Download or read book No Picnic on Mount Kenya written by Felice Benuzzi and published by MacLehose Press. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the shadow of Mount Kenya, surrounded by the forests and creatures of the savannah, life drags interminably for the inmates of POW Camp 354, captured in Africa during World War II. Confined to an endless cycle of boredom and frustration, one prisoner realizes he can bear it no longer. When the clouds covering Mount Kenya part one morning to reveal its towering peaks for the first time, Felice Benuzzi is transfixed. The tedium of camp life is broken by the beginnings of a sudden idea--an outrageous, dangerous, brilliant idea. Not many people would break out of a POW camp and trek for days across perilous terrain before climbing the north face of Mount Kenya with improvised equipment, meager rations, and a picture of the mountain on a tin of beef as their most accurate guide. Fewer still would break back into the camp on their return. This is the remarkable story of three such men--a powerful testament to the human spirit of rebellion and adventure--reissued in a deluxe edition featuring Benuzzi's own watercolor paintings of the expedition and a final chapter that has never before appeared in English.
Download or read book Facing Mount Kenya written by Jomo Kenyatta and published by African Books Collective. This book was released on 1978-12-29 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Facing Mount Kenya, first published in 1938, is a monograph on the life and customs of the Gikuyu people of central Kenya prior to their contact with Europeans. It is unique in anthropological literature for it gives an account of the social institutions and religious rites of an African people, permeated by the emotions that give to customs and observances their meaning. It is characterised by both insight and a tinge of romanticism. The author, proud of his African blood and ways of thought, takes the reader through a thorough and clear picture of Gikuyu life and customs, painting an almost utopian picture of their social norms and the sophisticated codes by which all aspects of the society were governed. This book is one of a kind, capturing and documenting traditions fast disappearing. It is therefore a must-read for all who want to learn about African culture.
Download or read book The Ecology of the Alpine Zone of Mount Kenya written by M.J. Coe and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries the peak of Mount Kenya has held a magical and religious significance for the Bantu and Nilohamitic peoples around its base. The Kikuyu live around the Eastern and Southern bound aries and the closely related Uembu and Umeru on the S.E. and N.E. respectively. Early in this century the Masai lived to the N.W. and North, but after continual warfare between them and their neighbours, the European administrators of that time moved them to a special reserve to the South, which accounts at the present day for the retention in the Masai language of many words that refer to Mount Kenya. Kikuyu folk-lore tells how, when the earth was formed, a man named Mogai made a great mountain, Kere-Nyaga. The fine white powder (snow) covering the peak, which they called ira, was said to be the bed of Ngai (God), and during male and female circumcision ceremonies a white powder was placed on the wound, and the ini tiates were told that this material had been brought from the summit of the mountain. In fact all important tribal ceremonies were, and in many cases still are conducted facing the mountain. Such occasions include marriage and sacrifice when, in time of hardship, Ngai's aid is called upon (CAGNOLO 1933, KENYATTA 1938, CRIRA 1959).
Download or read book Guide to Mount Kenya and Kilimanjaro written by Iain Allan and published by . This book was released on 1991-12 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Change in Altitude written by Anita Shreve and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2009-09-22 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Margaret and Patrick have been married just a few months when they set off on what they hope will be a great adventure-a year living in Kenya. Margaret quickly realizes there is a great deal she doesn't know about the complex mores of her new home, and about her own husband. A British couple invites the newlyweds to join on a climbing expedition to Mount Kenya, and they eagerly agree. But during their harrowing ascent, a horrific accident occurs. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Margaret struggles to understand what happened on the mountain and how these events have transformed her and her marriage, perhaps forever. A Change in Altitude illuminates the inner landscape of a couple, the irrevocable impact of tragedy, and the elusive nature of forgiveness. With stunning language and striking emotional intensity, Anita Shreve transports us to the exotic panoramas of Africa and into the core of our most intimate relationships.
