Destination: Africa

Book: One Day I Will Write About This Place (NEW August 2011) by Binyavanga Wainaina

(NOTE: After I wrote and titled this review, I carefully read Binyavanga Wainaina’s sardonic instructions on “How to Write About Africa” in the magazine Granta. You may want to check as you compile your Africa reading list.)

Binyavanga Wainaina reinvents memoir writing in One Day I Will Write About This Place.  I read two or three books a week and many of them are very, very fine writing, but this one knocked me back in my chair and made me reconsider the conventions of writing. Original. Poetic. Surprising. Experimental. He sees and hears and feels the world in ways you never thought of before.  Right from the first page, this book is a WOW experience. In this quote, he is describing a day playing soccer in Kenya when he was seven.

Warm breath pushes down my nostrils past my mouth and divides my chin.  I can see the pink shining flesh of my eyelids. Random sounds fall into my ears: cars, birds, black mamba bicycle bells, distant children, dogs, crows, and afternoon national radio music. Congo rumba.  People outside our compound are talking, in languages I know the sounds of, but do not understand or speak, Luhya, Gikuyu.

Maybe it is this early exposure to various languages that seem to be sounds without meaning that creates an approach to language that seems as much incantation as communication. These verbal meanderings come across as playful and spontaneous, but in fact are carefully crafted, because, as he says while contemplating the words “thirst and thirsty”, ”Words, I think, must be concrete things.  Surely they cannot be suggestions of things, vague pictures: scattered, shifting sensations.” Nothing escapes him.

One bee does not sound like a swarm of bees.  The world is divided into the sounds of onethings and the sounds of manythings.  Water from the showerhead streaming onto a shampooed head is manything splinters of falling glass, ting ting ting.  

All together they are: shhhhhhhhhh.

Shhhhh is made up of many many tinny tiny ting ting tings, so small that clanking glass sounds become soft whispers; like when everything at the school parade is talking all at once, it is different from when one person is talking.

This reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe’s love of words which bursts out in his poem, The Bells, when he finds words to mimic the sounds of the bells from tinkling to tolling, and extols the “tintinabulation of the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells.” Wainaina knows very early that he is meant to be a writer and spends all his money on novels and all his time reading. He says, (as many writers have discovered)  ”I…start to write and answers arrive, and after a while I realize I have followed a straight line and I am done.” But as a young man, the impressions of the world are overwhelming. “I do not have enough words for all of this,” he says. Eventually, he sends off a travel narrative to an Internet site and is paid for it. He is a professional writer.

But One Day I Will Write About This Place is much more than a travel memoir.  Instead, he uses the journeys he made through Africa to add to the picture  of the struggles that ripple over the continent.  Kenyans grow up saying, “We are not like those Ugandans,” but then the tribal conflicts emerge in Kenya as well. Because he is identified as Gikuyu, even though he does not feel that identity strongly (he just wants to be Kenyan) he and his family are in danger when the government turns anti-Gikuyu.  Even before the most dangerous period, his brilliance and high grades are not enough to get him into a top high school because he has the wrong identity. This awareness of dominant and minority groups sharpens Wainaina’s observations of other parts of Africa.

From childhood games, the influence of American culture, hairstyles and clothing choices, the book progress to corrupt politics and shockingly bloody oppression and reprisals. Wainaina depicts an Africa where real people live (see Granta article referenced at top)–an Africa that will stay in your mind.

He finds hope in the fact that Uganda has rebuilt itself. “This country gives me hope that this continent is not, finally incontinent.”

The light Wainaina sheds on “the dark continent” and his strikingly original expression make this book a must for the traveler’s library. And a real find for anyone who wants to expand their knowledge of Africa.

Having won several literary awards and started a literary journal Kwani? (why not?), he now teaches at the Chinua Achebe (See Things Fall Apart review) Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College in upstate New York.

The book title is linked to Amazon for your convenience. If you click through to Amazon and purchase anything at all, I get a few cents which helps support A Traveler’s Library. Thanks.

I am visiting Africa through literature on a semi-regular basis, as I try to expand my woefully small pool of knowledge. I welcome guest posts on books about Africa that may have inspired you, or suggestions to add to my reading list. And you can enter the Book Giveaway when you leave a comment, subscribe to A Traveler’s Library, or add your name in other ways. (See the rules here, and the list of books here.)

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Destination: Africa, the Serengeti

Book: Wildlife Photography: On Safari with Your DSLR by Uwe Skrzypczak

WIN THIS BOOK (See below)

Available in print  from your bookseller or in digital form through I-Tunes.

