Across Africa

 A few nights ago, I began another book, "Dark Star Safari" by Paul Theroux.

Theroux is a writer whose best-known works are accounts of his travels.  Years ago (1979), I read "The Old Patagonian Express", his account of traveling from Massachusetts to Argentina by train.  On my recent trip to the bookstore, I picked up a copy of this more recent book (2002) which tells of his journey across the African continent from Cairo to Cape Town.  As a young college graduate, Theroux joined the Peace Corps in 1963 and was a teacher in Malawi.  In 1965 he moved to Uganda to teach English at a university there.  Years later he wanted to return to that continent.  The news from Africa is always so terrible..."acts of God, acts of tyrants, tribal warfare and plagues, floods and starvation."  "Feeling that there was more to Africa than misery and terror", he set out to rediscover the land that he had known so many years ago.  Although he found Africa to be poorer, more corrupt and more decrepit than before, he remains optimistic about its future.

I have read about one fifth of the book so far, and Theroux has traveled through Egypt, and Sudan, and is now in Ethiopia.  The book is informative, full of adventure, and thoroughly enjoyable.  As one reviewer wrote, the author maintains "a tricky balance of crankiness, curiosity and charm."

In his opening chapter the author writes that he wanted to be "out of touch", to disappear.  He wanted to drop out from a world in which one is always accessible via cell phone or the internet, and Africa was the perfect place to do that.  This struck a chord with me.  You know that I am a dinosaur.  My cell phone is never turned on and is there for emergencies.  Although I write a blog as a form of diary, I belong to no other type of social media.  I have no desire to be on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., etc.  I shake my head in disbelief when I see tourists walking down the street glued to their smart phones instead of taking in the sights and sounds around them.  Yes, I take lots of pictures, but my idea of travel is not to post on Instagram an inane selfie of myself in front of every famous landmark and wait for my followers to "like" the photo.  Perhaps the greatest feeling of tranquility that I have ever experienced were the days I spent (in a pre-internet, pre-Smart Phone era) in a jungle lodge along the Amazon.  My travel adventures cannot begin to compare to those of Theroux, but I can relate to what he writes in that first chapter.

I was looking at a list of Theroux's books (yes, on the internet... I am not a complete dinosaur) and I saw that his latest travel book is "On the Plain of Snakes... A Mexican Journey".  I am definitely going to search for that at the bookstore!