I all things Africa and since i can say that my only natural talent is reading i think its only natural that i love reading about Africa i can safely say that two of my favourite books of all time are "A story like the wind" and "A far off place" by Laurence Van Der post (i wasn't so keen on the movie adaption which is a surprise as its Disney and i love all things Disney) other memorable African books are "Half of a yellow sun"-Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and "The other hand"-Chris Cleave... anyway its safe to say I've read some amazing African books in my time... but since we first started planning our Africa trip earlier in the year my reading list has been almost exclusively African from African themed novels ("things fall apart"-Chinua Achebe,"Heart of Darkness"- Joesph Conrad,"white mischief"-James Fox the list goes on and on and on...) to travel writing ("Dark star safari"-Paul Theroux, "Geldof in Africa"-Bob Geldof, "Livingstone's tribe-A journey from Zanzibar to the Cape"- Stephen Taylor again the list goes on and on...)to guide books (lonely Planet-Africa)...i am from all fronts absorbing all things Africa including now watching African themed movies (the constant Gardener,Out of Africa,Gorillas in the mist...and a whole lot more downloaded and on LPs i-pod to watch whilst in Africa...)and listening to African tribal music that LP has down loaded... i have now read all the relevant books that the Truro library has on offer and have branched out to reading about all of Africa Rather then just the countries we are going to i am currently reading "Blood River" by Tim Butcher its all about his journey across the Congo following in the footsteps of H.M Stanley's famous expedition its an amazing book and a real eye opener to how other people live... its sure going to be different from our African Adventure riding in relative luxury compared with the hardships that the vast majority of the Continent endure...
I have also recently finished reading "The map of love"-Ahdaf Soueif in it there is a powerful paragraph (many of you will have already read it in some form its one of those things that circulates in forwards emails...)
"if we could shrink the Earths population to a village of 100 people, with all the existing human ratios staying the same, it would look like this: There would be 57 Asians , 21 Europeans, 14 from the Americas and 8 Africans. 80 would live in Substandard housing. 70 would be unable to read. 50 would suffer from malnutrition. 50 percent of the entire worlds wealth would be in the hands of only 6 people. And all 6 would be citizens of the untied states." -Ahdaf Soueif
of all the things i have read lately this really stuck out to me...It really makes you think...
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