In this book, although the title is Wildlife Photography and it focuses on the Serengeti of Africa, the author means to help anyone who wants to become a professional level photographer.  Uwe Skrzypczak, (pronounced ScripCheck), discusses Equipment, Techniques and Workflow for shooting with a DSLR camera (Digital Single Lens Reflex–he uses Nikons). He also gives pointers that will help you plan your African trip. And of course, he  illustrates the whole with his amazing images of lions whose faces are dripping blood from a recent kill, a mob of gnus rushing to cross a river, the blur of a cheetah running full speed.

He says he chose to concentrate on the Serengeti because it has the greatest diversity of wildlife in the world, and it obviously is an area that he knows well. That is important because his main commandment is “Know your subject.”  Just as someone photographing a sports scene needs to have an idea where the players and the ball are going next, wildlife photographers need to anticipate the actions of the animals they are portraying.

I will freely admit that much of this book was over my head. WAY over my head. But I decided to present it to you because I know that many travelers yearn to improve their photography, and many travel bloggers aim to become at least semi-professional in their approach. And besides that, it sheds light on Africa, a current area of concentration at A Traveler’s Library.

I skimmed descriptions of camera equipment , but if you are a camera nerd, you know you’ll never get the best shot possible if you do not have the right equipment. His advice on storing images and managing them on the road is something that I can use. Similarly, camera settings involve more math than I am capable of concentrating on, but I know that it is important.

In chapter three, Uwe gets to a field that applies to anyone with any kind of camera–composition. He says:

Wildlife photography is an intuitive sub genre within the field of photography. You need to develop your instinct not only for the technical side of your work, but also with respect to the animals you are photographing.

A helpful hint he gives is to photograph animals at eye level whenever possible–that is, so their eyes are approximately mid level in the shot.  If you shoot from the open top of a jeep–common for people on safaris–he suggests waiting until the animal raises its head.

Among the travel guide type of suggestions he gives is a helpful table of the right time to be in the right place at Serengeti National Park to take advantage of mass movements of animals.  We also get helpful descriptions of the main areas and practical tips. An example: the Ngorongro Crater, which is part of the park, but more restricted, can cost up to $1060 for the six hours limited time in the area. You can stay on a lodge on the rim if you can afford more than one day of jaunts into the Crater.

Wildebeest migration crossing the Mara river

Uwe also discusses the main Serengeti National Park and the Masai Mara, a river system.

Hippopotamus

I learned many things about African wildlife, and the Serengeti..not just photography. For instance, hippos are actually the most dangerous animals to man. Also, Uwe points out how hard it is to photograph leopards and says,

Don’t be deceived by the many “action” photos shot in front of dusty or stony backgrounds that you can find on the Internet. These photos are mostly of tame leopards taken on farms in Namibia or South Africa.

The book closes with a narrative about his trip in 2007 when he needed to get a very particular shot of a male lion to use as the cover of a children’s book. I found the behind-the-scenes look at his work very interesting.

In addition to the blog linked to his name in the first paragraph, he has a website in German, Serengeti Wildlife. At either place you can see examples of his exciting photography.  He suggests many links to keep informed about African wildlife and parks. Here are those I think would be of most interest for travelers.

The Serengeti National Park

Tanzania National Parks

Kenya Wildlife Service

Have you ever been on a wildlife photo safari? Are you a wanna be professional photographer? I will give this book away to someone who leaves a comment in the next week. (Ending July 18) [Only residents of the United States and people over 18 are eligible.] 

NOTE: The photographs shown here are NOT by Uwe Skrzypczak, but are taken from Flickr with Creative Common license to illustrate the places discussed.  The publisher supplied the book  for the purpose of a review. The book title is linked to Amazon for your convenience. If you click through to Amazon and purchase anything at all, I get a few cents which helps support A Traveler’s Library. Thanks.

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Carrying machetes on the street of Lastoursville, Gabon, photo by Martha Cooper

Destination: Gabon, Africa

Book: How to Cook a Crocodile by Bonnie L. Black

I raced through How to Cook a Crocodile by Bonnie Lee Black, wanting to know what adventure the next day would bring.  I liked nearly everything about this memoir with recipes.  I liked the clearly-told story of a fifty-year-old-woman who gave up the life of a high class caterer in Manhattan for a life filled with heat and biting bugs in equatorial Africa.

I liked the pictures that accompanied stories about the lovely people she met.

I liked the basic and staight-forward recipes–some from her former life, but most the nutritious dishes she taught in classes in her Peace Corps assignment in Gabon.

And of course I was intrigued by her romance with a younger man, who besides being an attentive lover, constantly told her that he appreciated her wisdom–a quality lacking in younger women.  I was disappointed when he just suddenly disappeared at the end of the book.

It seems very appropriate that we should be talking about a memoir of a Peace Corps volunteer during the 50th anniversary of that organization.  How COULD it be 50 years since Sargent Shriver suggested the Peace Corps idea to President John F. Kennedy?

