Head of the Hyena is the stirring account of a young man's life-altering experience teaching in the isolated community of Wikondiek. He is joined there by Sabina, a beautiful and strong-willed young woman who is offered a position in the village despite never having applied for it. Their host is Phoebe Asiyo, the sole female elder among the Luo tribe. The daughter of a backcountry preacher, she defied a hostile government to become one of the first female MPs in Kenya, going on to entertain Barack Obama when he visited Luo-Nyanza as a U.S. senator.
In Volume 1 of the series, Cameron details his journey west from Nairobi to the village of Wikondiek. He is eager to see what goes on in Kenya once the World Vision cameras stop rolling, but with no prior teaching experience, he proves inept in the classroom. On his first outing, he runs afoul of the self-proclaimed King of Kisumu and narrowly evades a kidnapping attempt. Few foreigners have set foot in rural western Kenya, setting the stage for a dramatic clash of cultures as he and Sabina stumble from one blunder to the next with comic and sometimes devastating consequences.
Filled with unforgettable characters and ambitious in its scope, Head of the Hyena is more than a travel memoir – it is the witty and compelling meditation of a young man of the West grappling with how the past spills into the present to define our identity across generations.
