Looking for Lovedu (eBook)

Ann Jones (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2010 | 1. Auflage
288 Seiten
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (Verlag)
978-0-307-77334-0 (ISBN)

Infos

The acclaimed adventure writer Ann Jones tells the story of her overland journey, with the British photographer Kevin Muggleton, from one end of Africa to the other. Their purpose: to reach the southernmost tip of the continent and find the Lovedu people, a legendary tribe guided by the 'feminine' principles of compromise, tolerance, generosity, and peace. A tribe that was known for its use of skillful diplomacy instead of warfare, and was ruled by a wise and powerful magician, a great rainmaking queen--the inspiration for H. Rider Haggard's novel She.

Together Jones and Muggleton set out from England in a 1980 powder-blue army surplus Series III Land Rover. They hurry through France and Spain to Gibraltar and board an intercontinental ferry to North Africa. In Morocco they work a scam to circumvent government red tape, and travel on toward the first great challenge of the journey: the Sahara, where, despite dire warnings, they set out alone, through roadless shifting dunes, across the great apricot-colored expanse of desert.

Jones tells how they ferry across the river into Senegal and come upon the le de Saint-Louis, the first French settlement in West Africa. She describes how they beat their way through trackless bush to Bamako, the capital of Mali, on the Niger River, as their vehicle begins to disintegrate, and how they speed southward through once-prosperous Cte d'Ivoire and pause to visit the full-scale replica of Rome's Saint Peter's Basilica, built by the then-president of Cte d'Ivoire at a cost of 360 million of his own dollars. In Ghana they explore a fort from which slaves were shipped to the New World. They hurry through Togo and Benin to Nigeria, where they are harassed by omnipresent soldiers in the uneasy aftermath of the execution of the author Ken Saro-Wiwa and other political dissidents. In Cameroon they meet the fon of Chobe and his chief female minister, Ya Wende, and visit the twenty-four wives of the fon of Nkwem.

As they continue the journey they battle malaria, try to reform two would-be robbers, sing Christmas carols with American missionaries, confront extornionist and dangerous Mobutu men, and come near collapse on Zaire's impassable muddy 'roads.' Finally, they pause to recuperate in a posh hotel, whose luxuries spell the end of their expedition together--the author rejecting modern comforts, her companion yearning for more.
Ann Jones writes of how she travels on in search of the Lovedu people: through Tanzania and Malawi and the Tete Corridor of Mozambique to the ruins of the once-magnificent city of Great Zimbabwe. She writes of crossing the Limpopo River into South Africa, where her long journey culminates in an audience with Modjadji V, Queen of the Lovedu.

Her book is an irrestistible roller-coaster ride through Africa--crowded with obstacles, beauty, maddening corruption, and marvelous people.

From the Hardcover edition.

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The acclaimed adventure writer Ann Jones tells the story of her overland journey, with the British photographer Kevin Muggleton, from one end of Africa to the other. Their purpose: to reach the southernmost tip of the continent and find the Lovedu people, a legendary tribe guided by the "feminine" principles of compromise, tolerance, generosity, and peace. A tribe that was known for its use of skillful diplomacy instead of warfare, and was ruled by a wise and powerful magician, a great rainmaking queen--the inspiration for H. Rider Haggard's novel She.Together Jones and Muggleton set out from England in a 1980 powder-blue army surplus Series III Land Rover. They hurry through France and Spain to Gibraltar and board an intercontinental ferry to North Africa. In Morocco they work a scam to circumvent government red tape, and travel on toward the first great challenge of the journey: the Sahara, where, despite dire warnings, they set out alone, through roadless shifting dunes, across the great apricot-colored expanse of desert.Jones tells how they ferry across the river into Senegal and come upon the Île de Saint-Louis, the first French settlement in West Africa. She describes how they beat their way through trackless bush to Bamako, the capital of Mali, on the Niger River, as their vehicle begins to disintegrate, and how they speed southward through once-prosperous Côte d'Ivoire and pause to visit the full-scale replica of Rome's Saint Peter's Basilica, built by the then-president of Côte d'Ivoire at a cost of 360 million of his own dollars. In Ghana they explore a fort from which slaves were shipped to the New World. They hurry through Togo and Benin to Nigeria, where they are harassed by omnipresent soldiers in the uneasy aftermath of the execution of the author Ken Saro-Wiwa and other political dissidents. In Cameroon they meet the fon of Chobe and his chief female minister, Ya Wende, and visit the twenty-four wives of the fon of Nkwem.As they continue the journey they battle malaria, try to reform two would-be robbers, sing Christmas carols with American missionaries, confront extornionist and dangerous Mobutu men, and come near collapse on Zaire's impassable muddy "roads." Finally, they pause to recuperate in a posh hotel, whose luxuries spell the end of their expedition together--the author rejecting modern comforts, her companion yearning for more.Ann Jones writes of how she travels on in search of the Lovedu people: through Tanzania and Malawi and the Tete Corridor of Mozambique to the ruins of the once-magnificent city of Great Zimbabwe. She writes of crossing the Limpopo River into South Africa, where her long journey culminates in an audience with Modjadji V, Queen of the Lovedu.Her book is an irrestistible roller-coaster ride through Africa--crowded with obstacles, beauty, maddening corruption, and marvelous people.

