Author explores Africa in back alleys and buses

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Books Editor

Paul Theroux, photographed at his Pupukea home, says he travels "for the pure joy of it ... My motto is, Grin like a dog and wander aimlessly." Advertiser library photo • May 5, 2001

Paul Theroux follows a phrase like this — "The jaunt on horseback that early evening in Gaza was gorgeous" — with a description like this: "Trotting through back alleys that reeked of rotting food and litter, we passed basins of dirty water and buckets of garbage and chamber pots that were being emptied from upper balconies."

Traveling the Osama Road in Sudan (labeled "hazardous" for tourists), Theroux quotes explorer David Livingstone with deep fellow feeling: "The mere animal pleasure of traveling in a wild unexplored country is very great."

In the opening chapter of "Dark Star Safari Overland from Cairo to Cape Town" (Houghton Mifflin, hardback, $28), Theroux admits that, in addition to the spirit of adventure that has animated all his travel books, he has a petty reason for lighting out: a frustration with being too reachable, a chafing under the domesticity of his life in Pupukea with wife Sheila Donnelly ("Mr. Paul at home every evening when Mrs. Paul comes home from work ... The writer in his apron, perspiring over his bechamel sauce, always within earshot of the phone ... ").

If Theroux's curmudgeonly pronouncements grate on you, if you wonder about the fairness of drawing broad conclusions from narrow observations, if you are unwilling to accept Theroux's premise about travel reporting — "I saw it, you didn't, therefore I am licensed to exaggerate" — don't read this. Your blood will boil.

But if you appreciate a fine writer in his finest form, if you are curious about Africa, if you delight in eccentricity, make the trek with Theroux. The premise for the book was simple: Return to Africa (where he had spent years teaching in the 1960s) and see it from the ground, walking, hitching, riding buses and trains from north to south, Egypt to South Africa.

We caught up with Theroux, miserably reachable again, via e-mail between cities on his book tour, a form of travel we suspect is much more torturous to him than any crowded, broken-down African bus. Here are excerpts from our Q. & A.

A. For such a long, shapeless trip, the advance work is to psych myself up for it and to be in good physical condition. ... I did a lot of advance work in terms of finding out how to get from A to B — is there a bus? A train? A cattle truck? ... I had a reservation in Cairo, and after that, none. I had no idea when I would get to South Africa. When I got to Cape Town, I bought a one-way ticket home.

Q. What, exactly, did you take on this trip?

A. One change of clothes, a safari jacket, a pair of shoes, a pair of sandals, a sweater, a short-wave radio in a Patagonia MLC bag. Papers, reading books, notebooks and maps in a briefcase. About $2,000 in small bills. When my clothes wore out I bought used ones in the African markets —

T-shirts that had been sent in clothes-for-Africa drives. I had a nice one lettered "Top Notch Plumbing."

Q. What is your technique for notetaking and recording your experiences?

A. Making an accurate record of such a long trip is the hardest aspect. I have no tape recorder or typewriter with me — no electronics at all. I carry a small notebook and scribble in it all day. In the evening I transcribe these notes into a big notebook, a lengthy process.

Q. Do the people you're talking to know they're going to be quoted and appear as "characters" in your drama?

A. I strike up conversations with people as much as possible. This is my specialty, the "low-level meeting." When I am alone, I write down the elements of the conversation. I don't tell people that I am going to quote them — anyway, illiteracy rates have risen so high in Africa I assume few of the people I talk to can actually read. I might add that I would never compromise a person if I thought my quote would hurt them politically.

Q. When did the title "Dark Star" occur to you?

A. I like the oxymoronic quality of "dark star" and often felt, en route, that I was in another galaxy, not connected to the First World. Africa is a wonderful place for traveling, for becoming lost and found, strangeness, for personal mythomania, which I suppose I indulge in now and then.

Q. Throughout the book, you write "Africa is ... " with a different definition, descriptor, impression. Was this book in any way an attempt to define Africa today?

A. No specific definition seems to work because there are 53 countries on the African continent and all of them are different while having certain characteristics in common. The size is daunting. This is why, when people talk about "solving Africa's problems" they are talking through their hat.

If someone wants to understand it, I would say: Join the Peace Corps, spend two years as a teacher or helper, then you will get some idea of it. You will be the better for it, but Africa will not have changed at all for your being there.

Q. It's difficult, reading your book, to escape the conclusion that many African countries were better off under colonial rule. But then there's the vexing question of trains that run on time: Are they worth oppression?

A. Colonialism was a racket ... racism is ingrained in the imperial process. ... (Lots of these elements were apparent in Hawai'i, where racial politics were practiced.)

The colonial powers left very few educated people behind — too few to govern well. The result is that charities run lots of the institutions. But charities often have an agenda for Africans — making converts, selling them Western values, diverting their attention, and, worst of all, propping up tyrannies. I am not talking about emergency aid but the perpetual aid-giving which leads to no development or to corruption.

I read in the Advertiser a few months ago that a school in Kailua collects money and sends it to a school in Zambia so the kids can have hot breakfasts. This is an admirable thing — mahalo, kids! But do they know that the Zambia minister of finance was arrested two months ago for stealing $33 million? How many hot breakfasts is that?

Q. It has been said that your strength is your weakness: That you are so fine a writer that many are drawn in to the enjoyment of your work and therefore to your conclusions, without questioning them, and that your technique of drawing big conclusions based on small encounters is faulty.

A. Look at "The Structures of Everyday Life," a wonderful history of world culture by Fernand Braudel. He describes how people began using spoons, wearing pants, drinking coffee on the basis of travelers' tales. All accurate writing in the world has a historical significance, even if it is just a tiny detail. I know this because I have been back and forth to Africa for 40 years and my earlier writing is like an old picture, with valuable quaintness. Perhaps I am also talking about oral history, because I like to have long conversations with older people on my trips and ask them about the past — not enough of this has been done in the world, the observation of the working person has been lost. ... That's a good reason for traveling and note-taking — and inevitably I generalize. But I feel if I write the truth I will be vindicated and truthful writing is often prophetic.

I suppose that sounds pompous. I also travel for the pure joy of it, for the freedom of it, to find space. My motto is, Grin like a dog and wander aimlessly.