Dark Star Safari is a travel book, but it is not a holiday book. Theroux decided to go from Cairo to Cape Town using anything other than airplanes (though he does end up having to take one plane), and he portrays himself as a crotchety old man who has no time for traditional tourists, photography, sightseeing, and luxury. His method reminds me a little bit of Kerouac: traveling without a specific purpose, just observing normal lives and making spur-of-the-moment decisions to adventure into unexpected places. And like Kerouac his view is not a grand vision of the continent but a series of miniature portraits of individuals and towns.
Theroux references Heart of Darkness several times, particularly when he is traveling by boat along the Nile, and his view of the state of Africa is not much better than that in Conrad's story. Most of the countries Theroux travels through have thrown off their colonial Kurtzes only to have them replaced by local despots, tyrants and corrupt governments. Where there is copious foreign aid we are repeatedly shown the image of men standing around underneath trees with nothing to do, waiting for their foreign benefits. Where there is little aid people rely on subsistence farming, one bad season from famine. In Zimbabwe (as it was in 2001) Theroux describes a country on the edge of the abyss, about to go from a reasonably peaceful, prosperous country with modern farms and services to a lawless disaster ruled by a madman. "Even the democratic" South Africa sounds terrifying, with insane rates of seemingly unstoppable crime and plenty of racism.
For the first quarter or so of the book I found Theroux's mocking of the aid agencies and their expensive Land Rovers a bit tiresome, but by the time he's described the horrors of genital mutilation, poverty, AIDS denialism, useless government officials in expensive suits and on and on I pretty much agreed with his extreme cynicism, although this cynicism is uncomfortably close to saying "not our problem, too hard, nothing works".
It seems silly to say that I "enjoyed" such a depressing book, but it was worthwhile reading and Theroux's account was fundamentally honest and truthful despite his grumpy old man persona. The standard Western liberal view is that Africa is gradually getting better, and we just need to give a bit more to speed up the process. Dark Star Safari challenges everything about this view: In many places it's getting worse, "better" to us isn't necessarily better to them, aid is often counterproductive...it's all so depressing.
Theroux references Heart of Darkness several times, particularly when he is traveling by boat along the Nile, and his view of the state of Africa is not much better than that in Conrad's story. Most of the countries Theroux travels through have thrown off their colonial Kurtzes only to have them replaced by local despots, tyrants and corrupt governments. Where there is copious foreign aid we are repeatedly shown the image of men standing around underneath trees with nothing to do, waiting for their foreign benefits. Where there is little aid people rely on subsistence farming, one bad season from famine. In Zimbabwe (as it was in 2001) Theroux describes a country on the edge of the abyss, about to go from a reasonably peaceful, prosperous country with modern farms and services to a lawless disaster ruled by a madman. "Even the democratic" South Africa sounds terrifying, with insane rates of seemingly unstoppable crime and plenty of racism.
For the first quarter or so of the book I found Theroux's mocking of the aid agencies and their expensive Land Rovers a bit tiresome, but by the time he's described the horrors of genital mutilation, poverty, AIDS denialism, useless government officials in expensive suits and on and on I pretty much agreed with his extreme cynicism, although this cynicism is uncomfortably close to saying "not our problem, too hard, nothing works".
It seems silly to say that I "enjoyed" such a depressing book, but it was worthwhile reading and Theroux's account was fundamentally honest and truthful despite his grumpy old man persona. The standard Western liberal view is that Africa is gradually getting better, and we just need to give a bit more to speed up the process. Dark Star Safari challenges everything about this view: In many places it's getting worse, "better" to us isn't necessarily better to them, aid is often counterproductive...it's all so depressing.
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