how depressing your circumstances are. Aim for the moon because even if you miss, you might hit a star. Through his endeavours our protagonist discovers the significance of aspiring high, even if he lives in an impoverish village called Cedarville.
Boipelo (Boi) Seku is almost thirteen. He’s a Grade 8 pupil at Cedarville Comprehensive School and lives with his grandmother and father in a little two-room house in Khorong Koali Park in Cedarville. Cedarville, in the Eastern Cape, is a small village between two bigger towns, Matatiele and Kokstad. Instead of having green shady trees, his village is littered with dirt, weeds and thin dogs. Their houses were built after 1994 by the new democratic government after apartheid ended. They have a pit toilet outside the garden.
Life at home is not easy. Like most of his neighbours, Boi’s father is unemployed. Their only source of income is the government grant money that Makhulu (grandmother) gets at the end of the month. They use candles to light their home at night and a paraffin stove to cook as the cost of electricity is out of their reach. Their house is baking hot in summer and as cold as ice in winter as they don’t have ceiling boards. The tin roof leaks when it rains so Boi knows where to position his mattress to avoid it getting wet when it rains. His mother died in childbirth so Makhulu moved into the house to take care of him. Even though she’s almost blind, nothing he does escapes her notice. Much to his irritation.
His best friend is Potso, they’ve been inseparable since Grade One. They fish together at the river, hunt for tiny field mice to roast on an open fire, and dig clay from holes in the river bank and make little animals, mostly oxen or cows. Potso aside, he also has feelings for Sesi, the daughter of one of his school teachers.
It was an ordinary day when he stumbled upon a story that would change his life forever. Makhulu had gotten some old magazines from aunty Shirley from the library and asked Boi to read to her recipes for mincemeat from one of the magazines. A brief not easy when you are a boy whose staple diet consist of maize meal porridge and sour milk. The closest the family ever gets to eat meat is chicken feet or polony.  The story that caught his interest though was titled: Man Trades Paperclip for a House. It ignited a spark in him that saw him start his own trading scheme beginning with a tiny clay cow he made himself. Just maybe, his dream to one day live in a house big enough for his family, could become reality. Doubts aside and with Potso by his side, he traded. And trade by trade, he learned valuable life lessons, overcame obstacles, uplifted his community and brought to power the Nguni saying: Umuntu ungumuntu ngabantu (you’re because of others).    ​

Even though an American, the author, Caroline Kurtz had lived in Africa almost half her life. Her parents worked in Ethiopia for twenty-three years since her father got a letter from the Presbyterian Church headquarters in the US asking if he could go to Ethiopia to be a missionary. She was four when they arrived. She was raised there and fluent in Amharic. She was ten when her parents put her alone on the plane to fly to boarding school in Addis Ababa. And was fifteen when she attended high school in Egypt. She met her husband Mark there – both high school juniors and both children of Presbyterians working in SW Ethiopia.
The year was 1996 when she and Mark relocated to Nairobi, Kenya, leaving their daughter Miriam in college in the US. Their supervisors in Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) had presented them with an opportunity to work for four years in Nairobi with the South Sudanese there. She, as the Women’s Development Advisor, and Mark their Financial Advisor in charge of setting up the Presbyterian Church of Sudan’s head office budget. This was testing their faith to the limit as both had no major experiences when it came to their assignments. Caroline had never organised development projects before, but she was sure there would be something she could do to empower South Sudanese women. She had studied community organising. Mark could only arm himself with a basic accounting course in preparation. Previously, both had thrived in Ethiopia working for six years in an Addis Ababa girl’s school. Nothing prepared her though for a civil war chaos she would encounter, even though her parents raised her for hardship in Africa in pursuit of making the world a better place.  Their move to Kenya also included their two young sons, Kenny (eight at the time) and Jesse (a teen). An elite international school was waiting to welcome the boys.
