Born on 19 June 1975 in Nqutu, a small rural town in Northern-KwaZulu, Sihle Khumalo has made a habit of celebrating his birthdays in different ways:
In 1999, to celebrate his 24th birthday he bungee jumped at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.
The following year he ran the Comrades Marathon (in 11 hours 40 minutes). For his 27th birthday, in 2002, he parachuted for the first time – on static line – at Oribi airport in Pietermaritzburg. In 2003, it was aerobatic flying (as a passenger) at Rand airport.
After spending 10 years in the corporate world, Sihle felt that he needed a break from it all and also wanted to live a life – for at least a year – with no responsibilities. With his 30th birthday approaching, he decided to travel from Cape to Cairo by public transport, a once in a lifetime exercise in madness that culminated in the writing of Dark Continent, My Black Arse.
Sihle, who has absolutely no respect for African leaders and their political tactics, did this while dealing with Africa’s three main travelling problems: lack of infrastructure, bureaucracy and communicating in unknown languages.
Dark Continent, My Black Arse is Sihle’s personal and often hilarious account of his perception – based on his observations and experience – of Mama Africa. Celebrating life with gusto and in inimitable style, he describes a journey fraught with discomfort, mishap, ecstasy, disillusionment, discovery and astonishing human encounters. It is a journey that would be acceptable madness for a white man, but is regarded by the author’s fellow Africans as an extraordinary and inexplicable expenditure of time and money.
As Sihle’s famous counterpart Paul Theroux, author of Dark Star Safari, comments, Dark Continent, My Black Arse is uniquely an African travel story: ‘the story of ‘an African travelling on his own money and motivation, from one end of Africa to the other”.