Life and Death in the Sahara

 

A review of Sahara Unveiled – A Journey Across the Desert by William Langewiesche, Pantheon Books, NY, 1996.

 

I found this interesting book in the library, a branch that I don’t normally visit. It appealed to me because I drove across the Sahara in 1970.  Twenty years later during Langewiesche’s trip the physical challenge of the terrain remained immutable. Roads were terrible to non-existent. There was scant vegetation, mostly thousands of miles of a moonscape of rock and sand. The nights were clear and chilly. However, other things, i.e. bureaucracy, corruption, politics, danger, hostility, the size of settlements, the nature of trade, had changed for the worse in the time between our respective journeys.

Langewiesche starts his chronicle in Algiers, noting several times on his southward jaunt, that he had been there before. However, he never explained how or why he had travelled the desert before. In any case, prior knowledge allowed him to connect or reconnect with friends or acquaintances from earlier times. Through them he painted a realistic portrait of life in the oases of the Sahara.  Life was hardscrabble. Heat overwhelming.  Women were cloistered.  Male dominated Islamic society prevalent. The economy in shambles. Yet, the outside world, especially dreams of it, filtered in. In the central Sahara, Tuareg nomads strove to continue their traditional lifestyle, but trucks were replacing camels and modern weapons permitted banditry and rebellion to reach new heights.  Berber Arabs, Tuaregs and black Africans from the south were united by Islam, but tensions of eons old clashing cultures prevailed.

The author described the horrors – and gave numerous examples - of individuals being lost, abandoned, and dying of thirst.  Such afflictions were visited upon the desert dwellers through miscalculations. More than one of the author’s acquaintances lost relatives to the desert.  At least Saharans knew the risks, but outside visitors – trans Saharan tourists - often died because of ignorance. 

Langewiesche digressed to describe the desert’s devolution from green well-watered grasslands tens of thousands of years ago to today’s aridness which is still increasing. He also related the impact of 19^th and 20^th century French colonialism on the region, especially as it generated lingering hatred of France on the part of Algerians.  The author detailed how French romanticism of the “noble savage” Tuareg people precluded them from achieving a more balanced role in contemporary Saharan nations. Langewiesche’s discussion of the causes of Tuareg rebellion in the 1990s was excellent but even more useful in explaining conflict in the region during the years since.    

In sum, Sahara Unveiled is a fascinating and still valid portrait of a little-known corner of the world. Langewiesche told it as it was, warts and all. He certainly became part of the story but remained objective to the end. This book is an entertaining adventure story in and of itself. However, it is also an extremely useful read for anyone concerned with ongoing conflicts in the Sahara in Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Libya.

Journey through the heart of darkness

 

A review of Crossing the Congo by Mike Martin, Chloe Baker and Charlie Hatch-Barnwell, Hurst and Company, London, 2016.

First, a disclaimer; I drove across the northern half of the Congo in 1970. Roads were bad. We got stuck, had breakdowns, had to scrounge for spares, got arrested suspected of being mercenaries, got sick, got badgered by erstwhile officials. However, we found the people curious, friendly, and generally willing to help. Our trip some 43 years before team Mike, Chloe and Charlie’s undertaking was a walk in the park in comparison. Theirs was horrendous.

The saga told in this book began in London, followed by a long meander through West Africa.  Instead of retracing their route homeward, Mike and Chloe decided to circle down through the Congo and back up north to South Sudan, a journey of 2500 miles. They enlisted a friend, Charlie whose wonderful photographs fill the book and provide visual proof of their trials.  The three canvassed Kinshasa for permits, permissions, and advice. They also endeavored to put their old short wheelbase Land Rover into good enough shape for the trip. (We also drove a similar vehicle in 1970, but ours was in much better condition.) The Congo three barely get a passing grade for vehicle astuteness. Yes, they finally got through, but mostly on luck, not vehicle prowess.  However, whenever they broke down, which was almost daily, they jury rigged a part or just duck taped it back together until a better repair could be made.

Roads were the worst physical problem. They headed first to Kananga, southeast of Kinshasa but the road was destroyed and rutted by huge mining trucks and impassable for regular vehicles.  Then, they tackled the south/north route from Kananga straight to Kisangani 800 miles across the heart of the Congo basin rainforest, a route which had not been traversed by a vehicle in a decade. Because of war and neglect, the road essentially had retreated into jungle - bridges had given way, ferries non-existent, trees fallen across the path. Often the land rover had to be dug or dragged out of mud holes.  The team reinforced stream crossings and even built a raft to cross a river.  The physical effort was enormous and took a toll.

