ISBN: 0-88739-189-3
308 pp.
Size: 6 x 9
Paperback Original
Price: $14.95
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Kianza's Congo
Hugo Daems
Imagine a culture and people at the heart of human kind, a landscape of jungles, rivers, and vast savannas. Imagine the Congo. In his apt recollections of a decade spent in the Congo between the 1950s and the 1960s, Hugo Daems takes the reader deep into Central African rural life. Kianza's Congo is a timepiece. It is a retelling of myth, ritual, and daily rhythms of the Sonde tribe when their world began to interface with the world-through Belgian colonialism, Christian missionaries, and struggles for political independence.
Though Daems lived in the Congo as a servant of the Belgian government, he fostered deep bonds with the Sonde, particularly with clan chiefs. Infused with reverence for "other" lifestyles and traditions, Kianza's Congo is a story told with integrity; it is also a commentary on colonialism and, as such, universal in its implications.
"There are leopards in this forest. Lions and buffaloes, hyenas and snakes lurk on the plains....Many ghosts of our forefathers also roamed the forest, but I felt for the first time that the forest itself has a spirit. It grabs your 'power.' It controls your heart. It makes you shiver when you sweat."
Bio: HUGO DAEMS was born and educated in Belgium. In 1961, after the Belgian Congo became independent, he and his family emigrated to the U.S. Mr. Daems has an MBA from UC Berkeley and runs a consulting firm in Northern California.
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