How to Cook a Crocodile is particularly appropriate because it was the first book published by the newly formed Peace Corps Writer’s Books. (see below)

Bonnie Black and friend in market. Photo by Martha Cooper

Just when I was thinking that Bonnie Black is hopelessly Pollyanish about her circumstances–living with no refrigerator, walking a mile to buy groceries each day, fighting mud and snakes and enervating heat, I came to a letter she wrote to her sister.

She explains that because her letters might be opened, the Peace Corps urges volunteers to stay positive in letters home.

“The truth is (and I trust this letter isn’t intercepted) I try to write letters only when I’m in a positive frame of mind and I’m enjoying my experience here–which is to say, roughly four days out of the week.  The other three?  Forgetaboutit….(for instance) There are a b’zillion tiny ants everywhere–in your toothbrush, bed, clean underwear, fridge, everywhere….well, on such days (3 out of 7) I write only in my journal….”

Bonnie Black's house in Gabon Photo by Martha Cooper

Black obviously approached the work with gusto and her creativity earned her the nickname of “Martha Stewart of Gabon.” But since I see Martha Stewart as shallow and artificial, that label did not impress me favorably.  I will admit that I gasped when I saw the  (after) picture that showed what she had done to the living room of her house, which had stood abandoned before she moved in. Used to operating in America where everything was available and she had the price, Black adapted to working with more ingenuity than cash.

From the stories of her every day struggles, I could picture the landscape and the houses and the life of Lastoursville, Gabon. One telling moment comes when she asks Bev, her missionary friend for her “3 rules for living successfully in Gabon.”  Practical Bev says

1. Always carry toilet paper
2. Never expect anything–that way you can’t be disappointed
3. Never criticize the government. If you don’t follow rule three you’ll likely find yourself dead.

I would have liked to see more insight into the emotions and motivations of the Gabonese people, and less self-congratulatory stories about her decorating and teaching successes. The memoir lacks the sense of self-discovery that can give this genre universality.

It struck me as unfortunate–rather sad, really–that Black only once got to experience African life in jungle villages.  Instead she spent her time in one small town, with infrequent trips to the capital.

That fact makes this one of those books about an exotic place that does not make me want to go there (like those un-travel books Alisa Bowman wrote about here a while back.)  My travel bug only perked up when Black took that short excursion into the jungle and remote villages.

Village house in Lastoursville. Photo by Martha Cooper

Now at least I know something about one of the 52 countries in Africa.  A former French colony, located near the equator, it is populated by a million people and although nominally a republic, has a strong president and weak opposition system. Gabon is not likely to become a tourist attraction any time soon, although Lonely Planet points out some interesting sites, but this book helps us see one small piece of Africa.

In March 2011, Peace Corps Writers Books released Answering Kennedy’s Call: Pioneering the Peace Corps in the Phillippines.

Get some taste of the book, How to Cook a Crocodile at Bonnie Lee Black’s blog on the former Peace Corps Volunteers site.

Black sent me this book so I could review it, and her book designer sent me the photographs by Martha Cooper to illustrate the post. All photos appear in How to Cook a Crocodile.

Here at A Traveler’s Library, we have visited  quite a few African countries through books or movies, but by my calculation, need to get to 41 more. If you don’t remember which 11 we have already visited, use the search box.  Then suggest books for countries we have yet to visit. I need your ideas.

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Lake Chad in Nigeria from space, NASA

Destination: Nigeria

Book: Things Fall Apart (1959) by Chinua Achebe

You won’t learn here about today’s Africa, racked by wars in some parts and thriving on tourism in others.  This is the Africa of the Africans, when outsiders were just beginning to encroach. Missionaries showed up (a white man–not an albino, someone says–riding an iron horse), some slave traders, the British government claimed power, while villagers who had once been sure of the truth faced new paradigms that puzzled and upset them.

Ibo Statue from Nigeria

The iron horse tied to a tree stayed put, but soon even the natives were riding the iron horse called a bicycle and clustering around stores where they could trade and buy rather than subsist on the yams they grew.  It is an upsetting time, and in Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe tells it the way an old Ibo villager in Nigeria would tell it to a youngster.  We learn the family connections and rank of the characters. We learn about what they did from dawn to dark, and how they gained status within their community.  We learn about their many gods, and how puzzled they are when their powerful gods seem to allow these white men to come and set up a church to worship the white man’s God. Above all we can see the humanity of these “primitive” people and the value of their lives.

The title derives from the poem by William Butler Yeats, and the book closely parallels the poem.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

The book is one of the first books written by an African, from the African point of view instead of accepting the judgement of Europeans. The characters are clearly drawn, the dialogue replicates the rhythms and idiom of tribal speech.  The book is written in simple language, and in my public library is filed in the young adult section, but that strikes me as wrong. Just as Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea might be accessible to young adults because of the surface simplicity, there is a whole universe of meaning in this book.