Worse, however, than an unreliable vehicle and abominable roads were the suspicions, harassments and negative attitudes from Congolese, especially those in authority.  Everyone assumed that three foreigners were chickens ripe for plucking.  There were interminable checks of papers and intentions.  No official could believe the three just wanted to drive through.  Congolese society was so corrupt for so long that there was sheer disbelief that the three were not on some nefarious mission. At one point a “big man” had trees felled across the road to impede their progress.  Even Congolese Catholic priests tried to price gouge them. Similarly, the crowds of people the three drew would pilfer as soon as a back was turned.  Occasionally, however, an individual or two would be genuinely helpful, but that was the welcome exception rather than the rule.

This book is beautifully written – mostly by Mike – and lavishly illustrated by Charlie’s photos.  It provides the detail of the difficulties alluded to above. It is indeed a sad commentary that the Congo has regressed so much both in terms of physical infrastructure and human kindness and courtesy in the past fifty years. Indeed, the Congo today is a sad, neglected, desperate place.  Big kudos to the three for their journey through the heart of darkness.

Chuckles and Anguish in Libya

 

A review of 101 Arabian Tales - How We All Preserved in Peace Corps Libya by Randolph W. Hobler.

  In 1968 several dozen naïve American Peace Corps Volunteers confronted 12th century Libyan culture.  This collection of anecdotes from the first volunteers to go to Libya in the late 1960s recounts encounters with huge cockroaches, rabid dogs, male dominated society, cloistered women, primitive sanitation, Islamic strictures, bureaucracies (both theirs and ours) even as they taught  English to fifth graders and learned Arabic from peers.  The idealism and the optimism of the young Americans is infectious as they are alternately bewildered or enchanted by their Libyan hosts. They ate camel burgers, dodged the draft, fell in love, travelled extensively and taught their classes, but above all they made a difference. Their lives were irreducibly changed, and so perhaps were their students and friends. But it quickly came to an end with the coup d’etat that brought Gaddafi to power.  This collective memoir based on diaries and recollections aptly captures the era, the challenges, the despair and the accomplishments of Peace Corps Volunteers sent to bring enlightenment to a most backward corner of the world.  

 This is a very unusual Peace Corps memoir in that it is not one person’s story. Although author Randy Hobler does tell his saga, he makes a point to add and cite observations, anecdotes and recollections of dozens of his peers. The sum then is much greater than its parts. The book is indeed a compendium of all that was experienced by the first two groups of Peace Corps Volunteers to go to Libya.  Assigned to isolated village schools - the women to urban schools - their task was to teach fifth graders English. Along the way they needed to build Arabic language proficiency, which they began in training so as to function in their various communities. They had a tough time, especially the women who were compelled to operate in a society that disdained females.  But for all experience overcame ignorance, flexibly conquered stodginess, brashness and innovation won out.  Hey, they were twenty-one so open to the newness - to them - of a structured, inflexible archaic religious dominated culture.  

The book takes a chronological approach to their experience. First was training in either Utah for the single men or Arizona for the women and married couples.  Mostly training was ineffective. Arabic lessons were meager, TEFL training poor, and cross culture education lean.  The prospect of “de-selection”, meaning you got sent home on specious psychological criteria tainted the whole process. However, the trainees bonded and such bonds would be needed in Libya.

In Libya the now sworn in volunteers dispersed to various posts, some in cities of Tripoli, Bengazi or Derna, but most to isolated villages in the interior and a few to oases far south in the Sahara desert. Aside from enthusiasm, the PCVs were poorly prepared for what they encountered.  No one spoke English and their Arabic was rudimentary.  Students were incorrigible.  Housing was abominable, often a small room shared with Libyan colleagues. Water and food were well below standards. Intestinal or insect generated disease was common.  Above all was the challenge of integrating themselves into their communities.  Folks were uniformly hospitable, but circumstances were bizarre.  PCVs had to learn how to cope in order not to offend.

The book digresses in the summer of 1969 to detail lots of regional and European travel , but then picks up again and closes with the problems arising from Gaddafi’s take over and the resulting expulsion of Americans.  It was hard to leave, but all finally made it out safely.

Finally, after naming so many volunteers during the course of the memoir and relating their individual memories, the book closes with an epilogue of what many ultimately did in life after Libya.

I have read dozens of Peace Corps memoirs and always find the impact of service on the individual writer to be profound.  However, this memoir contains not just the memories and observations of one volunteer but of dozens. It is therefore that much more authoritative. It does encapsulate a time and a country experience - one that was not likely replicated anywhere else.  It is truly an opus of cross cultural blunders and inspired rectifications.   The author’s breezy whimsical style is readable and the book is full of relevant photos. This is a good read. Former volunteers from anywhere will appreciate and nod affirmatively at many of the recitations. Other readers will enjoy the saga - we came, we immersed, we persevered.    

 

More Horror From Rwanda

 

A review of Left to Tell:  Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, by Immaculee Ilibagiza, Hay House Books 2020.

