What we need now is love . . . just love . . . for all the world and for the people in it

I’ve just been walking around my garden thinking of the best way to ask all of you – friends, readers, climate change activists, educators, mothers, fathers, children and adults – for your help.

I need my new book – Dust and Rain: Chipo and Chibwe save the Green Valley to find many more readers so I need your help. First of all – it’s a great story and a good read – second, it’s an important book about climate change and the environment (and it would make a great film!) Let me explain how you can help me – please!  Somehow get hold of my book, read it, share it and promote it for the sake of its important message. I have given away as many books as I can but still need more readers.

Today is grey and cloudy but the earth is dry and hard. Increasing carbon in the air holds moisture without giving rain. Sometimes the weather is too hot, sometimes it’s too cold – sometimes just fierce and extreme. I grew up a farmer’s daughter in Africa so staring at the sky and wishing for rain was what we did. Weather watching and gardening have been my preoccupation all my life. When I first dreamed up Dust and Rain for my five-year-old grandson, Stephen Kupakwesu, I thought of saving trees and charcoal burners and the changing weather patterns created by damming the Zambezi River with Kariba Dam. Now the issue of climate change is even more urgent.

You can buy my book on Amazon.uk and Amazon.fr and at African Books Collective or at Bookworld or Gadsden Publishers in Lusaka. I hope it will be at the House Of Books in Harare Zimbabwe soon. Please, please – do get a copy and read it. Then – if you think it is good enough – write a review about it and much more importantly – please buy some copies and donate them to a school or a library or an environmental group or wildlife club that you know and where the book will do some good and help raise awareness!

The book is set in Africa – Zambia – but it’s a universal story that children (and adults) everywhere will enjoy – and it does make you see things in new ways! As I went around my garden this morning I photographed some of the things that are essential for all our lives – tell me if these things do matter to you also even if you have different ways of accessing them from the way we are able to in our small rural village.

Last I want to apologise for publishing the same post twice last week. Internet problems and rather a lot of travelling around have been disruptive. I also made a number of corrections to my posts because I asked everyone I met in Zambia and Zimbabwe for feedback and input. Something I welcome from all of you and appreciate very much when you do respond to my posts. Thank you!