Juma hides in his uncle's dhow and inadvertently joins the annual Dhow Race around the islands of Zanzibar, while his sister chases after the Changuu Island tortoises.
Lisa Maria Burgess wrote the Juma stories with her sons, Matoko and Senafa, when she taught in the Department of Literature at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She is a graduate of Brandeis University and earned her doctorate in literature from the University of Pennsylvania. She currently divides her time between Harare, Zimbabwe and Taos, New Mexico in the United States.