence for crimes against humanity. In profoundly arresting scenes, Gobodo-Madikizela conveys her struggle with contradictory internal impulses to hold him accountable and to forgive. Ultimately, as she allows us to witness de Kock's extraordinary awakening of conscience, she illuminates the ways in which the encounter compelled her to redefine the value of remorse and the limits of forgiveness.

    Don't miss this gripping memoir.Foreign correspondent Neely Tucker and his wife, Vita, arrived in Zimbabwe in 1997. After witnessing firsthand the devastating consequences of AIDS on the population, especially the children, the couple started volunteering at an orphanage that was desperately underfunded and short-staffed. One afternoon, a critically ill infant was brought to the orphanage from a village outside the city. She’d been left to die in a field on the day she was born, abandoned in the tall brown grass that covers the highlands of Zimbabwe in the dry season. After a near-death hospital stay, and under strict doctor’s orders, the ailing child was entrusted to the care of Tucker and Vita. Within weeks Chipo, the girl-child whose name means gift, would come to mean everything to them.Still an active correspondent, Tucker crisscrossed the continent, filing stories about the uprisings in the Congo, the civil war in Sierra Leone, and the postgenocidal conflict in Rwanda. He witnessed heartbreaking scenes of devastation and violence, steeling him further to take a personal role in helping anywhere he could. At home in Harare, Vita was nursing Chipo back to health. Soon she and Tucker decided to alter their lives forever—they would adopt Chipo. That decision challenged an unspoken social norm—that foreigners should never adopt Zimbabwean children.Raised in rural Mississippi in the sixties and seventies, Tucker was familiar with the mores associated with and dictated by race. His wife, a savvy black woman whose father escaped the Jim Crow South for a new life in the industrial North, would not be deterred in her resolve to welcome Chipo into their loving family.As if their situation wasn’t tenuous enough, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was stirring up national fervor against foreigners, especially journalists, abroad and at home. At its peak, his antagonizing branded all foreign journalists personae non grata. For Tucker, the only full-time American correspondent in Zimbabwe, the declaration was a direct threat to his life and his wife’s safety, and an ultimatum to their decision to adopt the child who had already become their only daughter.Against a background of war, terrorism, disease, and unbearable uncertainty about the future, Chipo’s story emerges as an inspiring testament to the miracles that love—and dogged determination—can sometimes achieve. Gripping, heartbreaking, and triumphant, this family memoir will resonate throughout the ages.

    Strapped to horses and donkeys, Francis and others were taken north into lives of slavery under wealthy Muslim farmers.For ten years, Francis lived in a shed near the goats and cattle that were his responsibility. After two failed attempts to flee--each bringing severe beatings and death threats--Francis finally escaped at age seventeen. He persevered through prison and refugee camps for three more years, winning the attention of United Nations officials who granted passage to America.Now a student and an antislavery activist, Francis Bok has made it his life mission to combat world slavery. His is the first voice to speak to an estimated 27 million people held against their will in nearly every nation, including our own. Escape from Slavery is at once a riveting adventure, a story of desperation and triumph, and a window revealing a world that few have survived to tell.

    This guide to treks and excursions around Kilimanjaro provides information on getting to Kilimanjaro from Europe, North America and Australasia, trekking preparations, where to stay and eat along the trails, employing a guide or porter, the environment and health and safety.

    Now leading a quiet, ordered life in the countryside, he is reluctantly summoned back into the game when a trusted old friend is kidnapped. With just seventy-two hours to deliver the ransom, with an army of security forces deployed to stop him, and with a diabolical double agent perilously close to assuming absolute power, Tiny races a hijacked motorcycle across the wilds of backcountry Africa in a thrilling epic adventure.

