Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown

I'm prompted to write this review by one of the reviews already posted here, which accuses Theroux of negativity and a dislike of people. I had the opposite impression. He does indeed see much to be disturbed by in Africa--any compassionate person would be disturbed by it. Civil society has broken down in many of the countries he visits. Poverty, disease, crime, and corruption beset the cities, and Theroux shows clearly how aid workers who come to help, and the missionaries who want to foist their beliefs on the Africans, often make things worse. He is opinionated and sometimes testy, which makes his account interesting, never a dry recital of facts. He talks with people wherever he goes, and most important of all, he listens to them. As a result, he learns what few outsiders ever do, and gives us a view of Africa--a place he loves--that is a fascinating, deeply unsettling revelation.


A Fresh Look From A Professional Skeptic   May 10, 2004
E. Clinton (Chicago, IL USA)
14 out of 17 found this review helpful

This may be the best of all of the Theroux travel books. Theroux, skeptical of everything, revisits the Africa he left 30 years before. Theroux concludes that things are worse in much of Africa and he strongly implies that Western aid; Western Charity and Western Liberal Do-Gooders have accomplished little or nothing in Africa. They have trained the local people to expect handouts instead of taking care of themselves. Here he sounds like a conservative Republican. However, Theroux is especially skeptical of the religious workers in Africa who, in his view, are wasting their time attempting to convert Africans to Christianity to save souls. This book caused me to rethink the African Charity issue.
As always, Theroux is fresh and unpredictable. He pokes fun at himself and his life, but he also concludes that his own journey through life has been very rewarding. You get the sense that no one handed Theroux any breaks in his career. He feels he had to earn every break he got.
He makes a few references to V.S. Naipaul in the book. He also interviews Nadine Gordimer, the South African novelist, and paints a portrait of an interesting and courageous woman.


A more accurate meaning for "safari"   January 2, 2007
John Bonavia (Needham, MA USA)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful

This is Theroux's account of a journey from the very north of Africa to the very south...but not in tourist style! Buses, rickety trucks, taxis, some trains. Travel guides give "the view from 30,000 feet." Theroux gives what the military call "ground truth." He sees the reality, meets many people. His account is enriched by two things in particular: He had lived and worked in some of the African countries, decades before, spoke some of the languages, so he could form a realistic view of whether things were better or (almost always) much worse: and he is a canny and skilful writer, who knows exactly how to balance description, dialog, and commentary, and packs plenty of punch into a few crisp words. For instance: "My first impression of Addis Ababa: handsome people in rags, possessed of both haughtiness and destitution, a race of aristocrats who had pawned the family silver."

He is generally scathing about the efforts of international aid agencies, whose personnel rush about in white Land-Rovers and end up leaving some useless practice, or object or building that will disintegrate, or need expensive maintenance, or be unsuited to the location, as with the two-story condos built in Harar by a German aid agency. The people, a tall race, did not use them but stayed in their mud huts. Why? "They are too tall. There is no space. They cannot bring their donkeys and goats inside." "Why would they want to do that?" "To protect them from the hyenas." The well-meaning aid people had missed a point or two.

He does, however, pay tribute to certain selfless individuals who work hard directly with the people, teaching or healing. Overall, his opinion is that survival is better assured with the simplest, oldest technology and crops, and living in small traditional villages. Nearly all the cities are basically disasters, and many of the government bureaucracies are incompetent or corrupt, even if sometimes those at the top are trying to make things better.

Now and again we get a really tantalizing throwaway: "Yes, the Bachiga of southwest Uganda and their curious marriage rite, which included the groom's brothers and the bride in the urine ceremony. I could not hear the name of the tribe without thinking of the piddle-widdle of this messy rite." To which the only possible response is, "Do tell!" But he doesn't.

A fascinating tale - a guaranteed page-turner. Incidentally, I noted the really unfavorable review by Carl Owen. It seems to have some reasonable points, but as with some other negative reviews, I felt it wasn't just having issues with the book's content. There seemed to be something about Theroux's personal style that seemed to irritate them. Now I was once annoyed with a Theroux book - I forget the title - when he thoroughly dissed my hometown of Aberdeen in Scotland! But that didn't prevent me appreciating and enjoying his thought-provoking remarks - and the humor!


A long journey   November 8, 2006
Gillian A (NY, USA)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

Just as the journey described, this is a long, sometimes arduous, always fascinating, quite awesome and ultimately, powerful book.

For a long time I had avoided reading it as the US critics had all but dammed it with faint praise - their reviews were lukewarm at best. But on my last trip to Africa (I travel there fairly frequently), someone recommended it to me.

Paul Theroux embarks on a one man expedition from Cairo to Cape Town in 2001. He refuses to fly on any part of the journey, insisting on traveling overland, using local transport - trains, buses, boats, taxis - for most of the time although he once rents a car. (To most Westerners who have traveled in Africa, public transportation is a faintly terrifying thought.) He shuns the more glamorous places e.g. the big East African game parks, and scorns Americans who only seek out `Hemingway's Africa' - a land of big game hunting. (Finally, at the end of his trip, he does succumb and goes to the creme de la creme of safari parks, Mala-Mala.) He prefers to stop over in simple villages where he can speak to ordinary people but where he is also sometimes confronted first hand with all of Africa's misery and violence.

While he describes many lovely and memorable moments, he does not flinch from covering Africa's darker side - typically, a visit to a town in northern Malawi, the main street of which he remembered as being lined with bustling Indian-owned shops selling a large variety of merchandise. Now the shops are ransacked, the buildings falling apart or boarded up, due to the former president having `encouraged' all the Asians to leave. He visits a school where he had once taught, only to find it now, while still struggling on, in a state of rack and ruin. Africa seems to have deteriorated, its people poorer and having less initiative to tackle their own problems. He has little time for the ubiquitous aid workers, `angles of mercy', feeling that their efforts, more than anything keep Africans dependent. He notes that government officials all drive Mercedes, aid workers zoom about in spotless, white Land Rovers and everyone else walks barefoot. One could go on and on.

However, along with the tragedy and despair, the book does present humor, hope and times of heart-warming exhilaration. Ultimately, it is not so much a pretty travelogue, as a clear-eyed view of Africa as it is today.