Africa is contagious by Steven van de Vijver

There is only one First Time for everything. Those first times are memorable, because you have no memories yet and your head is entirely empty. This is a book filled with first times of Steven van de Vijver, a doctor from Holland, going to Baraka, Africa to help the people as much as possible.
Working for Médecins sans Frontières, he discovers the mentality, environment, government and especially the diseases and hospital in which he works. There is no continuing story from beginning to end; the book is merely a summarization of all the memorable things he encounters on his journey. Definitely something to read if you are looking for a true story about life as a doctor in a developing country.

 

Desert Flower by Waris Dirie

The autobiography of Waris is a history of a small nomade child from Somalia who runs away from her family and homeland. She tells about her brutal experience with female genital mutilation. She runs away when her parents decide she should marry an old man. Waris only knows life in the desert and never saw anything like civilization. Her journey starts in the capital Mogadishu and via London she ends up in New York. There she is discovered as a high fashion model and later becomes a public person who fights female genital mutilation as ambassador of Amnesty International.

 

The prisoner by Malika Oufkir

Malika is the daughter of general Oufkir who is minister of defence. As a child she grows up as a princess in the palaces of King Hassan II. She lives an excessive, luxurious and privileged life. When her father consults a coup, the king has no mercy for Malika, her mother and her brothers and sisters. General Oufkir is executed immediately and Malika and her family are imprisoned and isolated. Malika tells how they lived like prisoners in ghastly circumstances for twenty years. They live with rats, spiders, without personal hygiene and are subject to the harassments of the guards. Extremely malnourished they face terrible diseases.