She had little conception of Africa or Africans, and yet the continent and its people would become the guiding force of her life.Galvanised by the suffering she witnessed in Ethiopia, on her return to Australia she became a human rights and aid activist for the people of the Horn of Africa. Valerie's work led her back to Africa again and again, involving her – at considerable risk to herself – in the armed liberation conflicts of the region. Even as she discovered brutality and corruption at the heart of these political movements, she also found love, marrying Ismael Ali Gardo, whose people, the Afar, roamed Ethiopia, Eritrea and the Sudan as nomadic herdsmen. Ismael's life mission was to help the Afar – desperately poor, uneducated, landless, and the victims of oppression in every country they once roved freely. Soon it became Valerie's too, as she embraced their culture and threw herself into their cause. In one of the most inhospitable landscapes on earth, Valerie and Ismael have waged an incredible struggle, bringing health and education to a people who would otherwise have nothing. Valerie's story is both an astonishing adventure and a testament to how determination and passion can achieve extraordinary things.

    This early novel deals with the pain and dislocation of the clash of the old and new ways - the educated young man determined to go overseas, and the elders of the family believing his duty is to stay and head the family.

    Habits become a part of your life but habits can be changed. This book covers the different ways in which you can easily change habits in order to change the course of your life. Everything that we do in life is as a result of what we have been taught, what we have experienced and what we expect from life. However, with all of these presuppositions or prerequisites, it’s hardly surprising that people are dissatisfied with what they get back from life. The habits that are introduced in this book are deliberately simplified, so that anyone can achieve them. I have worked with people who have problems for a very long time and these steps have succeeded in making their lives more rewarding. You have a choice in the kind of life you experience and the power of your thoughts and actions is amazing. By incorporating these 30 small life changes into your life – and they only take five minutes to try out – your life can be considerably improved. What you will learn from this book - How habits form- Certain steps to take in order to change your habits- Productivity habit changes- Relationship habit changes- Financial habit changes - Organizational habit changes- Spiritual habit changes- Habit changes in regards to your health- Leisure habit changes- AND MUCH MORE! So what are you waiting for? Download now and change your life!Scroll to the top of the page and select the 'buy button'.

    As Michael Smith describes: "Brother Jero is a self-styled 'prophet,' an evangelical con man who ministers to the gullible and struts with self-importance over their dependence on him. The play follows him through a typical day: He acts as kind of tourist guide, displaying himself to the audience, explaining, demonstrating how he manages to live by his wits. He is pursued and cursed by his aged mentor, whose territory he has taken over. He is besieged by a woman creditor who turns out to be the tyrannical wife of his chief disciple. He converts a pompous, painfully timid Member of Parliament with prophecies of a ministerial post. And all day he tries to resist the endless temptation of beautiful women, the play is delightfully picturesque and entertaining." (8 men, 6 women.) THE STRONG BREED. As outlined by Michael Smith: "The play refers to a folk tradition by which one person becomes the 'carrier' of community evil and symbolically purifies the village in an annual ritual. The hero is Eman, a stranger who has come to this particular village to act as teacher and share his education. 'Those who have much to give,' he says, 'must do so in total loneliness.' On the night of the purification ceremony he learns that Ifada, a helpless idiot boy whom he has befriended, has been selected as 'carrier' and victim; and he is driven by compassion to take Ifada's part in the ritual. The crisis brings back memories. We learn that Eman's father was a 'carrier' and that Eman has fled the family tradition of symbolic sacrifice. We also learn of Omae, the young Eman's betrothed, whom he left for many years to pursue his personal destiny and who died soon after his return.Now Eman accepts his past and discovers, 'I am very much my father's son'-one of 'the strong breed' who must take these responsibilities upon themselves-and at the end of the play is caught in a trap at the sacred trees and killed." (12 men, 5 women.)"

    Quick and stimulating to read, but slowly burning in the memory, they offer a different, more transcendent way of looking at our extreme, gritty world.

    Six cities. A thousand stories.Newsroom, political platform, local hot spot, confession box, preacher-pulpit and football stadium. For generations, African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world.

    Written with passion and from the heart, We Will Be Free is more than just another travel book, it is a modern manifesto, a declaration of independence and self sufficiency. “From the title to the very last page of the book, I was intrigued and entertained! It is full of unabashedly honest and hilarious metaphors describing life on the road and what it's like to be a part of the "overlanding tribe."Graeme makes you feel like you are a part of the travel adventure as he divulges his raw, poetic and amusing consciousness.This book is both a salty and a tender work of art about a beautiful family. The Bell family, on paper and in real life, will inspire you to live life fully and in your own way.Overland The Americas”.

