Ronald Wheatley

Review: A Song of Africa by Ronald Wheatley. The story is based on Ronald Wheatley’s experience and real life observation with the Peace Corps in Africa. It is exceptionally well-written and the characters are well developed. The book is fiction but filled with many aspects of different viewpoints of real life. The story was very informative of what goes on in Nigeria through the government to the dense isolated areas of villages buried deep within the forest and remote islands. In the story the author introduces the cultures and the names of a few of the groups that inhabit these isolated places. The story is contained in a four year period from 1966 to 1970 during the Nigeria-Biafra War. Wheatley identifies the Igbo people of Biafra as victims, massacred and starved by terrorist organizations and other military groups. The book is only 200 pages but contains so much reality and kept me intrigued and interested. The story begins with an expatriate American, a telecommunication engineer, who is there to install a system in the rustic areas of Nigeria. Paul has been there long enough to understand the history of tribal divisions which is populous and troubled. Maureen is introduced as the daughter of the American Ambassador who decides to stay and help the adults and children who are barely living, needing medical treatment. Paul and Maureen have a deep-friendly relationship for awhile until Maureen follows Larry, a missionary doctor in the depths of Nigeria to help some of the people in the isolated villages. Some of the children and adults were at their worst. They were missing body parts due to leprosy, malnourishment, and sores covering their bodies and filthy living areas with no assistance from the government of Nigeria. Paul went looking for Maureen and Larry and locates them deep within the forest and warns them that the terrorist and military are close and will kill everyone in their way. He tries to get Maureen and Larry to leave that place with him before it’s too late. Maureen agrees only when Paul offers her to get the people out of that area where they could be treated in a better place. The story goes on with more over-powering dialogue, conflicts, unjust scenarios and descriptive scenes of the lives of Nigeria. Ronald Wheatley claims, “A Song of Africa” is a message, a mystery of the values of human life and the conditions in which it is lived.… (más)