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Journal of African trips

Africa, spring 1999 part I

Agelasto
2004-05-21 17:28:26

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Bonjour from West Africa (1)

North, east and southern Africa weren?t really enough for me; they only whetted my
appetite to find out exactly how the continent ticked. My trip last year, starting in Cairo,
down the east coast, across the center, down the west coast with a departure from
Capetown, was just enough to get a flavor for what Africa could be like, if as a tourist I
wanted to give it more time. Last year?s trip, if you recall my e-mail (which if you didn?t
get, I can send) was a bit discouraging, for I mostly saw only problems, not solutions.
Problems I hadn?t anticipated; solutions which I had figured must exist, but did not seem
apparent. Yet I still could not figure out what exactly was wrong.

I left Africa last year a bit confused (confusion is my life?s normal condition, so I should
say I was only a bit more confused than usual). Last year I felt I had gotten a taste of
most of the continent, with the exception of West Africa, an area which has commonly
come to mean fifteen or so countries, two-thirds officially French-speaking. They cover
the region south of the Sahara, bordered by the Atlantic on the west and the Gulf of
Guinea on the south. I figured, just maybe, West Africa would give me the insight I felt
lacking at the end of last year?s two-month trip.

I am happy to report that I have somehow survived eight weeks in West Africa. And I
think I figured out what?s wrong with the continent. West Africa was more colorful,
brilliant, interesting and certainly more difficult to traverse than what I had experienced on
last year?s trip, but it also left me more saddened, for I now am more convinced than ever
that sub-Saharan Africa is a dying continent. In voodoo, which was transported to the
Americas with some of the slaves from West Africa, there are three states of being. There
are the living, ...