I continue with my blog about my newly released book, The Scourge of the Kaiserbird. Please also read Day 1 – Day 11. Earlier  in the blog (some 91 of them, 2016&2017) were dedicated to the original Afrikaans novel, Die Keiservoël Oor Namaland.

The past few months were busy with two visits to Namibia and two to the Kalahari, all connected with the book.

I received the “Orde van die Beiteltjie” for “Die Keiservoël Oor Namaland” at the Windhoek Woordfees. This accolade is the crown on nine years of research, writing and rewriting. That is how long it took to publish the Afrikaans book. The English book only became available this year.

The Windhoek Woordfees was attended by Queen Witbooi, widow of the late Hendrik Witbooi, vice-president of SWAPO and minister in the government. She gave a short talk and thanked the organisers for their concern about the Nama and Herero people.

Also in attendance were Salomon Boois, founder of the Nossob Development Programme and Captain John Cornelius Witbooi, leader of the South African Witbooi Namas. Both these gentlemen are involved in various development projects. Boois is especially concerned with the development of a tourist route along the tracks of the famous Simon Koper expedition of March 1908 which is featured in Chapter 37 of my book.

Less than two weeks ago I returned from a Botswana Nama cultural festival which took place in Lokgwabe, Botswana. Lokgwabe is the place to which Simon Koper fled in 1908 and he is buried there. I will report separately about this festival where I presented a book to the Botswana government. The visit to his grave was al almost surreal experience where I heard stories and legends which I dare not repeat for fear of causing misunderstanding, even today.

The great news is that the Amazon version, printed and Kindle, of The Scourge of the Kaiserbird is now available world wide, or will be so later this week. Because of all the illustrations and footnotes in the book editing it specifically for Kindle has not been easy. Fortunately the project was taken over by specialists, Kwarts Publishers, and they have produced a beautiful book. I never thought it would be possible to present the book in such style in the electronic format.

You are invited to visit my  Amazon Author Page at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07HFTTQ2B

I loaded a video of the Botswana Nama festival  and the presentation including my little speech on the Amazon page. The video is 3 minutes long.