Customer Reviews

Harmattan: A Journey Across the Sahara

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For those in a hurry, here is the bottom line on "Harmattan," Geraldine Kennedy's new book: Get it. Beg, borrow or steal it. Read it. You will laugh. You will learn. You will be inspired. Nothing better reveals the spirit and courage necessary to create a new world for the 21st Century.

"Harmattan" is an utterly riveting narrative and, in the stunning, seductive world of travel literature, an instant classic, an unforgetable contribution

This is a book for any woman who has attempted or dreamed of a quixotic quest. The year is 1964 in newly independent Africa when author Kennedy and four fellow Peace Corps volunteers brave the relentless Harmattan winds across the forbidding Sahara desert. The women do not let the lack of money or safe transportation deter them. If they had thought to ask for advice they would have been told that the trip was impossible, but no one asked. The travelers, on summer break from their teaching jobs, are more acquaintances than friends. Each is changed by the experience, but it is through Kennedy's eyes that we watch the desert test and forge the woman she will become. Her lyrical writing, spiced with a wry humor, involves the reader from the first paragraph: . . . . . . . . . ."Zinder was the place on the edge of the Sahara where they kept and told the desert stories. They knew of the men lost­sixteen Arabs in three trucks swallowed last spring­and those spared, praise Allah, to return to Zinder. A strange sort of anticipation permeated life there, a foreboding of misfortune inevitable as the wind swirling dust through the alleys, against the ancient ageless mesquite, under skirts, and over piles of peppers and yams. The Harmattan blew. Resignation replaced hope. Endurance meant survival. Despite the wind, winter was the preferred time for travel in the desert. Death, the people said, accompanied the summer trips of fools.". . . . . . . .As a reader, I immediately signed on for this journey. When the five women leave the desert at Algiers, I felt an exhilaration, a feeling of accomplishment. My life also had been enriched by their journey. For I now too am the keeper of one of the stories told by the old men on the edge of the desert, the story of "desmoiselles formidables."

After Eisenhower and before Vietnam was a lovely time to be young and American and on the loose in an optimistic world, and Kennedy records her adventure lovingly. And honestly too­the five young women were an unlikely grouping and got sick of each other. The depth of understanding that grows in her is with the desert, with her place in the human race, and with herself . . . now written down in this book full of wisdom and heart

Their story is truly amazing as, thanks to both naïveté and determination, they accomplish what few men even dare to try. Kennedy transports us back to a time when America was still innocent and five young women could rely on the kindness of strangers in making their way

An affecting travel and spiritual adventure. Writing with a sense of immediacy, Kennedy . . .evokes the magic and awesomeness of the alternatingly hot and frigid desert lashed by the Harmattan wind and sand. . . The unpredictable, rugged, often dangerous conditions . . .served both to forge and strain bonds among the tempermentally diverse travelers

"Harmattan" tells of the world Geraldine Kennedy and her adventurous friends found on their epic journey across the Sahara. It makes me proud of the special spirit and talents of women volunteers and reminds me why the Peace Corps was the best job I ever had. Three Cheers! (LMR, Former Director of the Peace Corps and Former Ambassador to Norway

One of the most exciting books I've read. I savored it like "Kon Tiki" because both seem so wonderfully improbable as undertakings. Read it

Ms Kennedy is quite a good writer, and I enjoyed the descriptions of her Saharan surroundings. However, I disliked the heavy focus on the pettiness of the group she was traveling with. I did not empathise at all with any of the women, and sometimes even felt like slapping them all for not making the most of their fabulous opportunity.

Having made almost the identical Sahara-crossing (in reverse) almost a quarter-century after those five Peace Corps women, I was really looking forward to reading Ms. Kennedy's book. Upon completing it, I was amazed to realize how little things had changed in that part of the world. Kennedy's writing captures well the ceaseless wind, the all-pervasive sand, the air thick with dust, the cold, starry nights in the desert, the aloof, graceful Tuareg, the all-too-forward men, the invisible women, the endless difficulty in searching out transportation, the waiting. However, the book is no "West With the Night." Their story is epic, yet so often I felt the author revealed her pettiness by the relentless focus on who among the group was or wasn't sharing, bickering, pitching in. Made me want to hear how the other four might tell the tale, and left me sad that Kennedy, even after so many years, reveals the grudge she still carries toward some of her companions. Every story is told through the filter of the storyteller, who discloses more of what's inside her than she may realize or intend.