    “A sweeping, poetic homage to Africa, a continent made vivid by Hartley’s capable, stunning prose” (Publishers Weekly). In his final days, Aidan Hartley’s father said to him, “We should have never come here.” Those words spoke of a colonial legacy that stretched back through four generations of one British family. From a great-great-grandfather who defended British settlements in nineteenth-century New Zealand, to his father, a colonial officer sent to Africa in the 1920s and who later returned to raise a family there—these were intrepid men who traveled to exotic lands to conquer, build, and bear witness. And there was Aidan, who became a journalist covering Africa in the 1990s, a decade marked by terror and genocide. After encountering the violence in Somalia, Uganda, and Rwanda, Aidan retreated to his family’s house in Kenya where he discovered the Zanzibar chest his father left him. Intricately hand-carved, the chest contained the diaries of his father’s best friend, Peter Davey, an Englishman who had died under obscure circumstances five decades before. With the papers as his guide, Hartley embarked on a journey not only to unlock the secrets of Davey’s life, but his own. “The finest account of a war correspondent’s psychic wracking since Michael Herr’s Dispatches.” —Rian Malan, author of My Traitor’s Heart

    What does this metamorphosis entail and in what ways are we affected by it? How do we live through it and what may we become on our journey toward each other, particularly when the space and places from which we depart are - at least on the surface - so vastly different?Ranging freely and often wittily across many terrains, this brave book by one of South Africa's foremost writers and poets provides a unique and compelling discourse on living creatively in Africa today.

    Americans, Cubans, Soviets, and Africans fought over the future of Angola, where tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers were stationed, and over the decolonization of Namibia, Africa's last colony. Beyond lay the great prize: South Africa. Piero Gleijeses uses archival sources, particularly from the United States, South Africa, and the closed Cuban archives, to provide an unprecedented international history of this important theater of the late Cold War. These sources all point to one conclusion: by humiliating the United States and defying the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro changed the course of history in southern Africa. It was Cuba's victory in Angola in 1988 that forced Pretoria to set Namibia free and helped break the back of apartheid South Africa. In the words of Nelson Mandela, the Cubans destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor . . . [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa.

    A historian and journalist who was one of the earliest and staunchest Afrikaner opponents of apartheid, Hermann Giliomee weaves together life stories and historical interpretation to create a narrative history of the Afrikaners from their beginnings with the colonization of the Cape of Good Hope by the Dutch East India Company to the dismantling of apartheid and beyond. The Afrikaners emphasizes the crucial role played by historical actors without underplaying the impact of social forces over which they had little control. Throughout their history, Giliomee's Afrikaners are both colonizers and colonized. Actual or virtual servants of the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch "burghers" nonetheless owned slaves and commanded servant labor. The British conquests of 1795 and 1806 extended the rights of British subjects to Afrikaners, even as they took away the Afrikaners' political autonomy and confirmed an economic and cultural subordination that was only partly alleviated by their dominance of South African politics in the latter part of the twentieth century.Demographically squeezed between far more numerous Africans (and other nonwhite groups) and their more affluent and culturally confident English compatriots, the Afrikaners forged a language-based national identity in which die-hard defense of privilege and opposition to various forms of British domination are inextricably intertwined with fears about cultural and even physical group survival. This nationalism underlay the Great Trek, in which Afrikaners opposed the abolition of slavery and legalized racial discrimination by the British; the irony of their becoming the twentieth century's first fighters against imperial domination in the Boer War; and the Afrikaners' rise to political dominance over their English rivals and nonwhite South Africans alike, even as they remained economically and culturally subordinate to the former. This same language-based nationalism spawned the blunders and horrors of apartheid, but it also led the Afrikaners to relinquish power peacefully when this seemed the safest route to their survival as a people.While documenting--and in important ways revising--the history of the Afrikaners' pursuit of racial domination (as well as British contributions to that enterprise), Giliomee supplies Afrikaners' own, often divided, perspectives on their history, perspectives not always or entirely skewed by their struggle for privilege at Africans' expense. The result is not only a magisterial history of the Afrikaners but a fuller understanding of their history, which, for good or ill, resonates far beyond the borders of South Africa.