 

This is an intense personal chronicle of a young woman who survived the genocide by hiding, along with six others, in a small bathroom for eight weeks. Around them the genocide raged stoked by ethnic animosities, which inflamed rural Rwanda pitting neighbors and friends against each other.  Essentially in Immaculee’s region the Tutsi were wiped out including her parents and two brothers. A third brother who was studying abroad also lived.

Immaculee tells her story in a stark compelling narrative. As do many others still today, she never fully understands the why, but she did clearly grasp the danger and threat of imminent death should she or others hidden with her be found by the killers.  Amidst the hiding and the menace of death, Immaculee relied upon her faith and built upon it for sustenance and hope.  Ultimately, she accepts the catastrophe of evil visited upon the Tutsi people and refuses to blame the killers but rather to forgive them.

All in all, Left to Tell is a gripping read that reveals a very personal story from a survivor of genocide. My only quibble is that the narration uses dialogue in quotations that obviously was created after the fact. Such a device contributes to the power of the story and gives it an immediacy that it would not otherwise have, so I must accept it.

Readers of Left to Tell will be astounded by the horror of the genocide, the courage of the victims and the bravery of those who saved some.     

Trauma in the Congo

 

A review of Land of Tears – The Exploration and Exploitation of Equatorial Africa by Robert Harms, Basic Books, NY 2019.

 

This is a definitive history of the greater Congo basin during the latter half of the nineteenth century until about 1908 when the Congo Free State was transferred to Belgium. It is a sad recitation because of the unbridled exploitation of the region first by slavers and seekers of ivory, followed by the misery forced on the inhabitants by rubber barons. The whole epoch reeks of unchecked abuses and atrocities sanctioned by theories of white superiority buttressed by rationales of commerce, Christianity, and civilization.  The abusers were anything but civilized.  

Author Harms traces the history of the region in part by focusing on three principle characters – explorer Henry Morton Stanley, slaver Tippu Tip, and explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza.  Each man was a force unto himself. Stanley as a fiercely determined explorer, the first European to traverse the Congo, and secondly as an operative who secured control of the central Congo for King Leopold II.  Although he was of mixed Africa/Arab heritage, Tippu Tip was culturally an Arab from Zanzibar who controlled the slave and ivory trade for years from his ruling post in Kosongo, eastern Congo. De Brazza came later onto the scene and successfully wrested authority over the western side of the Congo river for France. Stanley and Tippu Tip knew each other and interacted cautiously over the years.

These men notwithstanding, the tragedy of the Congo was written mostly on account of exploitation. First it was slaves sent by Arabs east to the markets of Zanzibar. Villages were raided and captives taken. Life for the people was completely disrupted.  Concomitantly, vast ivory stocks that had been accumulating for centuries in jungle villages were pillaged and also sent east.  Stanley and others in thrall to Leopold contested to acquire and send ivory west to the Atlantic.  The quest for this white gold became extremely violent as stocks were limited.  Slowly the external slave trade and Arab suzerainty were eliminated. However, the system of brutal acquisition transferred easily to rubber, where it became much more prevalent under authorities granted to concessional companies, both in the Congo Free State and in French territory. Villagers were compelled to produce quantities of wild rubber upon pain of death. Many were killed, maimed – hands and ears cut off, hostages taken, men flogged, etc. to compel production.  But like ivory, wild rubber too was an un-replenishable resource. 

The victims of exploitation were the African inhabitants of the region.  Probably more than 3 million perished.  Author Harms goes to some length to acknowledge that Congo basin villages had working political systems based on the rule of a “big man.”  However, the nature of the vast rain forest limited inter connectivity and there were no larger political groupings.  This made outside exploitation easier as villagers could not raise coalitions to combat the interlopers.  Yet, they resisted. Rebellion was brutally suppressed. Harms notes that as the Arabs/Europeans sought to extend control beyond the forest, they encountered better organized local opposition.

Against the backdrop of what was going on in Africa, Harms recounts machinations in Europe regarding the Congo. His detailed history tabulates King Leopold’s quest to own the region, the complex diplomacy of Europe, the justification (and hypocrisy) of anti-slavery motivations, and the corruption involved in it all.   It is a telling indictment of greed, manipulation and narcissism run amuck. Calls for the civilizing mission won over the public until it finally became evident that the exploitation of the Congo basin was based on extreme abuses of the indigenous people.  For this there was little final reckoning, instead the   brutal coercive systems were subsumed into government run colonialism that lasted another sixty years.   

Harms certainly did his homework. This is a well-researched, well documented history.  Sources were not just European diaries and records, but also recollections by Africans. The sum is a definitive study of Equatorial Africa in the time referenced.  Besides that, it is an engaging read of interest not just to scholars, but to a wider readership.       

