Slum City Africa: "A Very Bad Place with Good Teachings"

(Paperback)

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Slum City Africa: A Very Bad Place With Good Teachings is based on the experiences of a family forced to abandon a pastoral life in Ethiopia and move to Kibera, Kenya, one of the worlds dirtiest, most dangerous, and most notorious, city slums. The central characters represent literally thousands of people who made this transition in the twenty-first century. The story is authentic. While the main characters are not true to life, every event described within these covers happened. The authors have confirmed them through extensive research and, most importantly, many emotion-filled hours interviewing a mother and son who experienced the journey themselves.

Reviews

Slum City Africa: A Very Bad Place with Good Teachings provides a travailing expose of an Ethiopian familys harrowing and haunting experience as they journeyed to Kenya in search of new lives. Thisbook comprehensively and relentlessly burnishes the vulnerable slum life through the eyes of a mother and a son and how Mahret, the lead woman character in the novel, seeks to cope and necessarily overcome the gender challenges African women face in shantytowns. Through the lens of the kids in the book, we are exposed to the power of communities, the concept of solidarity, and the necessity of hospitality in vulnerable spaces, which ultimately provides us significant insights into the nexus linking home, community, and identity together. Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Chair inthe Humanities, and author of A Mouth Sweeter Than Salt.

With a deep understanding of history, Weyessa and Elofson present a captivating story of creativity, resilience, and survival, and of African womanhood, motherhood, and friendship as an Oromo, Ethiopian family transitions from a rural agrarian community decimated by drought, famine, and ethnic persecution to transnational refugee camps and massive urban shantytown infested with diseases, crimes, and economic hardships. A profoundly moving narrative. Gloria Chuku, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; author of Igbo Women and Economic Transformation in Southeastern Nigeria, 19001960.

This captivating story explores the impact of war and displacement on an ordinary Ethiopian family focusing on the resilience of a mother trying to create a better life for her children amid the poverty and violence of one of Africas largest slums. A particularly topical account given the persistence of conflict and drought in the Horn of Africa and the increasing number of refugees and internally displaced people across the globe. Timothy Stapleton, University of Calgary; author of Africa: War andConflict in the Twentieth Century.

Author Bio

Warren Elofson is a history professor at the University of Calgary. He has authored books in British constitutional history and western Canadian, western United States and northern Australian ranching frontier history.

Jonah Weyessa is a founder of a new tech start-up based out of British Columbia, Canada. He has a BSc degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alberta. Slum City Africa: A "Very" Bad Place with Good Teachings is Jonahs first novel.