Africa at the Internet Archive: Winds and Lights

After yesterday's post about stories from eastern Africa, I thought I would follow up with a post about stories from Uganda: Winds and Lights: African Fairy Tales by Prince Akiki K. Nyabongo.

There are ten stories in the book; here are links to each one: Ekituru or The Shadow / Mahangwe na Nyamugoromora or The-Wind-From-The-Rising-Sun and The-Wind-From-The-Setting-Sun / Omusisa or Earthquake / Enzirasi Yaruhemba or The Wind That Blows From North To South / Kabimbiri or The Wind That Blows From North To West / Nyakinyunyuzi na Nyamuhaibonwa Enganzi Yokwezi or Morning Star and Evening Star / Omunyantaza Waruhemba or The Comet / Kibonwaomu na Kalinda or Shooting Star and Orion's Foot / Omuhangazima or The Rainbow / Omuiguru Haliyoki? or What Is In Heaven?

The book's illustrations are by B. Hewitt; I do not have more information about the artist, but the artwork is lovely. You can see an even better scan at the New York Public Library Digital Collections; here's one of Hewitt's illustrations: 

The NYPL scan is also where I snagged this photograph of the author.

Akiki Nyabongo was born in Uganda in 1907, the second son of Kyembambe, King of Toro state in Uganda. He died in Uganda in 1975, although he was a long-time resident of New York, and his son, Amoti Nyabongo, is a New York City policeman: A Prince of a Policeman. His wife, Dr. Ada Naomi Nyabongo, died very recently, in 2020; her doctorate was in musicology, and they met in New York (she was born in Bermuda).

Prince Nyabongo received his doctorate at Queens College, Oxford in 1939 with a thesis entitled The Religious Practices and Beliefs of Uganda, and you can find out more about his work as a writer, scholar, and educator here: Africa Answers Back: Prince Nyabongo at The Queen’s College. There's also a wonderful essay at the Queen's College website: “The sort of education we want”: Akiki Nyabongo and Black History Month by Caitlin Monroe. (Many thanks to Matt Shaw at Twitter for sharing these materials with me!)

The title "Africa Answers Back" alludes to a novel that Prince Nyabongo published in 1936, which you can also find at the Internet Archive: Africa Answers Back. First published under the title The Story of an African Chief (you can see that earlier edition at Hathi Trust), the novel is about the tension between traditional African cultures on the one hand and European colonialism on the other.

The illustrations are by Eleanor Maroney:

In the archives at Queen's College, there is also an unpublished novel by Prince Nyabongo entitled Yali the Savage. I learned about that from a fascinating article by Mahruba Mowtushi about the Prince Nyabongo papers: Lost and Found: The Akiki Nyabongo Archive.

Of course, I am tantalized by this item: a handwritten manuscript of a story called "Frogs and Lizards will never be friends anymore."

I've managed to acquire the two books of folktales that Prince Nyabongo published (the Bisoro Stories, volumes 1 and 2); they are not at the Internet Archive, but at some point I will write up summaries of the stories from those two little books here too.

Meanwhile, Winds and Lights await you, both at the Internet Archive, and at the New York Public Library website too!

Winds and Lights: African Fairy Tales

by Prince Akiki K. Nyabongo