"What am I doing here?"
| Friday January 24, 2014 15:12
The Last Train to Zone Verde: My Ultimate African Safari is Paul Theroux's 16th travelogue. There is a lot of tongue-in-cheek here. For example, he travels by elephant back, hired tourist taxis, limousines and rickety old buses, but only twice on a train, and never in Angola. He missed a number of opportunities to ride on trains, he even missed the last train to Zona Verde, and then gave up, retreated, flew back to Cape Town instead of going on to West Africa. Zona Verde is not a specific destination, just an Angolan expression for ‘the bush’. Theroux claims he loves the bush and its hardships over any city, even when encased in the luxury of a five star hotel. He has a lot to say about the horrors of African cities.
The subtitle is 'Ultimate African Safari', and ultimate may mean 'last' or 'best'.
Two very different meanings - in this case Paul’s worst safari is his final one. It is probably because of this ambiguity that outside America it is subtitled Overland from Cape Town to Angola. Theroux began his career writing about Africa following his sojourns in Malawi as a Peace Corps volunteer (1963-1964) and as an extra mural instructor at Makerere University (1965-1968).
Those who loved Paul Theroux's train travelogues, The Great Railway Bazaar (the sub-Continent), The Old Patagonian Express (South America) and Riding the Red Rooster (China), found his form of propulsion altered in his other safaris, particularly his Dark Star Safari (2002) where he went by 'river and lake boats, planes, old trains, deluxe trains, taxis, small buses, large buses, trucks, an overlander 6WD and 4WD safari vehicles, a dugout canoe, a hired car, and where necessary (to cross borders mainly) by foot'(Mmegi January 31 2003). This was followed by Ghost Train to the Eastern Star’ (2008) where he pursued a route previously taken 33-years before (Mmegi, March 6 2009). Now after ten years away he has returned to Africa, intending to go from Cape Town through West Africa, perhaps to Dakar?
Reviewing Dark Star Safari I noted that Theroux, 'raves against African cities, aid workers in Africa and general disintegration. Less dominant are his passions against 'Third World Resorts', 'Over Landers’ and aging'. A decade later these concerns are repeated, and his love of Cape Town sustained. He did discover an exception to his biases in Namibia and that Angola was worse than he had ever imagined. He begins, 'Happy again, back in Africa, the kingdom of light, I was stamping out a new path”. In the mother city he left his deluxe hotel to visit various settlements to the east.
Much of this book becomes a meditation on the meaning of travel. He says, 'In Africa we see human history turned upside down and it is possible in Africa to see where we have gone wrong' … 'The window of Africa is a distorted mirror that partly reflects the viewer’s own face'. It is in northeast Namibia, in the Nyae-Nyae Conservancy, the home of the !Kung or Ju/’hoansi—the 'real people'that he was happiest. Theroux was invited to Tsumkwe to give a talk at a major celebration on 'Preserving a Cultural Heritage”. He reiterates that 'Africa was plagued by foreign advisors', but he was open to learn. His talk came first and he made recommendations. Then he learned that what he had called for had already been implemented over the years by Namibians and expatriates, and he was impressed: “I saw that I had been hasty in judging some of the efforts by outsiders”.
It is unfortunate he did not have time to learn more about the Nyae-Nyae village schools project, or discover Marjorie Shostak’s ‘Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung woman’ or re-read Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’s ‘The Harmless People’ (published in 1959, not 1991)—this might have given him more insights from the work of anthropologists, whom he also likes to criticise. There are lots of places in this book where it would have benefited from rigorous fact checking. I was disappointed that he quoted Namibians, like Dr Zedekia Ngavirue, who became a founder of Namibia, from a document 51 years ago, without meeting him when there.
He did meet Werner Hillebrecht, and one of the most knowledgeable people on Namibia, but never learned his surname, perhaps never talked to him. It also helps to have all place names mentioned in the text included on the maps—many were missing. Since 1960 most African countries’ populations have gone up five times in fifty years, yet he says they will only double in the next forty?
Before moving on to Angola, Theroux had a holiday at “One of these camps you could splash through the swamps on the backs of elephants, in what was one of Arica’s most expensive safaris” - US$2 500 (P21,000) a day.
He crossed into Botswana at a new border crossing between Dobe and !Xai-!Xai and on to the western side of the Okavango Delta for five days at Abu Camp. He let himself enjoy this luxurious experience, and then turned west back into Namibia for a taste of Etosha, a place that was bound to disappoint him after the pristine Okavango. After he’d left Africa Theroux learned that his identity had been stolen in Namibia and US$48,000 (P412,000) run up on his credit card; which was why it had stopped working in Angola.
“Angola was pretty much terra incognita”. He was told, “No one went to Angola because it was so dreadful”. Even before he got out of Namibia, Theroux was having reservations: “I was soon in a world of roadblocks and mobs, of terrible roads or no roads at all, a world of lies and scamming and crooked policemen … Why was I here? Over the following legs of my trip I attempted to answer the question. At first glance it seemed sheer perversity for me to be here, and foolishness to go further north”. It is not easy to get a visa to enter Angola. There must be a formal, notarised letter of invitation, character references, plus a series of prepaid air and hotel and tour reservations, a seven-page form to fill out, and more.
Theroux had to pay US$200 (P1,700) to apply, wait months, and the first time he was rejected. He did have an invitation to visit schools and colleges, to teach, and give talks. After transiting from Ovamboland in northern Namibia he entered a battle-scarred area fought over for years between SWAPO and South African forces, and in battles between Unita and MPLA (different Namibians have written a lot about their experiences in Angola; a literature he missed). It is 500 km between the border and Lubango, where he was first to teach, and it took days to get there on battered old buses. He didn’t even know he was already in the Zona Verde. Yet on this leg of his trip he had a number of memorable experiences, including witnessing an Efundula nubility ceremony.
The nicest place he found was the international school in Luanda, but it charged fees to foreigners and newly rich Angolans of US$47,000 (P404,000) a year. The oil wealth was not benefiting the majority, and he met many people who recognised and complained about this. I am constantly bothered by his tendency for absolutes: no, never, all, no one, nothing more, only place, to which even Theroux would find exceptions. Even in his Massachusetts, a county was settled in the early 1700s by prisoners and indentured servants.
He gets extremely ruminative: 'this sort of travel is only fantasy'. He becomes his own critic and goes on for pages of philosophising, when he still has one hundred pages to go to the end. The final chapter is “What am I doing here'. He found he had to develop an exit strategy, reasons for him to abort the trip. In this Theroux succeeds.
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