Description
After a violent clash between farmers and herders leaves her homeland in ruins, Kila loses everything. With nothing left but hope and a counterfeit promise of a better life in Amerika, she joins a group of desperate migrants led by the smooth-talking Kaba—only to realize too late that they’ve been duped. Their “passage” is a brutal gauntlet: across searing deserts, through storm-wracked seas, and into the hands of traffickers who trade in flesh and fear.
As companions vanish into the sea, enslaved or subjected to unthinkable violence, Kila presses on—only to be trapped once again, this time by the COVID-19 pandemic that turns their stopover into a prison. With her body violated and her dreams shattered, Kila clings to a new, painful purpose: survive, for the child growing inside her.
But what awaits her back home? Can she find redemption in a world that blames her for her scars? Will her husband, Jeff, and a patriarchal culture accept the child born of horror?
Nkamanyang Lola’s Desperate Journeys is a harrowing story of survival, betrayal, and the unbreakable desire to reclaim a stolen future.
Advance Praise
Vividly imagery-soaked, fast-paced with an upbeat sense of eventfulness from start to stop, Lola’s Desperate Journeys surprises with justling suspense, raising your tingling hairs with startles of isolated and collective traumas. In focus is Kila, the central consciousness of the picaresque gallop from inferno to hell in the guise of emigration to an Eldorado of dream-Amerika. Some drown, others are auctioned into slavery, raped or sodomised in the excursion of many, all duped by Kaba. Highway brigands, self-serving forces of law and order, transborder insecurity, geographical inclemency, penury and economic improvidence are worsened by the COVID-19 world conditions. From a ravaged village, Kila makes rounds of encounters with crude cruelties and inhumanity in extremis before returning to a home she has wrecked by taboo pregnancy to face the wrath of tradition. “Messy shifts from a wrecked life to an unfulfilling dream that died in shame” approximates the description of Desperate Journeys, and the well-honed lesson is that greener pastures are fiercely fictive; be careful.”
—Ntangnyui Patrick Tata, editor and critic, PATAMAE Research and Editing Consultancy; Regional Inspector of Secondary Education, North West Region, Cameroon
Lola’s Desperate Journeys questions the quest for greener pastures using the gruesome experiences of the protagonist, Kila, to show that illegal migration exposes the African youth to heart-wrenching perils. Lola advocates dialogue and reconciliation when faced with conflicts and humanitarian crises. Three compelling strengths define Desperate Journeys: a finely tuned command of imagery, an ability to sketch IDPs, refugees, and migrant characters with intricate accuracy, and an unrivalled understanding of issues and the challenges faced by African migrants, including scamming, identity crisis, trauma, conflict, ecological hazards, and gender-based violence. I strongly recommend Lola’s Desperate Journeys for the United Nations Humanitarian and Refugee Commission.
—Sinyuy Geraldine, PhD, writer, editor, and critic; Educator; Teacher of English and African Literature
A must-read poetic narrative, Desperate Journeys is aptly innovative and imaginative, full of suspense, apt imagery, metaphors of empire/trauma, vivid descriptions, pathos, humour, flashback, and symbolic in characters and settings, which are highly suggestive in treating themes like displacement, identity, migration, IDP/refugee crisis, disillusionment, and human trafficking. The novel will serve as a treasured resource handbook for High School and University students interested in Migration Studies, gender issues and Conflict and Peace Studies.
—Nyaa Hans Ndah, Associate Professor, American and English Literature
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