Land of a Thousand Hills: My Life in Rwanda - Hardcover

Carr, Rosamond Halsey; Halsey, Ann Howard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670887803 ISBN 13: 9780670887804

Publisher: Viking Penguin Books, 1999

Synopsis

A first-hand chronicle of the Rwandan genocide marks a native New Yorker's account of her years lived in Africa, as she discusses her friendship with Dian Fossey, her perspective on the fall of colonialism and African civil wars, and more. 17,500 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Rosamond Halsey Carr is the last of the foreign plantation owners in Rwanda, where she now runs a children's orphanage. She has been featured on television programs from The Today Show to CNN to the BBC.

Reviews

Fifty years ago, New Jersey socialite and fashion designer Rosamond Halsey Carr sailed from Brooklyn Harbor with four new cotton dresses, a lifelong supply of cold cream and hopes of injecting passion into her marriage with British big-game hunter Kenneth Carr. Although conjugal bliss eluded her, the hills of central Africa captured her heart, and she passed up safety, security and marriage with a later love to stay in Rwanda. Carr saw at close handAlong before the genocide of 1994Athe warfare between Hutu and Tutsi in 1959, violence spilling over from the Congo during the 1960s and independence for RwandaAon four days' noticeAin 1962. Rich in details about elephants, marriage customs and the author's flower plantation, this charming memoir transports readers to the land where Dian Fossey (whom Carr knew and profiles here) studied her gorillas. The horror of 1994 forced Carr off her plantation and out of the country for a few months, but she is now back, running an orphanage for victims' children she started in an old barn. By today's confessional standards, Carr, who is 86, is reticent about her personal life. Literary flourishes are few here; rather, along with her niece, Halsey, she writes simply and evocatively, entertaining readers with vignettes about her European, African and American acquaintances. Money did not come easily to Carr, but out of Africa has come an abundance of spirit. First serial to Vogue.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An intriguing memoir of a European woman plantation owner in Rwanda over the past half-century, written with grace and self-assurance by Carr, with help from her niece. Carr moved to the then Belgian Congo in 1949 in an attempt to salvage her marriage to an English explorer and big game hunter. That particular relationship failed to pan out, but her lifelong liaison with Africa was kindled. She and her husband had stumbled upon the gorgeous landscape that lay along the Rwanda-Congo border, at the time under a benign Belgian territorial mandate, but soon to be a hotbed of contentions: independence struggles, efforts to save the last habitat of the mountain gorilla, genocidal ethnic fighting. She lands first in the Congo, where she runs a pyrethrum (a natural insecticide) plantation, and then moves away from her husband to a similar if more spectacularly situated plantation in Rwanda. Carr is a keen observer, adept at both landscape descriptionand this is a landscape that barks for hyperbole, and Carrs delineations are vivid but controlledand summarizing historical moments (``the 1950s in Rwanda were the waning years of a great kingdom . . . florid and baroque''). She appreciates the various shades of gray that color her region's circumstances: she provides a neat, crisp summation of Hutu-Tutsi enmity and its cruel consequences over their 400-year association, and she maps Belgian colonial desires in the Congo and Rwanda and Burundi. She exudes common sense and integrity in matters of politics and business (she is invariably on the brink), then softens the story by lacing it with personal relationships (including a rocky but intense one with Dian Fossey) and life at her compound, where bougainvillea twine with the climbing roses, crested cranes rule the sky, elephants are garden pests, and an active volcano lights the night horizon. A quiet and elegant beauty of a memoir, with a dignity that is at once antique and enviable. (First serial to Vogue) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Carr has lived an extraordinary life. And, she still does; at the age of 86, she runs an orphanage in Rwanda, taking in children who have lost their families in the 1994 war between the Hutus and the Tutsis that tore the country apart. For 50 years, Rwanda has been Carr's home, where she managed and eventually bought a flower plantation. While fellow American and European landowners fled the country during Rwanda's war of Independence in 1959, Carr stayed, refusing to leave her beloved home and country. Carr did flee during Rwanda's brutal 1994 civil war, but only when Belgian UN soldiers were on her doorstep, ordering her out of the country. Some might think of her determination as foolish, because no one was safe anywhere in Rwanda at that time; but this is "a love affair between a woman and a country," a woman who has faced war, bankruptcy, heartache, and stampeding elephants. She has also experienced firsthand the rich culture of the Rwandans and their beautiful and lush countryside. Carr and her niece Ann Howard Halsey elegantly and objectively write of the royal Rwandan ceremonies, the weddings and tribal dances, as well as Carr's associations with European diplomats and ambassadors and the "high society" of wealthy landowners. Her descriptions of the day-to-day life at the plantation allow the reader to learn about the lives of the Hutus that worked for her and the neighboring Tutsis whose cattle grazed close by. Serial rights sold to Vogue. Michelle Kaske

This is an excellent book. Carr, then a young New York fashion illustrator, moved to Africa with her hunter husband in 1954. After their divorce, she took a job as a plantation manager and eventually became a plantation ownerAthe last foreign owner in Rwanda. In her 45 years in the Congo and Rwanda, she saw the fight for independence and then the rise of ethnic unrest and genocidal conflict in the 1990s. She now runs an orphanage on her plantation. Carr speaks with personal knowledge of both rulers and locals, including Dian Fossey, a neighbor and friend. Her brief account of ethnic and national differences can certainly be understood by the average reader. Those frustrated by Philip Gourevitch's We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families (LJ 9/1/98) may find this book by a resident Rwandan more interesting. Those who enjoy travel, history, biography, women's studies, or just a fascinating read will want it as well.AJulie Still, Rutgers Univ., Camden, NJ
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670887803
• ISBN 13: 9780670887804
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256