    Deadly shapes bore down. Animal and man driven by one single thought. Kill or be killed. Neither wanted to die.Falsely accused of a terrible crime, impetuous young aristocrat Lord Dallas Acheson is forced to flee his native Scotland, leaving behind the only woman he has ever loved - Lady Lorna de Iongh. From that day onwards, he must learn to live a different life in a land where danger is an ever-present partner.Fate takes him to southern Africa and the emerging seaport of Durban, from where he sets off to trade and hunt, seeking his fortune in the little-travelled midlands of Natal and the wilds of Zululand. Tested to the limit, Dallas discovers more than he could have imagined.Married to a woman he doesn't love, he yearns to abandon the restraints of nineteenth-century society to be with Lorna. And when the Zulu war breaks out, he finds himself torn between old and new loyalties, required to be an enemy of the land that is now his true home.

    John Henrick Clarke, El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, Dr. Cheick anta Diop and Dr. Khalid Abdul Muhammad. May all their souls rest in peace, because their spirits are alive and well within me. I have been transformed and reborn because of their mighty spirits.

    It contains new photography and an extraordinary range of previously unpublished archival material, including original plans and drawings.

    As the commander of German forces in East Africa, he was the author of one of the most successful guerrilla fights in history. His innovative and creative solutions to daily problems proved to be the undoing of a succession of British commanders, allowing him to bleed Allied forces from European fronts. Although he never had more than 3,000 European and 15,000 native soldiers, von Lettow-Vorbeck consumed the efforts of over 250,000 Allied (mostly British) soldiers. Von Lettow-Vorbeck and the men of the Schutztruppe are little known outside of Germany, but they were never defeated and have the distinction of being the only Germans of World War I to occupy British soil. Despite their successes, their exploits remain obscured in the greater tragedy of the Great War.

    Some have passed on and others have joined the household.

    The book also explains the progression of the mystical Way towards enlightenment, with a coherent explanation of its fundamentals and practices. It shows the correspondence between the Ancient Egyptian calendar of events and the cosmic cycles of the universe. It also provides the evidence that Ancient Egypt is the source of the Christian calendar of holidays (ex: Easter, Last Supper, Christmas, Lent, Ascension Day, Pentecost, Epiphany, Transfiguration, etc).

    Set in the 1930s, this novel tells the story of a young black minister, Joshua Clay, whose life is profoundly changed when his missionary work takes him to South Africa.

    This book is an appreciation of the creative imagination and linguistic versatility of the Zulu people. It is a book about human creativity. Not the creativity of the plastic arts, or of music, but rather that of the poet, the wordsmith. It gives an overview of the history of the Nguni cattle and their economic, social, political and spiritual importance to the Zulu people, both past and present.

    In Tanzania, Bernardi's mute grandfather makes him a wonderful music box and then helps him realize his dream of owning a soccer ball and going to school.

    Author John Gillow traveled extensively throughout Africa, uncovering the dazzling range of traditional hand-crafted textiles from each region. Five sections detail the textile history and traditions within Africa's major geographical areas, examining materials, dyes, decorations, patterns, and techniques. From the stripweave cloth of the Ashanti in the West to Ethiopian embroidery in the East, from Berber rugs in the North to the Madagascan silk of the South - and everything in between - the breadth of coverage in African Textiles is peerless. Robustly illustrated with over 500 color photographs and drawings, this is an exciting new sourcebook for those interested in textile design and the traditional arts of Africa.

    When a postgraduate student of African languages, looking for a topic for her doctoral thesis, happens upon an obscure and incomplete lexicon of metaphorical names for indigenous Sanga-Nguni cattle by a long-dead academic, she knows, instinctively, that she has found her subject.

    In this, her third book, the irrepressible vet's wife brings us yet more stories of her life with her husband and son in a coastal town in the Eastern Cape. In a home where domestic animals and wildlife abound, we once again encounter Beau, the wolf lookalike, who bites first and asks questions afterwards. I had to be constantly on the alert for visitors who behaved in a manner that Beau could interpret as suspicious. And on a bad day, that could be someone who coughed or sneezed once too often. 'My God, Beau, the poor woman only sneezed three times. She suffers from hayfever.' 'She was building up to something.' 'She was building up to another sneeze!' Then there's Singe, the cat who survived a shack fire; Gooseberry, a seagull who thinks a duck is his mother; penguins, a fish eagle, and the odd snake or two. Acutely observant, Sharp's writing is alive with her humour and compassion for all living creatures. She reaches into the hearts and minds of her readers, drawing them into her life. And throughout it all, one cannot help but admire her stoical efforts to maintain an air of normality - often in the face of daunting odds.

