{"id":652,"date":"2018-09-02T22:50:40","date_gmt":"2018-09-03T05:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/?page_id=652"},"modified":"2018-09-12T14:03:08","modified_gmt":"2018-09-12T21:03:08","slug":"therouxs-africa-2004","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/therouxs-africa-2004\/","title":{"rendered":"Theroux’s Africa (2004)"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019ve read most of the travel books of Paul Theroux. My favorite is Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town (Houghton Mifflin 2003). Africa was not a place Theroux was seeing for the first time, but a former home he was revisiting. He could compare what he saw with what he remembered. And in this case, it made all the difference. My review ran in Liberty, February 2004.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 A good travel book mixes together place, people and a central idea. The place should be somewhere no ordinary person would go. Finding the people is a matter of enterprise and odds \u2014 and a good travel writer, like Paul Theroux, knows how to set up the odds. Stay out of airplanes. Get off the tourist circuit. Cross borders on land. Arrange your travel as you go.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Lacking a plot, a travel book yearns for a unifying idea. In several of Theroux\u2019s books it was trains. In a train one can leave one\u2019s seat, find an interesting person and have time to know him. Trains are often colorful relics. I saw the Guatemalan train he took for\u00a0The Old Patagonian Express<\/i>, and it was a rolling ruin.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0His latest book,\u00a0Dark Star Safari,\u00a0<\/i>crosses Africa by air (one short leg), trains, buses, taxis, a lake steamer and a dugout canoe. It has the same dialogs as his other books, and the same longing for the unspoiled and distaste for ugliness. But this one has a theme: disgust at the do-gooders who infest Africa.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Theroux began his career in the 1960s as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi. Later he was an academic in Uganda, where he got to know some of the Ugandans who now run the country. He wrote\u00a0Fong and the Indians,\u00a0<\/i>a story of an emigre Chinese living in East Africa. He loves Africa, but at 60 \u2014 the Africans considered him an old man \u2014\u00a0he prides himself as a \u201cbullshit detector.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0He finds heaps of bullshit. The deepest is around the question of why Africa is poor. It is not colonialism. Theroux was there right after the colonial powers left, and though Africa was poor, it was on the way up. Things were orderly: The school where he taught in Malawi was well maintained and its library had books.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Theroux finds the school a shambles. The books are mostly looted. Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi are in decline, and Mozambique is worst of all. So what has happened to all the gifts these countries have been presented with for 40 years?<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cA road, a dorm, a school, a bank, a bridge, a cultural center, a dispensary \u2014\u00a0all were accepted,\u201d he writes. \u201cBut acceptance did not mean the things were needed, nor that they would be used or kept in repair.\u201d Instead, he writes, \u201cThey were like inspired Christmas presents, the things that stop running when the batteries die… The projects would become wrecks, every one of them… And when they stopped running no one would be sorry.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Running it all were the NGOs, the non-governmental organizations whose people tool around in new white Land Rovers listening to music on the CD players. The reader first meets these jeepsters at the Kenya-Ethiopia frontier, where Theroux asks for a lift across no man\u2019s land.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cThis isn\u2019t a taxi,\u201d the driver says.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Theroux says just wants to get across the border and find a guesthouse.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWe don\u2019t run a guesthouse.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Theroux writes, \u201cThey drove away, leaving me by the side of the road. That was to be fairly typical of my experience with aid workers in rural Africa: they were, in general, oafish, self-dramatizing prigs, and often complete bastards.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And where there are aid workers, he observes, there are prostitutes. Follow the money.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Later he has a dialog with an aid worker on a \u201cfeeding program,\u201d a term that reminds him of farm animals. He says to her, \u201cWe used to say, \u2018Give people seeds and let them grow their own food.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cThe rains have been unreliable,\u201d she says. Indeed: in some places it hasn\u2019t rained in three years.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cMaybe they should relocate,\u201d he replies. \u201cIf they relocate, they might find work, and they might plant gardens if you weren\u2019t feeding them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWe save lives, not livelihoods,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Theroux\u2019s observation is confirmed by a quite different travel book,\u00a0Adventure Capitalist,\u00a0<\/i>by investor Jim Rogers. In Ethiopia, Rogers says, \u201cAn entire generation of Ethiopians has grown up without learning how to farm. Instead…they go to town every month, park the donkey, and collect grain. Some recipients, the day we were in Lalibela, carried their ration of wheat directly over to the town market and started selling it. And so…there is a generation of farmers who have simply stopped farming because…there is no way to compete with free grain.