This book captures the essence of life in this world with all its whims and fancies and dreams. It takes you through a virtual tour of a common mans life in his own words. Learn from these stories as if they are shared with you, as if over a cup of tea and warm conversation. You will learn history, facts, trivia, and interesting tidbits that will make you appreciate things in general in this worldchildren playing, birds chirping, thunder clapping, then a silence that will set in, never to be broken, unless perhaps in the far pasture of the Milky Way. I meant this book to be entertaining, relaxing, armchair reading, and the stories are such that you can identify with them. Also, I wanted to keep my memories alive. In doing so, you will find some factoids to be chewed on.

While Allan Ogot's circuits of influence have been very wide, and while he has participated in conferences and forums around the world, he has never yielded his intellectual and personal anchorage in Kenya - though he has had numerous opportunities to accept distinguished chairs overseas. Extraordinarily, Allan Ogot has sustained his incredible level of service and scholarship through shifting and challenging conditions within Kenya and within Africa, navigating changing economic and political circumstances. His steady hand and persistent commitment to the highest ideals of scholarly engagement and community provide remarkable model for all who are dedicating themselves and will dedicate themselves to Africanist scholarship. This autobiography provides a commentary on the history of Kenya as seen through Allan Ogot's life experiences.

Who were the actors involved in colonial and post-independence education in Africa? This book on the history of education in Africa gives a special attention to narratives of marginalized voices. With this original approach and cases from ten countries involving four colonial powers it constitutes a dynamic and rich contribution to the field. The authors have searched for narratives of education 'from below' through oral interviews, autobiographies, films and undiscovered archival sources. Throughout the book, educational settings are approached as social spaces where both contact and separtation between colonisers and colonised are constructed through social interaction, negotiations, and struggles. Contributors include Antónia Barreto, Lars Folke Berge, Clara Carvalho, Charlotte Courreye, Pierre-Éric Fageol, Frédéric Garan, Esther Ginestet, Pedro Goulart, Pierre Guidi, Lydia Hadj-Ahmed, Kalpana Hiralal, Mamaye Idriss, Mihary Jaofeno, Raoul Kahuma, Rehana Thembeka Odendaal, Roland Rakotovao, Maria da Luz Ramos, Ellen Vea Rosnes, Caterina Scalvedi, Eva Van de Velde, Pieter Verstraete.

Kenya stands at a crossroads in its history and heritage, as the nation celebrates its fiftieth anniversary of independence from Britain in 2013. At this important juncture, what parts of its history, including the Mau Mau uprising, do citizens and state wish to remember and commemorate and what is best forgotten or occluded? What does heritage mean to ordinary Kenyans, and what role does it play in building nationhood and forging peace and reconciliation? Focusing on the 1990s to the present, "Managing Heritage, Making Peace" is a timely exploration of the ways in which Kenyans are engaging with the past in the present, including such local initiatives as the community peace museums movement, local and national monuments and other notable commemorative actions. The authors show how Kenya is facing a continuing crisis over nationhood, heritage, memory and identity, which must be resolved to achieve social cohesion and peace.

Author Samuel Ndogo offers an understanding of the autobiographical genre in contemporary Kenyan literature. He draws attention to life-writing as a form of cultural re-imagination in post-colonial Africa. Taking into consideration contradictions and paradoxes of referentiality in life writing, this book examines the autobiographies of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Wangari Maathai, and Bethwell Ogot. The analysis dwells on self-representations in correlation with imaginations of the 'Kenyan nation' in these works. Thus, the study gives a critical account into the modern memoir: the forms and styles it takes, the ways in which these authors tend to understand and present their lives. (Series: Contributions to African Research / Beitr�¤ge zur Afrikaforschung, Vol. 63) [Subject: African Studies, Literary Criticism]����

Footprints In The Sand...is an encouraging and uplifting book that reminds us about the importance of being careful with the "words" we choose to say and our actions. Everyone leaves footprints in the sands of time. They can be negative impressions or they can be positive. The choice is ultimately ours. This book encourages the reader to "Make a Difference" in our world by leading the way with positive footprints.

Collection of essays, poems and personal recollections.

The main objective of this book is to establish the salient reasons why higher education was developed in East Africa and specifically why the Federal University of East Africa was constituted. The book will identify the factors responsible for the collapse of this regional institution in June 1970. Another objective of this book is to demonstrate how the history of the University of East Africa sheds light on colonial and post-colonial policies on education, especially higher education, as a contribution to educational planning in contemporary Africa.

Unbeknownst to most, the Luyia Nation is a congeries of Bantu and assimilated Nilotic clans principally the Luo, Kalenjin, and Maasai. Created seventy years ago, the Luyia tribe is still evolving in a slow process that seeks to harmonize the historico-cultural institutions that define the eighteen subnations in Kenya alone. Available records indicate that geophysical spread of Luyia-speaking people extends beyond the Kenyan frontier into Uganda and Tanzania with some Luyia clans having extant brethren in Rwanda, Congo, Zambia, and Cameroon. The 862 Luyia clans in Kenya are amorphous units united only by common cultural and linguistic bonds. The political union between these clans is a pesky issue that has eluded the community since formation of the superethnic polity. Although postindependence scholars dismissed oral accounts of Egyptian ancestry, new anthropological evidence links the Bantu, including those in West Africa, to ancient Misri (Egypt). A major historical and cultural change in Buluyia occurred a little more than a century ago when natives first made contact with the Western world. The meeting in 1883 by a Scottish explorer, Joseph Thomson, with Nabongo Mumia, the Wanga king, laid the foundation for British imperialism in this part of Africa.

Barack Obama’s political ascendancy has focused considerable global attention on the history of Kenya generally and the history of the Luo community particularly. From politicos populating the blogosphere and bookshelves in the U.S and Kenya, to tourists traipsing through Obama’s ancestral home, a variety of groups have mobilized new readings of Kenya’s past in service of their own ends. Through narratives placing Obama into a simplified, sweeping narrative of anticolonial barbarism and postcolonial “tribal” violence, the story of the United States president’s nuanced relationship to Kenya has been lost amid stereotypical portrayals of Africa. At the same time, Kenyan state officials have aimed to weave Obama into the contested narrative of Kenyan nationhood. Matthew Carotenuto and Katherine Luongo argue that efforts to cast Obama as a “son of the soil” of the Lake Victoria basin invite insights into the politicized uses of Kenya’s past. Ideal for classroom use and directed at a general readership interested in global affairs, Obama and Kenya offers an important counterpoint to the many popular but inaccurate texts about Kenya’s history and Obama’s place in it as well as focused, thematic analyses of contemporary debates about ethnic politics, “tribal” identities, postcolonial governance, and U.S. African relations.