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Fan into Flame by John G. Gatu
Sh 2,105.00Autobiographies tend to take a very narrow view of the world. A politician’s life story will, in its broadest reach, only veer off the author’s life to his or her country’s political journey. A trade unionist’s will tend to drone on about trade unionism, and so on.
But not so John G. Gatu’s Fan into Flame.
Like a flame with uncontrollable embers, this wide-ranging 320-page tale refuses to be confined to any narrow literary alleyway.
First, the versatile nature of the author’s life history is as interesting as it is enlightening. From the time he ran away from home alongside other boys, keen to seek a better life in Nairobi, his was an adventurous and eventful life.
After a lengthy search, he joins the military as a signal officer. From the military, he works as a Swahili translator for a colonial military officer, church clerk, film editor and magazine reporter, before rising to be among the most influential church leaders in the history of Kenya. This career versatility – coupled with his numerous travels across the world – enables him to tell the story of Kenya from many perspectives.
As a young man, Gatu is seen as caught between the traditional African ways and Christian ways. No scene captures this better than when his father wants to take Gatu’s sister to a medicine man to have pneumonia “sucked out of her with a sheep’s horn”, as his mother insists that they take her to a dispensary.
The uncertainty that propels his life’s journey also makes for interesting reading. For instance, when all his young friends board a bus –on credit – return to their homes after failing to get a job in the city, Gatu stays on because no one would pay his fare at home after he escaped. It is such awkward situations that seem to open doors to even more interesting things.
His military adventure reads like a war movie script. When he enlists, he is given two blankets, two pairs of shorts, a pair of boots, puttees, a mess tin and a tag with a number that he was to hang around his chest all the time. The eight-shilling-a-month job offers a peek into the conditions of African military officers on Her Majesty’s Service in World War Two.
On the warfront in Ethiopia, at a time when he was strangely a heavy drinker and smoker, he is court-martialled and sentenced to 60 days in prison for a crime he insists he did not commit. On his way to Dire Dawa prison, interesting scenes unfold that see the man – who would later become the first African General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church in East Africa- throw an Ethiopian off a moving train.
In prison, he meets people from his childhood days and soon, the prison time morphs into another military job – as a translator. The twists from then on are greatly intriguing. His journey back to Kenya is so eventful and comical that his life qualifies for a film rendition. We see him almost dying while trying to swim in the Indian Ocean at Mogadishu, Somalia. When his regiment reaches Chogoria, in present-day Tharaka Nithi County in Kenya, women scampered to the hills. The sight of the soldiers really horrified the women, who thought they had been invaded by Ngorogothi, the dreaded man-eaters from Gold Coast who were believed to be fond of tearing off women’s breasts before eating them.
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Taliban: The True Story of the World’s Most Feared Guerrilla Fighters
Sh 2,200.00Fifteen years ago, southern Afghanistan was in even greater chaos than it is now. The Russians, who had occupied the country throughout the 1980s, were long gone. The disparate ethnic and religious leaders who had united to eject the invaders – the famous mujaheddin – were at each others’ throats. For the rural poor of Kandahar province, life was almost impossible. On 12 October 1994 a small group of religious students decided to take matters into their own hands. Led by an illiterate village mullah with one eye, some 200 of them surrounded and took Spin Boldak, a trucking stop on the border with Pakistan. From this short and unremarkable border skirmish, a legend was born. The students’ numbers swelled as news of their triumph spread. The Taliban, as they now called themselves – taliban is the plural of talib, literally ‘one who seeks knowledge’ – had a simple mission statement: the disarmament of the population, and the establishment of a theocracy based on Sharia law. They fought wi
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The War Within: New perspective on the civil war on Mozambique (African Edition)
Sh 2,000.00The 1976-1992 civil war which opposed the Government of Frelimo and the Renamo guerrillas (among other actors) is a central event in the history of Mozambique. Aiming to open up a new era of studies of the war, this book re-evaluates this period from a number of different local perspectives in an attempt to better understand the history, complexity and multiple dynamics of the armed conflict. Focusing at local level on either a province or a single village, the authors analyse the conflict as a “total social phenomena” involving all elements of society and impacting on every aspect of life across the country. The chapters examine Frelimo and Renamo as well as private, popular and state militias, the Catholic Church, NGOs and traders. Drawing on previously unexamined sources such as local and provincial state archives, religious archives, the guerrilla’s own documentation and interviews, the authors uncoveralternative dimensions of the civil war. The book thus enables a deeper understanding of the conflict and its actors as well as offering an explanatory framework for understanding peacemaking, the nature of contemporary politics,and the current conflict in the country.
Eric Morier-Genoud is a Lecturer in African history at Queen’s University Belfast; Domingos Manuel do Rosário is Lecturer in electoral sociology and electoral governance at Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo, Mozambique; Michel Cahen is a Senior Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) at Bordeaux Political Studies Institute and at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid.