Farce or Lark? - Roosevelt's African Safari

 

A review of Hunting for Teddy Roosevelt by James Ross, Regal House Publishing, 2020.

 

     This is an interestingly odd book. It is fiction intertwined with bits of real history. The basic premise comes from Theodore Roosevelt’s African safari which he undertook in 1909 after finishing his second term as president.  Roosevelt took the trip to escape from the pressures of politics and to reflect upon his decision not to seek a third term. All this comes out in the book. The fictional plot revolves around efforts to assassinate the ex-president and his uncanny ability to escape.  The depiction of Roosevelt is believable, but other characters are not as well drawn.

     In reality on this safari Roosevelt did indeed slaughter thousands of animals purportedly at the request of the Smithsonian Institute which wanted specimens for its collection. Roosevelt’s actual recollections of hunting encounters are used to lead into various chapters.  His son Elliot accompanies him (true) and they do have an odd (fictional) encounter with Paul von Lettow (a real German military officer who commanded the German army in East Africa during World War I). Other characters – journalist Maggie Ryan, various safari personnel, the assassin, etc. are all fictional.

     Although the story did move along satisfactorily, I became captivated by the errors, dissidences and leaps of credibility that abound in the book. Some misrepresentations can be attributed to the various characters, but most are the responsibility of the author.  The book is fiction, of course, and the author is entitled to rearrange geography and cultures as desired or necessary for the story, but I found that such shortcomings substantially distracted from the gist of the tale. For example:

Outlining the intended itinerary from the African highlands, to the Serengeti, to Mt. Kilimanjaro and then Lake Victoria, zig zags Kenya’s geography.

Tuaregs are described as slavers in Sudan.  In reality they live in the central Sahara, two thousand miles west.

Roosevelt rode on the “railroad linking Nairobi to Lake Albert.”  The rail line did pass through Nairobi, but it linked Mombasa to Lake Victoria.

The Swahili word “pembe” was employed at least six times to refer to local alcoholic beverages. “Pembe” means horn or antlers. The correct word is “pombe.”

TR is credited with staying on a sisal farm in the Aberdares.  That area is much too cold and wet for sisal.

“Faru” is used instead of “Kifaru” for rhino. Africans would have used the correct term.

There are several references to the Congo Free State owned by King Leopold of Belgium. At the time of Roosevelt’s safari, the Congo had been taken over by the Belgian government as a colony.

A lion hunt is described as “simba kuwinda” i.e. lion to hunt, correct would be “kuwinda simba” to hunt lion (object not subject).

Author Ross puts the Samburu people from northern Kenya in Kamba country (just outside Nairobi). Also, it is proposed to resettle them from there to Muranga so to free arable land for white settlers.  That is all wrong, the arid Athi Plains where the Samburu ostensibly lived were unsuitable for farming whereas Muranga is prime agricultural territory. The fact that Muranga, even then, was well populated by Kikuyu people is ignored. Later the author places the Kamba in Tanganyika. Why not just deal with the people who really lived there – the Kamba and Maasai people of the Athi/Amboseli area and the Chaga in Tanganyika

On several occasions the author refers to “mimosa” trees and “fire” ants. There were no mimosa trees in Africa at the time. Fire ants is an American, not an African term.

Author Ross describes the bandits encountered in Sudan over and over as Fulani. The Fulani people are pastoralists who live in the Sahael region of Africa south of the Sahara, thousands of miles west of the Sudan.  Sudan has many indigenous groups that engaged in banditry and slavery, why import foreigners?

At one point it is proposed to cross Lake Tanganyika from Kigoma (in German East Africa) to Kalemie, Congo.  The town of Albertville, Congo was not renamed Kalemie until 1971. This is a grievous error for a former Peace Corps Volunteer in the Congo.

Equally puzzling was a reference to the battleship Maine being sunk in the Philippines. Surely Teddy Roosevelt knew it was sunk in Cuba.

The fact that atrocities were inflicted on natives of the Belgian Congo, including severing of hands when rubber collection quotas were not met, is a true theme reflected in the novel. However, at one-point starving and mutilated victims of such horrors are described as Tutsi and their persecutors Hutu.  In actuality, Rwanda/Burundi, home of the Tutsi and Hutu, in 1909 were under the suzerainty of Germany, not Belgium. They were not victims of rubber exploitation.  I thought this bit to be a gratuitous reference to genocide which would not occur for another eighty years.   

Finally, our intrepid heroes defied geography throughout the tome covering, by foot or horseback, hundreds or even thousands of miles in days. On their trek through northern Uganda into the Sudan, they pass just north of “Victoria Falls.”   They might have been near Murchinson Falls, but Vic Falls were then and still are 2000 miles to the south.

     As noted above I enjoyed this novel as much as for the discrepancies as for the tale.  However, for those not disturbed by the errors, it is a pleasant extrapolation of Roosevelt’s safari.