BOOKPATHS

Kenya

Matthew DeBord talks with Ngugi wa Thiong’o, “Kenya’s most widely lauded writer.”

“NGUGI wa Thiong'o inhabits a world of subtle yet ever-present incongruity. In the mellow light of an early September afternoon, seated in the comfortable living room of his house on the campus of the University of California, Irvine, Kenya's most widely lauded writer and his wife, Njeeri wa Ngugi, calmly discussed what it was like to be held at gunpoint by thugs, awaiting death. ‘We narrowly escaped,’ Njeeri said.” – from “From an Epic Imagination,” by Matthew DeBord, Los Angeles Times

Kenya

“I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had go high up, near the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.” – from Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen

Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen (various editions)

“The geographical position, and the height of the land combined to create a landscape that had not its like in all the world.” – from Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen

Isak's Dinesen's Out of Africa transports readers to Kenya’s central highlands. It was there that she “had a farm…at the foot of the Ngong Hills,” between 1913 and 1932. Written after returning to Denmark, Out of Africa shares time and place, offering at once an often troubling look backward at colonialism and passages of unsurpassed beauty describing the landscape she came to love.

“To Denys Finch-Hatton I owe what was, I think, the greatest, the most transporting pleasure of my life on the farm: I flew with him over Africa. There, where there are few or no roads and where you can land on the plains, flying becomes a thing of real and vital importance, it opens up a world.” – from Out of Africa, by Isak Dinsesen

Related Websites

The Karen Blixen Museum, Rungstedlund, Denmark and The Karen Blixen Museum in Nairobi, Kenya

“I have before seen other countries, in the same manner, give themselves to you when you are about to leave them, but I had forgotten what it meant. I only thought that I had never seen the country so lovely, as if the contemplation of it would in itself be enough to make you happy all your life.” – from Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen

Kenya

Novelist Ngugi wa Thlong’o “tells John Freeman his epic story of struggle and survival.”

“…At just over five feet tall, with a ready giggle, he is hardly the portrait of a steely revolutionary. When Moi agreed to abide by term limits, and his hand-picked successor lost in the presidential elections, Wa Thiong'o realised that he had a chance to come home. It was good timing. Wa Thiong'o had just completed a six-volume satirical novel called Murogi wa Kagogo, a ribald satire of a fictional African dictator. It was also the longest novel ever written in his native Gikuyu language.” – from “Ngugi wa Thiong’o : the Language of Liberation,” by John Freeman, The Independent

DETOUR : Kenya

You can read Dave Gilson's interview with Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wangari Maathai, on the Mother Jones website. Take a few minutes to read about this remarkable woman.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2005/01/wangari_maathai.html

In 1977, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental group that restored indigenous forests and assisted rural women by paying them to plant trees in their communities. It has since planted over 30 million trees in Kenya, provided work for tens of thousands of women, and been replicated in dozens of other African countries. -- Dave Gilson

There is more to learn in Wangari Matthai's book, The Green Belt Movement : Sharing the Approach and the Experience.