‘I scrambled from the table and ran outside to the old orange tree. Flinging my arms round the trunk I burst into tears and began banging my head against the bark...’

A novel that looks at the challenges African teenagers and young adults face, especially in the poorer and more remote areas: forced marriages, families below the poverty line, inadequate schools, harsh discipline and bullying. All for discussion in school, this book will help young people realise their identity and their innate ability to create a better world for themselves and for others.

At the age of three, Winstone Wamalwa’s father died and his mother ran away to avoid being forcibly married to unmarried uncles who tormented him, and he had to live with unloving grandparents. He had no shoes to wear when he went to school. The school had no water or electricity and only an earthen floor on which pupils sat. Discipline was harsh – a friend collapsed from malnutrition when ordered to run round the playground for failing his exams.

But Winstone had talent. He gained a place in a prestigious school in Nairobi – only to be bullied for his poverty and from tribal rivalry by pupils from well-off families. In desperation he attacked a perpetrator and was only saved from expulsion by a Maasai pupil with strong principles who stood up for him.

In an astonishing twist, his art teacher then claimed him as her son but, believing his mother was dead, he fled in horror and was unable to return to school until an unknown benefactor paid his fees. It was then that Winstone at last saw a light at the end of a dark tunnel which led to an entirely different lifestyle.

Born in Cambridge, Roger spent many years working with children in a voluntary capacity in Kenya, Nepal and the UK. He is married to a Norwegian and has four daughters. He gives many talks and lectures on East Africa and Kenya in particular, to children and adults alike, with a view to helping them understand the hardships so many suffer from in third-world countries.