In Search of a True World View

Will utopian teachings and totalitarian regimes shape the future of humanity? Ronald Fagerfjäll, nestor among Sweden’s financial journalists, does not believe that at all. Religions only reflect a bygone era when men guarded herds of cattle and young women became barter for creating bonds between clans. And totalitarian regimes were formerly the general norm because something better had yet to be invented. An infallible leader quickly stifles the ability of his subjects to solve problems.

The obsolete is cleared out as economic, technological, and cultural evolution continues relentlessly, driven by millions of change projects and billions of free citizens. In knowledge economies, neither feverish fantasies nor feudal structures fit in. We cannot know our future with any certainty, but still, we create it ourselves by solving one concrete problem after another.

What does an evidence-based history of humanity look like? Our biological development was first and foremost a result of a fierce struggle for survival higher up in the food chain, first as scavengers and then as hunters. It required ever better ability to cooperate as well as constant development of weapons and tools. The fact that some 40 ice ages and countless volcanic winters passed during millions of years pushed the early people close to extinction and accelerated cultural development.

From this eye of the needle came Homo Sapiens, a species which could meet the threat from nature with innovations, stories, and cultures. Fagerfjäll has been working on his history book for four decades, but it is only now, when researchers have been able to take a closer look at both the life itself and the history of the planet, that the tale has been completed.

For anyone who doubts humanity’s ability to deal with today’s problems, this is a vaccination against pessimism.

In Search of Mina Wylie

In 1912, against a backdrop of growing feminist and national movements, the Australian public united behind a fundraising campaign to send two female swimmers to Stockholm to compete, for the first time, at an Olympic Games.  Coogee resident, Mina Wylie, was one of those women, and after winning silver at the 1912 Olympics she went on to become one of the greatest swimmers Australia ever produced.  Her career coincided with a growing view of beach culture and swimming as essential to a unique Australian way of life, and Mina became a role model for the vigorous and healthy ‘Australian Girl’.   As one of the first female sporting celebrities, she typified the new modern woman as she travelled to Europe and the USA, maintained an independent lifestyle and disregarded societal conventions.  In 1975, Mina was selected as an Honoree to the Florida based International Swimming Hall of Fame.  When her request to the Federal Government for expenses to attend the induction ceremony was denied, a nationwide fundraising campaign launched Mina back into the spotlight.  Sixty years after the Australian public had sent Mina to the Stockholm Olympics, the populace re-embraced the forgotten champion and sent her to Florida to take her place amongst the Greats of international swimming.   The book rediscovers Mina Wylie, a woman who twice inspired a nation, sixty years apart.  And a woman who was determined not be written out of Australian sporting history.    

In Search of the Queen of Sheba

The figure of the Queen of Sheba spans religion, history and geography. She came from the South as a queen of trade to embark on an affair which changed the course of humanity. She is an icon, a temptress, a political power. She is claimed by at least two countries, Yemen and Ethiopia, by art and by many societies. She stands for black empowerment. Is she real or did we need to invent her? Sarah Sands, a celebrated British journalist, goes on a quest to find her, ending up setting sail in a warship up the Red Sea on her trail.

In the Beginning

Time is all. A new cycle has begun.

The Atlas Mountains in Morocco, present day: A Berber boy, Uyyub, falls asleep under a sacred tree and dreams the tree talks to him. Curious and intrigued, he returns, but this time the tree talks to him when he is not asleep. Together they travel through time, charting the course of the evolution of life on Earth with particular reference to his clan’s genesis. Uyyub’s sister, Thiyya, joins them to watch the dirty-dancing dinosaurs and ends up interacting with events at the meeting between man and superman. Belief, Sid, is close by on all occasions to guide the brother and sister towards the final meeting with Time himself.

Our solar system is one of the several nurseries within the universe, devised by Time and his many personalities (the gang) to promote life and help staunch Time’s ongoing boredom.

The experiment on planet Earth is a miraculous success, giving rise to much speculation within Time’s gang. It is, therefore, being closely monitored and so the illegal time travellers are soon discovered, prompting a race between Time, who is determined to put an end to this anomaly; and the sacred tree, equally determined to enlighten the children fully of their heritage. Who will win the race?

In the Course of Dreams

In the Course of Dreams offers a profound odyssey into the heart of existence. Through poetic ruminations, it delves into timeless quandaries: life’s purpose, the essence of justice, the bounds of freedom, and the eternal dance of good and evil. Despite the weight of these themes, a luminous thread of hope weaves throughout, crafting a tapestry that is both current and eternal.

In Time

Join Roger on his adventures as he is being blasted back into the past. He meets many famous people, is imprisoned, and gets into other scrapes. He is helped through his ordeals by taking modern technology (his mobile phone) with him. He also meets girls along the way, although it could be the same girl throughout the ages.

