The book review:
Seeing Through Africa. Arthur Dobrin, Cross-Cultural Communications, Merrick, New York, 2004.

Arthur and his wife Lyn were PCVs in Kisii in 1965–67 engaged with agricultural cooperatives in community development work. This rather unconventional and very candid memoir, however, does not focus exclusively on Peace Corps service nor does it flow chronologically. Rather it jerks spasmodically forward and backward adding a piece of information or a thought, as it seems relevant to the topic being addressed. This format takes some getting use to, but once a reader is immersed a bit in Dobrin’s life story—and it really is a life story, not just a Kenyan story—the seams begin to fade away.

The book review:
In this carefully researched and documented work, Elkins sets the record straight unequivocally revealing that the British colonial government of Kenya engaged in deliberate horrendous abuses of human rights during the Mau Mau emergency. Furthermore, rather than individual cases of wrongdoings, the egregious abuses were systematic, approved at the highest levels, designed to break the will of the Kikuyu people and to destroy forever any challenge from them to colonial suzerainty.

The book review:
In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro--on foot across East Africa by Rick Ridgeway, New York, Henry Holt and Company, 1998. Ridgeway is an adventure travel writer who uses a month-long safari descending from Kibo peak on the top of Kili along the water courses of the Tsavo, Galana and Sabaki rivers to the beach at Malindi as an opportunity to delve into conservation issues in Kenya. His description of the walk itself, accomplished in the company of Iain Allen, KWS wardens Bongo and Danny Woodley, and rangers Mohamed Hamisi and David Lokiyor, provides the setting for the discussion. (Not coincidently my interest in this book was piqued because my wife and I hiked the along the Tsavo River with Iain and Mohamed in 1983.) Ridgeway evokes the sense-enhancing tension of the bush where every movement could be an elephant, buffalo, lion, hippo or even, now again, a rhino. He listens to the birds, smells the smells and suffers the heat. Juxtaposed to the on-the-spot lessons and anecdotes about the animals encountered--Ridgeway was particularly impressed by a no-bluff charge of an elephant matriarch--the author recounts the history of the Tsavo parks, the colonial-era debates about the utility of such areas, and the exploits of legendary white hunters. He uses Bongo and Danny’s father, the late Bill Woodley, a thirty-year veteran of Kenyan parks, as a measuring stick and point of departure for debates on conservation and hunting. Woodley, along with David Sheldrick, essentially developed Tsavo in the forties, fifties and sixties into today’s parks. They confronted elephant-culling issues, drought, traditional elephant hunting by Waliangulu tribesmen using bows and arrows, vicious battles with Somali shifta armed with AK-47s, and high-level political corruption.

The book review:
Greetings! (My Draft Board used to say that.) Welcome to the first of what I intend to be a monthly column of book reviews. I will pass along thoughts and recommendations on books about Kenya, books by RPCVs and books about Africa.

The book review:
Me here in Kenya I am fine—Walking the Peace Corps Road, Maxine Valdez: Sun City, CA. Winlock Galey, 2004. Maxine was a PCV from 1980-81 at Kerala Girls’ High School, Kimbimbi, on the slopes of Mt. Kenya. Her book is essentially edited from letters home, a journal, and letters from other volunteers. Although an earnest effort—and successful in many aspects—to portray honestly the daily life of a PCV, the book suffers from lack of coherent narrative and insufficiently introduced or developed characters, including Maxine herself. Although we all probably did it in our letters too, another criticism is that the book dwells too much on petty frustrations and annoyances such as matatu rides, lack of running water and poor availability of food. Similarly, it is filled with a bit too much introspection of the why-am-I-here variety.

The book review:
The Africa House: The True Story of an English Gentleman and His African Dream, Christina Lamb: New York, Harper-Collins, 2004. Kenyan RPCVs who lived in old European farmhouses on settlement schemes often wondered (I know I did) what toil, trouble and love went into building those dwellings and in bludgeoning the surrounding farm from the Kenyan bush. This question was also posed dramatically by Grogan’s castle; a now abandoned other world fortress perched on a promontory south of Taveta. This book retraces the quest of another such adventure, that of Lt. Colonel Stewart Gore-Browne, who built one of the biggest most outlandish homes ever. His estate, named Shiwa Ngandu, took form in the lightly populated region of Northern Rhodesia (present day Zambia) beginning in 1914.