History Book Club
Rockport Public Library
Monthly Meeting, Wednesday, June 29th,
2016
[Modified from
earlier report, July, 2013]
Wednesday, June 29, 2016: Africa since 1900. Colonization by Belgium, France, Britain, Germany and Portugal; End of Colonialism; Democracy and Dictatorship; Rwanda; Jomo Kenyatta; Apartheid and South Africa; Congo; Angola; more….
Paul Theroux, Last
Train to Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari, 2013. Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt: New York , NY
In 2003 Paul Theroux told the story
of his trip down the east coast of Africa in Dark Star Safari. Ten years
later, he published Last Train to Zona Verde, his account of a trip up
the west coast of Africa.
Theroux
introduces us to this “ultimate African safari” by taking us into the world of
the !Kung people, the Ju-Hoansi—“the earth’s oldest folk, with a traced lineage
to the Upper Pleistocene, 35,000 or so years ago…. the proven ancestors of us
all, the true aristocrats of the planet.”
In the “civilized”
world the news is bad The Greeks are rioting, world financial markets are in
turmoil, the Eurozone is approaching meltdown.
And here these ancient people show him how to build a snare to catch a
guinea hen, and after they catch it, how to pluck it and cook it over a fire,
that they’ve started the old way, by rubbing sticks together.
Ju-Hoansi tribesman. Theroux writes “The best of humankind are
bare-assed.”
It’s an interesting
juxtaposition--- these ancient people, laughing gently as they live their lives
far from the frenzy of Europe, and America, dollars and Euros and taxes and
inflation and governments awash in debt.
However,
the Ju-Hoansi are just about extinct. In
the 19th century the Boers hunted them just for sport. Modern times have overtaken many of them and
they have descended into alcoholism and depressing poverty.
In that
way, the Ju-Hoansi are just like many millions of Africans who have left their
subsistence farming lives in the bush, and flocked to the nearest urban
magnet. African cities hardly deserve
the name, because they are small cities, the ones built in the colonial times,
surrounded by miles and miles of shanties—tin-roofs, tents, cargo boxes, scrap
lumber, plastic sheeting ---- anything and everything to house people. Water available, sometimes, from one public
faucet. Slit trenches for toilets,
draining to--- don’t ask. No police, no
electricity, no jobs. Just poverty,
crime, and filth. And you must imagine
the smell!
Today, 200
million people in sub-Saharan Africa live in
these slums or squatter camps, the highest number of slum dwellers in the
world.
Theroux
ended Dark Star Safari in South Africa ,
and that is where he begins his trip in Last Train to Zona Verde, in the
depressing settlements of Cape Town .
Often
Theroux stops to ask, “Why am I here?”
It’s a question most of us have asked during a trip at some point.
Theroux’s
overall assessment of Cape Town and South Africa is
not encouraging. Soon, however, he is on
the night bus to Windhoek in Namibia .
Behind the
German organization are dreadfully poor Africans. It is in Tsumkwe, Namibia that Theroux finds
the Ju-Hoansi Bushmen in the northeastern corner of the country, near Botswana
to the east and Angola to the north. All the dancing around naked, hunting for
guinea hens and starting a fire with sticks is the act that they put on for
visitors. After the show is over, they slip into castoff American tee-shirts
and jeans, and look pretty much like the rest of Africans living well below
anyone’s poverty line.
Next on the
itinerary is Angola . Theroux talks with travelers and Namibians,
but Angola
is a dark secret. Only bad news comes
out of that darkest of the dark continent.
No matter,
Theroux catches a bus to the frontier between Namibia and Angola. He walks through the border formalities and
enters a country that is still pretty much ravaged by war. Angola was a mini-Cold War
battleground during the civil war that raged from 1975 to 2002, off and
on. The Cubans and Soviets joined rebel
groups fighting for another communist state, and the U.S.
and South Africa
supported rebels fighting for a non-communist state.
