Dancing with the Witchdoctor: One Woman's Stories of Mystery and Adventure in Africa Paperback - 2002

In a series of moving and powerful stories based on her experiences as a private investigator, Kelly James draws us into the mystery that is Africa. A lone woman searching for the lost, she exposes us to a world where truth is ephemeral, and where compassion, though frail, still bleeds through the grit and dust. In Detour she investigates the apparent suicide of a beloved coffee plantation owner in Kenya. In Gorillas and Banana Beer, James ventures into the jungles of Rwanda to catch a glimpse of the nearly extinct mountain gorillas, only to struggle for survival against merciless poachers in a village of forgotten children. In Beira, at the edge of Mozambique and anarchy's ground-zero, James searches for a lost woman and her daughter. Witchdoctor takes James deep into Turkanaland, otherwise known as hell on earth, to find a woman doctor who has disappeared. James's sanity and life hang in the balance in a surreal and ferocious closing to this compelling debut work. Dancing with the Witchdoctor is a testimony to the strength of women, one that reveals how even in a land where flesh withers in the sun, there is no better proof of humanity than when it is on the brink.