Kenia Valley - Kat Gordon,Mayela Gerhard...

Beschreibung

In den 1920er Jahren beginnt für den fünfzehnjährigen Theo Miller ein ganz neues Leben. Die Arbeit seines Vaters bei der Eisenbahn führt Theo mit seinen Eltern und seiner jüngeren Schwester Maud von England nach Kenia. Die exotische Welt Afrikas voller neuer Gerüche, Menschen und Tieren wird schnell zu einem neuen Zuhause und Theo findet in Sylvie und Freddie zwei deutlich ältere Freunde. Theo verliebt sich über beide Ohren in die wunderschöne und unerreichbare Sylvie und gerät in die berauschende Welt des Happy Valley Set.

Nachdem Theo sein Studium in England abgeschlossen hat kehrt er als erwachsener Mann nach Kenia zurück. Nicht nur das Land hat sich seither durch die Kolonialisierung verändert, sondern auch seine Freunde.

Meine Meinung

Kat Gordons Roman „Kenia Valley“ hat mich durch das exotische Cover gleich angesprochen und meine Neugierde auf ein buntes afrikanisches Abenteuer befeuert. Der Titel war für mich besonders verheißungsvoll, denn vor einigen Jahren verbrachte ich meinen Urlaub dort und durfte eine wundervolle Safari im Tsavo Ost Nationalpark miterleben. Ich war also ganz schön auf den Romaninhalt gespannt und wurde wirklich nicht enttäuscht!

"Daressalam war exotisch gewesen, aber dieses neue Kenia war das Afrika, von dem ich geträumt hatte, das Afrika von Henry Rider Haggard, und ich konnte es kaum abwarten, dass die Zugfahrt ein Ende nahm und mein Leben in dieser unglaublichen Landschaft begann." (Kenia Valley, Seite 19)

Der detailverliebte Schreibstil von Kat Gordon hat die einzigartige Kulisse Afrikas in mein Wohnzimmer gebracht. Außerdem hat die Autorin die aufregenden 20er Jahre vor dem spannenden Hintergrund der Kolonialisierung lebendig werden lassen. Gemeinsam mit dem fünfzehnjährigen Hauptprotagonisten Theo taucht man in die Hitze Afrikas und das ausschweifende Leben der Mitglieder des Happy Valley Set ein.

Durch die unschuldigen Augen des heranwachsenden Theo Miller erhält man einen staunenden Blick auf die außergewöhnlichen Persönlichkeiten die durch die Kolonialisierung ihr Glück in Afrika suchen. Die schillernde Gesellschaft von Freddie und Sylvie zieht Theo von Anfang an vollkommen in den Bann. Nur zu gern möchte auch Theo Teil davon sein, auch wenn diese Freundschaft zu Beginn den Argusaugen seiner Mutter unterliegt. Das Verhältnis zwischen Theo und seiner Mutter ist allerdings nicht das beste, sein Vater ist mit seinem Job bei der Eisenbahn beschäftigt und so scheint seine Schwester Maud als einzige eine emotionale und familiäre Bindung zu ihm zu besitzen. Der Freundschaft zu Freddie, Sylvie und weiteren Mitgliedern der Happy Valley Gesellschaft sind somit die Tore geöffnet.

Ausladende Dinnerpartys, jede Menge Alkohol und Drogen sind in der damaligen Glamourwelt der Kolonialherrschaften Gang und Gäbe. Theo wächst in diesem schillernden Umfeld heran und verstrickt sich durch seine Liebe zu Sylvie immer tiefer im Netz der Oberflächlichkeiten. Nachdem der Geschichte im ersten Teil ein farbenfroh glänzender Grundstock gelegt wurde, befasst sich der zweite Teil des Buches mit den etwas tristeren 1930er Jahren. Theo hatte für sein Studium Kenia verlassen und findet nach seiner Rückkehr eine verändertes Land vor. Die faschistische Politik Europas ist bis nach Afrika vorgedrungen und lässt die Macht der weißen Kolonialherrschaften über das schwarze afrikanische Volk in einem anderen Licht erstrahlen. Während sich Theos Schwester Maud für die Einheimischen stark macht lässt sich Freddie für die faschistische Politik einspannen.

Kat Gordon hat mit „Kenia Valley“ nicht nur einen unterhaltsamen historischen Roman erschaffen, sondern sie regt mit dem Porträt der damaligen Gesellschaft zum nachdenken an.

Fazit

Verführerisch und exotisch zugleich: Eine fesselnde Zeitreise in die 20er und 30er Jahre des kolonialisierten Afrikas.

-This was always one of my favorite Trixie books growing up. I am not surprised to learn that ghostwriter Nicolete Meredith Stack was originally an Iowegian, because the Iowa sheep farm setting always seemed like it must be someone's personal interest.

- All of a sudden everyone makes a lot of Biblical references. This wouldn't be strange if it weren't the first time that any of them had done so. Well, aside from the characters who are new in this book, and were presumably making Biblical references before the Bob-Whites arrived.