You can find a lot of study guides and analyses of Things Fall Apart by googling Achebe’s name.

“Chinua Achebe is an African great and perfect introduction to African writers. Things Fall Apart is a must-read classic,” says Gayle Pescud, a fellow Lonely Planet Blog Sherpa blogger, who lives in and writes about Ghana. Gayle introduced us to a book about Kenya, Unbowed in a guest post last September.

I know too little about Africa. I am going to remedy that by reading and reporting on a series of books (and probably some movies) about Africa in the coming months.  Do you have books to recommend? Now if you have nine minutes–here’s the author himself.

The incredible photo at the top that looks like an abstract painting tells another story about Nigeria. Click on the photo for information on Nigeria’s Lake Chad. Thanks to the photographers whose photos I use here–all form Flickr and Creative Commons. And the video is from You Tube, where you can find more videos of Chinua Achebe.

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

A Book for the Middle East in Troubled Times

Rebel flag, Libya

Destination: Libya

Book: In the Country of Men (2006) by Hisham Matar

It has been difficult for me to comprehend the arrogant statements of the dictator of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi. When he asserts, “The people LOVE me!” in the face of thousands of ill-armed, desperate rebels trying to depose him, I think he must be out of touch with reality.

Then I read  In the Country of Men and I understood a little better. The novel, written by an ex-pat Libyan, Hisham Matar , tells the horrific story of people who live under conditions similar to Stalinist Russia. In public they loudly announce their loyalty to the revolution and The Guide (reference to Gaddafi). In private, the intellectuals read widely and share ideas about how to change their government.

They watch television to catch sight of friends who have been hauled off to revolutionary court, and see public beatings as “confessions” are extracted and public executions. The fact that the author chooses a nine-year-old boy as his narrator makes the story that much more horrifying.

In a child’s view of the world, anything could possibly be true. “Shlooma” is still learning what things mean and how the world works, so he describes terrifying events and evil people in an almost matter of fact tone. His main concern is his relationship with his parents.

Concern. I think that was what I craved.  A warm and steady and unchangeable concern.  In a time of blood and tears, in a Libya full of bruise-checkered and urine-stained men, urgent with want and longing for relief, I was the ridiculous child craving concern.

He mistakes an oily enforcer for a friend and nearly betrays his own beloved father. He discovers his own capacity for evil when he betrays his best friend. A friend whose father had taken him to see Leptis Magna, the great Roman city whose ruins lie in the desert 120 km outside Tripoli.

In the perfect society that Gaddafi imagines his country to be, we see people who do not practice religion at all, an alcoholic mother, families who live in terror because the father has been dragged away.  But because the story is the story of a young boy, we also see the very human results of that mother, the distracted father, the normal rivalries between neighborhood boys. We learn what his house looks like, what he eats, how he plays during one summer in his life. Here is a description of shops:

Black silk scarves billowed gently above one, columns of stacked red caps stood as tall as men outside another. The ceiling was made with dark strips of fabric. The white blades of light that pierced through the occasional gaps illuminated the swimming dust and shone still and beautiful on the arches and floor, but darted like sparkles on the heads and down the bodies of the passersby, making the shadows seem much darker than they were.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this magnificently poetic book, even though it’s message becomes painful at times.

As for learning about today’s Libya, I did not realize how many attempts at uprising their have been against Gaddafi in his forty years of rule. This book reflects an attempt in 1979.  A friend of the family says,

“There was so much hope, so much hope.  Three years ago eight thousand students in Benghazi and four in Tripoli. Twelve thousand students took a stand in an illiterate country of less than three million…It took three years for hope to be reborn only to see the few who dared sacrificed for the many.”

Time after time “The Guide” has flicked away the bothersome people. His network of enforcers keep people in line and he sees a calm and compliant people. The few troublemakers will be easily dealt with as they have been in the past. That is the mindset that establishes his self-deluding “The people love me” statement. And that is why I am reading and sharing literature that comes from the troubled Middle East here at A Traveler’s Library.

The other countries of the world have stepped in this time. The situation is different, whether Gaddafi knows it or not. He may not, but we need to understand as much as possible. Read a New Yorker interview with Hisham Matar about the current uprising. You can follow @hishamjmatar on Twitter

Review the other Books for Troubled Times, as you read the news. Syria is edging toward the top of the news once more as rebels there attract attention. Our book, The Calligrapher’s Secret shows Damascus in a quieter time and perhaps explains some of the divisions in the country. We have also discussed, Egypt (A Traveller’s History) and Afghanistan (The Minaret of Djam), and before the recent uprisings, Yemen (The Woman Who Fell From the Sky).

