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"Part memoir, part ethnography, and part literary epistle. The authors recount a fabulous tale of sorcery, redemption, and friendship in which the reader comes to know fascinating characters, especially the coauthor Ngeti. Smith and Mwadime use a variety of narrative strategies to capture the complex and dramatic realities of contemporary African social life much more profoundly than could a traditional ethnographic text."—Paul Stoller, author of The Power of the Between: An Anthropological Odyssey
"Very few ethnographies capture so well the frustrations faced by many cosmopolitan sub-Saharan Africans. This poignant account of a cross-cultural friendship portrays a common yet extraordinary man as he negotiates the shifting forces of inequality, religion, kinship, and global modernity. Conceptually sophisticated yet vividly human."—Janet McIntosh, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University and author of The Edge of Islam: Power, Personhood, and Ethnoreligious Boundaries on the Kenya Coast
List of contents
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1 Emails from the Field: An Introduction
2 English Makes You See Far
3 God Helps Those That Help Themselves
4 Good Ants, Bad Milk, and Ugly Deeds
5 The Power of Prayer
6 Works and Days
7 A Confrontation
8 Reflections
Appendix: Members of Ngeti’s Family
Notes
Bibliography
About the author
James H. Smith is Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of California, Davis, and the author of Bewitching Development: Witchcraft and the Reinvention of Development in Neoliberal Kenya.
Ngeti Mwadime lives, works, and looks for opportunities in the Taita Hills and Mombasa, Kenya.
Summary
When the anthropologist returns to Kenya to begin fieldwork for a new research project, he meets a young man from the Taita Hills who is as interested in the United States as Smith is in Taita. This book tells the story of sorcery, redemption, and transnational friendship in the globalized twenty-first century.
