Africa Trek by Sonia and Alexandre Poussin (Jacana)
Afrika: Dispatches from the outside edge by Kingsley Holgate (Struik)
Africa has inspired thousands of travellers to explore its length and breadth and to write in gobsmacking prose, accounts of terror or terrible patriarchal views of people on the continent. But some of the books are gems, telling of Damascus-like experiences. At the same time they do not gloss over the poverty and suffering still occurring in Africa, but find the warmth, humour and human spirit of the people, which are too often buried beneath the mountain of pessimistic reports.
Africa Trek is such a book. French explorers Sonia and Alexandre Poussin, who came to South Africa for their honeymoon, ended up walking across Africa right up to the Sea of Galilee, which seems a very French thing to do. The pair had no support staff and declined lifts from strangers. They basically foot-slogged the journey of 14 000km with 7kg packs on their backs, which included the camera equipment they used to film their journey. They did not stay in hotels, but depended on the hospitality of people they met on their journey.
Their ”honeymoon” lasted for three years and their daughter was conceived on an Egyptian island during the last gasps of their epic trek.
Their journey through Southern Africa, which makes up a large part of Africa Trek, documents their journey from Cape Point to Arusha in Tanzania, the hometown of Kilimanjaro. There was definitely method in what some cynics have labelled their madness — the pair followed the Great Rift Valley, retracing the trail of early humans from Australopithecus to modern Homo sapiens. The evolution of humans was a big interest for the Poussins and they wanted to experience the historical journey themselves in their modern-day trek.
Although Africa Trek is very much a travel book about the places they visited, the Poussins’ account is more about the people they met on their journey and their own coming of age. They talk about Democratic Alliance politicians and chief executives joining them for a few days, before returning to their real lives, and about being mistaken for white Zimbabwean refugees who had been kicked off their farm in Zimbabwe. They even spent a night with Morgan and the late Susan Tsvangirai.
About 1 200 families offered their homes to the Poussins and much of the hospitality of these people comes across in the book, with their hosts’ unique stories. The first hosts for the couple, however, were not even human, but the penguins of Boulders Beach near Simon’s Town. Then a few days later the pair upgraded from their beach-side digs to a more upper-class establishment in Constantia.
The Poussins had some of their best times in South Africa and it took them 451 days to travel from Boulders Beach to Beit Bridge before the crossover into Zimbabwe. They also did a slight detour into Lesotho, which they described with the apt quote by Paul Morand: ”Above a certain altitude, man cannot conceive bad thoughts.”
Of course, walking your way through Africa is certainly not for sissies and doing it with your new wife will certainly put an interesting spin on the notion of marital strife. Contracting malaria is par for the course for most travellers on epic journeys through Africa and the Poussins did not escape the curse. But the hardships are minuscule against their wonderful experiences and Africa Trek ends up as a most enjoyable read, best read before bed so that your own impossible dream of travelling into Africa is suddenly not so impossible anymore.
Another epic African traveller is Kingsley Holgate, who has become one of the continent’s most iconic adventurers. Like the Poussins, Holgate has also suffered several bouts of malaria and one incident nearly killed him. As a result, Holgate, his family and a small group of friends embarked on their own epic journey to circumnavigate the coastline of Africa in his Land Rover, with the aim of raising awareness about malaria. They travelled through 33 countries, distributing mosquito nets.
Along the way Holgate sent regular dispatches back home and these have now been collected in book form, detailing their 449-day expedition. He writes about torrential downpours in Cameroon and perilous mudbaths in Nigeria, which they tackled in the hardy Land Rovers. They encountered the birthplace of voodoo in Benin and mutilated child soldiers in Sierra Leone.
Like the book by the Poussins, Holgate’s travel adventures also reflect the humanity within Africa and the wonderful stories that just beg to be told.