His life is peppered with trips to the past and sometimes characters from the past end up in the present day, they become his friends. There are relationships, some tragedies but humans adapt. One chapter involves some of the author’s family and is a true account more tragic than any fiction could be. The reader will have to decide which chapter is being referred to.

Throughout the story there are fights, battles, mystery and the paranormal.

Finally, there is a glimpse of the future of cars and driving, not all of which is to Roger’s liking.

Inciting Change

Whilst being homeless for two years and living on the peripherals of society, many an hour was contemplated to realise what is paramount in one’s life. Together, with the support and help from specialised agencies, I now have been housed and working for 13 years.

Eternally grateful for prayers answered, I hope that through the sharing of my words, others can gain insight and inspiration from a different world of thought and experience. It is hoped that the reader may realise that “coupled with consistency, the right support, love, and timely opportunities, one can conquer adversity!”

To those currently struggling with adversity in their lives, whatever their circumstances may be, I sincerely pray and hope for a better tomorrow. I regained my faith in God and humanity and pray you do too. If my words have by some measure helped in the process, I am humbled.

Incy Wincy's Day Out

Incy Wincy Spider climbed up his water spout.

It was such a lovely day that he decided to go on a day out!

Join Incy as he sets off on an exciting, adventure-filled day out! Enjoy incredible circus acts and witness Incy overcoming his fears. He surprises himself with his special circus skills too.

Indelible: A Social Worker in the Wake of Civil War

Driven by a long-standing desire, her education and her faith, mental health professional, Wendy Nordick, and her husband Bill Blair, a retired judge, plunged into a two-year assignment with Canadian University Services Overseas. She believed her 25 years of clinical social work were appropriate credentials to help a country with the highest rates of suicide in the world. Bill hoped to work for peace and justice. They felt they became laughingstocks when work visa delays left them homeless. Days before leaving, Wendy’s father died. Once in Sri Lanka, she shivered in a rickety beer factory cum hospital where she taught mental health skills. A year later, she was transported into steamy, bombed out Jaffna, the epicenter of a civil war to teach a trauma team who worked with the war affected and tortured during the war. She was humbled by what she did not know and sought help from a previous refugee. 

Independence to Freedom

This is a story of migration from rural Gujarat to Nairobi, Kenya and the impact of the struggles for independence from British rule on a traditional Hindu Gujarati family, and finally to London in 1949.

Here, the family navigated a life in between two cultures maintaining and imbibing the best of both. Hemkunver lived a life of bhakti – devotion. Manilal, her husband, followed a life of engaging with the world but spiritually grounded in his love for Indian classical music and philosophy. These characteristics were passed on to the main protagonist Viram, who from a very early age fell in love with Indian classical music. His abilities and interests were varied though – so he did not mind playing his sitar with jazz, or playing with Jimmy Page on Led Zeppelin or composing for films, TV and radio, whilst also developing a successful career in business. His desire to create awareness for one of the most sophisticated music systems of the world, led him to become an authority as a performer, advocate and producer of Indian music throughout the UK and Europe, creating around one hundred iconic events per year. He overcame the prejudice he faced from the British arts elite and jealous Indians by embarking on a journey into Vedantic philosophy to find his freedom.

Indigenous Knowledge on Traditional Upland Rice Farming in Sierra Leone

“Learning can be acquired by reading books, but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various facets of them.” (Phillip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield).

Indigenous Knowledge in Traditional Upland Rice Farming is a result of living and studying the rice farmers in the southern region of Sierra Leone, West Africa, over years of extension and rural development work. It is a result of years of effort trying to unearth how farmers generate and share information from their knowledge which remained unknown to professionals who attempt intervention projects aimed at addressing the constraints the farmers faced.

These ventures often fail to get the desired results with a waste of time and resources due to the lack of knowledge and understanding on the underpinning knowledge in a system they want to correct. It gives an insight into this farming system in a way that can be applicable to other farming systems in the country and elsewhere around the world. Fortunately, the information collected into this book was done before the rebel war in Sierra Leone, which claimed the lives of the majority of the seasoned and knowledgeable farmers. There is currently a drive by the government of Sierra Leone to encourage entrepreneurship in agribusiness around the country to improve agriculture and food production, in order to alleviate the problem of food shortages in the country.

This book offers an opportunity for those with the capital to grasp the fundamental principles underlying the practices in the farming system, the major source of food production in the country, as an insurance for their capital investments. This book can be translated into the local languages for the adult education of young farmers in the country who have not had the opportunity to have learned from their parents and older farmers through the method of oral traditional learning, as a result of the decade of rebel war which may have claimed their lives.

Indigo Ashes

Indigo Ashes is a collection of poems conceived as a journey.

The journey of a man, a soul, a human being and his experience on this planet.

The search for the meaning of his own

existence, the questions and the struggle with

the divine, the fights for his spiritual and

physical survival, loves and broken heart,

disappointments, illusions and suffering.

But also joy, courage, daring, wonder, redemption, deliverance, and finally, peace.