Jess de Boer is a farmer, beekeeper and lifelong student of the soil.A Kenyan citizen of Dutch descent born and raised in Nairobi, Jess has spent the last decade working across the East and Horn of Africa in the Regenerative Agriculture space.Jess retains a focus on facilitating the mainstream adoption of integrated land use practices across both tropical and dry-land (ASAL) landscapes and is committed to shaping the development of a regenerative African story - making farming cool again.In 2014, she won the Africa Book Club Short Reads competition with her story 'The Honey Man'. In 2016, her debut book The Elephant and the Bee was published by Jacaranda Books. Sister Nature is her second book.
This is a story we can all relate with. What will we do with our
life? Do we have to follow a path we build in our head for many
years or will we just go with the flow? From Africa to Switzerland,
with a quick detour to Vietnam, Jess brings us in her peregrination
and her mental journey of "What can I do with my life?". Is
following your principles enough? How can a simple detail (in this
case, an advert for beekeeping classes) change the course of your
life - and others? This was a truly fun and inspiring book. You'll
finish it full of hope and motivation to engage in something (or
someone) new and unusual.
*Marion Tessier, The KU Big Read*
If I had seen this book in the bookstore and it had been sealed
with only the cover for reference, I would still pick it up. Its
title 'The Elephant and the Bee, Jess de Boer On Saving The World
and other triumphant failures' had me chuckling even before I had
read the preface. That sets the pace of the book, which gives an
honest account of the author's incredible journey of trying to find
her purpose and like most of us attempting to actually do
'something good for once as opposed to just thinking about it.'
Jess's story begins right after high school and she shares a
collection of stories, spanning several years and different
continents that gives the reader a peek into her personal defeats
and success in her bid to save the world. What makes this book a
real page turner, are the Kenyan author's clever descriptions of
all the places she has been. There is the hilarious description of
a café she worked at in Christchurch, New Zealand, 'The building
itself had only just survived the earlier tremors and was held
together with suspicious amount of wire, duct tape and cable
ties...' And then her realisation that the mountains wilderness
that she had longed to see in Lao Cai in China, 'was in reality a
never-ending row of scruffy hotels and eateries on either side of a
road...'
Throughout the whole book, I felt like I was listening to a story
told by a friend over coffee and even the ending is not really an
ending but the possibility of something new. As Jess surmises,
'While saving the world isn't easy as it seems, we can make a
positive change, one little bee at a time.' What a beautiful
read.
*Brenda Okoth, The Sunday*
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