The Libyan flag photo is from Flickr, and you can click on the picture to learn more about the photographer. If you choose to purchase one of these books, or anything else that tickles your fancy, after clicking on one of my book links, I will make a few cents off of each purchase. Thank you!

I strongly wish that I could visit the many Roman ruins that inhabit the shores of Libya. Perhaps…some day.  Do you have a list of places that you would like to travel to in more peaceful times?

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Book Cover

Win a Copy of This Book by commenting on this post.

Destination: Africa

Book: Crossing the Heart of Africa by Julian Smith (NEW December 2010)

I enjoy hearing stories about the adventurers who busily mapped the globe around the end of the 19th  and the beginning of the 20th centuries. In Crossing the Heart of Africa, Julian Smith tells the story of a brave (or is it brash?) young man who sets out to impress the father of his lady love by walking 4500 miles from the Zambezi River in southwest Africa to Cairo in the north. The Victorian adventurer kept a journal and later published a book about the trip.

So author Julian Smith had plenty of source material although Ewart Grogan is not exactly a household name like the original Richard Burton or Dr. Livingston, despite three biographies that have been published.

Julian Smith weaves a fine tale. I liked his writing style. It was the whining I did not like.

Unfortunately, every book these days has to have an angle, and preferably one where the author either faces danger or does the travel-is-all-about-my-feelings number.  Smith follows the general path of Grogan across Africa, although being a typical rushed inhabitant of the 21st century, he does not have time to walk, so he takes buses, bikes, and boats to follow the trail. Even more unfortunately, he tells us all about his own romance and his uncertainty about being tied down by his imminent marriage.

Transportation in Mozambique, East Africa

The book tells us much about the difference between Victorian society and social networking society as it does about the unflappable and handsome Grogan. Grogan and his love have no doubts that the risks he is taking will win him the prize, and that however long it takes, she will be waiting for him. Smith has nothing but doubts. Should he get married? Should he venture into the Congo?

Grogan shrugs off the most horrible problems–ill with malaria, losing nearly all his equipment to thieves, facing down headhunters, finding a track across lava fields and swamps never before crossed by a European. Smith struggles with the morality of giving coins to poor children and worries about whether the bureaucrats are going to return his passport. Grogan steadfastly refuses to drop even a postcard to his intended when he’s near civilization. Smith frets over not making daily phone calls or sending e-mails.

Ah, yes, in Victorian England, a man was expected to take on physical, even mortal, challenges and keep a stiff upper lip about it all. In the 21st century, a man is expected to soften that lip and talk about his feelings.  Here are two passages that show the contrast:

Grogan’s arm was a sleeve of pain from wrist to shoulder.  Even if he could have raised a rifle, he found the last box of shells were corroded and worthless.  The party was reduced to eating raw hippo meat and sucking mud puddles for moisture. The diet started to turn Grogan’s hands black.

And here’s a challenge Smith faces:

An old couple climbs aboard and starts playing tease-the-mzungu[white man]. They point and ask me questions and laugh when I don’t understand.  Eery culture has assholes.  I’m too drained to care. Cyclic pressure clenches my guts, even though I haven’t eaten anything since lunch….Bumping along in a bus with a bad case of Montezuma’s revenge is nowhere near as bad as tramping through a monsoon with a potentially fatal fever.

Right. It’s not.

If there were two paths to follow, the Victorian adventurer would plunge into the abyss–follow the un-marked trail. Our role models today train us that it is better to think of a way to avoid danger than to throw oneself into it.

Uganda, The White Nile

In Victorian days, love meant total devotion, not friends with privileges, and a statement of love meant you were about to devote your life to that person, not try to find excuses to avoid marriage.

Smith is a fine writer, but frequently I wished I could find a way to cut out the poor-me pages  and stick with the story of the single-minded adventurer, Grogan. Smith tells that story very well. I particularly like some of his offbeat research, like this about travel:

“To travel” originally meant to “suffer.”  A thousand years ago, life was dangerous, but leaving home was sorse.  The word itself comes from the Old French travailler, meaning to toil, as in “travail”.  It’s rooted in the Latin tripalium, a torture device made of three poles tied together, to which victims would be attached and lit on fire.

So now you now why we are so hot to travel!!

Despite my mixed feelings, I believe this is a good book for a traveler’s library.  Smith provides plenty of geopolitical background and historical context along with stark descriptions of Africa today. And if you love the Great Age of Adventure, you’ll love this book.

The two Africa pictures are from the author’s web site, and if you click on them you can go to the site and see more of his pictures from the journey across Africa.

