Introduction In July 1858, English explorer John H. Speke became the first European to set eyes on the source of the River Nile, a large inland body of water located in East Africa that he called “Victoria Nyanza” in honour of the United Kingdom’s Queen.[1] Whilst Western authors glorified Speke’s “discovery” and treated European exploration … Continue reading Impacts of British colonial water management on Lake Victoria’s Luo, Sukuma, and Basoga shore-folk, c.1850-present
Category: Africa
Book review: Terge Oestigaard, Rainbows, pythons and waterfalls: Heritage, poverty and sacrifice among the Busoga in Uganda (Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute, 2019)
Following a four-month period of drought in February 2017, Mary Itanda, the rainmaker of the Busoga kingdom (also spelled "Basoga"), invited archaeologist Dr. Terge Oestigaard to participate in a rainmaking ritual at the eastern side of Itanda Falls on the White Nile, located 30km north of Lake Victoria near Jinja. In Busoga epistemology, the Itanda … Continue reading Book review: Terge Oestigaard, Rainbows, pythons and waterfalls: Heritage, poverty and sacrifice among the Busoga in Uganda (Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute, 2019)
Book review: Luise White, The comforts of home: prostitution in colonial Nairobi (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990)
With the stigma around female sex-work remaining widespread today, it comes as no surprise that prostitution has been a largely unexplored and misunderstood area of African history. The Comforts of Home uses oral history to foreground the experiences, agency, and financial independence of female prostitutes in colonial Nairobi in the period 1899 to 1963. Whilst … Continue reading Book review: Luise White, The comforts of home: prostitution in colonial Nairobi (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990)
Book review: Luise White, Speaking with vampires: rumor and history in colonial Africa (London: University of California Press, 2000)
Luise White’s scholarship has dominated the field of African vampire beliefs. Speaking with Vampires is informed by 130 interviews that were conducted in Africa between the late 1970s and early 1990s, synthesising numerous research articles on vampire rumours across sub-Saharan Africa that the author published in the 1990s.[1] White examines the multiple functions of the … Continue reading Book review: Luise White, Speaking with vampires: rumor and history in colonial Africa (London: University of California Press, 2000)
Carissa Chew 