Excerpts From the Book
Chapter 1: I learned that two hundred miles are not always merely two hundred miles, that it may be five hours or ten hours or two days away. And this you do not learn from a map. You taste the dust, broil during long days across desert and steppe, sleep in strange often dirty places, get ill from the food, go weeks without a proper bath–are generally exposed to all the things that keep some people coming home but make others, like me, confirmed travelers. For in all this you learn, and grow, and meet people, and begin to understand.
Chapter 6: In the evening light I passed a few indians in the alley outside Mr. Patel’s office. Further along, the main street was alive with strolling Europeans. Yet this is Africa, I reminded myself. What of the Africans? Kenya is their country, and the aims of the British government, at least as stated in 1923, recognize the preeminence of African interests. Next day I walked into the office of the Municipal Officer for African Affairs, Mr. E. C. Eggins, and asked him what the government was doing in Mombasa for the Africans
Chapter 8: Kilimanjaro floated in and out of her mists as we sped on newly laid tarmac toward Arusha. The thrill of her snowcovered eminence only increased with each glimpse, and we stopped a dozen times for photographs.
Chapter 16: In the Belgian Congo, we had been invited to visit the plantation owned by Maurice de San, brother of Louis de San who was the Belgian Charge d’affaires in New Delhi in 1952. I was anxious to hear what a resident thought about the way colonialism was practiced here. The several British civil servants who mentioned the Congo during interviews in Kenya and Uganda strongly disagreed with what they considered to be the Belgian’s heavy-handed policies to control the natives and limit their education.