Some lucky person today is going to win a copy of this book, which was given to me by the publisher for review. Just leave a comment below by January 17 at 6:00 a.m., and tell me if you have been to Africa or if you like to read about Africa or if you went to Africa what you would like to see. (see all the fine print about contests here.)

You might also like:

• Unbowed
• Heart of Darkness
• South Africa
• Lost Boys of Sudan

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©2012 A Traveler's Library. All Rights Reserved.

Book: Unbowed by Wangari Maathai

A GUEST POST by Gayle Pescud

I was in a modern bookstore for the first time in months in January,  getting well and truly high on the smell of new books (we live in Bolgatanga, the Upper East Region of Ghana, 18 hours from Accra, the capital), but I could only buy one (I used my spending money on coffee and chocolate).

After browsing for an hour, I came across Unbowed in the African writing section and soon sensed I was on to a good thing: two of my favourite authors wrote front and back cover endorsements: Bill Clinton (yup, that Bill Clinton) and Alexandra Fuller (who wrote Let’s Not Go to the Dogs Tonight, another brilliant African memoir, by the way).

And The Guardian wrote, “Maathai’s book is frank and moving…Like a Nelson Mandela or a Mahatma Gandhi, Maathai stands way above most mortals.”

Truly.

An 18 hour bus ride later I finished reading Unbowed (and a whole packet of caramels). Now, if you asked me to name the one book that everyone should read, I would say, “You can read supernatural fantasies for the rest of your life, but read Unbowed first.”

Unbowed is a memoir of Wangari Maathai’s life growing up in Kenya, Africa. Her book shows that one need not pick up a traditional “travel memoir” to be inspired towards distant horizons and discover writing that evokes a sense of place and a yearning to jump straight inside the pages of the book.

From Page 1:

“At the time of my birth, the land around Ihithe was still lush, green, and fertile. The seasons were so regular that you could almost predict that the long, monsoon rains would start falling in mid-March. In July you knew it would be so foggy you would not be able to see ten feet in front of you, and so cold in the morning that the grass would be silvery-white with frost. In Kikuyu, July is known as mworia nyoni, the month when birds rot, because birds would freeze to death and fall from the trees.”

Throughout reading Unbowed you feel as if you are in the company of a kind and sensible friend who happens to be an African woman and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, such is the humility, candor and warmth in Maathai’s writing.

Indeed, Maathai is famous for  her Greenbelt Movement which, since 1975, has planted more than 4 million trees across Kenya. But her environmental work is only half the story.

Unbowed tells about her life from birth through to the period of publication, but it’s the development of Maathai’s political consciousness and her transformation into an environmental and human rights activist in Kenya that most captivated me.

I discovered that Maathai’s commitment and dedication to protecting the environment has transformed the human landscape in Kenya, too. Her will and her network publicized, prevented or remedied human rights abuses, especially against women, corrupt practices, destructive environmental practices, and conflict across Kenya—in the face of death threats, abuse, harassment, imprisonment and much more. This was new to me and truly opened my eyes to the reality that Kenyans have had to endure for all these years.

But she is famous for her beloved trees and rivers and, to steal a Fuller phrase, the planet is “going to the dogs.”

When I visited Wli in 2005, a mountainous area on the border with Togo in Ghana’s east, the surrounding hills retained some forest cover, yet just one metre outside the “protected area” loggers were sawing down trees. When I revisited in 2007, I woke to the sound of chainsaws in the forest. All day, chainsaws. Wheezing chainsaws for the next five days. The mountains, while majestic in form, looked like something out of Mordor (Lord of the Rings): ugly and bare.

Looking around me here, where I live in the flat, semi-arid Upper East region, where conditions are harsh, hot, unforgiving and designed to make life as uncomfortable as possible, and women toil in the home and fields for virtually nothing—certainly not property rights when their husbands die and not for money while they’re living—I wonder where are Ghana’s Maathais?

Women, I’ve observed, especially in rural Ghana, are nothing if not strong and courageous. It only takes one strong woman to speak out and take action.

While Unbowed hasn’t exactly sparked my desire to visit Kenya, it gave me an urge to do something here in Ghana about the issues Maathai has dedicated her life towards. We could all “take a leaf” (forgive me) from Maathai’s life, her work, her determination and courage. Adding tree planting to an environmental project we’re supporting in Ghana was one significant action we took as a result of reading Unbowed. We are indebted to Maathai for the inspiration. You can read more about the project at the G-lish website. (Ed. Note: and find out what G-lish means!)

Read supernatural vampire wizard goblin fantasies for the rest of your life, but read Unbowed first because our planet is real and, as Maathai wrote on page 295, “We have nowhere else to go.”

Truly.

