Books 'n Links

Dennis has been providing literary suggestions for the group to provide a background to the areas and situations we will be encountering:

Reading Note 1: I have just finished an interesting read about a young man who lives on the street in an African city after fleeing a massacre in his village. It is very compelling – Chronicler of The Winds by Henning Mankell. Worth a trip to the Library or to your used bookstore to see if it is available.

Reading Note 2: The Fate of Africa: From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair, by Martin Meredith. This work is nearly 700 pages and it is meticulously referenced however it does actually read like a novel. From a boomer perspective, I recognized many of the names of the leaders, the issues, (wars, famines, coupes, disasters) from the headlines in the press as I grew up but I must admit that I was unaware of the whole ‘decolinization’ process by the European powers and the ensuing chaos that engulfed the entire continent. 

Reading Note 3: King Leopold’s Ghost, which is the harrowing story of the ‘colonization’ of what is now Zaire (the Belgium Congo) in the late 1800’s. It is very well written and researched and it actually reads like a novel. 

Reading Note 4: A School For My Village by Twesegge Jackson Kaguri and published by the Penguin Group. An earlier version was published as The Price of Stones. This book tells the story of one individual’s response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic that is currently sweeping Africa. There is also a very interesting Canadian connection. It is a quick read and worth the effort to track it down.

Reading Note 5: A Complicated War; The Harrowing of Mozambique by William Finnegan, An excellent overview of the tragedy of Mozambique after its independence from Portugal

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There are also a number of sites on the internet that may be amusing:

1) hfhmozambiqueca11113.weebly.com/ - Our trip website
2) gvmozambique2009.blogspot.com/ - Blog from a US GV group that built in Massaca in 2009

3) h4hinmozambique.blogspot.com/ - Blog from a Canadian GV group that built in Xai-Xai in 2010

4) www.itstimeforafricawakawaka.blogspot.com - Blog from a Canadian GV group that buildt in Xai-Xai in August 2011, after which some of the group continued on to climb Kiliminjaro

5) www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppiHSpm1VSA – TravelChannel video about Mozambique and Maputo

6) www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0553ZAly6U – BestDestination video about Mozambique and Maputo

7) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xai-Xai - Wikipedia information on Xai Xai

8) www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmb7Q9jSE9I – Habitat video about their work in Mozambique