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I expected a report like that from Rogers, the capitalist investor. But it is coming even louder from Theroux, the journalist. He refers to the aid workers as \u201ca maintenance crew on a power trip, who had turned Malawians into beggars and whiners.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0An old friend remarks how well Theroux\u2019s sons are doing in the West, and suggests that one of them come to Africa as Theroux did.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But you\u2019ve had plenty of Westerners, Theroux says. \u201cYears and years.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI want your son,\u201d the man says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And Theroux thinks: What would that accomplish? Nothing.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The most fascinating dialog is over the subject of Indian merchants, a class of people kicked out of Uganda, Malawi and other places for \u201cmonopolizing\u201d retail business. After a quarter-century, a few of their shops have been made into bars, but most of them are empty. Some have African women squatting outside selling vegetables on the ground.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Theroux speaks to a group of educated Africans about this. One mocks the Indian shopkeepers, who were everlastingly writing down lists of merchandise and adding up the figures, one, two three, one, two, three.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cBut that\u2019s how a shop is run,\u201d Theroux says. \u201cThat\u2019s normal business. You make a list of what you\u2019ve sold, so you know what stuff to reorder.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cIndians know no other life!\u201d the African replies. \u201cJust this rather secluded life \u2014 all numbers and money and goods on shelves. One, two, three.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0They have to count the inventory, Theroux says. \u201cThe profit margins are so small.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cBut we Africans are not raised in this way,\u201d the African says. \u201cWhat do we care about shops and counting?… Selling is not our heritage. We are not business people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Another African, a former ambassador who had been listening in, says: \u201cWhen Africans run businesses, their families come in and stay with them and eat all their food \u2014 just live off them. As soon as an African succeeds in something, he has his family cadging off him. Not so?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cThat is true, brother,\u201d one says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cAnd we are not cut out for this shopkeeping and bookkkeeping and\u201d \u2014 the former ambassador winks at Theroux \u2014 \u201cthis\u00a0number crunching.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI had never heard such bullshit,\u201d Theroux writes. \u201cWell, perhaps I had and not recognized it. The man was saying: This is all too much for us. We cannot learn how to do business. We must be given money, we must be given sinecures, because we don\u2019t know how to make a profit.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I have heard similar things myself. Once I had a Tibetan tour guide who complained about all the Chinese who had moved to the Tibetan capital city, Lhasa. The Chinese had started little businesses \u2014\u00a0karaoke bars, beauty shops and the like \u2014 all over the city. They were business-oriented. If you gave a Chinese 100 yuan, my guide said, he would put it in the bank and invest it in his business. \u201cIf I had 100 yuan,\u201d he said, \u201cI would go drinking with my friends, and by morning the 100 yuan would be gone. But we would have fellowship.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The locust plague of relatives reminded me of my first Filipino maid in Hong Kong. She had arrived with only a satchel, but when she went home a year later she packed a box the size of a washing machine. The box was full of gifts. Why? Because when Filipinos went on a foreign job and came back with nice things, and their relative or neighbor admired one of those things, they had to give it to him.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI\u00a0have\u00a0<\/i>to,\u201d my maid said.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I thought, this woman, who earns one-fourteenth of what I do, is facing an enormous and informal tax to which I am not subject at all. But at least it was one-time tax. Think if she had brought her neighborhood with her, and had had to feed them the entire year. That would be the better comparison to Africa.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We wonder why some peoples succeed and some do not. It is not always about whether they have a free market. It can be whether they have the values that the market requires. Values are passed down in a culture, but they can change. Giving people aid allows them to survive without changing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Theroux\u2019s epiphany came after he visited his ruined school in Malawi. He decided, \u201cOnly Africans were capable of making a difference in Africa. Everyone else, donors and volunteers and bankers however idealistic, were simply agents of subversion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

\u00a9 2004 Bruce Ramsey<\/span><\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019ve read most of the travel books of Paul Theroux. My favorite is Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town (Houghton Mifflin 2003). Africa was not a place Theroux was seeing for the first time, but a former home he was revisiting. He could compare what he saw with what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-652","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":779,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/652\/revisions\/779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}