Textauszug

the mission

The Queen was an afterthought. Long before we heard of her, we hatched the scheme in Africa--in Zimbabwe, on the Zambezi, in a canoe. In the long white afternoon, the intensity of the sun propelled us, lightheaded, into a reedy little backwater to rest. We drew the four canoes together, and Dave, our guide, opened a cooler and pitched us bottles of warm Coke. I dipped my bandana in the river, wrapped it around my eyes, smarting from the glint of sun on water, and lay back against the thwart, half dozing, embraced by my friends' banter. Images of the African morning played upon the inside of my eyelids: Elephants showering in the shallows at the river's edge. Crocodiles lying like logs against the banks, innocent and sinister. A flight of carmine bee-eaters darting from their nests in the riverbank, flinging themselves like rubies over the bright water. Now, as heat enveloped us, pressing our bodies as a lover might, everything grew still as all that had gone before and all that was to come converged upon this single suspended moment that was both dream and reality: Africa.

Of course we couldn't bear perfection. Who first pitched dream trips into the silence I can't recall, but my companions leaped upon the subject, describing half a dozen places that might be better--more beautiful, more exciting, more perfect than this. It's the subject that always comes up among travelers: Where do you really want to go? Someone spoke of Timbuktu: of camels and drifting coppery dunes, and blue-robed masked men slim as swords. Another spoke of rain forests along the Congo: of furtive okapis and tiny Pygmies hunting with nets, and women who make houses out of leaves. Someone spoke of the Skeleton Coast: of ships flung inland among desert elephants, and lions prowling among seals on the beach. And then a British voice was saying: 'I've always been keen to drive all the way through Africa.'

This was Kevin Muggleton, a photographer from pastoral Wiltshire. He spoke offhandedly with an easy tantalizing laugh. Not even Muggleton could seriously make this proposition: to drive from one end of Africa to the other. But his voice carried a decidedly un-British edge of enthusiasm that drew me out of this moment--relaxed and contemplative in a green canoe on a blue river in the heart of Africa--and flung me by the sheer force of its vitality into an uncertain and adventurous future. 'It's classic,' Muggleton said. 'You know, the old 'Cape to Cairo' sort of thing.' That's all it took. Later I stumbled upon the Queen and used her as a good excuse, but in fact I decided everything in that moment.

When I was a kid, my father's idea of a good time was to get in the car and drive somewhere. Anywhere. Anything to escape the malicious carping that passed for family life in our house. 'Want to take a little ride in the jalopy, kiddo?' he'd say to me when tension sucked the air from our kitchen, and off we'd go in the old green Ford for a few hours or a few days. Even in winter we'd roll down the windows for a faceful of wind. We'd go where my father felt like going and head home when he was laughing again and felt like going back. Maybe he had a plan all along, but he never let on. To me and my dog, Lady, this aimless wandering was bliss. When I grew up I labeled it 'travel' and kept at it, which is how I came to be lazing in a canoe on the Zambezi in the first place.

I lifted my bandana and squinted up at Muggleton in the next canoe. He was young, big, tall, lean. He'd grown up in Hong Kong, a military brat, gone to boarding school in England, and after Sandhurst done a stint as an officer in the British equivalent of the Green Berets. Later he'd started a video...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 8.12.2010
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber
• Themenwelt: Reisen ► Reiseführer
• ISBN-10: 0-307-77334-5 / 0307773345
• ISBN-13: 978-0-307-77334-0 / 9780307773340