FEAST OR FAMINE

Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays (2009) is categorized into five sections: Reading, Being, Seeing, Feeling, and Remembering. Reading is a series of essays on Smith’s favourite authors. She begins with Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) who’s novel Their Eyes were Watching God is described as “a beautiful novel about soulfulness.” She says of E.M. Forster (1879-1970), who “made a career of disingeneousness” but who was a “progressive among conservatives” that “there’s magic and beauty in Forster, and weakness, and a little laziness, and some stupidity. He’s like us.” Smith likes George Eliot (1819-1880) because “she was a writer of ideas” and “she was on the border of the New” who pushed the novel’s form to its limits. Roland Barthes (1915-1980) is described as “radical invocation of the reader’s rights” while Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) is a “bold assertion of authorial privilege” who “believed in the butterfly qua butterfly.” She liked the “elusive, allusive pleasu...

World Tourism Day is commemorated annually on September 27. Its idea was conceived at the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) general assembly in Spain in 1979.The 2014 global host is Mexico in the city of Guadalajara, and the theme for this year is “Tourism and Community Development.” Although it is called World Tourism Day (WTD) in most countries it is a celebration with week-long activities. Kenya has celebrated WTD for over 30 years, and this year the focus is promoting tourism to Kenya and among Kenyans – international and domestic travel. Therefore community-based tourism – in which local people have a stake in ownership, management, and benefits from tourism – is a key theme for Kenya. The 2013 World Economic Forum survey on global tourism and travel competitiveness recognized Kenya as a leading tourism destination and the location for some of the best hotels, parks, spas and lodges in the world. However, with the attack on the Westgate Shopping Ma...

The Nairobi National Museum at Museum Hill is one of the National Museums of Kenya – there are regional museums and other museums that come under the NMK umbrella. The Nairobi National Museum (which also has the Nairobi Snake Park on site) has interesting earth sciences collections including the archaeology section (the study of human prehistory), paleontology section (biology and geology prehistory, especially mammals such as elephants, but excluding humans) and palynology/palaeobotany section (fossil pollens). It is internationally recognized for its contribution to prehistoric studies and has one of the largest collections in the world. The Archaeology Section at the museum includes stone artifacts, pottery, bones, harpoons, iron artifacts, shells, beads, ochre, and wooden vessels from 2.5 million to 1.8 million years ago from the West Lake Turkana Basin to the Acheulean period (1.8 million years to 300,000 years ago) to Middle Stone Age (300,000 to 50,000 years ago) t...

Wildflower (2010) is about the life and death of Joan Root (1936-2006), the wife and producer/assistant of wildlife documentary film-maker Alan Root. One of the couple’s films about termites, Mysterious Castles of Clay, narrated by Orson Welles, was nominated for an Oscar in 1978. Other films included the migration of wildebeest herds across the Serengeti, the Galapagos Islands, elephants, cobras, mountain gorillas, and the first hot-air balloon flight over Mount Kilimanjaro. They were an indomitable team. Born in Kenya to British parents, Joan was also well-known for her conservation efforts at Lake Naivasha. But the novel begins with her marriage to Alan in 1961, and their collaborative travels and films, predominantly across East Africa. Compiled from letters and memorabilia from her husband, Seal enters the mind and emotions of a remarkable adventurer. While Alan was the “front man” and the man behind the camera, Joan was the one that put the film together “and...