Interview with Robert Gribbin, author of The Last Rhino

Q. Why did you write this book?

A. I lived many years in Africa and have accumulated many stories and anecdotes about life there and interactions amongst people. A number of these items have been published here and there.   I wrote an earlier novel entitled State of Decay. In some ways The Last Rhino is a sequel.  At least in the sense that I used several characters from State of Decay and made vague references to their backstories. So, when I started thinking about a new book, I already had a setting – Africa – and a protagonist – Philippe. I just had to figure out a plot.

I find that fiction reveals as much in general terms of knowledge as does non-fiction. A realistic setting and reference to authentic events and places generates genuine understanding of issues.  The fictional part of it permits the author to create plot, concentrate on problems and to people the story with characters of his own choosing. 

Q. Do you have the plot mapped out ahead of time?

A. No, I do not. I know that some writers think it all through in advance and even outline where it is all going to go. Part of the fun for me is figuring it out as I go along…and as I go back to add something or flesh out a shorter bit. I mull things over while I reread and often get a new idea.  I am indebted to reader/reviewers who have pointed out what was good, what was bad, and what needed to be improved.  

Q. What is the major theme of The Last Rhino?

A. Obviously, conservation is a key theme.  Poaching is a real problem that has devastated big game throughout the continent. The Congo is no exception. I did want to draw attention to this crisis. I hope that the book does that. 

I realized as I was writing that another theme is that of second chances.  Most of the characters experienced difficulties in earlier phases of their lives. For example, Philippe gets to rebound from traumatic loss, both in his sense of self and mission but also in love. Godfrey and Sia sustained terrible shocks at the hands of the Lord’s Resistance Army.  Christopher goes from limited prospects to possibilities and so forth. One of my reviewers was pleased with the depiction of women, especially Marie. On the larger scale Garamba and its creatures have a second chance, as does the Congo itself – if, and it is a big if – if it can manage to bring some order out of chaos.  I left some hope that there might be a second chance for white Rhinos as well.

Q. What is the most fictional part of the story?

A. Most everything in the book is based on reality, but the Wayamba people as a tribe living near the park are fiction. Even so, their philosophy of life: self-contained, disdain for the modern world, living in harmony with nature and aspects of their political system can be found in real tribes in eastern Africa. I adapted what I needed for my plot.

Q. What about the rhinos?

A. Sadly, the white rhinos which used to range widely in Garamba Park are gone.  The remaining ones were probably killed by poachers about ten years ago. Only two northern white rhinos remain alive. They are zoo bred females, now captives in the Ole Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. It is hoped that one or both might be artificially inseminated by sperm from a southern white rhino, but this remains problematical. A healthy population of southern white rhinos exists in southern Africa and efforts are well advanced to protect black rhinos throughout their range in eastern Africa.   Yet, despite such efforts rhinos remain in danger of extinction as long as habitat is lost, and their horns are valued for medicinal and other purposes in Asia and the Arab world.

Q. Tell us about the cover photo.

A.  The photo is of a white rhino.  I took it in Meru Park, Kenya in 1983. Although well protected, accompanied daily by rangers and housed overnight in a corral, sadly that animal and two others were slaughtered by poachers a year or so later.

If readers have questions for the author, please post them in a comment.   

Music makes waves in Malawi

A review of The Warm Heart of Africa: An Outrageous Adventure of Love, Music, and Mishaps in Malawi by Jack Allison, P.C. Writers, 2020

This memoir of Peace Corps service in Malawi, Africa, has everything such a memoir should have. It is frank in describing the author’s qualms about joining the Peace Corps. It is candid when presenting in his reactions to finding himself dropped off relatively unprepared at his site. It is honest in descriptions of Allison's village of assignment and the warmth of its inhabitants. The author realistically reported on the poverty, problems and the various cultural interactions that both fire and misfire. He learned a lot along the way. To his credit Allison mastered Chichewa, the language of his region, undoubtedly – as all Peace Corps Volunteers would attest – fluency in language dramatically improved his Peace Corps experience. Allison also recounted the travels, the parties, and contacts with fellow volunteers.  He related many telling or amusing anecdotes.  Up to this point this memoir constituted a fairly normal recitation of the transformative experience that most PCVs undergo.

What made Allison’s experience different was that he was a song writer. He composed jingles about health issues – eating protein porridge, boiling water, washing hands, etc. – that he set to music and recorded with local bands. The songs became national hits propelling Allison to an unexpected stardom. The songs had a measurable impact on improving health nationwide.  Allison was feted by senior political figures, but when his profile got to be too grandiose, i.e. more popular than the president, he was expelled.

Many years later, Allison was invited back to reprise his songs and to compose new ones combating HIV/AIDS.

This memoir is one man’s story – and interesting enough for that alone - but it also sheds light upon Malawi in the sixties and the positive impact that the Peace Corps had upon that nation.