Africa Solo: A Journey Across the Sahara, Sahel, and Congo - Softcover

Kertscher, Kevin

3.67

83 ratings by Goodreads

9781883642945: Africa Solo: A Journey Across the Sahara, Sahel, and Congo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1883642949 ISBN 13: 9781883642945

Publisher: Steerforth Pr, 1998

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Feeling the need to reorient his inner compass, filmmaker Kevin Kertscher set out on a personal journey across large expanses of the African continent.

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From Kirkus Reviews:

In a narrative that is among the better recent additions to the genre, a personable and resourceful modern-day Henry Stanley traverses half of the African continent by thumb, afoot, and aboard riverboat. Comfort was not among his considerations when Kertscher, an independent filmmaker, set out from the Algerian port of Oran heading into the Sahara. He hitches rides with North Africans and a quarrelsome group of Europeans, traveling in a four-car caravan led by an unstable egomaniac. Upon entering the Sahel, to the south of the Sahara, Kertscher heads west via a series of slow and unreliable conveyances to reach a Peace Corps friend in Timbuktu. His account of one incredibly long and breakdown- filled trip aboard a truck overloaded with passengers sitting atop sacks of dates is especially representative of the state of local transport, and even more of the Africans' and eventually Kertscher's good-humored resignation to the pace of travel. Guiltily, but faced with the prospect of crossing the Congo during the rainy season, Kertscher flies from the Ivory Coast to the Central African Republic, hitches south to the Congo River, and catches the boat (really a floating city replete with merchants, crime, and police) to Kisanganicertainly one of the most picturesque, crowded, and uncomfortable excursions anywhere. Soon after, Kertscher contracts a severe malarial infection; only through the kindness of the local Congolese villagers does he pull through. The final stage of his journey through east Africa includes encounters with mountain gorillas and a visit to Tanzania's Ngorongoro Crater. While the journey is hardly unique, Kertscher is refreshingly unassuming and open to nuances of human nature (his own included), and while his occasional explanations of the motivations behind his trip seem canned and tired, he draws a colorful and vibrant portrait of this marvelous landscape and of its warmhearted people. -- Copyright �1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Booklist:

Kertscher, an independent filmmaker whose grandfather was a white hunter in Africa, uses his background to render a fascinating account of his travels across the breadth of Africa. Kertscher crosses the Sahara desert and the Sahel region, moving on to Timbuktu and southward to the Ivory Coast and the jungles of equatorial Africa. He battles malaria and loneliness, sees the silverback gorillas of East Africa, and floats on the Congo River in a rigging of six barges alive with people, animals, and cargo. At differing times and durations, his traveling companions include peace corps volunteers, conventional tourists, and a band of adventurers trying to sell progressively deteriorating cars. Kertscher has an eye for detail and an appreciation of different peoples and cultures, finding beauty and dignity in the music or religious worship of the people he sees. He appreciates the experience of being a foreigner, wondering at the rootlessness of long-term travelers unable to fit in anywhere. And he clearly understands the privileges that continue to be extended to a white person in Africa. Vanessa Bush

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