Also, in 1996 the government of Sudan had signed a cease-fire with Commander Riek Machar, a Nuer warlord in South Sudan. Millions have been killed and displaced in South Sudan during the decades long civil war. The Sudan government had bombed rebels in the South remorselessly. The Southern commanders had fought each other and civilians were casualties. Crops were burned to ashes, cattle slaughtered and famine rife.
 Caroline and Mark were enthusiastic. “Everyone was hopeful about the future – UN staff, Nuers. How do humans do that, even facing odds laid out as clearly before us as the odds of success in South Sudan?” she asks. Idealism perhaps. She attended the UN’s aid worker orientation course and felt excited and empowered. She studied her notebook of Nuer vocabulary words. The Nuers are cattle people; their Southern neighbours are the Dinkas. She could be in South Sudan up to a third of every month.
In the book Caroline describes her life in the village of Waat, a compound where she would live for the first time in South Sudan. She was the only American for hundreds of miles around. The village was dense with heat, and with bare necessities. All it offered grew out of the ground, mostly the sorghum people ate all the time. The Red Cross had recently drilled a new well. She was hosted by the village pastor and his assistant. Her refuge at night was her burgundy tent. Elder Guy Lual, a church leader from Nairobi, was also there. She also met Nyang – he went to university in Cairo but returned to Waat with so much optimism. He wanted to rebuild classrooms, to teach adult education and children to read. He had come back to be Education Director for the province. Caroline had brought with her two big treadle sewing machines; she wanted to help the women live few of their dreams. The women wanted her to stay and teach them to read.
As with all best intentions, everything started out good. The Sudanese pastors in Nairobi welcomed Mark with open arms. He negotiated a new office for them. The Presbyterians were donating money for South Sudan and Mark was there to track the money, to see if it was being used to help the suffering people. It soon emerged that was not the case. Bank statements and receipts were not forthcoming. The money was not making its way out of Nairobi for development in South Sudan. Church leaders were spending the money from grants to support their families living in Nairobi instead.  Mark grew disheartened. The author admits at this time they should have sought help immediately. “He was feeling increasingly humiliated. The air in our house got heavier and heavier. Mark hardly ever smiled,” she says. They’ve been married for twenty-three years by the time she went to Waat. Mark was let go; told to take a break from his assignment. He was in despair.
Caroline was facing her own struggles. After getting back from Waat, she had written a grant for sewing machines and sewing lessons for South Sudan women. After the grant came, Mark informed her that the pastors were using the money to pay salary. There was no money for her to travel into South Sudan, or for anything to do with women’s development. She was now also aground at home.
 This was just the beginning to the complex humanitarian crises she experienced first hand in South Sudan. In her journey she got to teach young Nuer men for weeks at a time in the harsh, “god-forsaken” Kakuma refugee camp. She taught women to crochet in Nyal – a village where all traces of the 20th century had been erased. In 1998, she got a new assignment as a logistical organiser for an upcoming peace conference. She now had a full-time job and office space. This was a turning point for her. As she says; the most important and hope-inspiring work she did in all her years in Africa.  Through this work, she became part of a peace intervention team in a close-in conflict. South Sudanese tribes were fighting each other in the middle of their big war against the government of North Sudan. The Wunlit Peace Conference of 1999 paved the way to reconciliation between the communities. The Dinkas and Nuers had to make peace with each other to have any hope of winning the war for independence from the North.  ​

​Yes! What an epic historical book of fiction and written by a young woman in her twenties. 
The period is between the First World War and the rumbles of the Second World War. At the heart of it is the Palestinian struggle for independence and turbulent Middle Eastern politics. This is the backdrop to a deeply compassionate and understated story of lives caught up in the turmoil, and trying to make sense of it all. 
The main character, Midhat Kamal, travels from Palestine to study medicine in a town in France. He moves to Paris where he absorbs some of the Parisian manners and style. On his return to Palestine, he becomes known as ‘the Parisian’.  We get an indication of Hammad’s ability to capture the big picture with detail and understatement: During Midhat’s medical training, the professor, surrounded by a number of students including Midhat, is examining a young boy. After the emanation the professor pronounces, ‘carcinoma of the stomach and you will have to see the surgeon this afternoon.’  For the first time the boy speaks in an anxious tone, ‘But I have to get back to work.’  Midhat can’t get the boy out of his mind and a few days later he enquires after the boy. No one can tell him anything because the flood of wounded soldiers from the front has overtaken the hospital. 
