title: Against All Odds: Tales from Exile
author: Mazemba A. Nzwanga
description: Author's note Fictions like myths are based on reality. This work is a fiction, even though some names of people and places may be real. Similarly, some events related in the story may actually have occurred. This nonetheless does not prevent the narrative from remaining fictional. Any resemblance to a situation someone may have encountered is therefore a matter of coincidence. My biographical notes Mazemba Nzwanga was born in Bonga-Yasa in Bandundu, a western province in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He attended Saint Henry Elementary School in Yasa run by the Josephit Brothers of Kinzambi, a lay diocesan congregation with education as the main mission. He later on attended the famous teachers' college of Kinshasa known as Institut Pdagogique National (IPN), now named Universit Pdagogique Nationale (UPN) where he obtained a Bachelor's degree in English and TESOL. He taught English Literature, Grammar and Composition for several years at the Institut Suprieur Pdagogique de la Gombe (ISP/G) in Kinshasa, the Congo's only teachers' college for women. Mazemba Nzwanga migrated to America in the early nineteen nineties. He received a Master's degree from the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC, and a Ph. D in Foreign Language Education from The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH. He taught ESL at Ohio State and at the Columbus State Community College for some years, before working with the immigrant communities as an ESL instructor and a writer for "The Star Newspaper", an African newsletter for the metropolitan areas of Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio. Mazemba and his family live in Columbus, OH.
  						    	
  						        	--This text refers to the <a href="/dp/1462883141/ref=dp_bookdescription?_encoding=UTF8&amp;n=283155">Paperback</a> edition.
zlib_text: ![](images/00001.jpg)
  
  
  ##### www.blackmask.com
  
  * * *
  
  
  #### The Ivory Child
  
  
  [CHAPTER I. ALLAN GIVES A SHOOTING
  LESSON](The%20Ivory%20Child_split_001.html#filepos2955)
  
  [CHAPTER II. ALLAN MAKES A
  BET](The%20Ivory%20Child_split_001.html#filepos24878)
  
  [CHAPTER III. MISS HOLMES](The%20Ivory%20Child_split_001.html#filepos62308)
  
  [CHAPTER IV. HARÛT AND MARÛT](The%20Ivory%20Child_split_002.html#filepos86147)
  
  [CHAPTER V. THE PLOT](The%20Ivory%20Child_split_002.html#filepos114247)
  
  [CHAPTER VI. THE BONA FIDE GOLD
  MINE](The%20Ivory%20Child_split_002.html#filepos137860)
  
  [CHAPTER VII. LORD RAGNALL'S
  STORY](The%20Ivory%20Child_split_002.html#filepos174123)
  
  [CHAPTER VIII. THE START](The%20Ivory%20Child_split_002.html#filepos204279)
  
  [CHAPTER IX. THE MEETING IN THE
  DESERT](The%20Ivory%20Child_split_002.html#filepos225619)
  
  [CHAPTER X. CHARGE!](The%20Ivory%20Child_split_003.html#filepos260515)
  
  [CHAPTER XI. ALLAN IS
  CAPTURED](The%20Ivory%20Child_split_003.html#filepos294108)
  
  [CHAPTER XII. THE