What do farm and transport animals, companion animals and wildlife have in common? The imagination of editor and animal welfare professional Dipesh Pabari who has, with writers from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt, woven an insightful tapestry reflecting the relationship of sentient (and sapient) species with the human beings who share their African life space. The World Society For The Protection Of Animals (WSPA)Welfare book is an anthology of animal stories inspired by the African environment.
I found the book to be a refreshing, quirky and insightful read.
Readers who meet with the lives of creatures whose narratives are so carefully fashioned will be drawn into reflection, laughter, remembrance, and outrage. The reader may be compelled to note that the struggles, desires, and dreams of existence are not confined to the human species alone. The reader, after a few pages, may even be struck by the thought that dominance of the environment by human beings, the quest for happiness in the battle for rights cannot exclude the perception of the dignity of all creatures great and small, however inarticulate or vulnerable to the whim of human sensibility they are.
Obiero Ojwang’s Three Goats invites the reader to glimpse the knowledge of anguish in the stricken gaze of a goat. Gitonga the bully and Mwangi face off over a leg-saving donkey in Stanley Gazemba’s Unlikely Burden. Aluizah Amasaba Abdul-Yakeen and Karen Menczer’s poignant tribute to Accra’s bats, a grandmother’s prescience and a fight for the right of space reads like a thriller. Dawn James’ wily Cairo Cat who becomes Mish-Mish by dint of feline wiles is a story many readers--some of whom may have bewilderingly became cat owners overnight--will identify with. Irene Ekpeh and Kingsley Aigbona in The Owl ask “Just because something does not sound or look right to you, doesn’t mean it is unnatural. How do you think a goat must feel when it sees you laughing?”
The answer is in there. There are animal characters in the book destined to move out of the book’s pages and continue their lives in the imagination of those who will encounter them.
The book evokes memories of tall animal teaching tales told to children throughout the continent by assorted relatives. These sixteen short stories not only provide fascinating insights into human-animal relationships, but are also contemporary tributes to the lives of animals. The stories avoid the temptation to moralize and are told in eclectic literary styles that should appeal to readers of all ages and cultures.
The African ecological ‘heritage of splendor’ has either been decimated or lost in the murkiness of an appropriated past. The present is often characterized by lurid tales of human-animal conflict that then justify all manner of excesses inflicted on non-human creatures. Several African societies that at their core had incorporated a profound consciousness, knowledge and respect of life in all its forms have relegated the wisdom of trusteeship of a splendid natural heritage to outsiders, in this becoming alienated from that which was once theirs.
This little book is a small but important step in reclaiming the intrinsically African sense of inter-species tolerance and co-existence; a former deeply lived culture of conservation. In a perfect world there is plenty of room for all life’s creatures to forge their shared destinies. In the absence of such perfection, this book is a little dreaming room for the ‘what-ifs” of co-existence among species.
Read the book with your children!
The Unlikely Burden and other stories (Editors: Dipesh Pabari and Lila Luce) can be purchased in Africa through [email][email protected]
For international orders, visit: http://www.canapublishinguk.com/
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