About Me:
Since 1999 I have been researching two diaries from a botanical collecting expedition in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan 1933-34. In order to understand the plants collected I took Bsc Conservation Biology, graduating in 2004. In 2007 I visited Khartoum, Sudan to complete my research for the forthcoming book.
My book is finally published and in my hands. I am the publisher, and my printer-binders have done a superb job of it - I am well pleased.
After much deliberation I have decided to be the sole seller/distributor in order to keep the book at a sensible price, therefore I will be selling it through my own efforts and by word of mouth.
If there is interest in buying That Hard Hot Land, the book is £52 plus £5 post & package (UK only). If posted outside UK please contact marykeenan44@hotmail.com for postal rates.
A brief summary of the book is below.
THAT HARD HOT LAND
Botanical Collecting Expedition
in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan
1933-1934
Author/Researcher: Mary L. Keenan
Published: 2 Feb 2011 by KEENAN
ISBN: 978-0-9564910-0-8
Hardback: A4 size, 416 pages, 22 maps, 270 photographs
Copyright © Mary L. Keenan 2010
marykeenan44@hotmail.com
Between December 1933 and April 1934 three very different men travelled 6000 miles through western and southern Sudan by train, motor car, lorry, river steamer, donkey, and on foot. The expedition aimed to investigate the relationship between the vegetation and soil through a strip of country with similar temperatures but with great variations in rainfall.
James Edgar Dandy, botanist at the British Museum, Natural History Department (later Head Keeper of Botany), wrote a diary, took over 300 photographs and collected over 700 plants. Dunstan Skilbeck, lecturer in Soil Science at Oxford University (later Principal of Wye College, London), collected numerous soil samples and wrote a diary. Cecil Graham Traquair Morison, lecturer in Soil Science at Oxford University, was leader of the expedition (continued to lecture at Oxford, and undertook further ecological surveys in Africa, including the Sudan).
Accompanying them were six local men, employed as cook, drivers, and servants. Dandy’s diary and field notebook, short and to the point, are supplemented by his photographs and letters, and complement Skilbeck’s longer, more colourful and descriptive diary. The diaries record the work undertaken, the terrain, people met, daily hardships, humour, aggravations, conversations, soul searching, and life changing events.
A ten day trek to the volcanic caldera of Jebel Marra, Darfur is described with geological, botanical, and ethnographical observations. Journeys are described, hunting with local tribes, fishing, and shooting for bushmeat. Tribes and their customs, chiefs, government officials, governors, district commissioners, doctors, teachers, tourists, missionaries, and all others met during the expedition; as well as agriculture, water, cotton growing, salt mining, experimental fruit farms, roads and railways, hospitals, schools, and much more, are described and researched.
Readers of That Hard Hot Land, whether for serious academic study or for general interest, will be taken on a specific journey through Sudan, during a specific time in history. This is part of Sudan's history, for those who have been, for those who are here now, and for those who will come.
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Area(s) of Expertise
Artist, Photographer, Historical Researcher of Sudan, Author, Publisher
Current Area of Employment
Retired, Historical Research
