Kapuściński informs. I had never realized the impact a simple plastic jug has on gender relations, family dynamics, and the division of household labour. Nor was I aware of how elephants died. The 19th century Apartheid system developed by freed American slaves transported to Liberia and forced upon the indigenous population was unknown to me.

But it's the beauty of his writing (kudos to translator Klara Glowczewska!) that makes these sketches of some 40 years of the correspondent's adventures on the African continent so vital. I'm struck by Kapuściński's humanity. I'm struck by his empathy. Highly recommended.

Ébano es un libro peculiar y sorprendente. Son relatos vividos por el autor en distintas partes de África y en ellos narra sus vivencias mezcladas con historia y sociología. Es sorprendente cómo están escritas estas historias increíbles pero reales, porque comienzan sin una explicación, sin una justificación, da igual dónde esté o qué está haciendo, por peculiar que sea, ya esté varado en un oasis esperando a un camión que le saque de allí que en mitad de un convoy militar por la selva, no perderá tiempo en explicarte cómo ha llegado allí, porque lo que quiere contarte es lo que sucedió a continuación y eso es lo que importa, o lo que importa para él, de la misma forma que muchos relatos podrán terminar dejándote con un "¿y qué pasó después?" en la boca. En la línea de lo anterior cada relato sucede en un lugar distinto, en un país distinto, lo que te hace imaginar que estas historias son solo una milésima parte de todas las que ha vivido, lo cual, por lo que conozco del autor, es ciertamente así. Aprender tanto con un solo libro no es fácil, y menos si es un libro de, llamémoslo así, aventuras peculiares.
Como contra decir que parece notarse el paso del tiempo por los relatos, de manera que si los primeros son más agitados, los últimos son muy calmados, como si la edad del autor hubiese contagiado sus textos, y es una pena, porque esto me hizo perder interés en los últimos textos.

Đây là một cuốn du ký? một cuốn phóng sự? Hay là một dạng hồi ký - báo chí? Hay lại là tiểu thuyết nhỉ? Trời ơi. Không thể xếp nó theo loại được, bởi vì, cuốn sách này đã giúp tôi có một cái nhìn rất khác về Châu Phi, xóa bỏ những định kiến mà trước đây tôi luôn mang, theo tâm lý học gọi là "Một dạng niềm tin vào sự thật lỏng lẻo"; Một Châu Phi rộng lớn, hùng vĩ với những con người, bộ lạc và dân tộc đã chịu nhiều khắc nghiệt của cuộc đời, số phận. Nhưng nó đẹp, lấp lánh, diệu kỳ và tôi tin rằng, một ngày kia Châu Phi rồi sẽ khác.

Một cuốn sách dạy cho chúng ta rất nhiều thứ về cách viết, triển khai, lấy thông tin và cho thấy được một sự tận tụy thuần khiết với một trái tim rộng mở của tác giả. Masterpiece.

"Our world, seemingly global, is in reality a planet of thousands of the most varied and never intersecting provinces. A trip around the world is a journey from backwater to backwater, each of which considers itself, in its isolation, a shining star. For most people, the real world ends on the threshold of their house, at the edge of their village, or, at the very most, on the border of their valley. That, which is beyond is unreal, unimportant, and even useless, whereas that which we have at our fingertips, in our field of vision, expands until it seems an entire universe, overshadowing all else. Often, the native and the newcomer have difficulty finding a common language, because each looks at the same place through a different lens. The newcomer has a wide-angle lens, which gives him a distant diminished view, although with a long horizon line, while the local always employs a telescopic lens that magnifies the slightest detail."
― Ryszard Kapuściński, The Shadow of the Sun

As I started reading, I was getting really frustrated. At first, I was dealing with a series of memoirs, sketches, anecdotes, lyrical prose and imagery told by a master raconteur ... which was all well and good ... but I was really getting hung up on the context. When was this happening? Why was Kapuscinski there? Was he there for a particular event or was this meeting a chance occurrence?
As I kept reading, I realized there was a quality of timelessness in his observations and descriptions. This narrative was less about a specific time or place; it became a narrative of human nature and experience. And this point was crystallized in the final chapter in which Kapuscinski muses about history and myth, recounting the life in a village in Erithrea.
Just wonderful!

