“I hope to enforce others the courage to find a way out, even life isn’t always easy,” Jacky says as she takes the reader into a world, where most people would have given up and let be.

Jackline Alaka Buluma is  The Kenyan Pilgrim.

She was born in Mombasa, Kenya, 1973, ten years after Kenya had become a sovereign state after having been a British Colony since the turn of the century. She is of the Luhya tribe, who origins from Western Kenya. She grew up on the coast of the Indian Ocean and in rural Western Kenya not far from Lake Victoria and the Ugandan border in an environment, where exchanging a teenage daughter for six cows wasn’t unusual.

Jacky, as she is called, was born as the second child into an average family life with a mother taking care of the house and the children and father working in a company to provide for his wife and two daughters. Even there wasn’t money for a luxurious life the family was doing fine. The family was Catholic by religion. However the religion didn’t play any major role in the everyday family life.

As she and her bigger sister were almost the same age the ties between the two were close and even playing with other kids, they spent most of their time together playing with each other and exploring the neighborhood. Always with Jacky in the lead.

The country’s independence created growing challenges for the population and for many it became a wish to be independent rather than being an employee. Jacky’s father decided to seek his fortune by establishing his own business in his home area in Western Kenya.

Jacky went to primary school in Mombasa and secondary school in Western Kenya and later Ngara Girls High school in Nairobi. Also she was engaged in the choir of the local church.

As an adult Jacky has made a living as a ladies hairdresser. Today she lives in the outskirts of Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.

Jacky was the first writer-to-be, who joined Isotia. She has her share in the establishing of Isotia Writing Concept.

Jacky wrote the first draft of her manuscript by hand in her salon, before she typed it in a cyber-cafe.

The Kenyan Pilgrim is the story of Jacky’s life.

It is her wish that her novels will show not only the conditions for living in post-colonial Kenya, but also will enforce others the courage to find a way out of perhaps hopeless conditions of life.

In September 2013 Jacky and Peer met for the first time ever. SInce they made contact in early 2007 all contacts had been on mail only, approximately 2.000.

Here they are at Wilderbeest Eco Camp outside Nairobi. In front of them is the first draft of “The Kenyan Pilgrim”.

“It was that day it got the subtitle “book one” as we realized more will follow,” says Jacky.