Download or read book Mountain Dragons written by Jan Stipala and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Homeland written by George Obama and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-01-05 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Homeland is the remarkable memoir of George Obama, President Obama’s Kenyan half brother, who found the inspiration to strive for his goal—to better the lives of his own people—in his elder brother’s example. In the spring of 2006, George met his older half brother, then–U.S. senator Barack Obama, for the second time—the first was when he was five. The father they shared was as elusive a figure for George as he had been for Barack; he died when George was six months old. George was raised by his mother and stepfather, a French aid worker, in a well-to-do suburb of Nairobi. He was a star pupil and rugby player at a top boarding school in the Mount Kenya foothills, but after his mother and stepfather separated when he was fifteen, he was deprived of the only father figure he had ever known. Now left angry, rebellious, and troubled, his life crashed and burned. George dropped out of school and started drinking and smoking hashish. From there it was only a short step to the gangland and a life of crime. He gravitated to Nairobi’s vast ghetto, and in the midst of its harsh existence discovered something wholly unexpected: a vibrant community and a special affinity with the slum kids, whom he helped survive amid grinding poverty and despair. When he was twenty, he and three fellow gangsters were arrested for a crime they did not commit and imprisoned for nine months in the hell of a Nairobi jail. In an extraordinary turn of events, George went on to represent himself and the other three at trial. The judge threw out the case, and George walked out of jail a changed man. After winning his freedom, George met his American brother for a second time, and was left with a strong impression that Barack would run for the American presidency. George was inspired by his older brother’s example to try to change the lives of his people, the ghetto-dwellers, for the better. Today, George chooses to live in the Nairobi ghetto, where he has set up his own community group and works with others to help the ghetto-dwellers, and especially the slum kids, overcome the challenges surrounding their lives. "My brother has risen to be the leader of the most powerful country in the world. Here in Kenya, my aim is to be a leader amongst the poorest people on earth—those who live in the slums." George Obama’s story describes the seminal influence Barack had on his future and reveals his own unique struggles with family, tribe, inheritance, and redemption.
Download or read book The Great Rift Valley written by John Walter Gregory and published by . This book was released on 1896 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Orchids of Kenya written by Joyce Stewart and published by Timber Press (OR). This book was released on 1996 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book by the Royal Horticultural Society's Director of Horticulture & previous Sainsbury Orchid Fellow at Kew is the first to cover the 265 orchids native to Kenya. It is the product not only of the author's peerless knowledge of orchids but of her ten years' residence in Kenya.
Download or read book Kilimanjaro written by Henry Stedman and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new guide is written in the proven Trailblazer style--with detailed walking maps showing hiking times, points of interest, and gradients.
Download or read book From the Slopes of Mount Kenya written by Mary T. Wanjiku and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2012-05-17 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I was born and brought up in Kenya during the struggle for independence from the colonial rule. This book is about the trials and tribulations that took place during those difficult years. It is also about the cultural changes that the African families endured in that period, but where everyone looked out for each other. My family moved away from the village into the new emerging cosmopolitan towns and a new way of life where there was the merging of cultures from all over the world.This move meant losing some of their cultural identity process but on a positive note, led to their embracing in the activities found in the brave new world. My story is a personal journey that started with humble beginnings on the slopes of Mount Kenya with the euphoria and excitement that accompanied the freedom from the British rule. It is about growing up during the transitional years of post colonial Kenya and taking advantage of the many opportunities and challenges of a new nation and doing whatever was necessary to enable me to reach my goals and to find my identity and role in the new found freedom and independence.
Download or read book The Perfect Nine written by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzling, genre-defying novel in verse from the author Delia Owens says “tackles the absurdities, injustices, and corruption of a continent” Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s novels and memoirs have received glowing praise from the likes of President Barack Obama, the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, and NPR; he has been a finalist for the Man International Booker Prize and is annually tipped to win the Nobel Prize for Literature; and his books have sold tens of thousands of copies around the world. In his first attempt at the epic form, Ngũgĩ tells the story of the founding of the Gĩkũyũ people of Kenya, from a strongly feminist perspective. A verse narrative, blending folklore, mythology, adventure, and allegory, The Perfect Nine chronicles the efforts the Gĩkũyũ founders make to find partners for their ten beautiful daughters—called “The Perfect Nine” —and the challenges they set for the 99 suitors who seek their hands in marriage. The epic has all the elements of adventure, with suspense, danger, humor, and sacrifice. Ngũgĩ’s epic is a quest for the beautiful as an ideal of living, as the motive force behind migrations of African peoples. He notes, “The epic came to me one night as a revelation of ideals of quest, courage, perseverance, unity, family; and the sense of the divine, in human struggles with nature and nurture.”
