Winston Churchill said, “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of an enigma”. This quote is a perfect description of Africa.
In Zimbabwe, it’s against the law not to give a ride to a hitchhiking handicapped person. Africans revere their parents― we hide ours in nursing homes. Hutus killed 800,000 Tutsis in one year in Rwanda. The Janjaweed has slaughtered 400,000 indigenous Africans in the Darfur.
During the mad scramble to colonize Africa that started in 1890s, Europeans divvied up the continent without considering the cultural diversity of the peoples they jammed together. Their ineptitude has caused civil wars and genocide.
Imagine assimilating the Congo where seventy dissimilar languages are spoken or Sub-Saharan African where over two thousand different dialects are used.
Three years ago I drove across Africa in a pickup truck. As I stared at the endless bush veldt I realized that although Africa is vast, most of the land is unfit for human habitation. Three great deserts: the Namib, the Kalahari and the Sahara encompass one third of the continent. The Sahara alone is approximately the size of the United States. As a result, overpopulation continues to plague Africa. A ten percent crop failure can produce a famine.
The industrialized countries having squandered their own natural resources are busy ravaging Africa’s wealth. Ten percent of the oil consumed in the United States comes from Angola. The country is rich in diamonds, uranium and gold, yet Angola ranks in the bottom ten-percent of all countries based on the socioeconomic condition of its population. China has four-thousand troops deployed in the Sudan to protect her oil interests.
In
The Lion Killer, I weave the tragedy of modern Africa into the lives of fictional characters. The primary character, Rigby Croxford is a farmer faced with the prospect of having his farm confiscated by a corrupt government. Croxford is visited by demons, some real― some imagined. His war experiences in the Rhodesian Bush War haunt him. He is the quintessential warrior lost without war. A man burdened by his bigotry, but a man willing to die to save the Africa he loves.
Sound like an intense adventure? It is.
Are you ready?
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