A Bend in the Nile by Chris McIvor | Sandstone Press

A Bend in the Nile: My life in Nubia and other places

Chris McIvor

RRP: £11.99

Chris McIvor's first book on his life in Africa. This volume covers Nubia. The second book will recount his adventures in Zimbabwe.

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Description

Nubia – a vast area located in Southern Egypt and Northern Sudan – goes back at least to 3100 BC. Troubled by poverty and the dislocation of its people after the construction of Africa’s largest dam, its landscape is harsh and uncompromising. Most of it is desert negotiable only by the hardiest of nomads, but the thin strip of land beside the Nile provides living conditions for settlement and survival. Dongola is one such settlement. It was here the young Chris McIvor arrived to provide teaching services in the early 1980s. Later travelling along the Nile and across the desert he explored the broken remains of a civilization that long predates any European equivalent, and discovered a deeply cultured, warm people whose first instinct was to open their hearts and homes to him. In Darfur he also encountered the beginnings of the religious, political and ethnic struggles that would drive the worst genocide witnessed so far in the 21st century.

Chris McIvor OBE has worked for nearly thirty years in emergency response and development in countries as diverse as Sudan, Morocco, Algeria, Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. He is currently Advocacy and Programme Development Director for the charity Save the Children in Mozambique. He has published many articles about development issues in poorer countries, was a frequent correspondent for the Irish Times between 1983 and 1986, and was Zimbabwe correspondent for New Africa and Africa Now magazines between 1986 and 1993. He is the author of several books on the environment, land reform in Zimbabwe, disabled peoples’ rights, unaccompanied child migration as well as community involvement in development programmes. Chris McIvor has published short stories in a variety of journals across the world.

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