|
He meets old friends from the 1960s, some of whom have become powerful, like a minister in the Ugandan government. The worst of them stole from foreign donors and their own people, like the lowest thieves who rob the church's poor boxes. He is generally very well informed and has done the background research for his travel books. He travels overland--on bus, truck, matatu, train, boat--from Cairo to Cape Town taking numerous detours en route. 433)Theroux summarizes Africa as he sees it:"It is so much worse for Africans. I swore I would never return to the stinking buses, the city streets reeking of piss, the lying politicians, the schemers, the twaddlers, the crooks, the moneychangers taking advantage of weak currency and gullible people, the American God-botherers and evangelists demanding baptisms and screaming `Sinners.'--and forty years of virtue-industry CEOs faffing around with other people's money and getting no results, except Africans asking for more." (p.473)Theroux' Africa is not an optimistic place. He encounters hardships, although he tends to make a bit too much of them dramatizing the dangers to his own wellbeing. Theroux explains:"It is for someone else, not me, to evaluate the success or failure of charitable efforts in Africa.
272)Christian missionaries get their share, too, and rightly so. Paul Theroux is grumpy, but I don't mind. He spends time with Nadine Gordimer, the courageous South African writer, and her husband.Theroux paints a rather bleak picture of Africa. Offhand, I would say the whole push has been misguided, because it has gone on for too long with negligible results. In Dark Star Safari he returns to Africa where he used to live as a Peace Corps volunteer and teacher four decades earlier. For charities and NGOs, aid is business and they do not even plan to exit. His general observation is that virtually everything has gotten worse in the decades since most of the countries became independent. I like his laconic style and astute observations.
The most civilized ones I met never used the word `civilization.' The wickedest believed themselves to be anointed leaders for life, and wouldn't let go of their delusion. During the second trip he witnesses the brutal consequences of superstition in Malawi, the total collapse of rule of law and economy in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, and the corruption in relatively stable Zambia. Theroux doesn't mince words, meeting a particularly dogmatic missionary on a train in Mozambique:"Mozambicans were not sufficiently unhappy, not poor enough, not sick enough, not adequately deluded; they needed to feel worse, more blameworthy, more sinful, abused for merely having been born, for original sin was inescapable. If anyone had asked me to explain, my reasoning would have been: Where are the Africans in all this." (p. Foreign aid has tended to make things worse, creating dependence on aid.
He summarizes his relationship with Africa as follows:"I love the African bush--I missed it; but I hate African cities. 472)This edition of the book contains a postscript from when Paul Theroux returned to Africa in 2003, two years after his original trip. Yet the book is full of humanity and Paul Theroux meets many good people on his travels trying to make the best of a bad situation. The kindest Africans had not changed at all, and even after all these years the best of them are bare-assed." (p. And he writes well.
And like other missionaries, Susanna was determined to bully Africans into abandoning their ancient pantheism, which had been inspired by the animals and flowers of the bush, by the seasons, and by their long-held hopes and fears." (p. Government to government aid supports the dictators and thieves in power. Along the way he observers and talks to a variety of people, both African and foreign, ranging from shopkeepers, ship engine men on Lake Victoria and evicted white farmers in Zimbabwe to missionaries and aid workers (`agents of virtue,' he calls them disparagingly). Corruption is rampant virtually everywhere.
what was being provided by foreign donors was thought provoking. are now in disrepair, and Theroux feels this is due to the fact that they were never what the Africans needed or wanted in the first place, and if things are to change, Africans need to play a major role and be involved in the process from the beginning.Despite the negativity, it is apparent that Theroux still has deep feelings for Africa and even undertakes a game watching safari.I recommend this book to anyone that has an interest in Africa and wants to hear more than the guidebooks say. Dark Star Safari is an account of Paul Theroux's overland journey through Africa and his observations of how the continent has changed in the forty years since he had last been there.I found this book to be somewhat depressing, as Mr. Many of the buildings, roads, etc. You may not agree with all of Theroux's perceptions and opinions, but Dark Star Safari is an interesting read that will challenge you preconceived ideas about Africa. Theroux is very pessimistic towards Africa and his experiences there. I feel much of his negativity is coming from the basis of comparison of his previous African experiences, and if this was his first trip to Africa the book may have had a very different tone (he'd still be grumpy though).He has little patience for the aid workers in their fancy Land Rovers and the naive tourists going to see animals on safari, and also has some controversial views on the solutions to the problems in Africa.I found his questioning of foreign aid interesting and his assessment of what the Africans needed vs.
We must be grateful for what we've been given, but it's not for the faint-hearted.Also the atheism grates a bit, even to a secular spiritualist.
I dislike some of the language used in the book, but I realize that this is a non-fiction book and he must report conversations accurately. I recommend the book to everyone who is interested in a truthful look at the rest of the world at the time of Mr. Paul Theroux has done a magnificent job of combining an entertaining travel log with a no-nonsense look at the political, social, and financial issues of each country, city, and village that he visits. All in all, I enjoyed the book and feel I am better educated about some of the world than I was before. Theroux's travels in the subject area. Additionally, he delves into the personality traits of the various people and governmental authorities he encounters. Consequently, I have a much better understanding of why these countries are the way they are.
Hence, it is a shame to end the book with an inane diatribe that is as self-assured and pompous as anything that comes out of the Ohio missionary.Ultimately, I found the cocksure denouncements of both aid workers and missionaries from a man concerned with procuring himself an 'authentic' African experience too much. Because Theroux was quite perceptive of the complexities of African life, it is a shame that his notion of Christianity in Africa is every bit as simplistic as a fundamentalist's biblical literalism. He admires the courage of the martyred Father John Kaiser in Kenya, and the nuns whose commitment to Africa runs deeper than any aid worker. Dark Star Safari is both fascinating and supremely self-indulgent. By the end of the book, he was insufferable. However, Theroux ignores the fact that many of the agencies he criticizes by name are largely staffed by Africans, and not by foreigners. Theroux may be an irritable crank, but his portraits of Malawi and Zimbabwe in particular give remarkable insight into what has changed in Africa and why.I think many readers familiar with Africa will be receptive to his criticism of foreign aid agencies for creating a dependence on donor money throughout the continent. This may not seem like a major oversight, but he is constantly harping on the failures of foreign "agents of virtue" joy-riding around Africa in fancy Land Rovers, but one wonders if he might have actually observed some relief work instead of just cursing the aid workers who didn't feel like giving him a lift when he stuck his thumb out.Where he ultimately lost me was in his belittling, self-righteous rant directed at a missionary from Ohio he met on a train in Mozambique.
|
