About the Author

Richard Afuma is a native of Kom, a remote region of Cameroon, which in his childhood was among the most primitive places in Africa. The oldest boy in a family of eleven children, he made his way at the age of eight from a mud-walled and thatched-roof hut to a school run by Baptist missionaries, and from there on a journey through a labyrinth of corruption, prejudice, and the capricious whims of “benefactors” to southern Maine, and a life he could not possibly have imagined. A graduate of Westbrook College, now the University of New England, and of the University of Maine’s School of Public Administration, Afuma has a daughter and lives in Portland, Maine, where he works teaching life skills to men and women with cognitive disabilities.