Soar Kenya

Enjoyable Books About Kenya,

 For Children Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai By Claire Nivola Published April 2008 Sample from book:  Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and founder of the Green Belt Movement, grew up in the highlands of Kenya where trees cloaked the hills, fish filled the streams, and the people tended their gardens. But over many years, as more and more land was cleared, Kenyawas changed. When Wangari returned home from school in America, she found the streams dry, the people malnourished, and the trees gone. How could she alone bring back the trees and restore the gardens and the people? With watercolor illustrations and lyrical prose, Claire Nivola tells the remarkable story of one woman’s efforts to change the fate of her land by teaching many to care for it. For Adults Unbowed: A Memoir By Wangari Maathai September, 2007 The following is based on a review from Publishers Weekly
Maathai, a 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, presents a matter-of-fact account of her rather exceptional life in Kenya. Born in 1940, Matthai attended primary school at a time when Kenyan girls were not educated. She attended college in the U.S.and went on to earn a Ph.D. She became head of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy at the University of Nairobi before founding Kenya’s Green Belt Movement in 1977. The Green Belt Movement mobilized thousands of women to plant trees in an effort to restore the country’s forests. Because Kenya’s environmental degradation was largely due to the policies of a corrupt government, she then made the Green Belt Movement part of a broader campaign for democracy. Maathai endured personal attacks by the ruling powers. For example, President Moi denounced her as a “wayward” woman. She engaged in political activities that landed her in jail several times. When a new government came into power in 2002, she was elected to Parliament and appointed assistant minister in the Ministry for Environment and Natural Resources. Her memoir documents the remarkable achievements of an influential environmentalist and activist. the following is based on a review from Booklist
Wingara Maathai, mother of three, is the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate, and the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She knew how the earth can sustain life both as a biologist and as a Kikuyu woman who, like generations before her, grew nourishing food in the rich soil of Kenya’s central highlands. Her memoir, engrossing and enlightening, is a work of tremendous dignity and rigor. Maathai describes the paradise she knew as a child in the 1940s, when Kenyawas a “lush, green, fertile” land of plenty, and the deforested nightmare it became. Discriminated against as a female university professor, Maathai has fought hard for women’s rights. And it was women she turned to when she undertook her mission to restore Kenya’s decimated forests, launching the Green Belt Movement that provided women with work planting trees. Maathai’s ingenious, courageous, and tenacious activism led to arrests, beatings, and death threats, and yet she and her tree-planting followers remained unbowed. Currently Kenya’s deputy minister for the environment and natural resources, Nobel laureate, visionary, and hero, Maathai has shown the world the connection between thriving, wisely managed ecosystems and health, justice, and peace.The Camel BookmobileBy Masha HamiltonPublished April 2008 The following is based on a review from Publishers Weekly
Hamilton’s third novel follows Fiona Sweeney, a 36-year-old librarian, from New York to Garissa, Kenya. Fi has a sincere but naïve quest to make a difference in the world. She volunteers to run the mobile library overseen by Mr. Abasi. In her travels through the bush via camel, her favorite stop becomes the small village of Mididima. The people intrique her: Matani, the village teacher; Kanika, an independent, vivacious young woman; and Kanika’s grandmother Neema are the most avid proponents of the library and the knowledge it brings to the community. Not everyone shares such esteem for the project, however. Taban, known as Scar Boy; Jwahir, Matani’s wife; and most of the town elders think these books threaten the tradition and security of Mididima. When two books go missing, tensions arise. Some of Mididima’s citizens welcome all that the books represent; others prefer the time-honored oral traditions of the tribe. Kanika, Taban and Matani become more vibrant than Fi, who never outgrows the cookie-cutter mold of a woman needing excitement and fulfillment, but Hamilton weaves memorable characters and elemental emotions in artful prose with the lofty theme of Western-imposed “education” versus a village’s perceived perils of exposure to the developed world 

The following is based on a review from School Library Journal
Fiona, a New York librarian filled with a sense of adventure and a desire to do good, heads to Kenya to run the camel bookmobile. She has long romanticized Africa, and she arrives determined but naive. Her most remote stop is Mididima, a seminomadic farming village with a makeshift school, led by Matani, who has studied in Nairobibut returned to educate his fellow villagers. Young Kanika, who wants to leave and study as well; the reclusive Scar Boy; and their families are among Fiona’s patrons. When Scar Boy doesn’t return the books he’s borrowed, the overly rigid local librarian threatens to end the Mididima stop. Fiona, Matani, and Kanika each have a stake in keeping the bookmobile coming, so they all try to get the boy to return them. However, he has his own compelling reason to keep them. All of the characters take a turn at narrating chapters, allowing readers to understand their place in the story more fully. Ultimately, each one is changed by the bookmobile, but not in ways that they (or we) might expect.

 Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetownby Paul Theroux published April 2004The following is based on a review from Publishers Weekly
In Dark Star Safari, Paul Theroux takes readers the length of Africa by rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train. He confronts danger, delay, and dismaying circumstances. Trying to gauge the state of affairs, he talks to Africans, aid workers, missionaries, and tourists. Readers will appreciate his candid thoughts on the history, politics, and beauty of Africaand its people, and “a vivid portrayal of the secret sweetness, the hidden vitality, and the long-patient hope that lies just beneath the surface” (Rocky Mountain News). In a new postscript, Theroux recounts the dramatic events of a return to Africa to visit Zimbabwe.Author Information
Paul Theroux, born in Medford, Massachusettsin 1941, published his first novel, Waldo, in 1967. Other novels include The Family Arsenal, Picture Palace, The Mosquito Coast, O-Zone, Millroy the Magician, My Secret History, My Other Life, and Kowloon Tong. His travel books include Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, and Fresh Air Fiend. The Mosquito Coast and Dr. Slaughterhave both been successful films. Theroux contributes articles to magazines including Talk and Men’s Journal. He divides his time between Cape Cod and the Hawaiian Islands, where he is a professional beekeeper.   

The Birds of East Africa

A Princeton Field Guide

Copyright January, 2006

 The following is based on reviews at Amazon.com
Birders will discover in this book all the good elements of books that have been published about Kenya’s status as a bird gazer’s paradise. However, this book is the better than all the others. The outstanding plates are the book’s tour de force. This is by far the best and most exciting guide available for anywhere in Africa.The illustrations in this guide are of a very high standard. The detail needed for field identification is outstanding and the fresh and brief descriptions make good reading.  The artistic quality makes the book an attractive object as well as a useful one. A very fine field-guide indeed that sets a new standard for regional African guides.