    Kurtz, an ex-soldier turned mercenary, is given a high profile job—to kill the president of Zimbabwe. But it's a set up, the assassination attempt fails, Kurtz has been burned and her exfiltration plan are in ruins. Kurtz now heads for her only place of refuge, the Okavango Delta in the heart of Botswana. Determined to lay low and take it easy, Sonja discovers that her beloved Delta is on the brink of destruction. In a bid to halt a project that would destroy the Delta's fragile network of swamps and waterways, she is recruited as an ‘eco-commando.'Soon she finds herself caught in a web of intrigue as deadly as the one she left behind her. Caught between her ex-lover Sterling, Martin Steele, her mercenary commander, and a TV wildlife documentary host ‘Coyote' Sam Chapman who blunders out of the bush in a reality show gone wrong. Instead of escaping her violent past, Sonja is now surrounded by men who are relying on her killer instincts. Having come to peace, she finds herself in the midst of a deadly war… and it is not only the survival of the Delta that is at stake.The Delta is a white-knuckle thriller from international bestseller Tony Park, the new "master of adventure," in his North American debut.

    Gilbert's work is a valuable contribution to the honorable photographic tradition of tribal studies.' Peter Matthiessen When photojournalist Elizabeth Gilbert first came into contact with the Maasai over ten years ago, their images were everywhere in Africa. Pictures of warriors were printed on postcards, T-shirts, safari advertisements, and hotel logos, but in reality their traditional life was disappearing. So Gilbert set out on a four-year journey to photograph what was left of traditional Maasailand.Broken Spears is the stunning result of that remarkable journey. Over 120 images capture the rituals, secret ceremonies, and landscapes of the Maasai, documenting the life of this extraordinary tribe in the most comprehensive collection of photographs ever assembled. Gilbert's intimate relationship with the Maasai allowed her to photograph centuries-old Maasai ceremonies, including male and female circumcisions, weddings, and perhaps the most dangerous of all Maasai rituals, a lion hunt. Broken Spears is a haunting testament to a rapidly disap

    The intellectual and distinctly South African perspective exhibited in these writings is enriched by humor and autobiographical anecdotes. Subjects addressed include African literature and literary criticism, education in a democratic South Africa, relations between Africans and African Americans, negritude, African identity, and African humanism. A critical introduction, full biography, bibliography, and brief synopsis of each essay are included.

    Now for the first time, his encyclopaedic knowledge is available to the reading public. With its magnificent colour artwork, including superb paintings, detailed maps and lively and informative text, this book will be greatly welcomed by both readers at home and visitors to the sites themselves.

    Brings together international contributors---including often overlooked African scholars and activists---from across the social sciences to examine HIV and AIDS from angles previously unexplored. By presenting on-the-ground evidence and ethnographic cases, emphasizes that HIV transmission in sub-Saharan Africa is a complex and regionally specific phenomenon rooted in local economies, deepening poverty, migration, gender, war, global economies, and cultural politics. Recognizes that AIDS in Africa cannot be stemmed until social, gender, and economic inequities are addressed in meaningful ways.

    Boone's study is set within the context of larger theories of political development in agrarian societies. It features a series of compelling case studies that focus on regions within Senegal, Ghana, and Cote d'Ivoire and ranges from 1930 to the present. The book will be of interest to readers concerned with comparative politics, Africa, development, regionalism and federalism, and ethnic politics.

