Land of a Thousand Hills: My Life in Rwanda

Amazon.com Price: $10.26 (as of 10/11/2019 15:09 PST- Details)

Paperback with scene of hills and a photo of Rasamond Halsey Carr and A nn Hard Halsey
248 pages

Categories: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Description

In 1949, Rosamond Halsey Carr, a young fashion illustrator living in New York City, accompanied her dashing hunter-explorer husband to what used to be then the Belgian Congo. When the marriage fell apart, she determined to stay on in neighboring Rwanda, as the manager of a flower plantation. Land of a Thousand Hills is Carr’s thrilling memoir of her life in Rwanda—a love affair with a country and a people that has spanned half a century. All the way through those years, she has experienced the whole lot from stalking leopards to rampaging elephants, drought, the mysterious murder of her friend Dian Fossey, and near-bankruptcy. She has chugged up the Congo River on a paddle-wheel steamboat, been serenaded by pygmies, and witnessed firsthand the collapse of colonialism. Following 1994’s Hutu-Tutsi genocide, Carr turned her plantation into a shelter for the lost and orphaned children-work she continues to these days, at the age of eighty-seven.
If you enjoyed Out of Africa and West with the Night, here’s any other amazing woman’s story of her adventurous African life. Rosamond Halsey Carr left her job as a young New York City fashion illustrator in the 1940s to sign up for her hunter-explorer husband in the Belgian Congo; after their divorce, she determined to stay on in neighboring Rwanda as the manager of a flower plantation. For the next 50 years she lived an odd life, witnessing the fall of colonialism, the loss of her friend Dian Fossey, and the relentless clashes between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Even though this book includes a poignant insider’s account of the events surrounding the horrific 1994 genocide, it also provides a beautiful portrait of the Rwanda that used to be–and still is. After being evacuated All the way through the genocide, Carr returned to Rwanda and, at age 82, rebuilt her home from the ground up, intent on opening a home for some 100 orphaned children.

Carr’s humble tenacity and bold strength animate her historical, cultural, and personal accounts. Arriving in Africa in 1949, she witnesses the traditions of the royal Tutsi dynasty, sails up the Congo to camp in pygmy villages, encounters leopards, mingles with European aristocrats, finds and loses love, and lives through Congo independence and civil war. Her passion for the country and its people makes for a life story that may be both tragic and hopeful, and full of interesting details that animate the spirit of Rwanda. –Kathryn True
Paperback with scene of hills and a photo of Rasamond Halsey Carr and A nn Hard Halsey
248 pages

Related products

Home » Shop » Books » Subjects » Arts and Photography » History and Criticism » History » Asia » Japan » General » Land of a Thousand Hills: My Life in Rwanda

Recent Products