Africa captivates and captures you, but not in the way you would think. Not glistening Zanzibar beaches, storied safaris or British lodges — those exist, for sure, the same way Vale and Aspen also exist. Places people only know of as in legends about the other half. Africa is the most brutal of continents. And life choices the most limited. Violence and disease.

I spent ten years in Africa, fighting the mayhem. Distributing food. Working on peace processes. Building schools and government offices. Managing camps, trying to get them closed down, trying to help people move on. Camps are as much mental as they are physical, safe places like ghettoes that are really perilous. The camps are expanding, and as AID dries up they are becoming more barren, more bedraggled, darker and more sinister than they were even before. At least in times past, people like me could bear witness to the suffering. And write about it.

In my Africa novel, “I, Charles, From the Camps,” that is what I do. Set in Uganda under the shadow of the Lords Resistance Army, it is the story of a rebel leader and how he came to choose that wicked path — and why you might have made the same choice as well. Pick up a copy, read, and share. Let my life in the camps mean something for those people who are still trapped there.