An American teenager moves to southern Africa in the 1970s during a time of great change, and comes back changed himself. After a 35 year absence, he returns to southern Africa to volunteer for a conservation and research program in the Tuli Wilderness of Botswana. Despite close encounters with lions, hyenas, and elephants, it's the people of southern Africa that once again left the biggest impression on him.
Unbelievable circumstances. Believable hope. If we follow media accounts, the continent of Africa may seem to be little more than AIDS patients, malnourished babies, child soldiers, and a failing attempt to imitate the West. Though Christians today are increasingly concerned about injustice and human suffering, their effectiveness in Africa is limited by only knowing this "bad news" and the trite, feel-good solutions sometimes bandied about in response. Into the Mud takes readers below the headlines, into real stories of real people living neck-deep in some of Africa's most difficult issues -- but with hands, minds, and hearts rooted in God's kingdom. Each of the interwoven stories and related discussion questions addresses a broader issue of missions and development, including evangelism, literacy and education, microfinance, health services, urbanization and refugee assistance, and more. Reflection questions at the end of each chapter help readers to apply lessons from the chapters to their own ministry contexts. Where the world sees despair, author Christine Jeske sees God writing stories of hope. Study groups, development students, mission teams, and everyday activists alike will be challenged by her stories to enter more deeply into the thick of life's mud.
Winner of the 2021 ALA Book of the Year Award - Scholarship The author uses the image of blood under the skin as a way of understanding cultural and literary forms in contemporary South Africa. Chapters deal with the bloodied histories of apartheid and blood as trope for talking about change.
From Calvinist to Catholic, from Charismatic to AmaZioni, the Rainbow Nation has one of the most colourful, variegated, and bewildering array of Christian churches in the world. Where on earth did they all come from? How did they develop? What do they believe? How are they related to one another? In this clear and readable history of Christianity in South Africa, Kevin Roy answers these questions with comprehensive, succinct and rigorous historical analysis with sympathy and honesty. Dr Roy does not shy away from the failures and sins of the participants in this story that intertwines with the history of the peoples and tribes in South Africa. This book is a testimony of divine love and patience in the midst of human folly and frailty, of successes and faithful service to God.
SOIL: beneath our feet / food and fiber / ashes to ashes, dust to dust / dirt!Soil has been called the final frontier of environmental research. The critical role of soil in biogeochemical processes is tied to its properties and place—porous, structured, and spatially variable, it serves as a conduit, buffer, and transformer of water, solutes and gases. Yet what is complex, life-giving, and sacred to some, is ordinary, even ugly, to others. This is the enigma that is soil. Soil and Culture explores the perception of soil in ancient, traditional, and modern societies. It looks at the visual arts (painting, textiles, sculpture, architecture, film, comics and stamps), prose & poetry, religion, philosophy, anthropology, archaeology, wine production, health & diet, and disease & warfare. Soil and Culture explores high culture and popular culture—from the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch to the films of Steve McQueen. It looks at ancient societies and contemporary artists. Contributors from a variety of disciplines delve into the mind of Carl Jung and the bellies of soil eaters, and explore Chinese paintings, African mud cloths, Mayan rituals, Japanese films, French comic strips, and Russian poetry.
As Africa and its diaspora commemorate fifty years of post-independence Pan-Africanism, this unique volume provides profound insight into the thirteen prominent individuals of African descent who have won the Nobel Peace Prize since 1950. From the first American president of African descent, Barack Obama, whose career was inspired by the civil rights and anti-apartheid struggles promoted by fellow Nobel Peace laureates Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and Albert Luthuli; to influential figures in peacemaking such as Ralph Bunche, Anwar Sadat, Kofi Annan, and F.W. De Klerk; as well as Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, Wangari Maathai, and Mohamed El-Baradei, who have been variously involved in women's rights, environmental protection, and nuclear disarmament, Africa's Peacemakers reveals how this remarkable collection of individuals have changed the world - for better or worse.
From 1976-1983, an estimated 30,000 people disappeared in Argentina. They were victims of the "Dirty War" - a brutal campaign designed by the government to root out possible subversives. Robert J. Cox, editor of the Buenos Aires Herald, did what few others were willing to do - he told the truth about what was happening every day in his newspaper. He challenged those in power - asking questions and demanding answers.
In today's globalised world, it is increasingly important to understand the otherness of different societies and their beliefs, histories and practices. This book focuses on a burning cultural issue: how concepts and constructions of gender and sexuality impact upon health, medicine and healthcare. Starting from the premise that health is neither a universal nor a unitary concept, it offers a series of interdisciplinary analyses of what sickness and well-being have been, are and can be. The originality of this book is its cross-cultural and trans-historical approach. Bringing together specially commissioned work by both major critical voices and young scholars in fields ranging from anthropology and art history to philosophy, political science and sociology, this volume challenges many traditional assumptions about gender, medicine and health-care. Issues addressed include: the politics and realities of female genital mutilation; sex-work and migration; the portrayal of mothering in contemporary African writing; the representation of AIDS in literature, photography and the media; the place of gender in ancient Egyptian health papyri; the dramatisation of morality and sexual over-indulgence in Thai literature; the relationship between myths of menstruation and power in early modern England; the role of anger in traditional Chinese medicine; and the ways in which both disease and sexual identities were redefined by cholera in the nineteenth century. The wide-ranging Introduction provides a historical and theoretical framework for what is defined here as Cultural Medicine, whilst fifteen original essays demonstrate from different perspectives that health is not merely a physiological and medical issue, but also a cultural and ethical one. An invaluable research and study resource, this book is written in a clear and accessible style and will be of interest to the general reader as well as to students of all levels, to teachers of a wide range of disciplines, and to specialist researchers of cultural studies and of medicine.
