A compassionate government employed medical doctor stakes everything in an attempt to save his AIDS patients and donor agencies from the exploitation of a corrupt government administration. But can he?
In a largely ignorant population of an African country, Dr. Cinzano, a government employed medical doctor, encourages his patient, Karamba, to embark on public health education campaign about AIDS that he was confident will save thounsands of his compatriots from falling into the traps of the dreaded disease.
The media and government embrace the project whole heartedly. Unknown to Cinzano, the media has other agenda, and so is the government. The media's real purpose is to sell their newspapers and impove their advert rating, while government sees it as an excellent smokescreen to cover up its shady handling of funds given to it by various donor agencies.
Cinzano finds out that his good intentions is about to be hijacked for purely selfish purposes, and he is determined to fight back to expose these intentions.
Unfortunately, Cinzano has set up himself against a behemoth of an opposition- a corrupt government, and an expoitative media largely owned by that same government and its cronies.
Excerpt
"The network of the spider's domain spreads like that of an ambitious emperor. Its tiny legs glide over the spun threadwork complex like a dexterous masquerade dancer bent on showing off its skills on the dance floor.
It moves back and forth, blind-like, its fluid motion belies the awkwardness of its trunk, firmly planted between the fragile tendril-like, but deceptively undernourished eight legs:its body like a bloated bubble in the middle of an octangonal tray."
Karamba is a riveting story about one man's efforts to bring attention to government malfeasance in the face of a raging HIV/AIDS epidemic in a corrupt country in sub-saharan Africa. Through the eyes of the author, Oyenekan, the reader is introduced to the many faces of the epidemic. He also introduces us to the complex forces that perpetuate it, from ignorance about the disease perpetated by the lies of preachers in their sermons to their congegations, to the political leaders who line their pockets with misdirected donors' funds.
What struck me particularly in reading this book was how well it captured the underlying dynamics we see around many controversial issues regardless of the country or continent, such as racial reintegration, HIV, and gay rights in the United States, which have been exacerbated by failure of civic, political, and religious leadership and silence or complicity of the media.
The bulk of the collection is eight short stories that are set in yesteryear. The compilation is filled out with four entertaining fantasy pieces and three poems.
This is the trade paperback edition of the mythopoeic paranormal novel recounting the attempts of one Danny Blue and his friends to come to terms with a series of unusual events in his life. A Kindle eBook edition is also available.
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Not only do the seas roll on but two romances,a death at sea, uncovered past lives, history uncovered in Brazil, caves in Australia, poetry in Senegal, the Lux Mundi