Download or read book Geology of National Parks of Central Southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania written by Roger N. Scoon and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-04-09 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes the interrelationship between the spectacular geology of an area of East Africa that includes a branch of the rift valley, as well as giant freestanding ice-capped mountains and extraordinarily toxic, alkaline lakes, and some of the greatest concentrations of wildlife on Earth. It suggests that geological processes that have shaped the iconic landforms, including active volcanoes, may also be responsible for the unusually diverse speciation which characterises the region. Moreover, it is not a coincidence that important palaeoanthropological discoveries have been unearthed in the region. National parks and conservation areas have tremendous potential for geotourism and the book assists both tour guides and visitors in this regard. In addition, the book may provide a better understanding to management of the importance of geology for sustaining wildlife.
Download or read book The Snow Angel written by Lauren St John and published by Zephyr. This book was released on 2018-10-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lauren St John's stunning Christmas classic is about forgotten children, the power of nature to heal us and a girl who will climb mountains in search for a place to call home. Nominated for the 2019 Carnegie Medal. Growing up in vibrant, crowded Nairobi, Makena has only one dream: to climb Mount Kenya like her hero, her mountain guide father. But when her beautiful world is shattered, she finds that in the city's dark places there are a thousand ways to fall, each more deadly than any crevasse. In a world of strangers, does she dare trust Snow, whose ballet dreams are haunted by a past she's still running from? And is the sparkling fox friend or foe? After a fresh start in the Scottish Highlands turns bad, Makena flees to the mountains. But will they betray her or be the making of her?
Download or read book Dust written by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Washington Post Notable Book When a young man is gunned down in the streets of Nairobi, his grief-stricken father and sister bring his body back to their crumbling home in the Kenyan drylands. But the murder has stirred up memories long since buried, precipitating a series of events no one could have foreseen. As the truth unfolds, we come to learn the secrets held by this parched landscape, hidden deep within the shared past of a family and their conflicted nation. Spanning Kenya’s turbulent 1950s and 1960s, Dust is spellbinding debut from a breathtaking new voice in literature.
Download or read book Dance of the Jakaranda written by Peter Kimani and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This funny, perceptive and ambitious work of historical fiction by a Kenyan poet and novelist explores his country’s colonial past and its legacy.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice Set in the shadow of Kenya’s independence from Great Britain, Dance of the Jakaranda reimagines the special circumstances that brought black, brown and white men together to lay the railroad that heralded the birth of the nation. The novel traces the lives and loves of three men—preacher Richard Turnbull, the colonial administrator Ian McDonald, and Indian technician Babu Salim—whose lives intersect when they are implicated in the controversial birth of a child. Years later, when Babu’s grandson Rajan—who ekes out a living by singing Babu’s epic tales of the railway’s construction—accidentally kisses a mysterious stranger in a dark nightclub, the encounter provides the spark to illuminate the three men’s shared, murky past. With its riveting multiracial, multicultural cast and diverse literary allusions, Dance of the Jakaranda could well be a story of globalization. Yet the novel is firmly anchored in the African oral storytelling tradition, its language a dreamy, exalted, and earthy mix that creates new thresholds of identity, providing a fresh metaphor for race in contemporary Africa. “Destined to become one of the greats . . . This is not hyperbole: it’s a masterpiece.” —The Gazette “A fascinating part of Kenya’s history, real and imagined, is revealed and reclaimed by one of its own.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune “Kimani’s novel has an impressive breadth and scope.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “Highlighted by its exquisite voice, Kimani’s novel is a standout debut.” —Publishers Weekly “Lyrical and powerful.” —Kirkus Reviews
Download or read book To the Summit written by Margo Chisholm and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A formerly obese and bulimic cocaine addict recounts how the death of a friend helped her overcome her problems and reach amazing goals, which included climbing the peaks of Mount Everest. 60,000 first printing. Tour.
