Author Spotlight: Kate Saller

The Moon in Your Sky: An Immigrant’s Journey Home by Kate Saller

The Moon in Your Sky: An Immigrant’s Journey Home brings to life the remarkable story of Annah Emuge. Growing up in Uganda under the rule of Idi Amin, Annah and her peers faced hardships few of us can imagine. As a young woman, Annah escaped to the United States, only to face more devastating challenges. How Annah overcame the trials she endured in the land she had thought would hold only promise for her and her family is a riveting story of perseverance that will inspire any reader. Annah’s sorrows give depth to the great joys she experiences as she not only survives but triumphs, devoting her life to the suffering of orphans left by the ravages of war in her homeland.   


Preface 

I had just finished speaking to the Rotary Club of St. Charles, Mis­souri, about my humanitarian work in Africa when a beautiful, stat­uesque black woman approached me. Without prelude she asked me, “Do you know how to get mosquito nets for fifty-four children in Uganda?” This was my introduction to Annah Frances Acam Emuge, the determined and courageous woman who is the subject of this book.

As I came to know Annah, I was amazed to learn about the joys and tribulations of her life. It seemed as if, every time she told me a story from her past, I was incredulous that one human being could have survived it, and yet that was just one part of her story. Annah was the third daughter born to a poor family in rural Uganda in 1959. I wrote her life entirely through her eyes, to give readers a full sense of growing up as a village child in a country being systematically decimated by its maniacal dictator, Idi Amin Dada. As a child and teenager, this remarkable young woman matured and set the course of her life while enduring the kinds of devastations and threats that we have read about in many such accounts of life in twentieth-century rural Africa. What set Annah’s story apart for me was that it is not about an individual overcoming such an existence, coming to the United States, and finding a clear path back to her roots to improve the lives of those left behind; rather, it is the story of a woman who was faced with even tougher challenges here, and of her extraordinary and largely solitary triumph over all of them.

Entwined in Annah’s tale of grace and strength is the sadder story of her husband, who came to this country filled with hopes and ambitions, only to find that they were all beyond his reach. The loss of his dreams, along with the realities of the life he found here, proved to be more than this talented and brilliant man could withstand.

To accurately portray Annah’s life, I created an outline of the book and then had her tape-record her recollections from each period of her life, one section at a time. I took notes from each recording and then interviewed her to fill out my knowledge of that part of her life. After writing each chapter from my notes, I went over the material with Annah to ensure that she felt it was an accurate and complete picture of her life at that time. As this pro­cess progressed, Annah and I realized that I am unusual among her American acquaintances in that I understand and have observed firsthand the life she led in Uganda, sleeping in mud huts and work­ing on the family’s subsistence farm to survive. Through my affilia­tion with the service organization Rotary International, I have been to five African countries, traveling to and staying in rural areas to immunize children, distribute mosquito nets to orphans, and coordinate the placement of filtered wells in poor communities with no access to clean water. In spite of the unbelievable hardships suffered by the people I encountered there, all of them were warm and wel­coming, finding joy in things like the simple act of offering me a crude, handmade stool to rest on in the shade as I worked. It was this same spirit that drew me to Annah when I met her.

Annah did get her fifty-four mosquito nets through Rotary con­nections, and St. Louis-area Rotarians donated the money needed to purchase them. She has now created a 501(c)(3) organization, the Atai Orphanage Fund (www.ataiorphanage.org), which col­lects donations to help support the children who live in the orphan­age created by her mother. I am a member of the AOF’s board, and we are proud to say that we were able to raise the funds to place a 240-foot bore-hole well on the orphanage’s land in 2010. Although the children sleep in mud huts and live a simple, poor life that dif­fers very little from Annah’s childhood there, they proudly tell any­one who asks that they have a mama in America who loves them. 

All of the author's proceeds from sales of this book will be used to support Annah and the orphans of Atai.

Author Spotlight: Sam Pickering

The University of Missouri Press has three books in print by Sam Pickering, who some years ago gained fame as one of the inspirations for the character of Mr. Keating, played by Robin Williams in the film Dead Poets Society. In his most recent book, All My Days Are Saturdays, he writes about teaching and his recent retirement, visits to various locales, and, as he tell us, "the many people I meet . . . who tell me their stories, small tales that make one laugh and sigh." Also by Sam Pickering from the University of Missouri Press are Indian Summer: Musings on the Gift of Life and Walkabout Year: Twelve Months in Australia. Here he ruminates about a life of writing essays about life.

