Customer Reviews

Swahili for the Broken-Hearted

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I'm a recent convert to Peter Moore's books and look forward to reading them all. Please see my review of "The Full Montezuma" for an explanation of how I discovered him and more detail on his writing style.

"Swahili for the Broken Hearted" is a follow-up to "The Full Montezuma." After breaking up with the much ballyhooed GND (Girl Next Door), with whom he roughed it through Central America, Moore undertakes another long and grueling journey. Here he travels overland from Cape Town to Cairo, the fabled route dreamed up by Cecil Rhodes, and pondered by many an armchair adventurer, including yours truly.

To his credit Moore makes it to Cairo but I won't give anything away. In this day and age, politics frequently rears its ugly head, making the romanticized journeys undertaken by the Victorian Brits seem almost quaint. Sudan, in particlar, threatens to intervene with its unsympathetic attitude toward would-be explorers. This worrisome fact causes no end of stress for our story teller.

Along the way, Peter frequently does things in his own inimitable way, taking mini-buses to South African townships (a fact that horrifies his white S.A. friends) and finds himself hitchhiking on a Sunday in Lesotho (not a wise move). He's caught up in violent demonstrations in Ethiopia and suffers aboard long-haul lorries through Kenya's very inhospitable and bandit-ridden northern territory. If you want to know what it's like without having to subject yourself to the torture, this is the book for you.

I really wonder, however, how often Mr. Moore forgoes the pleasures of a night with some of the attractive, and obviously very willing, female backpackers he meets on the road. Come on, Peter, if you hooked up we want to know details! Are you being modest or just a gentleman who's protecting the ladies' reputations?

I read this story on a recent trip to West Africa (an area he doesn't travel through) and it kept me thoroughly entertained through some strenuous days of my own. I even squashed a cockroach on the nightstand of my Dakar hotel room with it and its matte finish wiped off easily, good as new. I e-mailed Peter about this and he responded, saying that he was glad I found additional uses for the book.

Moore comes across as a very nice guy, one who would be fun to run into in a fly-blown African bar or ratty backpackers' hostel, a well-traveled veteran whose brain you could pick over a few beers. I'd recommend this book as an entertaining, easy read; one that you're sorry to see come to an end. As with all good travel narratives, you feel you've taken a journey with a friend and it leaves you looking for more. Fortunately, Peter has several other volumes to choose from. I plan to seek them all out.

My husband and I had just moved to Kenya the fall of 2005. Around 3 months later I found this little gem in the bookstore of Jomo Kenyatta airport and could NOT put it down. It truly hit home with me as I was still very green & somewhat tense about living in Africa. The laugh out loud moments were plentiful and somehow soothing. I'll never forget the goat "tucking & rolling" from atop the bus when Mr. Moore visited Ethiopia or the name of the catering company that the film company hired to feed the actors during his ill fated acting debut in Nairobi. HA!

It has been several years since I have read Swahili for the Broken Hearted or any of his books for that matter. I was in Singapore and picked up Wrong Way Home. I started reading it on the plane on the way back to the states. It was one of those books that I couldn't put down and laughed out loud.

It was killing me that I couldn't get my hands on any of his other books. I was going to try Amazon U.K. etc, but I travel a lot for my job and thought that I could pick the other books up back in Singapore or somewhere else. I had a heck of a time finding them. I finally found Swahili and Montezuma in a book store in England.

Long story short I really have enjoyed all of Peter Moore's books and am ordering Vroom With a View today.