    For his first wife, this is a colossal slap in the face. For Matilda, it is an abrupt end to childhood. This tale is set in British West Africa, in the 1940s, during the ten years leading up to Independence.

    Without running water or electricity, Warri is at first a nightmare for Blessing. Her mother is gone all day and works suspiciously late into the night to pay the children's school fees. Her brother, once a promising student, seems to be falling increasingly under the influence of the local group of violent teenage boys calling themselves Freedom Fighters. Her grandfather, a kind if misguided man, is trying on Islam as his new religion of choice, and is even considering the possibility of bringing in a second wife.But Blessing's grandmother, wise and practical, soon becomes a beloved mentor, teaching Blessing the ways of the midwife in rural Nigeria. Blessing is exposed to the horrors of genital mutilation and the devastation wrought on the environment by British and American oil companies. As Warri comes to feel like home, Blessing becomes increasingly aware of the threats to its safety, both from its unshakable but dangerous traditions and the relentless carelessness of the modern world.

    Blaming herself for the heinous crime that happened because she didn't "go straight to school," Tali is bound by invisible chains of secrecy, shame, and self-imposed isolation. Her harrowing and illuminating journey to recovery begins in her twenties with the support of her mentor, Dr. Daniel Benson, with whom she experiences deep love and then heartbreak. Feeling lost, Tali travels to Israel where Kabbalah sparks her spiritualism, and then to Africa where an arduous climb up Mount Kilimanjaro ignites a newfound feeling of empowerment. Only when Tali goes back to the Bronx and learns that her unreported crime scene has become the site of a rehabilitation center, does she understand that there is one more road to travel prior to reaching freedom.

    Their mission is simply to provide a temporary Top Secret special intelligence communications center to support U.S. members of a high level Allied war planning meeting.An easy mission quickly goes awry. Only two months after the Allied assault and occupation of Casablanca (Operation TORCH), the city remains a hotbed of Vichy and German sympathizers and spies. One unexpected event leads to another. Things get dicey, with life threatening situations, shots fired and dead bodies. Tony is diverted from Casablanca on a brief classified fact-finding mission to a neutral country's island. That mission gets complicated and ultimately results in spy catching and another death. Returning to Casablanca, events result in Tony meeting Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.Between "Casablanca's" covers are communications intelligence, counter-intelligence, military politics, diplomatic tension, WWII history, family dynamics, and in the final analysis, a very exciting, twisting and fast moving story.

    It is the heyday of apartheid. Although not a word is exchanged, a strong erotic bond develops between the two of them, culminating in what is later seen as a rape and for which the narrator gets the death sentence. In an absolute tour de force the narrator, only ever referred to as Mr Sibiya, waiting to be executed, writes down his story - reconstructing bit by bit not only his own and a brief history of his family, but also his obsession with the white girl, the court proceedings, and his encounters with Dr Dufre, a Swiss criminologist who has been granted permission of compile a dossier of the case. One of the most remarkable things about the novel is the narrator's ability to be objective, to view himself and the series of events almost dispassionately.

    Having spent six years in Africa with her English missionary husband, she knows that the desert is not as empty of water as most suppose, if one knows where to look. Thus she leads her party on an epic two hundred mile walk to gain the fertile grassland to the south. To achieve this, she must drive them ever onwards, quell two mutinies and watch some of her party die. Their lives are saved when they reach an oasis, but to gain true safety they must now face Arab slaver traders, bloodthirsty Ashanti warriors, and the all-consuming forest. Victoria's walk has hardly begun. Set at the turn of the 20th Century, when the British Empire was approaching its zenith, with a handful of administrators and soldiers endeavoring to rule vast areas and dominate peoples they did not understand, VICTORIA'S WALK is a tale of the human spirit at its highest and lowest, its most courageous and its most bestial, of one woman's unceasing fortitude, of the men who loved her, and the women who hated her.

    

    Some of the essays previously appeared in a collection published only in South Africa, Resident Alien, but others are collected here for the first time. The collection comprises twenty-three pieces; the title story investigates the provenance of the world famous song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” which Malan traces back to a Zulu singer named Solomon Linda who recorded a song called “Mbube” in the 1930s, which went on to be covered by Pete Seeger, REM, and Phish, and was incorporated into the musical “The Lion King.” In other stories, Malan follows the trial of Winnie Mandela and plunges into the explosive controversy over President Mbeki’s AIDS policies of the 1990s.The stories, combined with Malan’s sardonic interstitial commentary, offer a brilliantly observed portrait of contemporary South Africa.