Gayle Pescud is an Australian living the ex-pat life in a cross-cultural relationship in Ghana. She and her partner Godwin have written the Insider’s Guide to Ghana and contributed to the Insider’s Guide to Volunteering in Ghana. She blogs at G Is for Ghana, and works on the website mentioned above. Thanks so much, Gayle for providing us with a terrific piece of literature about Africa for travelers.

How bout you? Have you been to Ghana or Kenya? Have you worked in an International volunteer effort? Let’s share.

If my trip is on schedule, I’m spending my last day in Brittany–on the south coast. Tomorrow we take a train to Bruges (Brugge, Brugges–take your pick).

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A Traveler’s Library has the great good fortune to talk to Peter West Carey who writes The Carey Adventures, about his People, Places, and Patterns Project. He will be traveling to Africa (including Spain and  Morocco; and then Kenya and Tanzania) and Nepal, photographing and learning about cultures along the way. And how can YOU be involved? Here goes:

Me: I  read your interview at The Mother of All Trips about PPP Project, and you talked about travel with your daughter. How old is your daughter and how will she be involved in this trip?

Peter West Carey: My daughter Sabrina, who is 8, will be joining me on the Africa leg of the trips.  Taking her to Africa was really the origin on this trip.  While the trip has some certain idyllic aspects (riding camels, going on safari) I also want to expose her to vastly different lifestyles, while showing her some of the commonality we all share.  And she finally had enough frequent flyer miles to make the trip less expensive. [Ed. Note: That is one Well-traveled little girl!]
Just tonight I started talking to her about doing the presentation at her school.  Her eyes lit up.   She sounded rather excited about being able to tell all the other kids about what she saw–even before she sees it!  While she won’t be with me for the 50 school, 10 library and 20 community group presentations I have planned before the end of 2010, I’d love to have her share the experience from her perspective as well.

PWK: It’s actually three locations but two trips.  Africa will be one trip, combining Spain (still not part of Africa, but close) and Morocco as one section and Kenya and Tanzania as the other.  Nepal is a separate trip about a month after getting back from Africa.   I had previously been to Nepal and the offer to climb a 20,000′ peak was intriguing.

After making these general plans… I knew I was going to take my camera gear…  But then the question came: why?  Sure, I have plans to sell some photos and write some stories to help pay the rent. I don’t believe all travel needs to have lofty reason (I very much enjoy sitting on a beach for a week at a time) but I wanted this trip to have a bit more life to it. That’s when I came up with the concept of a slideshow/presentation.

I had previously noted on my blog that I’d be concentrating on people photography in future travels.  So that was one.  Places seemed obvious as I wanted to give [conext to their lives].  And patterns have been a facination of mine for the past year, but I’ve never concentrated on them in a meaningful way.  Natural, man-made, symmetric…they all catch my eye…  Combining all three, I’d like to show how life, .. is the same in these distant locations  as well as how it differs from life back home.  I hope exposure to those threads and how they weave through vastly different cultures can bring about some understanding and tolerance in the view. [and some curiosity leading to travel].

Me: At A Traveler’s Library, we always would like to know–are there good travel books (or movies) that inspired you to travel?

PWK: I loved [amazonify]1570610835::text::::Voyage of a Summer Sun: Canoeing the Columbia River[/amazonify].  It hit close to home and has put “Kayak the Columbia River” on my list of life goals.

[also loved] [amazonify]078670621::text::::Endurance,Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage[/amazonify] defines how you lead, take risks and bring all your men home safely.

Right now I’m reading [amazonify]0217718817::text::::Farthest North[/amazonify] (the version edited by John Krakauer) about Nansen’s attempt to reach the North Pole.  Those types of books show me a lot of what it takes to really preserver in difficult situations and what type of character is needed for certain types of travel.  While I don’t plan on going on …a multi-year sledging trip to either pole, they do inspire me to learn more about those cold, distant, and often forgotten places on Earth.

PWK: There are three things I need help with for this trip:

1. Make a pledge to the People, Places and Patterns Project. The funding for this project[through kickstarter.com] works on the principle that a project must receive pledges for the entire goal or no funds are dispersed.  [Peter is over 27% of the way to his goal of raising $10,000 by February 16.] Any help is appreciated and pledges start as low as $1.

2. [Suggest]… connections at schools and community groups, starting in my local Puget Sound region and then expanding out from there.  I already have invites from schools in Utah, Oregon and California and I’d love to make the presentations as widely available as possible.

3. Spread the word!  This project is backed by no large corporation or media outlet (yet!) so word of mouth is key to its success.  As the date gets closer I’ve had some amazing response from complete strangers offering to help… It’s a wonderful use of the internet and interviews like this are greatly appreciated!!

Thanks so much for dropping by, Peter. We’ll try out your books, and perhaps you will come back with more complete reviews of a favorite of yours once this project is complete. And readers, do take a look at Peter’s web site and consider supporting his trip in one of the three ways he suggests. After all, we can’t have too much mutual understanding in this world. [If you make a purchase at Amazon by following the link from one of the books suggested here, I'll donate the income to Peter.]

