Gaile Parkin was born and raised in Zambia, and studied at universities in South Africa and England. She has lived in many different parts of Africa, including Rwanda, where >Baking Cakes in Kigali is set. She is currently a freelance consultant in the fields of education, gender, and HIV/AIDS.
Her second novel, When Hoopoes Go To Heaven, was published in Feb 2012.
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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 ...
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