Mama Tenga – My African Life

The book

An adventurous, fateful journey to West Africa made Katrin Rohde sell everything she owned in Germany and settle in Burkina Faso. She gives a graphic report of how she began to take care of street children leading pitiful lives marked by hunger, drugs and crime in the capital city of Ouagadougou.

Over the years Katrin Rohde has set up a number of facilities for children and teenagers: orphanages, women’s shelters, clinics, workshops, training facilities, counselling centres for women and girls, and much, much more – always working on the principle of capacity building.

With self-assurance, courage and discipline, with humour and African equanimity she realises her projects and ideas in what are often difficult conditions. Today everyone knows her there as Mama Tenga – „Mother Fatherland“. A colourful, enthrallingly narrated autobiography, a testimony to human nature, that provides a deep and unusual insight into African reality and the life of people in Burkina Faso, illustrated with a photo gallery showing life at AMPO and the country of Burkina Faso.

The author

Born in 1948 in Hamburg, Katrin Rohde completed her schooling in England and opened her first bookshop at the early age of 24. Over the years she trained 20 apprentices and managed two bookshops in Plön and Preetz in Northern Germany before leaving behind her previous life to settle in Africa. In recognition of her humanitarian commitment, Katrin Rohde has received many awards including the Federal German Cross of Merit and national awards of Burkina Faso.

  • 308 pages
  • with many colour photos
  • Nieswand Verlag
  • published in December 2013