Bill Bryson - Bill Brysons African Diary

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Bill Brysons African Diary

In the late 1940s and early 1950s after he became a little too saggy to fit into a Tarzan loincloth without depressing popcorn sales among cinema audiences, the great Johnny Weissmuller filled the twilight years of his acting career with a series of low-budget adventure movies with titles like DevilGoddess and Jungle Moon Men, all built around a character called Jungle Jim. These modest epics are largely forgotten now, which is a pity because they were possibly the most cherishably terrible movies ever made.

The plots seldom got anywhere near coherence. My own favourite, called Pygmy Island, involved a lost tribe of white midgets and a strange but valiant fight against the spread of Communism. But the narrative possibilities were practically infinite since each Jungle Jim feature consisted in large measure of scenes taken from other, wholly unrelated adventure movies. Whatever footage was availabletrain crashes, volcanic eruptions, rhino charges, panic scenes involving large crowds of Japanesewould be snipped from the original and woven into Jungle Jims wondrously accommodating story lines. From time to time, the ever-more-fleshy Weissmuller would appear on the scene to wrestle the life out of a curiously rigid and unresisting crocodile or chase some cannibals into the woods, but these intrusions were generally brief and seldom entirely explained.

I wouldnt be at all surprised to learn that no more than four people at a time ever paid money to watch a Jungle Jim movie. The series might well have escaped my own attention except that in about 1959 WOI-TV, a television station well known in central Iowa for its tireless commitment to mediocrity, acquired the complete Jungle Jim oeuvre and for the next dozen or so years showed two of them back to back late every Friday night. What is especially tragic about all this is that I not only watched these movies with unaccountable devotion, but was indelibly influenced by them. In fact, were it not for some scattered viewings of the 1952 classic BwanaDevil and a trip on the Jungle Safari ride at Disneyland in 196I, my knowledge of African life, I regret to say, would be entirely dependent on Jungle Jim movies.

I cant say it actively preyed on me that my impressions of Africa were based so heavily on a series of B-movies made in California more than half a century ago, but when a personable young man named Dan McLean from the London office of CARE International, the venerable and worthy charity, asked me if I would be willing to go to Kenya to visit some of their projects and write a few words on their behalf, it occurred to me that there were some gaps in my familiarity with the Dark Continent that I might usefully fill in. So I agreed.

Some weeks later, I was summoned to CAREs London offices for a meeting with Dan, his boss Will Day and a rugged and amiable fellow named Nick Southern, CAREs regional manager for Kenya, who happened to be in London at the time. We sat around a big table spread with maps of Kenya, while they outlined what they had in mind for me.

Of course, youll have to fly to the refugee camp at Dadaab, Will observed thoughtfully at one point. He glanced at me. To avoid the bandits, he explained.

Dan and Nick nodded gravely.

I beg your pardon? I said, taking a sudden interest. Its bandit country all round there, Will said. Where? I asked, peering at the map for the first time.

Oh, just there, Will said, waving a hand vaguely across most of east Africa. But youll be fine in a plane.

They only rarely shoot at planes, Nick explained.

This wasnt at all what I had had in mind, frankly. By way of homework, I had dutifully watched Out of Africa, from which I derived the impression that this trip would mostly take place on a verandah somewhere while turbaned servants brought me lots of coffee. I knew that we would probably visit a clinic from time to time and that someone in the party might occasionally have to shoot a charging animal, but I hadnt imagined anything shooting at me in return.

So how dangerous is Kenya then? I asked in a small controlled squeak.

Oh, not at all, they responded in unison.

Well, hardly, Will added.

It depends on what you mean by dangerous, of course, said Dan.

Like bleeding and not getting up again, I suggested. Being shot and stabbed and so forth, I added.

They assured me that that only very rarely happened, and that it was nearly always one or the other. You had to be very unlucky to be shot and stabbed, they said.

Its mostly diseases you have to worry about, Nick went on. Malaria, schistosomiasis, trypanosomiasis.

Rift Valley fever, blackwater fever, yellow fever, said Dan.

Dengue fever, bilharziathe usual tropical stuff, added Will.

But they pointed out that you can be inoculated against many of those and for the rest most people manage a more or less complete recovery, given time and a considered programme of physiotherapy. Many even walk again. I asked if there was anything else I should know.

Well, the roads are a little dangerousthere are some crazy drivers out there, Will said, chuckling.

But apart from that and the diseases and the bandits and the railway from Nairobi to Mombasa, theres absolutely nothing to worry about, Nick added.

Whats wrong with the railway?

Oh, nothing really. Its just the rolling stock is a little antiquated and sometimes the brakes give out coming down out of the mountainsbut, hey, if you worried about all the things that might happen you wouldnt go anywhere, would you?

I dont go anywhere, I pointed out.

They nodded thoughtfully.

Well, itll be an adventure, Will said brightly. Youll be fine, absolutely fine. Just check your insurance before you go.

And so it was that I became irrevocably committed to the African adventure which follows.

Saturday, September 28

We meet at the Kenya Airways check-in desk at Heathrow, the five brave souls who are to form our party from London. In addition to me and Dan, they are: David Sanderson, a thoughtful and kindly fellow who is soon to take up a post in Johannesburg as CAREs regional manager in South Africa, but joining us now in his capacity as urban specialist; Justin Linnane, an intent but amiable young maker of television documentaries who has volunteered to make a video record of the expedition; and the photographer Jenny Matthews, whose brilliant and compassionate snaps grace this volume. White-haired and sweetly unobtrusive, Jenny is easily the wonder of the lot. If you saw her in a supermarket you would take her for a schoolteacher or civil servant. In fact, for 25 years she has gone wherever there is dangerto Chechnya, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Rwanda. She is fearless and evidently indestructible. If things go bad on this trip, it is her Ill hold on to.

The first good news is that Kenya Airways has given us all an upgrade on account of our genial goodness and dapper manner, and so of course gets a glowing mention here. It is a nine-and-a-half-hour flight from London to Nairobi, and we are very pleased to pass it in comfort, with a better class of drinks and our own party packs.

An hour or so after we are airborne, by chance I come across an article in