One's idea of a
country, a people, and most importantly a culture differ from reality. There is
no substitute for actually going there and being there — even with the advent
of the Internet which Paul Theroux points out. As much as I would like to go to
Africa, with all the hardship and danger involved, I'll go with second-best,
that is reading a first-hand account of an accomplished writer as he journeys
through the Dark Continent.
Theroux starts out in
Cape Town, South Africa at the continent's southern tip. He is not content to
see the typical tourist sights. As always, he delves into what it means to be
the average citizen of a nation. He takes the reader through the townships of
Cape Town and describes how people live there. He is bold, and asks questions
that people don't always like to answer but prove essential in understanding
what makes them tick, what makes their country tick.
He then moves up the
Atlantic Coast of Africa, weaving his way through Namibia where he is
introduced to the Bushmen and then into the no man's land of Angola, which, he
reports has no wild game animals anymore. He even teaches students in southern
Angola, something he had done initially in Nyasaland, now Malawi, when he was
only 22. I cannot stress how brave Paul Theroux is in taking this trip. Did I
mention that at the time of the writing, he was age 70? How he could endure the
fatigue of traveling overland in crowded buses on torturous roads and sometimes
not eating all day I do not understand. Yet he did it. He pulled it off. It was
his farewell to Africa trip.
Whenever I read a
book by Paul Theroux, I not only learn about the world in which we live, I
learned about myself. You see, Mr. Theroux expresses many opinions, some of
which I wholeheartedly agree with and others I strongly disagree with.
Sometimes the most enlightening opinions are the ones I disagree with. You see,
he does not write them in such a way that he is offending the reader, at least
not me. He leaves room for people to disagree with whatever they want to. For
example, he mentioned that he hates going to any kind of zoo or viewing wild
animals that are kept on farms, such as an elephant park in Botswana. My reply
to that is that as long as the animals are well cared for and their people who
benefit from and enjoy watching them, then what's the problem? In disagreeing,
I strengthen my own position.
One thing I've
noticed about Paul Theroux is that he doesn't exactly "go native"
when he visits the countries he writes about, but he doesn't act like any
American I know. It's like his "first worldness" has rubbed off and
we are able to view a person who is a citizen of the world, and far beyond the
sense of the cliché. He has a knack for mixing and matching cultures and
attitudes and can thus get along with the people he meets on the road, a skill as valuable and laudable as any other. It
doesn't matter if it's a bureaucrat, a slum dweller or someone hawking
something on the road. He blends in; he takes up little space.
This is not Paul Theroux's
best travel book. He harbors a great deal of disappointment. He is disappointed
in the state of modern Africa with its countless cities with slums with
uneducated, hopeless people. He is disappointed in the politics and terrorism
and violence that keep him from traveling as far afield as he had planned. If
you choose to read it, be patient. If you are, you will be rewarded by nuggets
of knowledge and experience that you can either apply toward your own journey
to Africa or general knowledge that will stand you in good stead.
Available at Amazon.com.
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