Being the first Africa book I read and considering I was reading it as I landed in Africa for the fist time, you can understand why I consider this one of the more influential books in my Africa experience.
Theroux’s overland safari takes us all the way down Eastern Africa “from Cairo to Capetown.” He passes through Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, and South Africa. His accounts of the various landscapes, people, and cultures of these countries are intriguing and definitely gave me a good idea of where I was going. However, his cynicism and jaded attitude struck me the most. He overly romanticizes the Peace Corps and excessively berates any other foreign aid workers. After an extended rant about aid workers who naively think they can positively contribute to development in Africa and a concurrent discussion on the negative dependence created within African governments by the outside hand of foreign aid, he arrogantly suggests that his offer to teach university students for 1 week in Malawi is valuable and should be received with open arms. His contradictory and hypocritical approach lends a “holier than thou” tint to his writings. I was happy to see that he recognized his own hypocrisy and admits that his offer to teach was more to assuage his fear of aging (he was celebrating his 60th birthday) than to truly help those in need.
Despite this, I appreciated Theroux’s hard criticism of 3rd world development and its various actors. I will be considering his opinions and developing my own on this topic for quite some time, I am sure. 101paige 101reviews
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