Gaile Parkin Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Gaile Parkin, author of Baking Cakes in Kigali and When Hoopoes Go To Heaven, discusses her funny and charming books set in Rwanda and what "Africa" means to her.

What does "Africa" mean to you? Is there a specific noun, verb, adjective or even flavor/perfume/sound you associate with each African country you have experienced?

Africa is a wonderfully vast and varied continent, from the majestic sand dunes of the desert in Namibia, through the dark, dense rain forests of eastern Congo, to the sun-bleached, palm-fringed coast of Kenya. The sounds are varied, too, even within one country. In Tanzania, for example, it's sparrows that wake you with their early-morning twitter in the northern city of Arusha, while the heart-piercing cries of fish-eagles pull you from your sleep in the city of Mwanza on the lake, and in Dar es Salaam, on the eastern coast, it's the harsh squawking of black crows that ensures you wake at dawn.
There's a particularly African smell that I love: the smell of rain before it has rained. Away from any big city or town with its hustle and bustle and bling, out in the open land where any road or path is a track of bare earth, the soil knows when the rain is coming, and in the half hour before the rain actually falls, the soil begins to drink it, giving off an intoxicating perfume of freshness and fecundity. It's impossible not ...