Western travelers' fascination with Africa is alive and well, judging by Julian Smith's finely written account of British explorer Ewart Grogan's epic transecting of the continent from south to north in the 1890s. He was the first white man to do so.
The urgent motivation for Grogan was to prove to his prospective father-in-law that he (Grogan) would be a worthy husband to that gentleman's daughter. Smith parallels Grogan's trek with his own in 2007, as far as he could go until forced by good sense and a healthy survival instinct to stop in conflict-ridden Sudan; in contrast to Grogan, he had something to prove only to himself. His account of Grogan's hazardous trip is half the strength of this intriguing narrative; the other half is his honest, unrelenting self-examination before his own commitment in marriage to his fiancé Laura, who, like Grogan's Gertrude, anxiously awaited his return.
Smith is a successful travel writer with four guidebooks to his credit, and whose work has appeared in a number of national publications. With Crossing the Heart of Africa, his clear, precise and subtly humorous prose style is smoothly ramped up as he deals with the absorbing adventures of the two travelers, whose stories are seamlessly interwoven, and are both compelling and highly entertaining.
Smith is a master of metaphor. The book is alive with original, photographically vivid word images. His accommodations are often unusual: the walls of one room "end raggedly two feet below the roof, as if gnawed by a giant rodent." African animals can tend toward the exotic. One night his flashlight beam catches an armadillo, "a scaly silver football rooting in the underbrush." A warthog "has an almost vindictive homeliness. Feed a serving tray into a wood chipper, stick on two stumpy tusks, and cover in coarse hair. Finish with stubby legs, a wispy tail, and hooves like cloven high heels." A young female chimpanzee has a "butt-swinging knuckle walk [that] is adorable....Her arms look twice as large as her parenthetical little legs."
Spectacular African landscapes come alive. Grogan crossed extensive, jagged lava fields: "This hellscape was the inverse of the Alps, broiling black instead of frigid white." In Uganda Smith and Grogan both passed crater lakes, "like gigantic thumbprints amid the undulating hills." On the local transportation, from the back of a motorbike: "We pull out into the life-or-death game of rock-paper-scissors that is Kampala traffic. Bus flattens minibus, minibus squashes car, car smashed motorcycle. Pedestrians always lose." Small everyday experiences become something more than everyday. Laura's voice on a satellite cell phone call is "scrubbed by distance." After some weeks he yearns for "any sort of exercise beyond the isometrics of clutching a seat in terror."
The Washington Post has reported that "Julian Smith, a talented travel writer...evokes Grogan, his adventures and his world with both insight and panache...and matchless skill."
I can't say it better.
