Tourism in Africa: Three ApproachesAfrica Explored: Europeans in the Dark Continent, 1769-1889 by Christopher Hibbert; Olivia'sAfrican Diary: Cape Town to Cairo, 1932 by Olivia Stokes Hatch; Africa Alone: Odyssey of anAmerican Traveler by Sandy McMathReview by: James B. WolfAfrica Today, Vol. 35, No. 1, Black Consciousness in South Africa (1st Qtr., 1988), pp. 83-84Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4186477 .

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Tourism in Africa: Three Approaches James B. Wolf

Christopher Hibbert, AFRICA EXPIORED: Europeans i the Dark Continent, 1769-1889, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1983): pp. 348, hardcover $17.50, paper- back $7.95 (New York: Penguin, 1985).

Olivia Stokes Hatch, OLIVIA'S AFRICAN DIARY: Cape Town To Cairo, 1932 (Arlington, Virginia: American Council on Education Press Distribution Center, 1980), pp. 162, $12.50.

Sandy McMath, AFRICA ALONE: Odyssey of an American Traveler (Little Rock, Arkansas August House, 1983), pp. 361, out of print.

Each of these books is about travel in Africa. Hibbert retells the tales of nineteenth century explorers; Hatch publishes, fifty years after the fact, a Cape to Cairo adven- ture; and McMath publishes his diary of his auto trip alone across Africa from west to east in 1980. There is something very romantic in each of the books; the romance of travel is a known attraction. From classical times a trip to Africa often resulted in a written account of the joumey. Africa, so far off the beaten trail of westerners, with a population so alien from Western society, held a fascination for European and American visitors. A journey in Africa was so exotic to the casual visitor, so unique an experience, so difficult to replicate, verify or challenge, that they were frequently written up and published just as soon as the traveler returned home. Africa once discovered by Europeans was rediscovered frequently, and since each traveler saw him or herself as the central figure in a great adventure, it should not be surprising that the amount of tourist literature describing Africa is so huge.

These three books together illustrate the types of casual travel that westerners have undertaken in Africa. The major themes are here; the variety of travelers are all represented. It might seem strange that three books could be symbolic of so much previous literature, (I use the word with some reservations) but remarkably they are.

Christopher Hibbert in Africa Explored breaks no new scholarly ground what- soever, nor was that his intention. He presents in capsule form summaries of the journeys of exploration of Europeans from the late eighteenth century through to the age of the partition of Africa in the late nineteenth century. All the great names are here from Mungo Park through Ludwig Krapf to Henry Stanley. The well known ex- plorations, the familiar adventure tales from all parts of the African interior are here in a book designed for light and exciting reading.

The question asks itself: why publish these tales again? The answer has several dimensions. First, these are good stories: heroic struggles, pioneering discoveries, exotic surroundings; the second is related to the first in a contemporary economic sense: this book is tailored to sell, to make money. It is perfect airplane reading; each chapter is self contained, nothing is too deep or challenging for the reader. Hibbert provides for the layman popular history, and he does so by abridging the lengthy original publica- tions. His contribution to the original works is to provide information about the preceding and succeeding lives of the explorers (if they were lucky enough to have any).

Olivia's African Diary: Cape Town to Cairo, 1932 is a very strange book to have published in 1980. In her introduction, the author suggests that her half cen- tury old trip might provide some insights into Africa and Africans to contemporary

James B. Wolf is Professor of History at the University of Coiorado at Denver. Denver. Colorado. 80204

lst Quarter, 1988 83

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visitors to Africa. However, the world, Africa, and the attitudes of people have changed so radically that insights of that somewhat distant age are of antiquarian interest only. Her trip from the Cape to Cairo, as a traveling companion to her father Anson Phelps Stokes, Canon of Washington Cathedral and a visiting lecturer at the University of Cape Town, was hardly roughing it. Miss Stokes and her friend Miss Marvin Breckinridge who took the photographs for this book toured Africa in the manner of most rich travelers visiting during the interwar period. Their insights tell more about the tourists than the people they observed. As tourists the then Miss Stokes and Miss Breckinridge sought comfort, convenience, ease of travel, and authentic, easily ac- cessible natives. For the two young women it was a tour of discovery, of exotic peoples and places, but their observations provided little new in 1932 or today.

One interesting sidelight in this work is the attention given to the American black population by whites in Africa. Canon Stokes delivered lectures on American blacks; Jan Smuts comments on his amazement at the pace of development of 'American Negroes." Also, European life in Africa occupies significant space; this is not surpris- ing as Europeans visiting Africa in fact visited Europeans and only observed Africans in passing. Olivia's African Dairy is typical of the style of tourist travel publications of the 'twenties and 'thirties: self-centered, self-taken, and self-important. That this rather pedestrian book is published in this decade only emphasizes the point.

A far more interesting work is Sandy McMath's Africa Alone: Odyssey of an American Traveler. It is based on an Arkansas lawyer's journey from Morocco to Cape Town in a Toyota Land Cruiser in 1976. There is something very fascinating about McMaths African adventure. A man and a car and a continent combine to form almost an archetypal traveler tale of courage and daring. Similarities with the eigh- teenth and nineteenth century explorers Hibbert writes about are vivid. McMath on his own encounters and engages the people along the way just as the earlier pioneer Europeans did. What is different is that he traveled by car.

Following the First World War the automobile became part of the adventure for- mula for westerners visiting Africa. It was a convenience, providing freedom of move- ment and freedom from the dependence upon carriers; it was a visible symbol of the superiority of western civilization and a cocoon of western security in alien territory. The Cape to Cairo run, or visa versa, was a challenge between the wars, particularly for Western Europeans. McMath shared many of the same problems with his predecessors: the car sinking into sand and mud, continual mechanical difficulties and insufficient spare parts, and perhaps the most common ailment-fatigue.

Another aspect of his journal reflects the dependence of the African traveler upon the hospitality and voluntary physical aid given by Africans. Africans were essential to the successful trip through Africa, not only as subjects to look at and write about but also for labor, food and information. McMath's observations are graphic; his self- imposed challenge exciting, and his book fun to read.

Tourism is discovery for the individual; each tourist work following the initial ex- plorers seems to be a tale of rediscovery. But for the traveler. Africa is new; Africans are different; the tourists' observations are fresh and worthy of sharing with the reading public. Or so they think. While Herodotus said that there was always something new out of Africa, what people write about Africa is often neither new information nor stimulating reading. Unfortunately, no matter how desperately tourists want other- wise, few of their observations carry weight with scholars or great interest for the general reading public. If the tourist is not the first there, he or she would be better off enjoy- ing the sights rather than publishing another rediscovery of Africa.

84 AFRICA TODAY

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