The Moon in Your Sky: An Immigrant’s Journey Home (To Uganda)

Kate Saller

Abstract

Far Away Places kicked off its fifteenth year on Thursday, September 18 at Barnes & Noble with author Kate Saller of St. Louis, MO discussing her new book, The Moon in Your Sky: An Immigrant’s Journey Home.

Saller graduated from Goucher College with an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. Her previous work includes creative non-fiction and horticulture where her articles have been published in Damselfly Press, National Gardening, Horticulture, American Nurseryman, and various newspapers.In addition to her work as a journalist and writer, Saller is a humanitarian activist through the service organization Rotary International. She has visited Niger, Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda providing immunizations to children, clean-water wells to villages, and mosquito nets to orphanages. While giving a lecture about her work in Africa at the Rotary Club in St. Charles, MO, Saller met a woman named Annah Emuge. Emuge introduced herself by asking Saller how she could get 54 mosquito nets to an orphanage in Uganda. From there, Saller and Emuge shared a friendship that lead to Saller’s new book,The Moon in Your Sky.

Annah was born in the village Agu in northern Uganda to a family of subsistence farmers. Her mother wanted her to get an education and took a job outside the home to assist her. As her education progressed, Uganda suffered under the brutal regime of Idi Amin Dada. While she was interning for a hospital, she met her future husband, an educator named James Emuge. James was being groomed to become a future minister of education under Uganda’s new president, Milton Obote and given funds to earn his doctorate in education at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. Soon after their arrival in Ohio, a coup d’état ended funding for James’ education. Depression and alcoholism followed, leaving Annah to raise their three children alone in the U.S. She took up odd jobs to support the family and continue her own college education. Cut her off from her family for fifteen years, a Ugandan college professor told her they were still alive and caring for fifteen children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic. In 2004 Annah, then an assistant manager at Walgreens, cashed in part of her retirement to return home and found an orphanage for the children in her home village.

Disciplines

African American Studies | African Languages and Societies | International and Intercultural Communication | International Public Health | Public Health Education and Promotion | Social Work

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