Lyrical, beautifully written tales of life in Africa Africa evokes a deep sense of mystery. It is a place that retains what most of the world has lost: space, roots, traditions, awesome beauty, true wilderness, rare animals, and extraordinary people. In this wonderful and haunting collection of stories, Kuki Gallmann writes of her life in Africa, where every day brings challenge and adventure. African Nights is a treasury of memories, in which fascinating people and places are brought to life. The healing powers Africa can have on those who embrace the land as a place of mystery, superstition, danger, and beauty. Gallmann's collection of true stories of her life in the Kenyan Highlands reads like a novel. One story flows into the next as Gallmann writes of her interactions with the Kenyan people, other European farmers, and African animals. Central to the stories are the customs and rituals of the Kenyan tribes: the offering of cattle for courtship of a daughter, rain dances, sacrifices to gods and spirits, and female circumcision. Gallmann, an Italian, fell in love with Africa 30 years ago and has since made Kenya her home. These stories examine what Africa has given her, but the author also writes of what the land has taken away: her husband, Paolo, died in a car accident and her son, Emanuele, died of a snakebite. The triumphs and hardships of a passionate life are in these stories, set against the spiritual and mysterious African culture. By publishing these stories and selling her first novel to Hollywood, she hopes to bring the environmental issues so crucial to Africa's future to the world's attention. This is wonderful adventure reading. Michelle Kaske "Captures perfectly the magic of Kenya, creating an almost overwhelming picture of beauty and drama, pain and joy, death and resurrection....Her discovery of African culture, with its mystery and danger, is recounted in spare, lyrical prose."-- "New York Times Book Review" on "I Dreamed of Africa ""The triumphs and hardships of a passionate life are in these stories, set against the spiritual and mysterious African culture. This is wonderful adventure reading."-- "Booklist Previews Lyrical, beautifully written tales of life in Africa Africa evokes a deep sense of mystery. It is a place that retains what most of the world has lost: space, roots, traditions, awesome beauty, true wilderness, rare animals, and extraordinary people. In this wonderful and haunting collection of stories, Kuki Gallmann writes of her life in Africa, where every day brings challenge and adventure. African Nights is a treasury of memories, in which fascinating people and places are brought to life. The healing powers Africa can have on those who embrace the land as a place of mystery, superstition, danger, and beauty. Kuki Gallmann is an environmentalist, a poet, and a writer. She lives in Kenya, Africa. African Nights True Stories from the Author of I Dreamed of Africa By Gallmann, Kuki Perennial Copyright ©2004 Kuki Gallmann All right reserved. ISBN: 0060954833 A Maasai Woman In the face of some Masai matriarchs could be read the tale of a people whose iron code of tradition makes them unique among the earth's beings. Robert Vavra, A Tent with a View The woman who came through the camp was lean and tall. She could have been of any age between eighteen and thirty. She marched straight towards me in the yellow August dawn, while I stretched to chase away the shadows of sleep, shivering in the early-morning air of the coldest month of the year on the Kenya Highlands. It was 1973, when hunting was still allowed in Kenya. She greeted me in Swahili and in a high clear voice, without any shyness, she asked me immediately for salt. 'Chumvi. Mimi nataka chumm' She smiled with even, well-spaced teeth. All creatures in the Highlands need salt to supplement their diet. Rock salt mixed with the soil creates a salt lick irresistible to elephant, rhino, antelope and buffalo. They walk long miles at dusk, drawn by its subtle scent, imperceptible to human nostril. But before leaving the shelter of the shrubs around the area of the salt-lick, which generations of converging animals' hooves have made barren of vegetation, they pause and sniff the air with quivering muzzles, with tentative trunks, to detect any smell of danger in the wind. Reassured, they move on, head down, eager to lick the salt trapped in the earth. Chumvi. A handful of the precious salt, is a treat that few humans, even, can resist in wild Africa. I smiled up at her, and nodded. She came close on elegant legs, and sat in the dust next to me. We had camped in the late afternoon, not far from a manyatta in the area of Narok, one of the main centres of the proud Maasai tribe. It then consisted of a couple of petrol stations, a general store kept, like most other stores, by Indian merchants, and a few primitive dukasi shops where one can find a bit of everything, from tea to blankets, from dark sugar-