Sweat is Invisible in the Rain... 

 

is a memoir of living in two homes, one on either side of the Atlantic. Cherno Njie describes his childhood and youth in Banjul, the capital of the small African country of The Gambia, and his later life after moving to the United States in the 1980s to earn his university degree. The Njie family compound was an idyllic home: brothers and sisters, uncles and aunties, friends and strangers. Cherno tells how he carried the memories of his home and the lessons of his mother and father to Austin, Texas, where he studied at the University of Texas at Austin. His life and successful career in Texas, though far from Gambia, was nevertheless rooted in that country. After the Gambian elections of 2011, which long-standing president Yahya Jammeh allegedly won, he explains his growing resolve at the time to contribute to Jammeh’s defeat. This came to a head when he participated in a coup plot that failed on December 30th, 2014. Njie gives his side of the story, his account of the coup, and what has since happened. Though Sweat is Invisible in the Rain is a story of two homes, it is a story of one life.