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Author's love of Africa blooms

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By JOYCE McKENZIE

jmckenzie@tampatrib.com

Published: October 6, 2009

Updated:

UNIVERSITY AREA - Debra Liebenow Daly describes her father, the late J. Gus Liebenow, as a "renaissance" man.

The professor of African history at Indiana University traveled extensively in the 1960s throughout Africa, a continent he chose to call home for a year with his wife, Beverly, and their four children.

"I was 8 years old the first time I went to Africa, and we went on a cargo ship because Dad thought it was very exciting and we could take our car," said Daly, whose family stayed a year in an Episcopal mission in Liberia while her father was engaged in a research project.

Daly's love of Africa plus her adventurous spirit inherited from her parents motivated Daly in 1998 to leave her grown children, Beverly Douglas and John Daly Jr., and grandchildren, Abby and Tyler Douglas, to venture back to Swaziland, where she lived for a year with her husband, John.

John Daly, who at the time was a professor of public administration at the University of South Florida and is now the department head, was doing research at the Swaziland Institute of Management and Public Administration. Their living expenses were paid by a Fulbright scholarship he was awarded.

"The women were initially standoffish toward Debby because she was white," John said. "But when we were leaving and they gave me a gift, they started giving Debby gift, after gift, after gift, after gift. The Swazi name Jabulile they gave her means happiness."

Following her husband's second Fulbright grant in 2005 and their yearlong stay on the campus of the University of Swaziland, where John taught public administration, Debra Daly's admiration for the Swazi women coupled with a longtime dream enticed her to write "The Kingdom of Roses and Thorns," a book published in March by AuthorHouse.

In it, she chronicles the lives of five Swazi women with a backdrop of magnificent mountain ranges and fields of flourishing roses. Despite the wealth of natural beauty, most people live in poverty and are confronted with one of the world's worst HIV/AIDS epidemics.

It's also a kingdom that accepts polygamous relationships and where women, who have no rights, are viewed by their spouses as property.

"The women portrayed in this book are considered to be ordinary in their culture. In fact, they lead extraordinary lives," she wrote in the book's introduction.

Debra Daly, who continues to visit the country with her husband, said despite their horrendous hardships, these women have managed to endure by sheer stamina and determination.

"They all face different obstacles in their lives, but ultimately they survive through the same strength, faith and perseverance that characterizes women everywhere," she wrote in the book.

Daley said they are "perfect roses in a difficult and thorny world."

The book is available at Barnes & Noble stores and at Amazon.com.

Reporter Joyce McKenzie can be reached at (813) 731-8026.

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