The book has a great deal to say about conditions in Kenya and in many other countries Jack visited in 1994-96. Amid the joys and troubles of travel in Africa, the narrative runs through a number of quirky, sometimes hilarious incidents while Jack is working at UN-Gigiri. Yet the book is not called Africa at Large or Gigiri Gallop or See you in the Serengeti, it is Buffalo Gals.
Why alienate audiences interested in patrolling my complex observations by introducing challenging and intrusive...
Jack arrived in Africa in March 1994, in a watershed year for the continent. In April, the African National Congress won power in South Africa, ending 45 years of apartheid. The country had been in a turbulent transition period for several years, during a reform period that ended minority rule, and the collapse of the homeland system. A referendum of the white population in 1992 supported and accelerated the process.
That same month, the Hutu Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were killed when...
According to Orson Scott Card, “Who but adolescents are free to have adventures?” Jack Doe at 43 was enmeshed in a great adventure or three, therefore he was still an adolescent at heart.
He was an unlikely recruit to the UN. He was poorly equipped to handle any significant work on behalf of developing countries. He had never been to any, and certainly never worked in any. He came from an all-Anglo country, and by 1993, he had only ever met one African, no Arabs, and few Asians. He had no...
The more transmissible HIV-1 variant was first identified in Kinshasa from a 1959 sample, developing from a simian virus In a large urban environment. This variant never spread in West Africa.
AIDS cases were first diagnosed in Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa in 1983, the year after the gay epidemic in the USA began (though it had probably been around Africa much longer). AIDS appeared in the rest of East Africa over the next two years.
By 1998, AIDS was the leading cause of death in...
I owe my soul to the company store
Post-colonialism
In most countries, the colonial occupiers found they were making a loss by the 1960s, with the cost of providing facilities now exceeding export gains. They wanted out, and they passed the structural losses on to newly independent governments.
After independence in the 1960s, African countries sought to counter the inequities of colonialism. The new governments set about providing education and health for their people, and building up...
I write because I have something to say that no-one else has said or written about. “Buffalo Gals” discusses topics that as far as I am aware have not been previously aired in public, and others that are rarely seen today.
- Elite bar women, who live in a highly competitive but mutually supportive subculture;
- Domestic servants who are underpaid, often abused and are tempted to disappear with employer money;
- Well prepared and humorous con-men,...
Scattered through the book(s) are assorted photos, callout boxes, letters or emails, Swahili proverbs and malapropisms. They are there—partly because the book is long, to give the reader a break, and partly because the book partly follows the designs of Lonely Planet Guide and Unravelling the Code.
I am told that interruptions to the flow of text are a real no-no in literature, as it spoils the “reader trance”. I agree these are more effective in...
It is a very busy time. I am currently publishing
In 2024 we finished "Remembering Dorothy", a festschrift of pieces for the centenary of the birth of my mother, the eminent playwright and poet Dorothy Hewett - with a strong collection of memories from major Australian theatrical figures, and several stories of my own.
Back in 2013 I self-published
- "Unravelling the...
My second novel I have chosen to self-publish, partly for the experience and partly because it is quirky in both form and subject matter. I doubt a mainstream publisher would be interested, in these days of collapsing readership.
Critical to the form (and contributing to the narrative) of the book is "The Lonely Planet Guide to Kenya" which had appeared only two years before the events of the book, and was already the Travellers' Bible. An entry in the...
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