Old Africa Bookstore
Endless Horizons covers 100 years of the Prettejohn family in Kenya. This book starts in 1904 when Jock ‘Black’ Harries came to Uganda with the King’s African Rifles, moves on to Jock’s pioneering cattle ranching near Njoro, to World War I, to Mike’s grandmother coming to marry Jock, to Mike’s father managing Jock Harries’ stock operation, to Naro Moru where Mike’s father bought his own farm, to Mike’s schoolboy adventures, a trans-Sahara expedition, the Emergency, and then on to Mike buying his own ranch in Mweiga and becoming a professional hunter and managing massive cattle/game ranches in Galana and Taita before ending his career in conservation. The last chapter tells of Mike’s efforts to save the critically endangered bongo. The book is epic in proportion, yet takes time to focus on the small details of life that make it authentic and personal. The book includes over 80 photographs, many published for the first time.
Hard Cover - Ships from Kenya
Richard Lyth: Oxford graduate, missionary, commando, Frontier Agent, linguist, District Commissioner, Anglican bishop. Lyth lived an epic life –much of it spent in the remote southeastern Sudan. During World War 2 he served as Frontier Agent on the Boma Plateau, part of the traditional homeland of the Murle people. There he met a young Murle man named Lado, the subject of this book. The two men became lifelong friends. Over time Lado told Lyth the story of his difficult and extraordinary life. Lyth lived for many years among the Murle people, studying their culture and language. He penned an early edition of this book in 1945, drawing upon his knowledge of the setting and customs of the intriguing Murle culture and integrating them with Lado’s personal story.
This book follows the life of a man named Lado. He was born in Sudan approximately 1920. He grew up living the traditional life of his Murle people- herding the goats, planting sorghum and hunting antelope with a spear. But Lado was different. Even as a young boy he wondered about the world around him. As he grew older he was increasingly confused by the different manifestations of the tribal god named Tammu. As a teenager he was captured in a raid and taken away as a slave. He was later adopted into the tribe that enslaved him. Under these conditions his questions about suffering and God became more intense. He was rescued by British troops and learned Arabic under the protection of the District Commissioner. Eventually he returned to his home at Boma as the official translator for the military. It was here that Lado met Kemerbong (Richard Lyth). A meeting that changed the rest of his life.
Northrup is the story of a big-hearted American millionaire, William Northrup McMillan, who came to Kenya in 1904 on a shooting expedition. He fell in love with the country and bought a large estate and a mountain. Having explored and hunted in Sudan and Ethiopia, he decided his future lay in Kenya and he would help in “opening up a completely new colony.” He poured his large fortune and all his enthusiastic energies into his adopted country, developing his estates, backing new business ventures and providing assistance to the needy. During World War I, he became a British citizen and received a knighthood for his wartime services.
After his parents drop him off at a boarding school in Kenya as a young boy, Clay crosses the threshold into an unknown and often-hostile world. Ox, the captain of the rugby team, rescues Clay from the paddling machine and becomes his mentor. Titch, a boy in his class who struggles to read, befriends Clay in his lonely days at boarding school. Clay develops a passion for rugby, which helps him carve out his niche wherever he finds himself-in Kenya as a child, in the apple country of Washington state as a junior high student, back in Kenya in high school, in a college in California, and finally in Sudan where he joins up with his friend Titch during a lull in that country's civil war. The Dust of Africa is a story of a lasting friendship forged in shared struggles and joint exploits on the rugby fields in Kenya. Clay and Titch are forever marked by the land of their childhood, two young men who can't wash the dust of Africa off their feet.
In Tribal Origins Peter Parr records the moving story of how his family traveled to Sudan in 1955 to work as Presbyterian missionaries. His mother dies soon afterwards and Peter and his sister Pamela find themselves in a boarding school in Egypt with their father far away in south Sudan. Despite the rough beginning, Peter learns to love Africa and the people of Egypt, south Sudan and later Ethiopia. The author uses photo-clear memories of his African childhood to give us a snapshot of a forgotten era with sometimes sharp comments on the missionary community as well as colorful observations of the African cultures that shaped the author’s own tribal origins.
Drinking the Wind traces the life of Jon Arensen who arrived on the African continent with his parents in 1946. Growing up in Tanganyika in the bush by Lake Victoria, Jon learned Kisukuma before he spoke English. He loved the outdoors and as a young boy he helped feed the family with his shooting skills. But he couldn’t grow up in the wilds of Africa forever and he went off to boarding school in Kenya to study and learn more about the wider world. After university in the USA, Jon returned to Africa as a teacher at Rift Valley Academy before moving to southern Sudan in 1976. He and his wife Barb surveyed the languages of southern Sudan for the Education Ministry before settling among the Murle people at Pibor Post where they learned the language and culture and translated the Bible into the Murle language. The author’s love for Africa oozes from every page of this book, which abounds with adventures of all kinds in this memoir of a life lived in Africa.
The title of this selection from Mary Casey’s Journals, Under the Shadow of the Oath, refers to the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, which lasted from 1952 to 1960. With her husband Mary Casey owned a farm on the slopes of Mount Kenya near Timau just above a forest reserve, a hiding-place for dangerous wild animals as well as the Mau Mau, but as she writes: ‘... if you have to spend your days with people who have taken blood-curdling oaths for your destruction the only possible way to carry on is as if everything was as usual, apart from what seem reasonable precautions.’ Her Journals offered often a refuge and meant to her, ‘above all a transmutation by poetic thought of grief into some kind of tragic drama; of joy in the elements into song’.
Roble is a proud and successful Somali man living with his family and his camels in the arid areas of Kenya’s Northern Frontier District. After the drought attacks, Roble is reduced to begging on the streets of Moyale. The author draws on his many years living in Moyale to depict the devastating effects of drought on one man’s family, his self-esteem and finally his sanity. This story graphically shows Roble’s struggle to hoard a permanent savings account. As you read this novel, you’ll be drawn into a beggar’s world so real you’ll taste the grit of sand and smell Roble’s raunchy armpit wallet. Permanent Savings, Ahmed Muhidin’s intriguing first novel, ushers us into the head of a beggar battling to regain what the drought has stolen.
In 1938 the British government in Kenya recruited Katharine Fannin, wife of a Kenyan colonial official, to spy on the Italian war preparations in Abyssinia. Armed with an antique guide book, Katharine gathered vital information for British intelligence. Her maps, details of military installations and reports proved invaluable in the Abyssinian Campaign of 1941. A fearless, independent and unconventional woman, Katharine Fannin was also a talented journalist and her writings on Africa remain fresh and direct. This biography captures the life of a remarkable woman.
Kids books
by Lokigen, who wrote the book as he saw the destruction of the environment around Lake Naivasha, where he grew up. Lokigen currently lives in Australia. A parable showing the importance of conserving our environment and the consequences of deforestation. Hauntingly beautiful paintings highlight the text.
A mother of four with a flair for colorful drawings. She has lived in Africa for eight years. Children living in Kenya welcome their cousins from overseas and take them on a safari into the bush. Bright illustrations of the animals they encounter on their trip make this book a hit with young children.
