BUSARA ROAD
David Hallock Sanders

A tale of adventure and discovery in newly independent Kenya as an American Quaker boy comes of age in a troubled nation coming of age itself.

A BRIEF Q&A WITH THE AUTHOR

When the New Door Books staff talked with author David Hallock Sanders about his remarkable novel Busara Road, he told us many fascinating stories about the book's inception and background. Here is part of the conversation:
 
NDB: Busara Road follows the adventures of Mark Morgan, an 11-year-old American boy living at a Quaker mission in Kenya at the dawn of that nation’s independence. Why did you choose that setting for your first novel?
 
David: I was primarily intrigued by the idea of exploring the experience of a young person coming of age in a nation that is coming of age itself. And like many first novels, Busara Road draws some of its inspiration from my own life. As a child I lived in Kenya at a Quaker mission where my parents worked as teachers. Like Mark in the novel, I was there in the mid-sixties, shortly after Kenyan independence. It was a time when this new nation was filled with optimism, yet it was also reeling from decades of violence and upheaval. Like Mark, I was young enough to be embraced as a child and be given access to aspects of local life not available to adults. Yet at the same time I was old enough to be fully aware of my engagement with the world around me. Also, like Mark, I had extraordinary independence—wandering the rain forest on my own, ducking into thatch huts, swinging on jungle vines, injuring myself in ever more dramatic ways, and in general just being a kid let loose in a fabulous wonderland.
 
However, Mark’s story is definitely not my story. For one thing, I’m not an only child like Mark, but rather one of seven kids in a big Quaker family. Besides, Mark has a far more dangerous and drama-filled life in Kenya than I did!
 
NDB: What is the significance of the title, Busara Road?
 
David: In the novel, Busara Road is the name of the dirt road that cuts through the mission and the Kenyan landscape. Much of Mark’s life happens along, or just off, this road. Busara is also a Swahili word for wisdom, insight, and common sense. So in numerous ways that unfold throughout the novel, Busara Road becomes Mark’s own path to wisdom and insight.
 
NDB: Mark finds himself getting caught up in the deep animosities lingering from Kenya’s Mau Mau days and its long fight for independence. You reveal quite a bit about the dark undercurrents of violence and distrust below the surface. Was that your own experience of Kenya when you lived there?
 
David: Not really. At the time, I was barely aware of politics. I was just a kid living in a wondrous new place. I only knew of the Mau Mau rebellion through vague stories of violent attacks that had happened in the past. I had no real understanding of Kenya’s history of struggle, no awareness of the atrocities of the British Emergency and the cruel conditions of colonial control, and really no appreciation for Kenya’s long and bloody fight for self-determination. My own experience was simply one of being surrounded by people who embraced me with extraordinary love and care and trust and humor.
 
But since the novel is told through the eyes of 11-year-old Mark, I needed to expose him more directly to the dark repercussions of the post-Mau-Mau days so that the reader can be exposed to them as well. In that regard, too, Mark’s experience is far more dramatic than my own.
 
NDB: Mark develops deep relationships with several Kenyans at the mission, including his neighbor, Layla Mbote, and his best friend from school, Radio Mathenge. Perhaps his most profound relationship, though, is with Chege Ndegwa, the Kikuyu cook and housekeeper assigned to his home. Chege is a wonderful character. Was he central to the book from the start?
 
David: Not at all! Chege’s prominence was a total discovery. I hesitate to describe characters as having wills of their own, but in this case it’s almost true. Chege started out as a very minor character, just the guy whom the mission assigned to cook for Mark and his father. But he quickly asserted himself in my imagination as central both to the book’s story line and, more important, to Mark’s experience of Kenya. Chege has great kindness, strength, wisdom, and generosity, but also his own complications, which all combine to make him a very human human-being. Because Mark has lost his mother, and because his father is frequently away on business, Chege becomes Mark’s surrogate parent, and over time he brings Mark deeper and deeper into the fabric of Kenyan life. Chege’s emergence as a character was one of those marvelous gifts that arose from the act of writing itself.
 
NDB: Busara Road left me wanting to read more about Mark’s life and experience. Any chance of a sequel?
 
David: Given how long it took me to complete this book, I wouldn’t advise holding your breath. But yes, I do have ideas for how Mark’s life might evolve over the years. Kenya has become a much more complicated place than might have been predicted from those early, optimistic post-independence years. So I am curious about bringing Mark back, in his middle or older years, to a place that was so important to him as a child—and finding out what he discovers then.