Mr Tom Mboya Joshua

Beyond the Horizon Mr Tom Mboya Joshua

Delving into the rot and decay that infested the socio-political landscape in most African states in the 80s and 90s, Beyond the Horizon is a twin plotted story set in the backdrop of the genocide in Rwanda, and a chaotic social and cultural scene in Kenya. It revolves around Victor, the main protagonist who finds himself in a conflicting situation of not knowing what his true identity is and his dire need to fit in somewhere in his adopted family. When still young, he rebels and runs away from his foster parents who had subjected him to cruelty. He ends up on the streets of Nairobi where hunger and cold nights threaten to end his life. But through a twist of fate, he is luckily rescued and taken to hospital after a road accident that nearly destroys his life. Later, a nurse adopts him, but through another strange twist of events fuelled by the fear of being forced to go back to his parents, young Victor is instead persuaded to escape with Isabel, a rich but childless lady. All along, through rumours overheard from friends, Victor has always known he comes from a place called Rwanda. Forced to leave Isabel?s home due to her incestuous overtures, Victor finds himself a victim of homelessness and odd jobs once more until a hare-brained scheme to manage a gold mine they hatch with his friends leads him to the middle of nowhere. In Rwanda, Angelo Mperenza who later turns out to be Victor?s real father works hard to start a movement for peace after maliciously being dismissed from the military and seeing his family destroyed through the vengeance of an army general who does not like him. The general forcefully takes his wife and ensures that his two daughters are denied education at a military academy. when a movement for peace her father had ealier started is taken out of his control and turned into an underground resistance, the older girl ends up enlisting as a child soldier. The events that follow spell doom for many. Both of his daughters are killed and he is forced to flee from Rwanda. Woven into Victor & Angelo?s story there are fundamental issues and events that portray a society grappling with the exigencies of obsolete health and educational institutions. Thrown in the mix are issues of love, sexuality, domestic violence, fate and destiny, and the rationale of Divine justice (if ever there is any) when the contradictory circumstances that many of the characters find themselves in challenge all that they believe in and expect to happen.