    Scorpions of Southern Africa is both a field guide to the identification of the more common and visible of Southern Africa's rich fauna of 130 scorpion species and a description of the physiology and ecology of scorpions. It dispels myths that portray scorpions as deadly venomous animals to be killed on sight, and offers an intriguing insight into the amazing adaptations that have enabled scorpions to survive over millions of years. Layman's terms are used as far as possible, and a glossary of more complicated terminology is provided. Distribution maps and photographs are given for over 50 Southern African species as well as practical information about where to look for scorpions and how best to handle these often feared creatures.

    Sensing that their safety could no longer be guaranteed, the easterners fled to the eastern region and established an independent nation called Biafra.

    Providing descriptive and typological information about the Bantu languages of southern Africa, this volume brings together a set of expert contributors and is divided into two parts: linguistics areas, including phonology, morphology, syntax and historical linguistics, and secondly, the many hundreds of Bantu languages themselves.

    They offer a global perspective on the last, troubled decade of the 20th century with meditations on the deaths of Francois Miterrand and the Nigerian dissident Ken Saro-Wiwa as well as invocations to fellow writers such as Josef Brodsky and Chinua Achebe. This collection unites Soyinka's public persona with insights into a much more private poetic search.

    

    Imagining the Congo historicizes and contextualizes the constructions of the Congo's identity during four historical periods. Kevin Dunn explores "imaginings" of the Congo that have allowed the current state of affairs there to develop, and the broader conceptual question of how identity has become important in recent IR scholarship.

    

    From the diamond mines of Namibia to the refugee camps in Tanzania, she fights to regain her freedom, her faith, and her family. Only when the voices of the refugee children point her toward Nevernight, the place of peace where it is never dark and there is no fear, does Miriam find what she has lost.

    It is the first historical work to reconstruct a Batwa or Pygmy past, thereby questioning Western epistemologies that have long portrayed the Batwa as a quintessential people without history.

    This book has been fully overhauled by an expert Africa author and is packed with stunning new pictures bringing this breathtaking country and its people to life. It gives you more background on the country’s fascinating history and culture than any other guide. From the vibrant capital of Dar es Salaam to the plains of the Serengeti, all the country's top destinations are covered. You'll get the lowdown on unmissable Tanzania experiences like coral diving off the coast of Pemba and chimpanzee tracking in the Mahale Mountains, and there’s fully illustrated gazetteer detailing Tanzania’s fabulous wildlife. Maps throughout will help you get around and travel tips give you all the essential information.

    Mud, yes--but certainly not huts. Instead, these adobe buildings, many of them enormous, show sublime sculptural beauty, variety, ingenuity, and originality. In the Sahal region of western Africa--Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, Ghana, and Burkina Faso--people have been constructing earthen buildings for centuries. But they remain unknown to most of the Western world. Their plastic forms--from simple stairways, to ornamented domes, to complex arches--are highlighted by subtle painting and intricate grillwork.James Morris spent four months photographing these hidden jewels, from the great mosque at Djenne--the largest mud building in the world--to small houses in remote animist communities. Butabu shows these works as both aesthetic treasures and as architecture with contemporary relevance. These are no museum pieces, but rather buildings that continue to be maintained and built, even as they are threatened by the uncertainties of weather and the encroachment of Western technology. Text by Suzanne Preston Blier covers the history of earthen architecture, the technology that creates it, and the symbolism of its form.

    Uses diary excerpts, songs, poetry, and artwork to celebrate the cultural contributions of women of African descent throughout history.

    Twenty-three years later, that child–a gentle, innocent young man named Amadou Diallo–was gunned down without cause on the streets of New York City. Now Kadi Diallo tells the astonishing, inspiring story of her life, her loss, and the defiant strength she has always found within.

    Here, in his memoirs, he writes with his customary combination of wit and wisdon on such diverse topics as his youth, his early days in theatre, and the birth of Evita Bezuidenhout - his alter ego. He deals frankly with sex, politics, HIV/AIDS and the bizarre twists and turns of contemporary South Africa. It is also a book of journeys, such as Evita Bezuidenhout's road trip through South Africa on the eve of the 1999 election, to educate the populace on how to vote. Needless to say, one hilarious adventure after another unfolds along the dusty country by-roads.

