This Too Is Real

Women with Firewood

KASANE, BOTSWANA: Before I left home, I read Paul Theroux’s book, Dark Star Safari, on his trials and tribulations of traveling from Cairo to Cape Town. Theroux’s objective was to discover the “real” Africa by shunning anything tourist related; flights, safaris, historical sites, etc. In the process, he was shot at twice, robbed once, and temporarily infected with debilitating disease. To top off his miserable experience, as I recall, saw only three wild animals: an eland, an ostrich, and a baboon. Nevertheless he implies this was the only way to see and experience the “real” Africa. Okay, I’m thinking, so maybe what he reports on is a slice of Africa, but by no means the “real” thing. For this is akin to a foreigner traveling through the U.S. by bus and drawing his observation of America from the various bus stops and their immediate neighborhoods. I actually met a British woman who did just that and encountered a frightening side of America most of us couldn’t identify with. What any seasoned traveler wants is honesty, of course, and hopefully a balance between the good and the bad, the positive and the negative. Without a doubt there’s the underside to Africa, like the four women I met in Botswana carrying firewood back to their village. “We want electricity,” one said. “Can you help us?” Who, of us, can imagine living under such circumstances? On the other hand, you can’t help but marvel at the endless breathless vistas, the rich diversity of wild life, and the efforts being taken to preserve it all. This too is “real.”