Eastwestern Latitudes (Travelogue 03 Book 1)

"The Travelogues" are anthologies of short stories from a decade of travels across the globe. Avoiding the ‘Big Picture’ and focusing instead on telling details, in colorful photo-like snapshots, they attempt to capture the essence of our World: the many places between ‘here’ and ‘there’ that make each journey worthwhile.

The World is huge, and wild, and beautiful, and intense, and pure. The World is disgruntling at times, and always chancy, and usually exhausting. Each continent is a World (and a book) unto its own. Africa is where you rot incessantly waiting for a bush taxi to fill up and where it takes three days to complete a one day’s errand, and where you’ll be dumped by the roadside at one AM. This is where you can be delayed for a week by some petty official in the hope of a bribe, and where you will wait four hours for a sandy omelet — in Africa, words you think you know, words like ‘near’ and ‘far’, ‘later’ and ‘soon’, and even ‘now’, have different meanings. Nothing can really prepare you for it.

"Eastwestern Latitudes" relates the first half of a two-year-long overland odyssey from Morocco in northernmost Africa, across the desert of Francophone West Africa, to the eastern parts of the continent: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda. Through all the places that really draw me: those not here and not there, but in-between.

This isn't one of those books about wandering from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Cape of Good Hope. Details about the history and meaning behind the places I pass through – I’ll admit it right now: you’ll find these to be sketchy at best. And no: here you won’t find answers to Africa’s unanswerable questions, or any grand epiphanies coming to me at the end of my trip. Suspicious border guards and ill-defined camel trails across the Sahara? A route as convoluted as possible, passing through every unlikely destination? The Full Monty of ‘Out of Africa’ experiences? Yeah. Sure. All that is here, but there is much more to this story. The real story of Africa is the story of her people. It’s the story of their zest for life, their sense of humor, their hand-to-mouth survival in spite of all the odds. It’s exactly they, the people, who make the spirit and soul of Africa real. It’s the people who make Africa come alive.

"Eastwestern Latitudes" is the Un-Tour of Africa. I invite you to join me and squeeze yourself into a contortionist pretzel, which even Houdini would have found unbearable, to hitch rides in clapped-out matatus. Sleep restlessly in the sometime-dubious dives the locals frequent, because they’re cheap and exactly the opposite of what you’re looking for. Chew sugar cane, tearing off the hard green bark like a baboon, then crunch the deliciously sweet liquid centre, sucking out its life before spitting out mouthfuls of woody pith. Share a communal straw to sip thick, soupy, lukewarm, very bitter, alcoholic porridge that passes for beer in those parts. At a great distance from the homeboys who might frown, someplace which is green and simple, rediscover laughter. And sadness. And love. Go ahead — get to know Africa up-close. It’ll be less of an armchair trip and more of an experience. Africa’s sights, sounds and smells, most of all her people, make for an intense patchwork of encounters —from the dreadfully frustrating to the sublimely eye-opening— but that is one of the undoubted joys of traveling across the continent. A close-up of Africa isn't like any postcard.

And if you enjoy these stories, than I invite you to then download "North of South," describing all of southern Africa, where this book leaves off.