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Books 9: Africa Reportage
'The Zanzibar Chest' is a triple book inside its 450 pages. It is the story of the life of its author, Aidan Hartley, as a war reporter in the horrendous conflicts of Sudan, Somalia, and Rwanda in the 1990s, and some of the story of those conflicts. It is the story of his father, mother, and his father's best friend; and also a love story of his own. And mixed with these tales are reflections on what it means to be a son, a father, a lover, a friend, a human, and various others of the masks we put on when we try to contact others from inside the solipsism which always threatens to overwhelm us. This book is a compelling read. That doesn't mean, however, that the author is a nice, or even decent person.
'The Shadow of the Sun' by Ryszard Kapusinski is a compement and a contrast to Hartley's book. It covers some of the same events as Hartley's book from the perspective of a journalist from communist Poland, but one who tried to get inside the country as well as observing the most dramatic events of its recent history. Kapusinski starts in 1957 and continues up to 2000.
He mixes with very poor people in their ordinary round during his travels around Africa, and covers a somewhat wider group of countries than Hartley. He is also a calmer and more balanced human being.
Hartley is a member of the privileged English upper class, and some of what he suffers in his journalistic career is perhaps an attempt to remove guilt for this. At the same time, the unthinking acceptance of his class comes through. He refers constantly to taking huge quantities of drugs - cocaine, marijuana, ecstasty and others - knowing, however, that people of his class do not have to worry about repercussions for this; not in Britain, and certainly not in Kenya. There is no political analysis or economic background to the events which are described. Despite the horrible events to which the author is witness, a great selfishness and a sense of entitlement is apparent. It sometimes seems as if all these lives are being lost simply so that the author can grow up.
Yet, it is perhaps this self-obsession which makes this book great.