New Release!
For further information about Ian and his work, please visit: http://www.ianmathie.com.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords
A Bio
Having worked his way through two energetic careers, Ian Mathie retired and became a full time author. Using the pile of detailed notebooks he had kept during the years he spent working in the African bush, he began a series of African Memoirs in which he shares the many exciting experiences and gives his readers an intimate look at tribal life from within.
With four books in the series already published, the fifth volume is due for release any day. After that he intends to try his hand at fiction, with a fast paced spy thriller.
****
Born in Scotland, within sight of Edinburgh Castle, Ian was taken out to Africa aged three, when his soldier father was posted to be second in command of the Northern Rhodesia Regiment in 1951. After a sea voyage to Cape Town, during which he spent most of the voyage confined to his cabin with measles, the family spent four days on a train as it crawled across southern Africa, eventually stopping on the bridge over the Victoria Falls to wash the dust off the carriages in the spray.
Not long after arriving in Lusaka, Ian was sent to the local mission school, along with his father’s soldiers’ children. There all the teaching was done in the local language and in the mornings he did lessons, while in the afternoons the wide open bush was his playground.
At seven and a half Ian was sent back to UK to a boarding school, and hated its restrictive environment. Fortunately he was able to fly back to Africa for each of the school holidays, where he spent most of the time wandering in the bush with his local friends. Boarding school continued for the next nine years, during which he developed an interest in flying and demonstrated some talent by gaining his gliding certificate on his sixteenth birthday. Two years later he joined the Royal Air Force to train as a pilot.
Due to politically driven defence cuts, Ian’s career in the RAF only lasted four years, and then he returned to Africa. Someone in the service had noticed that he got on well with all the African students on his military courses, and he was invited to join the government’s overseas aid programme as a rural development officer. He was sent to West Africa and soon found himself specialising in water resources, living among isolated communities far out in the bush. As the work developed, the territory for which he was responsible increased, and he was given a light aircraft to fly himself between remote projects, often thousands of miles apart.
****
Over the years, Ian visited and worked in most of Africa’s countries, only returning to UK when changes in the political situation meant there were more local people available to take on the work he had been doing. Inspired by wanting to know more about what had motivated the tribesmen among whom he had worked, he took a place at Cardiff University and retrained as an industrial psychologist. He went on to develop some innovative and challenging motivational and performance development programmes, returning regularly to Africa on short term assignments and working across Europe.
When health issues restricted his work and travelling, Ian became a full time author, and now lives right in the centre of England, in south Warwickshire, with his wife and his dog.
For further information about Ian and his work, please visit: http://www.ianmathie.com.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords
An Except
BRIDE PRICE, is the story of Abélé, a fourteen year old orphan girl to whom I became foster father when I moved to live in a forest village in Zaïre. Life settled down well and we fitted into the community with ease until an unwanted suitor came out of the forest demanding to marry her. He demanded I should set her bride price and I had no right to refuse. That’s when the problems began.
Under the intense scrutiny of the witch-doctor and observed by my friends and neighbours, who were prevented by their own customs and traditions from giving me any direct advice, I had to peer into this evil man’s soul to find a price he could but would not pay. When I finally named the price, his reaction was entirely unexpected and had far reaching and dramatic consequences.
Here’s an extract from our first encounter:
****
His presence completely dominated the room. I felt a faint tremor of apprehension and began, for the first time I could remember, to feel uncomfortable in my own home.
The afternoon light was dim inside the house but there was enough to let me see the man clearly and to examine his features and huge frame. By the way he had stooped to enter I judged that he must be well over six feet tall and he was massively built. I wondered if he came from one of the south eastern provinces of the country, where many of the men were this tall. Certainly he was unlike the local people who were wiry and slight. He spoke the local dialect well, but with an accent which showed the language was as foreign to him as it was to me.
A dull green shirt stretched tightly across his barrel chest, the buttons straining to contain him. Heavily muscled arms, like those of a heavyweight wrestler, filled the short sleeves. His creased grey trousers were sweat stained round the waistband and grubby down the fly. They contrasted harshly with fluorescent pink socks and white plastic sandals. In the humid air beads of perspiration coated his broad chocolate forehead. A thin scar ran from the corner of the right eye down the broad expanse of his nose to the corner of his mouth. His face and his overall appearance held a distinct aura of menace that was increased rather than dispelled by the brief smile as he finished eating.
He tossed the mango pip casually out of the open door and wiped his sticky fingers on the leg of his pants, adding to the grime. Turning to look at me again, his eyes gleamed mischievously in the dim light. Again the tremor of apprehension fluttered through me and I hoped that it had not shown. I did not know this man. He was not someone I would forget easily and I wondered who he was and why he had come.
For a long moment we stared at each other as though neither knew what to say. Finally my visitor broke the silence. This time he spoke in good but heavily accented French. I tried to place his accent but could not.
“I am Kuloni Nkese. Do you know me, Kamran?”
His name was all too familiar and he evidently knew something about me for he had used the name by which the villagers now called me. It was the common name for a tall thin tree that grew in this part of the forest which Olidange, one of the villagers, has applied to me since I was over a foot taller than him and he had to crane his neck back to talk to me. The others, who were not much taller, all laughed and the name stuck. Word travels fast in the forest, even among isolated communities, so I should not have been surprised that Kuloni Nkese knew this. Even so, his use of the name made the back of my neck tingle.
When people spoke his name it was with fear and with hate, invariably accompanied by a sign to ward off evil spirits. This man was the Party Agent from a village some twenty-five kilometres to the east of here, across the Banaii River. He was hated by all, feared by most and spoken well of by none. His reputation made him the archetype of all things evil in mankind.
****
BRIDE PRICE is available in print or electronically at Amazon.com…
And is also available in other e-formats at Smashwords.com.
For more information about the author and his other books, please look at Ian Mathie’s website: http://www.ianmathie.com . You will also find reviews of his work and two broadcast interviews there.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords