'Until the lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero'…This African proverb aptly describes my thoughts about this book. A rare find in my local library that took me over a month to finish reading. I have to admit that the book started off very slow for me, there were mentions of names & lineage in families & I couldn’t figure out whose life the author was now describing, the father or the son. But when I got to the part where the Germans 'entered into the chat', I was hooked.

The book describes not only the German occupancy of Tanzania in the early 1900's but also the invasion by other colonial powers; Arabs, Portuguese, British, French after they divided up Africa like a piece of cake amongst themselves. It was refreshing to read about all these from the point of view of the fictitious characters in this book who are local Tanzanians. And even though the book details the trail of terror that colonialism left on the inhabitants of the countries that they wrongly occupied, it also gives us a glimpse of the day to day activities that the community had. Details like how they celebrated Idd, how the women met after finishing their household chores & what they talked about, how the men met in the evening & sat at the porch to hold 'Baraza'…these details were my favorite.

This for me should be how history books need to be written, for us & by us.