Red Winds: A VSO in Tanzania

Red Winds is an account of Irma Upex-Huggins time with the VSO in Tanzania living and working in an environment of extreme poverty and it charts her journey through the country and through illness and recovery from a serious accident. Red Winds is a combination of poetry and prose letters from Africa.Irma was born in Antigua in the West Indies finished school in Nevis and came to live in England. But as a black woman now coming from England to Tanzania she has a sense of dislocation an uncomfortable sense of my not-belonging when I feel that my Africanness is still wandering in the Diaspora when asked Kabila Gani? meaning what is your Tribe her reply is Sina- I have none. She is marked as an Outsider by her lack of Swahili and even by her hair worn in a style of Maasai men.Irma is called Mzungu different and she writes as an Outsider of the land and the people mostly the people. Not having a common language she watches people closely and with compassion of their lives and their deaths. Irma is a great storyteller and her poetry has a wonderful clarity. Irma has left her own river and finds in this new river of Africa fullness and beauty.