The book has been described as "depressing yet compelling", and it was to me--though not without much insight and touches of humor. I put one CD in after another yesterday, watching afternoon rain clouds roll by, fascinated, unable to really do anything else. I have never been to Africa, though at one time, about 10 years ago, I thought I might go with a Japan-based group of English teachers called "Teachers Helping Teachers (THT)". It was the inspiration of the late Bill Balsamo, a kind, funny, generous man, who had a knack of talking with English teachers from other countries at international conferences, asking if they'd like our group to come visit them and do workshops for their colleagues. The answer was usually an enthusiastic "yes!" I joined THT for three week-long journeys, one to Laos, another to Bangladesh, and another to Hue, Vietnam, all during school holidays in Japan. We also visited a teachers' conference in Vladivostok, Russia, together. Bill had a contact in Africa and there was some talk of organizing a trip there, but before any plans could be made, Bill developed an aggressive form of cancer and died within the year. A photo of Bill from our 2007 trip to a school in Laos:
And one more, showing a bit of his playfulness, sitting next to me at a restaurant in Dhaka, Bangladesh:
At this point in my life, I doubt I'll ever go to Africa. Now retired, I have less money, more contentment with being in either of my Colorado homes or with family in Illinois, more motivation to plan short rather than long excursions. Like Theroux, who was my age when he went to Africa for the last time, I'm happy, more often than not, just being at home. In picking up his book, perhaps I'm initiating myself into a future of armchair travel.
Theroux had more substantial reasons for ending his last Africa journey early, and he recounts them after he decides not to get on the train for the zone verde, the open land known as the bush. During the last weeks of the trip in Angola, he continually asks himself, "What am I doing here?" Three people he spent time with on the journey have died, two violently. Boku Haram and al Quaida were active in the direction he had planned to go, as murders and kidnappings filled the news. But more important, was his increasing revulsion with dysfunctional urban slums, full of violence, squalor and human despair. One seemed more like any other, he reports, noting that he never really cared for cities that much anyway; the villages brought him the experiences he was looking for. (In fact, some of the best parts of the book deal with his travels outside cities, in the townships.) Finally, he admits, he just can't stand any more jostling in bus lines, any more jeers from the gangs of young unemployed men loitering everywhere, any more of the relentless poverty.
Theroux zeroes in on the causes, a major one being the corruption of the government and exploitation of foreign companies. Angola, with a population of 25 million in a land area twice the size of Texas, is actually a wealthy country, a major exporter of oil and minerals. Yet, none of the benefits were apparent in the cities he visited. In Angola, the few at the top enjoy ostentatious wealth, and the expatriate community--largely oil companies and Chinese business investors--live in their own enclaves. Did Theroux believe once, as I did, that Africa's future would be a bright one, once the shackles of colonialism were thrown off? That was the dominant ideology among those of us on the Left in the 1960s; "the people united will never be defeated." Yet....Angola won independence from Portugal in 1975 after a long liberation struggle. Then a nearly-30-year civil war ensued. Since that war ended in 2002, Angola's economy boomed, thanks to its vast oil and mineral reserves. But the majority of the people continued to suffer. Life expectancy and infant mortality rates are among the worst in the world. If Theroux had visited in 2016, he would have certainly written about climate change as well. Drought has produced the worst food crisis in 25 years. Malnutrition rates have doubled and food prices are soaring. Reading Zona Verde, I find it hard to believe things could have gotten worse, but they have and will continue to deteriorate through the end of the year, according to a May article in The Guardian.
Theroux's anger and frustration are apparent in this book, as are his fears that the world will become more and more like this, as globalization progresses. Most people in the world now live in cities, and the pattern is so often the same, he reminds us: slums develop as rural people can no longer live in their home communities, and then squatter camps develop around the slums. No doubt this pattern is evident to some degree in Rio de Janeiro this summer, as complaints of crime, pollution, and poor preparation for the Olympics continue to come in.
But the real story behind these stories is the globalization story, including trade agreements. Theroux's book inspired me to do a little checking today, as this African journey is still very much on my mind. The US signed a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) in 2009 with Angola, and not surprisingly, there's a trade deficit: we buy twice as much as we sell. The US imported $2.7 billion worth of mineral fuels in 2015 from Angola and another 66 million in diamonds and precious metals. (Total imports: $2.8 billion) While our election rhetoric focuses on free trade, especially, the TPP, as it affects this country, our focus needs to be a lot broader. I think Theroux would agree that if we tied human rights to our trade agreements, we'd be contributing to a much better and fairer world.
No doubt Theroux needed a healing experience after his Africa sojourn, and perhaps he found it in the U.S., his home country, as reported in his 2015 travel memoir, Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads. Healing, in the sense that he turned away from megalopolises in favor of small communities, yet "unflinching", as the amazon blurb reports. His many readers, now including me, would expect no less. It's on my list.
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