Paul Theroux: Dark Star Safari

By MICHAEL LARSEN

It was not with the greatest enthusiasm that I opened this, the latest in a vast number of travelogues by American Paul Theroux. He was patronisingly dismissive of parts of New Zealand when he ventured here, and so I was prepared for an equally smug and flippant account of his overland expedition from Cairo to Cape Town.

I arrived a sceptic and left a convert. What a marvellous tale. Theroux taught in Uganda and Malawi in the 60s, so this trip down the eastern side of the vast continent is a homecoming of sorts, an opportunity to gauge and report change and development. Or lack thereof.

Theroux's narrative style is eminently readable, weaving personal experiences with solid historical knowledge, and coating it all with some beautiful descriptive passages. He stops long enough to let us look at the sights, and then whisks us off again, by overcrowded, smelly transport: a rickety bus in Tanzania, dangerous trucks in Southern Ethiopia, a dugout down the Zambezi river, a steamer across Lake Victoria. He is determined to avoid being lumped in with the consumer tourists he so loathes.

He introduces us to some very prominent figures - most of his peers from the 60s are now in power - and it is these interviews, contrasted with the locals he meets, that provide him with the perfect opportunity to show the great divide between the corrupt despots and their impoverished citizens.

The honesty, of course, comes from the people. He asks his Shire River boatman, "Do you ever think about the president?" "No. Because he never thinks about me," comes the perfect reply.

The lack of interest that the people have in their own destiny is a constant cause of frustration for Theroux, but he has an epiphany in Malawi: "Only Africans were capable of making a difference in Africa."

He rails against the aid workers - agents of subversion he calls them - in their brand new Land Cruisers, swanning around in hotels while the people they were supposed to be helping starved. "I seldom saw relief workers that did not remind me in some way of people herding animals and throwing food to them."

An easy target, sure, but his research, and sheer determination to get in among the real Africa lends pretty substantial weight to his arguments.

He peppers his prose with anecdotes from those in whose footsteps he follows - Rimbaud, Flaubert, Sir Richard Burton - which help shade but never overwrite his own text.

What I enjoyed most were his dissertations on travelling itself - why he did it, why he wrote about it, the ethos of his journey. "Happiness was unthinkable, for although happiness is desirable, it is a banal subject for travel; therefore Africa seemed perfect for a long journey."

Sure, he covers a great deal in a short time, and the sections on Johannesburg and Cape Town are probably the least interesting. But even so, he always writes beautifully, knowledgeably and colourfully, never once letting anything get in the way of his passionate love of the dark star continent.

* Hamish Hamilton $34.95

* Michael Larsen is an Auckland freelance writer.