Vox Publica

Angry Winds

I have traveled quite a bit in my not-so-short life but, beyond a quick stop in Nairobi and a week at a conference in Rwanda, I’ve never actually been to sub-Saharan Africa. That may be why I picked up a copy of Angry Wind : Through Muslim Black Africa by Truck, Bus, Boat, and Camel by Jeffrey Tayler. I’m not usually much of a reader of travel writings, but the book promised to introduce me to an area of the world that I knew little about and I’d be unlikely to visit for several years at least. After reading the book, I’m not sure I want to go there.

For this book, Tayler traveled through the Sahel, a term describing the desert region inhabited by African Muslims in what’s now Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Mali (it also includes the Sudan, but Tayler wisely decided to skip the civil war there). While these countries have a history of falling into and out of civil war, they were relatively peaceful at the time Tayler was there, which might not have made his trip any easier but certainly made it safer. He did encounter a few unnerving situations, but most of them seemed related to his reluctance to pay the so-called formalité to the military officers and government officials that got on his way. Mostly, though, Tayler seems to have spent his time in the region figuring out how to get to the next spot.
While doing this, he ends up meeting a few colorful characters whom he employs as his guides, but seldom does his experience of a country and their people seem to reach much beyond them and those they introduce him to. To be fair, in a couple of occasions he makes an effort to meet the Tuareg, but it seems more than as an object of curiosity than for any loftier purpose.

Through the book, Tayler appears more as a tourist than a traveler, and as he often describes himself to others as such, that may not really be an insult. But his superficial understanding, western perspective and inability to connect to the people around him, are maddening, if for no other reason that it constrains my own understanding of the region. But it’s perhaps because I can empathize with him, feel the despair that cultural shock produces and makes you seek refuge in the certainty of superiority of your own culture or the shallow admiration of the more “quaint” traits of the culture you are visiting, that his inability to get beyond himself bothers me so much. I expect more from someone who’s lived and traveled abroad so much.

But my most lasting impression of Tayler’s journey is one of boredom. At no point in the book he seems to be having fun, there is no joie de vivre here, much less joie de voyage. He makes traveling to these countries seem unbelievably boring and alienating, so much so that I hope someone who has been to the Sahel will read this “review” and will tell me that there are compelling reasons to visit this region.

All this said, Tayler is a good writer and I did enjoy the book, if nothing else it wetted my tastebuds for some more travel writing.

Posted by marga at April 16, 2005 11:07 AM | TrackBack