When David Hartness graduated from Vashon High School in 2001, he worked for three months as a volunteer teaching English in a small rural village in Kenya. Now, nine years later and based on seven years of experience living in Africa, Hartness has published a novel set in Mozambique. Called “Amani’s River,” the book is currently available at the Vashon Bookshop.
In a phone interview from his home in Lusaka, Zambia, Hartness, 32, recalled becoming intrigued by the culture and continent of Africa through a McMurray Middle School humanities teacher who had once lived there. But it was his own sojourn to Kenya that turned infatuation into commitment.
In his blog, “A Small Perspective,” Hartness describes himself as “an idiot abroad” on that first visit, not understanding the social norms of Kenya and finding the new culture to be “vast, abnormal and scary.” The mud huts in the village where he lived and taught English had no running water and no electricity, but Hartness soon found himself falling in love with the culture and the locals’ understanding of community.
“It was something unique and interesting,” he said. “The people were so welcoming. They would invite you into their home for a cup of tea, provide a meal for a homeless woman.”
Hartness blogs that every community member had a responsibility to raise the children, a responsibility to take care of the elderly and to share with each other what they had to offer.
After college, Hartness served three years in the U.S. Peace Corps as an education volunteer and AIDS worker in Namaacha, Mozambique. What he learned while stationed in Namaacha spurred Hartness to write “Amani’s River.”
“If you go there, you may not realize that the people lived through a bloody, 16-year civil war that ended within the last two decades. Bullets were still in buildings, and there are people maimed from the war. It’s incredible to see the remnants, yet it is such a peaceful country,” he said.
Stories about child soldiers who were brutally inducted into the war against their will — by both the government and the rebel forces — and made to commit heinous acts of terror deeply affected Hartness. His aspiration for the book is to raise awareness about child soldiers around the world who continue to suffer equally horrific fates.
“I hope the book is an eye-opener and people will keep in mind that there are still 250,000 children serving as child soldiers,” he said. “As a global issue it is not new, but it needs to be discussed. Not enough is being done to eradicate the problem. I wrote ‘Amani’s River’ in hopes that it would shed light on the issue and force social change.”
“Amani’s River” tells the story of a 10-year-old American boy whose parents return to their native Mozambique to live on the banks of a beautiful river. The family settles in, but soon violence breaks out. The boy, Aderito, is abducted by rebels and forced to become a trained killer.
The scenes are graphic and disturbing, but Hartness said that while the character is fictional, the story is based on events that happened during the war. In a blog post Hartness writes:
“I befriended people with cut-off limbs, scars on their faces and aches in their body, directly related to the brutal war that tore families apart and left a country to rebuild … I (also) wanted to depict the raw emotions, pain and brutal realities of the many lives currently affected by war.”
Hartness said he chose to make the main character American as he wanted his target audience — Americans — to relate to the boy and to the idea that any child can be affected by war anywhere around the globe.
While Hartness plans to return to Vashon this summer to do a reading from his new book, he is content to make Africa his home for now. He and his son live in Lusaka, where Hartness works for an international school teaching English and literature.
As for what might be coming down the publishing pipeline, the author said his next book may take on other social issues. His underlying motivation is to try to help change minds through fiction. And when he’s not doing that through novels, he’s working on affecting perspectives through his blog.
“What you think you know about Africa, think again,” Hartness writes. “We often see only the negative part of Africa, and we have very strong images of this place, full of violence, full of hatred, full of political unrest, but I see the culture of Africa as peaceful. A place that has their moments of violence, and problems, but people that care for one another.”
