Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown. Paul Theroux. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003.
by Mikhal Hagstrom
Paul Theroux finds himself at one point on his journey through East Africa in the engine room of a cargo ferry in the middle of Lake Victoria.The engine is loud, the lights dim, and the room full of steam.And in the middle of this room is a man at a small table, a textbook and a page full of mathematical equations situated in front of him.Theroux turns to the chief engineer of the vessel, at this moment his tour guide, and writes (the noise rendering speaking useless), "What is he doing?" The engineer replies, "Boosting his academic qualifications for his employment" (p. 235).
Throughout Dark Star Safari, Theroux encounters hard working Africans.He uses words such as friendly, resilient, innovative, and resourceful.Yet he does not paint an optimistic picture of their respective countries.He blames corruption, thievery, and prostitution more on governments and aid organizations than on the people themselves.In fact, he states that the African people are the only ones who can really save their countries from poverty and corruption:
Only Africans were capable of making a difference in Africa. Everyone else, donors and volunteers and bankers, however idealistic, were simply agents of subversion. (327)
This is quite a statement from a man who is not an economist, and does not visit the offices of any relief or development organizations on this trip through Africa.The encounters he does have with aid workers are bad from the start.He asks several white workers cruising through in their land rovers for rides, and is turned down.On a bus he speaks with a woman who is going to "supervise a wet feeding," as she puts it.This sounds strangely like something you would do to an animal in almost anyone's ears.What she means is that she is going to feed one meal to some starving children in a village, and the move on to the next place.It does seems the aid workers he meets have it quite wrong.Yes still I am not conviced he encountered enough of these people to make the conclusions he does.
Theroux refers to charity in Africa as a form of theater.NGOs divy up money and food for the attention, to attract more money, and to further their own operations.On this matter he says:
In my view, aid is a failure if in forty years of charity the only people still dishing up the food and doling out the money are foreigners… if all you have done is spend money and have not inspired anyone, you can teach the sharpest lesson by turning your back and going home. (272-273)
Unfortunately even for the organizations that Africa would be better without, turning their backs and going home would not be a strategy suggested by many development economists.In situations where dependency has been created between the locals and the NGO, leaving is a much more complicated process than simply walking away if it's to be done well.
Leaving aid for a moment, Theroux's keen observations and spirited interactions with the locals make for a very captivating read.A peace corps worker in the 1960s, this trip is his return to Africa 34 years later.As he travels, his descriptions of the people are perhaps the most interesting items.In Egypt, he encounters people whose "desperation has made them innovative".In Sudan, the people are exotic and friendly.The Ethiopians he meets are handsome, but smelly, unwashed, and in rags.In Kenya he is met with cynicism, suspicion, and brutality.In Uganda he is impressed by a faint but clinging spirit of hope.He says, "the belief that their children had a future here was a measure of confidence and a way of saying the country had a future" (224).
Theroux visits some of his old haunts in Malawi and Uganda, but is disappointed time and time again by the decrepitude, poverty, beggary, and unemployment that he observes.The respected founders of Makarere University (where he taught English from 1965-1968) were unknown and certainly not respected, the library in disrepair, the lawns brown, the books uncared for.What he observes in Malawi is even worse.Being the 8th poorest country in the world, he witnesses what he terms "unapologetic beggary".In contrast to the sliver of hope he witnesses in Uganda, in Malawi there is only a sense of futility.
Traveling Lake Victoria by cargo ferry, Theroux is met with incredible hospitality.When he enters into Tanzania, he witnesses the linear decrepitude.He states here that nothing new has been built in Tanzania in 40 years, and that all Tanzanians know is failure, empty political rhetoric, and broken promises.In Mozambique, he meets both protectors and criminals, as well as a missionary he accuses of "abusing Africans with the notion that they're sinners".As Theroux travels through Zimbabwe, he encounters again and again the government buying up farms, and Mugabe's efforts to drive the whites away.South Africa he refers to as a first world country with a third world mindset.The lights, motels, and commercialization make the country appear much better off than other areas of Africa.Yet beneath that surface there is huge amounts of prostitution, murder, and crime.
Throughout the book, Theroux demonstrates a great disdain for cities.He calls them dirty smelly centers for crime. This is quite justified, as it is in the city of Johannesburg that his luggage is stolen.Entering Nairobi he witnesses a man being beaten to death.In Addis Ababa he contracts parasites which he has for months after returning home.In Johannesburg and Cape Town he struggles with the sheer statistic that South Africa has 52,000 reported rapes per year.He feels much more affinity for the countryside, all of which he refers to as the bush.The subsistence economy Theroux witnesses in the bush he refers to as "the saving grace of Africa".
Travelling with Theroux I appreciated his stories, and the details of the sights, sounds, and smells around him.However it would have felt more personal if he would have written more about the difficulties of travel.He speaks several languages, but traveling from Cairo to Cape Town, I am certain somewhere he experienced difficulties in communication.He does not mention changing money, and every so often the reader finds him having mysteriously arrived in a new place without any mention of the hours of travel by bus, train, or taxi, that it must have taken to get there.
While travelling through Kenya, Theroux remarks that "whenever I saw a town that looked tidy and habitable I saw the evidence of foreign charities."The conclusion he draws from this is that nice places attracted charities.I would challenge that conclusion, as he does not seem to consider the possibility that those areas were nicer because of their respective charities.
Theroux's summation of poverty is that it cannot be eliminated by aid, only by an eradication (or at least a decline) in corruption.He has innumerable endearing and treasurable encounters with the people of Africa, yet pictures them all to be in bondage to the corruption of their governments.This is summed up well by Father Cruciani, a priest Theroux meets in Aswana, Egypt: "Wonderful people. Terrible government. The African story."