Relationships are central to the story, both deeply loving and loyal or painful and fractured. At times letters play a beautiful role, they are personal and sometimes include incidental historical facts or lines of poetry.   Hammad uses Arabic or French in different contexts adding authenticity without compromising meaning. The descriptions of markets and local stores are rich and detailed – ‘where customers are offered coffee heavy with sugar and cardamom’.
I loved this book; it moved me deeply and at times made me laugh. I look forward to her next book, due in January 2023.

​not left her house for nearly three years. Immobilised if she tries to step across her front step here is a woman who, while she holds down a virtual job, loves to bake, lives for her cat Fred and retains a cheerful and positive façade, her demons prevent her crossing that threshold in to the real world. A world that has let her down. Victim of a sexual assault, exacerbated by a traumatic childhood, these intrusive memories make their presence felt every day leaving her powerless.
But, and here is the joy, she is not alone.  Her best friend Sadie is a constant visitor, bright and cheerful and always encouraging, with her two children in tow she is a golden, sunny character. Then there is Tom the social worker who becomes her regular visitor and a new friend Celeste whom she meets on line.  Steadfast in their loyalty these are the ones who will bring Meredith to take those first shaky steps. And when her estranged sister appears, she realises she can no longer hide.
This is a beautifully constructed story showing the value of self-worth and what happens when that tenuous grasp slips through your fingers; getting past the memories of mean words from a bitter parent who continually undermines. It underscores the value and loyalty of those who believe in you, the friends who uplift you and move you gently forward and that facing the truth can be the launching pad for a new life.  An empathetic book that looks at mental issues with positivity.   Recommended.

​Véronique Tadjo is a writer, poet and painter from the Ivory Coast, who has lived all over Africa. She was visiting professor at Wits University. She is a prolific writer with many awards and the release in 2021 of her latest novel in translation, In the Company of Men: the Ebola Tales draws on real accounts of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa of 2014. She considers herself a Pan-African so is eminently placed to write about this scourge that has attacked African countries
And while all this might sound depressing it is so far from that. Tadjo’s ability to weave folk tale and reality brings together an almost magical yet harshly honest series of stories - moving insights into the devastation and effect on those closest to the virus. She has a measured voice, the poetic quality is sorrowful, sad and an elegy to those who have passed and a hymn for those who have survived. 
In West Africa the de-forestation has affected the biodiversity in such a way as to allow disease to spread. Tadjo illustrates this effect as she follows two young boys through the stripped woods as they hunt bats for food; the Baobab speaks to us; the whispering trees echo the broken chain between man and nature; a doctor; nurse, survivor, the virus itself – all have a story and whether it is the stigma of having had the virus, the absence of supplies, the bravery, the fear, each has a voice.  It is the simplicity of the stories that enthrals. And cuts to the heart.
I must mention the cover as this is something that also sets the book apart. The Baobab tree with all is its intricate appendages is both unsettling and intriguing.  
Tadjo uses poetry, fictionalised testimonials, and beautifully constructed prose to paint this picture of a disease that in 2014 claimed more than 11000 lives. She points to the effects of pandemics and epidemics and how man contributes to this cycle.  And she brings the reality of this crisis into focus. 
As the giant Baobab says; ‘But when men murder us, they must know that they are breaking the chains of existence. Animals can no longer find food. Bats can no longer find food, can no longer find the wild fruit they like so much. Then they migrate to villages, where there are mango, guava, papaya and avocado trees, with their soft sweet fruits. The bats seek the company of men’.
 Tadjo has presented us with sobering stories that have an important place in this world we inhabit – they remind us of our hand in the destruction.   
This book won Veronique Tadjo  the Los Angeles Times Book Prize 2021.