    Whereas biblical accounts attribute the Assyrian retreat to divine intervention, journalist Henry Aubin offers an explanation that is miraculous in its own light: the siege was broken by the arrival of an army from Kushite Egypt--an army, that is, made up of black Africans. These Kushites figured in historical texts, Aubin continues, until the late 19th century, when racist scholars expunged them from the record--a process that, Aubin observes, coincided with the European conquest and colonization of Africa. The Kushite intervention assured the survival of the Hebrew people, Aubin asserts, and it deserves to be acknowledged anew. Well-written and carefully developed, Aubin's argument will doubtless excite discussion.

    Presenting voices rarely heard outside Africa, some recorded as early as the mid-nineteenth century, as well as rediscovered gems by such well-known authors as Bessie Head and Doris Lessing, this volume reveals a living cultural legacy that will revolutionize the understanding of African women's literary and cultural production.Ranging from communal songs and folktales to letters, diaries, political petitions, court records, poems, essays, and fiction, these texts provide a vivid—and heretofore largely invisible—picture of African women's lives. Their work and families, their experience of the cruelty of colonialism and war, and their struggles for civil rights are described in voices from twenty original languages and six countries in the region: Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe. Together the texts demonstrate women's critical role in cultural continuity and resistance to oppression.Each text is accompanied by a scholarly headnote that provides detailed historical background. An introduction by the editors sets the broader historical stage and explores the many issues involved in collecting and combining orature and literature from diverse cultures in one volume. Unprecedented in its scope and achievement, this volume will be an essential resource for anyone interested in women's history, culture, and literature in Africa, and worldwide.

    But as she tells it in her captivating new memoir, Orr did not grow up as a stranger abroad; she was a girl at home--only half American, the other half Nigerian. When she was sent alone to the United States for high school, she didn't realize how much leaving Africa would cost her.It was only in her forties, in the crisis of kidney failure, that she began to recover her African life. In writing Gods of Noonday she came to understand her double-rootedness: in the Christian church and the Yoruba shrine, the piano and the talking drum. Memory took her back from Duke Medical Center in North Carolina to the shores of West Africa and her hometown of Ogbomosho in the land of the Yoruba people. Hers was not the dysfunctional American family whose tensions are brought into high relief by the equatorial sun, but a mission girlhood is haunted nonetheless--by spiritual atmospheres and the limits of good intentions.Orr's father, Lloyd Neil, formerly a high school athlete and World War II pilot, and her mother, Anne, found in Nigeria the adventure that would have escaped them in 1950s America. Elaine identified with her strong, fun-loving father more than her reserved mother, but she herself was as introspective and solitary as her sister Becky was pretty and social. Lloyd acquired a Chevrolet station wagon which carried Elaine and her friends to the Ethiope River, where they swam much as they might have in the United States. But at night the roads were becoming dangerous, and soon the days were clouded by smoke from the coming Biafran War.Interweaving the lush mission compounds with Nigerian culture, furloughs in the American South with boarding school in Nigeria, and eventually Orr's failing health, the narrative builds in intensity as she recognizes that only through recovering her homeland can she find the strength to survive. Taking its place with classics such as Out of Africa and more recent works like The Poisonwood Bible and Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Gods of Noonday is a deeply felt, courageous portrait of a woman's life.

    It Took the Courage of One Man to Change the Odds.By 1990, Sierra Leone, once hailed as the 'Athens of West Africa', had degenerated into a savage battlefield, overtaken by rebel forces in a devastating civil war. Assigned to spearhead the mission as UN peacekeeper was Major Phil Ashby. But by 2000, the rebel occupation he had worked so diligently to disarm rose again to control an astounding two-thirds of the country. The enemy's mission: get rid of the outside opposition first. A number of Ashby's colleagues were tortured and finally butchered, and more than 500 were taken as hostages. Among the hostages was Phil Ashby. Miles from civilization, with no rescue in sight, Ashby and three of his men knew that their fate was up to them alone. Lost deep inside the rebels' heartland, unarmed, and outnumbered 20-to-1, Ashby devised a plan to escape from the hostile jungles that would test fate and challenge all reason. They should have been doomed.Against All Odds is the incredible true story of that escape-and of the heart-pounding courage of Major Phil Ashby who defeated the rebel forces of Sierra Leone and became a living testament to the power of the human spirit and the sheer determination to survive.

