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.
A teenage boy struggling with the coming-of-age issues of sexuality, religion, and peer approval is overwhelmed, but soldiers on. After several years, he comes to understand the family forces that have left him so deeply troubled, and the process of
A teenage boy struggling with the coming-of-age issues of sexuality, religion, and peer approval is overwhelmed, but soldiers on. After several years, he comes to understand the family forces that have left him so deeply troubled, and the process of
London: Lashed, Lacerated, Lampooned and Lambasted satirizes 18 popular Jack London novellas with adult content and language and the work is author Jay Dubya's 37th published hardcover/paperback book.
