A Woman of Africa If You Run from Both the Sun and the Moon You Must One Day Confront Your Shadow

Nick Roddy

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Why I wrote this book

I had been in Africa a few years and I had met a number of Biaffran refugees who had made their lives in new countries. As a former Police Officer I understand and appreciate  what is commonly known as grave yard humour, and it was that that inspired me, I was told terrible stories by people who were laughing about the awful things they had experienced, they exhibited a sense of humour that I had previously only associated with the traditional Jewish Ghetto humour, and it made me appreciate that “ghetto humour” in the face of adversity is a truly universal human trait. However when ever I suggested to them that their histories might be interesting to other people they could not see it, they were too close. This is a basically a true story, it’s not a tragedy or a sob story, it’s a story that I had to write, because I believe it needs to be read.  It was a story looking for an author and it had a life of its own, I just had to try and pin it onto the page.

If you enjoy books by Paulo Coelho, Thomas Hardy or Joseph Conrad then you should try this book.

Synopsis

'I am an African woman. That's not a political statement. I am not a Whoopee Goldberg or an Oprah Winfrey, a middle-class American in search of an identity or asserting a political right. I am a woman and I am African. That is all there is to it, and that is my tragedy.' In Douala, Cameroon, an African woman relates her life as a woman of Africa to a white oil company worker. Her story can be seen as an experience which encompasses a range of issues that affect women in Africa today, it touches upon Aids tribal prejudice, prostitution, poverty and ignorance. Viewing her life through the conflicting filters of religion and cynicism, her narrative is entertaining and moving. She relates, with no trace of self-pity, her life as a Biafran refugee, as a women in modern Cameroon and as an uneducated Anglophone in today's Douala. The story she tells starts from her birth during the refugee crisis of Biafra. She grows to be a willful child who realises there is life outside the ghetto. The book follows her as she develops into a young woman whose singular, eccentric and colourful character drives her to embrace life furiously. In doing so she challenges the social norms of her society. Rarely self-analytical, she forces an almost existentist path through her limitations, frequently falling along the way but always pulling her self back up without a trace of despair. Through the force of her character she overcomes obstacles to succeed in her dream to become A Woman of Africa. This is an important new novel - and a fictionalised reworking of real life stories told to author Nick Roddy in Douala by Biafran refugees. Nick's own experiences in the region also inform this novel - while writing it he was kidnapped by MEND (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) and held captive in the Jungle for 3 weeks. Nick still spends part of each year living and in Douala.

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