    Many people in the old European colonial powers -- and not only the dwindling band of "old Africa hands" who served in the colonies - are in despair, lamenting maladministration, corruption, civil and inter-state wars, poverty, famine, and the seemingly unstoppable march of AIDS. And all in a great continent with abundant human and natural resources. The other side of the coin is that hope is beginning to dawn as Africa's plight is recognized by the Africans themselves and its vital strategic, political and economic importance in the age of globalization is gaining universal appreciation. An "African renaissance" may seem far-fetched but there is perhaps light at the end of the tunnel. This is the backdrop against which Andrew Sardanis's fascinating story is set. It begins with his work as a journalist in Cyprus -- on the receiving end of British colonialism -- and moves to Northern Rhodesia where he played a leading role as an international businessman and in the politics of independence leading to the new nation of Zambia. He was at the heart of Zambia's political and business development, and always a sympathetic but critical observer and adviser, both in government and in business, also a close but objective friend of leaders including Kenneth Kaunda.

    Sometimes wacky, sometimes profound, the title is always entertaining, with the odd bit of sleaze.

    This guide encompasses all countries south of the Zambezi and Kuene rivers: Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, southern Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe. In the same format as the acclaimed Madagascar Wildlife it provides a colorful introduction to the mammals, birds, reptiles, and other wildlife, along with advice on how to make the most of a safari and even observing wildlife in everyday settings. The sheer range of habitats spanned by this region--grasslands, wetlands, desert, and bushveld--ensures that visitors have an almost unequalled opportunity for observing species in the wild, especially when the sealife and coral reefs of the coastline that fringes on two oceans are included. Accessible, comprehensive, and beautifully illustrated with around 300 photographs, this is a travelers' companion that will appeal both to the first-time visitor and the serious naturalist.

    It explores how gender issues play out in two Yoruba religious traditions--indigenous religion and Christianity in Southwestern Nigeria. Rather than shy away from illuminating the tensions between the prominent roles of Yoruba women in religion and their perceived marginalization, author Oyeronke Olajubu underscores how Yoruba women have challenged marginalization in ways unprecedented in other world religions.

    But our picture of the slave trade is incomplete without an examination of the ways in which men and women responded to the threat and reality of enslavement and deportation.Fighting the Slave Trade is the first book to explore in a systematic manner the strategies Africans used to protect and defend themselves and their communities from the onslaught of the Atlantic slave trade and how they assaulted it. It challenges widely held myths of African passivity and general complicity in the trade and shows that resistance to enslavement and to involvement in the slave trade was much more pervasive than has been acknowledged by the orthodox interpretation of historical literature. Focused on West Africa, the essays collected here examine in detail the defensive, protective, and offensive strategies of individuals, families, communities, and states. In chapters discussing the manipulation of the environment, resettlement, the redemption of captives, the transformation of social relations, political centralization, marronage, violent assaults on ships and entrepôts, shipboard revolts, and controlled participation in the slave trade as a way to procure the means to attack it, Fighting the Slave Trade presents a much more complete picture of the West African slave trade than has previously been available.

    

    The significance of Ancient Egypt for the rest of Africa is a hotly debated issue with complex ramifications. This book considers how Ancient Egypt was dislocated from Africa, drawing on a wide range of sources. It examines key issues such as the evidence for actual contacts between Egypt and other early African cultures, and how influential, or not, Egypt was on them. Some scholars argue that to its north Egypt's influence on Mediterranean civilization was downplayed by western scholarship. Further a field, on the African continent perceptions of Ancient Egypt were colored by biblical sources, emphasizing the persecution of the Israelites. An extensive selection of fresh insights are provided, several focusing on cultural interactions between Egypt and Nubia from 1000 BCE to 500 CE, developing a nuanced picture of these interactions and describing the limitations of an 'Egyptological' approach to them.