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Jungle scene

Destination: Africa

Book: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

A Guest Post by Craig Martin

I read voraciously and used to read even more. Four books a week seems slow when I include the audiobooks that accompany me on countless hours of train and plane travel. But when I’m asked to talk about a book that has motivated me to visit a place or to start traveling, I’m somewhat at a loss.
One book that’s heavily influenced my view of the world is Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness , made into the film Apocalypse Now by director Francis Ford Coppola. In Heart of Darkness, the protagonist Marlow recounts a journey from Britain deep into the Congo. It’s a story of a journey, of imperialism and of the madness that lurks just behind the thin walls of sanity.

It’s tough reading at times, with long sentences bursting with imagery and hints through a sharp use of vocabulary and tone. It rewards, if you can call it that, with a slow, meandering journey up a river and an ending that doesn’t really satisfy the readers’ narrative impulses. For that, I love it.

Critic Chinua Achebe infamously called Heart of Darkness an inveterate piece of racism as it uses the African people and landscape as nothing more than a foil for European protagonists; the dehumanised indigenous characters are nothing but backdrop. This resonates with my own post-colonial Pakeha* reading and is an urgent call to action for travelers and writers to move beyond stereotypes, stop casting ourselves as the heroes of our stories and start to uncover the threads of narrative we travel through.

In the end, Heart of Darkness is a book that has inspired me to stretch my viewpoint, to act compassionately for social justice, to travel. Otherwise, we may well end up in a culture as happily blinded to our societal prejudices as Conrad was.

Craig Martin

Craig Martin is the co-publisher of the Indie Travel Podcast and Indie Travel Podcast Magazine. Along with Victorian literature, he enjoys self-reflective movies and the better sort of modern Fantasy novels.

* Pakeha is a term used to describe the non-Maori peoples of New Zealand, especially those of European descent.

Thank you so much, Craig, for taking time to do this. For those of you who haven’t read about Craig and Linda Martin on their website (which I recommend you do as soon as you have left a comment below), Craig and his wife live on the road, so making a contribution like this, in addition to their blogging and publishing a magazine keeps them busy indeed. And thanks also, for adding the word pakeha to my vocabulary.

I would like to clarify one thing for those who are more familiar with the movie Apocalypse Now than with the novel, Heart of Darkness. Coppola very loosely based his film on the Conrad novel, which, as Craig says, is set in Africa as opposed to the Vietnam setting of the movie.

Craig’s point is a very good one. As travelers we need to constantly redevelop the sensitivity to realize when we are influenced by stereotypes and find ways to move beyond them.  Have you found other books that help you do that? Please let us know in the comment section.

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Lion

Destination: Botswana and Zimbabwe, Africa

Book: The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa by Alexander McCall Smith

Since I was first introduced to Alexander McCall Smith through his funny, thoroughly delightful No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, the first of a series that has a world-wide audience, I have been curious about why a Scotsman is writing about Africa.

Not that he never writes about Scotland, but we’ll save those books for another day.  When I went to my library to poke around for more books in the series of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, I found that McCall Smith has also written several children’s books, and a couple of collections of folklore (not mentioning scientific papers in his role as a physician and a member of U.N. committees.)

I love the characters of the Detective Agency, and felt that I learned a lot about the culture and lives of people who live in Botswana. His keen ear for dialect makes you feel you are there. The wildly popular series now numbers ten. It is typical of his lovely sense of humor that Precious Ramotswe, “traditionally built” founder of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency writes a foreword for The Girl Who Married a Lion.

I finally got around to his web site, which you will find by clicking on his name, here, Alexander McCall Smith. It turns out that he grew up in Zimbabwe and part of his education was in Africa.

The short fables from Botswana and Zimbabwe retold in The Girl Who Married a Lion relate a way of looking at the world, tells you what sort of things are high priorities for people who live in the bush, and let’s you hear the voices of native speakers. They deal with drought, selfish behavior, fears of the wild animals, and magical powers.

I was struck at how often songs made up on the spot played a role in these stories.  I have always thought that learning a language teaches you a great deal about another culture, because it reveals assumptions and tells you what is important and not so important in that culture.  If you can’t learn the language, then folk tales run a close second. And Kerry Dexter is about to chime in here and say that nothing is better than folk music for teaching about a culture.

In these stories, although we don’t hear the music, we definitely see the thought process that goes into creating the songs that people use as an every day medium of expression.

Photograph from Flickr via Creative Commons, taken by “etrusia_uk”

Have you ever read folk tales of a country you are visiting to help you understand their culture? Share your thoughts here.

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