Thursday, January 9, 2014

Positive Quiddity: M. Norman Powell

Recommended book: Ingwe by M. Norman Powell

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About the Author
Born M. Norman Powell in South Africa in 1914, Ingwe is the fourth generation of British family which immigrated there in the 1820's. Lured by tales in indescribable beauty, Ingwe and his family moved to make their home in Kenya, then known as British East Africa. Thus beginning a life story so filled with adventure, drama, and tragedy that it rivals the writing of Faulkner or Hemingway. Ingwe's story, however, is not fiction conceived in an author's mind. It is as real as the man himself, and his story was played out in the vast untamed African wilderness, where the native people, the wildlife, and the land itself all played their part in shaping Ingwe's life. As a child, Ingwe was befriended by the local African tribesman of Kenya. From these lifetime friends, Ingwe mastered the ways of African survival, hunting, and tracking, as well as the ways of the tribe and the significance of their traditions. So skilled in the ways of the wilderness and tribal customs, that M. Norman Powell, a white man of British ancestry was initiated as a member and warrior of the Akamba tribe. It was his eventual association with Zulu tribal Scouts where he received the African name Ingwe, the Leopard. As an adult supporting a family, politics eventually forced Ingwe to leave his ranch, his lifestyle, and the wilderness that he loved. Having previously spent ten years in the U.S. as a young man and becoming an American citizen, he returned to the U.S. in 1981. Although forced to leave his beloved Africa, he carries with him the memories and the lessons learned from a land and people who once lived in harmony with the earth, but have now lost their traditional ways in this so-called civilized world.

http://www.amazon.com/Ingwe-M-Norman-Powell/dp/0787212989

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Afterword by the Blog Author
I met Ingwe in Redbank, New Jersey in 1997. He said that tribal elders gave him the name "Ingwe" (the word for Leopard in Zulu and other African languages) because he walked, stalked, and moved through the terrain like a leopard.

Ingwe said that the political climate in Kenya became very difficult for whites once the country became independent. As an initiated tribal member, he consulted with his tribal friends and they told him that remaining in Kenya would make things very difficult for them. This was an important factor in his decision to leave Kenya and come to ther United States he said.

I asked Ingwe about Rudyard Kipling and his Jungle Books. I said that Kipling didn’t get closer to the jungle than the officer’s club in colonial Simla, but he got one thing after another after another right about the natural world, its rhythms and rules. How did he do that? Ingwe pointed behind himself to a bookshelf that had Kipling’s major writings included. He expressed his respect for Kipling’s insights sand for the Jungle Books, which were instrumental in the formation of the Scouting movement in the UK and in the United States. But he didn’t answer my question as to how Kipling got so many natural patterns described so accurately in such detail.

He mentored many Scouts and served as an elder who taught many of his ideas and skills to naturalist and author Jon Young, himself founder of the Wilderness Awareness School. Ingwe passed away several years ago.

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