The Price of Stones

The author is a Ugandan native with modest rural roots whose worldview was expanded when he studied human rights at Columbia University. But his eyes were truly opened to the plight of AIDS orphans when he returned to his home village in Uganda. Narrator Richard Allen dramatizes the personal characteristics that led Jackson to found a free school for AIDS orphans: ingenuousness and persistent fortitude. Allen lends a graceful lilt to the African names and voices of those who played a role in Jackson's journey--from the initial idea for a small school to the impressive organization that is the Nyaka AIDS Orphans School today. The memoir's simple dialogue and prose are made agreeable, and sometimes even stirring, by Allen's rich narration. N.M.C. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

February 8, 2010
So many people die of AIDS in Uganda that at times bodies are stacked in city mortuaries like firewood. Moved by the plight of more than one million AIDS orphans in a nation with a population of 30 million, Kaguri, a human rights advocate returning home after studying at Columbia University, decided to build a school for children who had lost one or both parents to the syndrome. Kaguri and his American wife used their modest resources and contributions from friends and churches to open the two-classroom Nyaka AIDS Orphans School and initiate advocacy campaigns to counteract the superstitions that have stigmatized HIV/AIDS in Uganda. Anecdotes about the students, the author’s family—his own brother and sister died from the disease—and his dealings with donors and corrupt officials, reveal Kaguri to be at once vulnerable and ferociously determined. Written in simple, straightforward style, the book is an affecting and accessible tribute to the difference one person can make in the world.