I write in two genres that rarely share a shelf: nonfiction about real estate and investment, and fiction rooted in East Africa.
For over twelve years I've led the real estate advisory and property management firm I founded in 2014, after studying property and facilities management at university. What I enjoy most has never really changed: connecting people, and chasing the next thing worth knowing.
My way of seeing the world took shape early, in colonial-era high school classrooms and across a life lived in Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, Atlanta, Calgary, and now Saskatoon. Walking through ancient places like Egypt, I felt how much the past still presses on the present, and that fascination runs through everything I write.
My nonfiction begins with The Tanzanian Diaspora Property Handbook, a practical guide for anyone buying property across borders. My fiction carries the same questions of land, debt and who gets to own what: The Last German Rupie follows an unpaid colonial payroll from Tabora in 1916 to the present day, and The Covenant of Mars asks who owns a city built by machines beneath the Martian sky.
Both novels began close to home. I was raised on family stories of the Tendaguru dinosaurs and of buried rupie treasure in colonial Tabora, and The Last German Rupie grew from stories passed down by my grandfather, Berchmans Bulu, and my great-grandfather, Fabiano Shija, who served as an askari in the King's African Rifles and fought in Burma during the Second World War. The Covenant of Mars began with a question technology cannot answer: once we can have almost anything, what will make life worth living?
I'm a member of the Institute of Real Estate Management (IREM), the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) and the U.S. Green Building Council, serve as a seasonal peer reviewer for Greenbuild and AfRES, and am working toward IREM's Certified Property Manager (CPM) designation. I'm also back in the classroom, studying for a Master of Sustainability in Regenerative Sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan (USask).
Away from work, I read widely, watch far too many films, and get outdoors whenever the weather allows, walking and cycling the Meewasin trails along the South Saskatchewan River. I'm a Christian and an incurable theology nerd, never far from whatever new gadget has caught my eye. I'm a husband and a father of two daughters and two sons, and home is now Saskatoon, where I write, research, advise, and have learned that a prairie sky can be every bit as big as a mountain range.