    They came with dreams of the future, knowing if they could hold on and finish out their sentences, they would be free. Who were they, how did they get here, and did their lives go the way they imagined? Details of their stories have been lost over time but what remains is an important piece of American history.

    13 remarkable women from Khayelitsha, infected with HIV, tell, through words, body maps, photos and artwork, how their lives have been transformed by antiretroviral treatment.

    African countries seek various answers, and they have recorded varying degrees of success as they attempt to unite their peoples to build strong nations, develop their economies, and stabilize their politics. Failures have equally been recorded in a number of places, although these have not prevented the search for new solutions nor dampened the enthusiasm of Africans in liberating themselves from poverty. Among the leading issues that the volume pays attention to are: the achievements of independence, the colonial legacy, Africa's place in global affairs, economic development, political instability, and the challenges of renewal in the 21st century.This is the fifth volume in a series of textbooks entitled Africa. Contributors to the volumes are African Studies teachers from a variety of schools and settings. Writing from their individual areas of expertise, these authors work together to break stereotypes about Africa, focusing instead on the substantive issues of the African past from the perspectives of Africans themselves. The organization of the books is flexible enough to suit the needs of any instructor, and the texts include illustrations, maps and timelines to make cultural and historical movements clearer. Suggestions for further reading that will help students broaden their own interests are also included. Africa challenges the accepted ways of studying Africa and encourages students who are eager to learn about the diversity of the African experience."

    An African boy learns a lesson from a wily baboon.

    In particular, Goudge focuses on the role played by "race" in discourses and practices of development, and on the impact of unacknowledged - and often unconscious - assumptions of white, Western superiority. For example, the unequal distribution of resources that results from global power imbalances is often attributed to the inferior capabilities of the black poor. Goudge worked for some years as a volunteer in a "third world" country - in her case, Nicaragua - and this book is the result of her subsequent reflections and research. The core of her evidence comes from in-depth interviews with development and aid workers, as well as her own experiences and diaries. She also explores other related texts to illustrate that development and aid practitioners and agencies do not operate in a vacuum, but are a part of a pervasive discourse of superiority and inferiority. She submits her material to stringent analysis and finds much evidence of unconscious attitudes of superiority - with uncomfortable echoes of the assumptions of the colonial epoch. Goudge questions her own beliefs and actions as much as those of others. Indeed it is her contention that in scrutinising the motivations of those of us whose intentions are good, we can discover a great deal about the global operations of the power of whiteness.

    Sahara: An Immense Ocean of Sand tells the story of the world's largest desert, documenting the culture, history, environment, people, and animals of this massive region. 500 bold, full-color photographs and illustrations, including startling photographs from space and candid shots of indigenous peoples, help tell the story of this expansive territory.

    It is an instructive tale for our age — its vision of the individual will and imagination resisting the madness of politics and the destruction of war is singular and profound. (Description by Carol Muske-Dukes)

    Each writer takes a different perspective on the topic of imperialism. Contextual materials include related works by Darwin, Melville, and other contemporaries; biographical backgrounds; and modern reactions to the novels.

    While focusing primarily on pastoral and agricultural markets, Peter D. Little demonstrates that the Somalis are resilient and opportunistic and that they use their limited resources effectively. While it is true that many Somalis live in the shadow of brutal warlords and lack access to basic health care and education, Little focuses on those who have managed to carve out a productive means of making ends meet under difficult conditions and emphasizes the role of civic culture even when government no longer exists. Exploring questions such as, Does statelessness necessarily mean anarchy and disorder? Do money, international trade, and investment survive without a state? Do pastoralists care about development and social improvement? This book describes the complexity of the Somali situation in the light of international terrorism.

    The content includes poems, short stories and serious nonfiction pieces. The short story, Weight of Whispers by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, won the 2003 Caine Prize for African Writing.