Vicki’s father bought an old farmhouse in Nova Scotia in 1947, and since marrying Vicki, I have spent summer months in Canada. Last week I watched an old woman with a blue cane shopping for strawberries in Sobey’s grocery in Yarmouth. Flats of strawberries lay displayed on a counter. Atop the flats were wooden boxes, each containing a quart of berries. The woman hobbled slowly past the counter sampling berries. From each of the first three boxes she selected a single berry, eating it slowly and then shaking her head and spitting the green topknot into a scrap of tissue paper. The taste of the berry she removed from the fourth box, however, met with her approval. As she chewed, she nodded. Reaching into the flat, she picked up the box and placed it in her grocery cart.

“Personally,” H. G. Wells wrote, “I have no use at all for life as it is, except as raw material. It bothers me to look at things unless there is also the idea of doing something with them. I should find a holiday, doing nothing amidst beautiful scenery, not a holiday, but a torture. The contemplative ecstasy of the saints would be hell to me.” 

A long time ago, I might have agreed with Wells. Nowadays, observing not only seems good enough but mete and right. Once upon a time I dreamed of legendary faraway places with unpronounceable names. Now I stay at home or, when I travel, wander familiar paths. Yesterday I jogged eight miles along backcountry dirt roads. A haze of bloodthirsty buccaneering deerflies sailed about me, all ready to board my head and shoulders. In past years I studied my shadow on the road and plucked the flies from the air before they unsheathed their sabers. I always bettered the record of the tailor of nursery fame who swatted seven flies in a single blow. During a run I never failed to make at least two of the piratical flies walk the plank every mile, often finishing a run having deep-sixed at least thirty of the one-eyed and peg-legged. Yesterday I ignored the flies and let the boldest settle on my neck and arms. Instead of letting the insects bother me, I looked at the flowers growing on the shoulders of the road, which included flags of blue vetch, sunny two-flowered Cynthia, and woodbine, its blossoms jeweled crowns set with white, pink, and yellow. While constellations of water lilies flickered like stars on the surface of still ponds, balls of bullhead lilies rolled in the currents eddying through slow streams.

A wag recently remarked that the lives of essayists are so dull that in order to enliven their days they eventually start sending themselves e-mails and telephoning their homes and leaving messages for themselves. Some even go bankrupt ordering items they don’t want just so Fed Ex or UPS will rap on the door and disrupt the humdrummery of fitting verbs to nouns and paragraphs to pages. Virginia Woolf once wrote that “a writer’s country is a territory within his own brain.” My country doesn’t fill the atlas. Rarely do I forsake the dirt road for the asphalt highway. Yet my country seems a wondrous place rich with domesticity and good humor—hokey stories that keep me smiling. After a time the lively person slips too easily into the cold grasp of good sense. Nonsense quickens, but it is harder to write. I jog and write in part because I don’t want to settle into an armchair and become one of those rancorous old boys who is not happy unless he is recollecting an aged grievance. Laurence Sterne argued that digressions are the sunshine, the life, and “the soul of reading.” For my part I am a rambler and think digressions are the heart of essays. Yesterday I broke my run to search for snakes, turning over bits of wood and broken fish boxes lying beside the road. I found six red-bellied snakes, small necklaces gleaming with life and, more important, bright with the capacity to make passersby appreciate the beauty of living.

I have written a couple of shelves of books. In them I described the appointments of my days: years when children trod the stage of my life, decades in classrooms, the stacks of many libraries, a few faraway places, and always a lively variety of people. Have I been successful? In my terms, you bet I have been successful. I have enjoyed a rich life and had great fun. Moreover, I’ve perfected the art of writing the unread, and I am now working on writing the unwritten. Last week I received a letter in which my correspondent called me “America’s Most Neglected Literary Treasure.” Of course I immediately carried the letter into the kitchen and read it to Vicki. “It’s always nice to hear from a friend,” Vicki said as she stirred the pea soup she was making. “How did you know the letter was from one of my friends?” I asked. “Oh, come on, Sam. What are friends for if not to praise and exaggerate wildly?” Vicki said. “Now leave me alone. Can’t you see I’m busy with this soup?”