- The Obligatory Romance Subplot is at least handled a little more subtly than in The Mysterious Code. Trixie has obviously internalized the idea that being a tomboy is bad and reproaches herself for it all the time, which makes me sad, but I like that she tries some new things and then decides what she's comfortable with. When a local boy she meets tries to police her from the opposite perspective and says that he was interested in her until she started acting like a girl and makes unfavorable comparisons with Honey and Di, Trixie shuts him right down. Jim, by contrast, affirms her choices and is a much better Obligatory Heterosexual Love interest, even though the scene with the ID bracelet is weirdly possessive and ends the book on a sour note to me.

- Unlike Trixie/Jim, Honey/Brian and Di/Mart are completely implausible pairings and I don't seriously believe they would really date each other.

Death Comes to Happy Valley: Penn State ... A Kindle Short that neatly summarizes the rise and fall of Joe Paterno, the classic Shakespearean drama. Doesn't have much about the Sandusky scandal, but as I write this new revelations have appeared that would seem to involve Paterno in the cover-up from ten years ago.

Parallels to the Catholic Church (ironic given that Paterno was Catholic) abound. He had become a respected and comfortable institution at Penn State, someone who had a good idea, worked hard, had achieved respect and idolization, but who succumbed to the image of his own myth and when that image was threatened chose to look the other way.

A tragedy.

Why would anyone read this book? Well, if you liked Out of Africa or White Mischief, West with the Night, or the Mystery series, Heat of the Sun, my guess is that your curiosity about Africa in the thirties has been tweaked.

Juanita Carberry, (her father changed the spelling of his name, adding an extra "r") spent her childhood in Kenya. Her mother had been a pilot, dying when her Gypsy Moth (and wasn't that a Gypsy Moth in Heat of the Sun?) went into a spin and crashed. Juanita, her name belying her English background, had virtually no relationship with her father, a cold man, who loved beautiful women, but once married to them, took them on long donkey rides in an attempt to abort pregnancies. Juanita doesn't explicitly state it, but the reader suspects that Carberry's rebuffed attempts to hire the ship's doctor to perform an abortion on Juanita's mother when she was on the way back to England to have her child, might have been Juanita herself in the womb.

It must have been something, finding cobras or mambas in the house, having to shake out your shoes to avoid stinging "creepy crawlers" and learning to watch every step while running around barefoot (she attributes her ease of avoiding dog shit on the London sidewalks to early childhood practice observational skills.)

What makes this such a charming read is anecdotes of Africa: the natives who became her surrogate parents, an alternative to her libertine father and stepmother; her encounters with wildlife of all sorts; the beauty of the landscape; and the unusual food (she loved the taste of termites, plucking them from the air as they flew about, but ruining a date later on when at dinner she plucked one flying by and popped it in her mouth without thinking. The fellow never called again. Locusts tasted too much like grass.) Because lockjaw (from tetanus) was so common, children's lower front teeth were knocked out while young so if they did contract lockjaw, they could still get some food.

I remember hearing Leiningen versus the Ants (now available online for free at http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lvta.html), a classic story of a Brazilian village being overrun by ants. Carberry tells of safari ( ants that would kill almost anything in their path, usually by asphyxiation as the ants move into any open orifice. Babies left outside unprotected were easy prey. Water was useless as a defense. She describes how they would cross water by walking over the bodies of ants who sacrificed themselves to created a bridge. ( read the Wikipedia entry for more details at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorylus) Pretty astonishing. The only solution was paraffin and bedposts and chairs and bassinet legs were placed in bowls of paraffin. The natives would use the ants, which have very large pincers as sutures, get the ant to bite across an open wound, then breaking off the body. Is that enough detail? They are considered a great benefit to local African tribes as they kill of large quantities of crop-destroying rodents.

She associated with many of the African servants who were treated little better than slaves and consorting with them was frowned upon. One interesting ritual was circumcision, done to the boys (and girls, but little is explained about that procedure) when they were between the ages of 8 and 16. Since age was measured from the date of circumcision, it was difficult to know the real chronological age of anyone. They were grouped in river, the cold water thought to act as a partial anesthetic and since showing pain was not considered kosher (pun intended) the classic sounds of women ululating helped mask any cries the boys might make.

Juanita had lots of pets, but the best seemed to be her cheetah's, distinguished from leopards by their differently shaped spots (more rosette in shape and on the face) besides being larger and heavier. It was important to know the difference because leopards would often kill humans, especially while chasing dogs, a delicacy, who would run back to their master, providing two for the price of one for the leopard. Cheetahs, on the other hand, were quite docile, the only problem being the dew claw, which, while playing would scratch deeply, often causing infection.

Juanita knew many of the participants in the famous mysteries and events surrounding the White Mischief era. In fact, the killer had confessed to her but she was never brought to trial as a witness because a child's testimony was not considered reliable. It's also the story of her escape from abusive parents, going on to become a world class swimmer.

Charming tale well told.