Our author
is harsh in his criticism of the Portuguese, who first occupied Angola and
began shipping slaves from there in the 17th century, and their
sloppy, exploitative colonization until independence in 1974.
He is critical
of colonialism throughout Africa , but quick to
point out that hardly anything has shown improvement as Africans have gained
independence. Theroux also ridicules the
thousands of well-meaning do-gooders from the rest of the world, who helicopter
in to distribute aid, and cover the bush, but mainly stay in the big cities,
driving white SUVs.
“Virtue
tourism” is what Theroux calls the world-renowned entertainers who throw money
at projects in Africa, but lack the follow-through.
Theroux
buys a seat in a van driven by a drunk Angolan, and filled with a colorful
group of plain Angolan men and women, as they race and bounce over bad roads,
stop for hours for engine repairs, and often for unisex urination breaks. A shriveled up little woman appears with a
bucket of smoked chicken parts, covered with swarming flies. It sounds pretty gross, but it’s been a long
time since his last meal, and a long time before he’ll reach any form of
civilization, so finally Theroux succumbs and buys a piece of the chicken, and
all its flies.
In Angola ,
everywhere he turns he sees idle Angolans and hard-working, eager Chinese. The Chinese are everywhere. They are building roads and airports and
factories, so there are nicely dressed plant managers, engineers and other
leaders, and there are hard-working owners of little shops. There are also thousands of working-class
Chinese, doing work that should be getting done by Angolans. But, the Chinese owners say, “The Angolans
don’t want to work as hard, and as long, as needed to get jobs done.”
At several
points Theroux encounters bright, eager and hard-working young Africans. Many of them leave this depressing scene for
Europe or America, and we see them right here, working in our hospitals and
elsewhere in Boston.
Increasing
efforts to teach Africans about family planning, fidelity, abstinence in
marriage.
In an
opinion piece in the Boston Globe the
other day Jeffrey Sachs, in discussing globalization and the fallout from
populist movements like Brexit in the UK and Trump in the U.S. wrote about the
population explosion in Africa, now at 1.111 billion, and estimated to reach
4.39 billion by 2100. He writes:
“Africa’s astounding demographic surge, for
example, would be decisively eased by a simple, humane, decent, and wise policy
to ensure that every African child has the realistic prospect of at least a secondary-school
education. The result would be a dramatic voluntary reduction of the sky-high
fertility rate.”
When will
we start to see bright young Africans take over their countries, not to grab
all the money they can, but to help their people create a land of promise? Africa
has tremendous raw materials, and many of the resources to develop, if only
leaders start to emerge who can unlock the potential of the people of this
continent.
It will
happen. It must happen.
-end-
Future History Book Club Topics
Here are the topics for the rest of 2016. We encourage you to nominate topics for 2017!
Wednesday, July 27, 2016: American Foreign Policy from the Barbara Pirates to today. Civil War alliances by both Union and Confederacy; Gunboat Diplomacy; Spanish-American War; “He Kept Us out of War!”; Britain and the U.S. in WWII; The Cold War; more.
Wednesday, August, 31, 2016: Germs and Plagues: A history of epidemics in the world. Plague of Athens (429 BC), Plague of Justinian (541 AD), “Black Death” in 1346, Cocoliztli Epidemic in Mexico (1528), Wampanoag Smallpox in 1616, 1918 Flu Pandemic, more.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016: Scaremongering and Witch Hunts in America.Salem Witch Trials, House Un-American Activities Committee; McCarthy Investigations; more.
Wednesday, October 26, 2016: Political Parties in America. Whigs, Know-Nothings, Federalists, Copperheads; Communists, Socialists, Republicans, Democrats, more.
Wednesday, November 30, 2016: Colonization in America. Jamestown, Plymouth, Gloucester, St. Augustine, Junipero Serra, Roger Williams, Quebec, Nieuw Amsterdam, more.
December: No Meeting