Estoy gratamente impresionado con este libro. Después de muchos años de tener en mi lista de pendientes a Kapucinski por fin lo leí, gracias en gran parte al estimado amigo que me obsequió su libro.

El autor relata a modo de crónica sus andares y pesares en un período de 30 a 35 años por los países de una compleja África, esa que no la representa la visión europea y de occidente como un continente homogéneo, sino de una África desconocida, profunda, esa que los europeos no suele interesarles conocer. Pero además hay un plus, Kapucinski nos habla de la realidad de muchas Áfricas en un contexto y época que ahora se ha transformado y eso me parece inigualable, irrepetible.

Me quedo con estas palabras de el autor:

"En dichos mitos, el lugar de las fechas y de la medida mecánica del tiempo -días, meses, años- lo ocupan declaraciones como "hace tiempo", "hace mucho tiempo", "hace tanto que ya nadie lo recuerda". Todo se puede hacer caber en estas expresiones y colocarlo en la jerarquía del tiempo. Sólo que ese tiempo no avanza de una manera lineal y ordenada, sino que cobra forma en movimiento, igual al de la Tierra: giratorio y uniformemente elíptico. En tal concepción del tiempo, no existe la noción de progreso, cuyo lugar lo ocupa la de durar. África es un eterno durar."

Kapuściński was a Polish journalist who died in 2007, and who spent time in Africa between the late 1950ies and the 1990ies. Africa was not his only beat, but when he spent time there he spent time with the people and shared their lives when he could. He was the first Polish foreign correspondent to cover Africa and he was always seriously underfunded compared with those representing the big European and American publications and agencies. What he lacked in funds he made up in ingenuity and a willingness to share in the lives of Africans with the result that he got the big stories (a coup in Zanzibar is the subject of one piece) but also the stories about the little people. He went to visit friends in remote villages where there wasn't enough to eat. He traveled in war zones. He met the dictators and sadists who were independent Africa's first rulers. Once traveling with Greek correspondent in the region of Lake Victoria, he took refuge in a hut where he collapsed, exhausted, into a bunk only to discover a huge Egyptian cobra coiled underneath. He and the Greek threw their weight behind a huge metal container (their only weapon) and tried to crush it. The canister did not cut into the snake and they had to wrestle it to death. He got cerebral malaria, nearly died, and lived with the after affects for years.
The pieces in this book are beautifully written, undoubtedly due in part of the translator. Not like journalistic pieces one usually reads, with their pyramid structure and journalistic phrases and short cuts. Kapuściński's scope was broader, from the latest war or coup to serious attempts to characterize African people. He put himself on the line in every piece—it was personal, heartfelt and wise. He engaged seriously with people, didn't just watch from afar or "interview the participants".
One learns a great deal about the history of Africa—and why in a sense there was no history until the Europeans started to divide Africa up into colonies and zones of interest. Why there'd never be a history because there were no documents at all, only the oral stories the people told. The chapter on Rwanda is worth the purchase of the book alone: Kapuściński put the genocide in a context which none of the several books I read on the subject of the Rwandan genocide was able to do. Similarly, another long chapter on a visit to Liberia developed a context for the awful civil wars which began when an army sergeant took charge and carved up the President in his bed—without even a plan for what he'd do when he became leader—and was eventually carved up himself. That essay ends when Kapuściński is allowed to travel up country and meet the tribal people (which the ruling Americo-Liberians called aboriginals when I visited in 1965). They are coming into Monrovia across a bridge and Kapuściński sees a naked man with a Kalashnikov, the others carefully stepping out of his way. "A madman with a Kalashnikov" is how he, quite appropriately, ends the essay.
Kapuściński's focus in this book is mostly East Africa and the Sahara and Sanhel, a few mentions of West Africa, not much of Southern Africa. Not much about the more "civilized" parts of Northern Africa.

Dec 9, 9pm ~~ Review asap.

Dec 10, 135pm ~~ I first 'met' this author in 2020 when I read his book Travels With Herodotus. I enjoyed that one so much that I ordered more by RK but this is the first of those that I have managed to get to.

Published originally in Polish in 1998, this translation is from 2001. The essays here cover almost all of the continent of Africa, and RK shows the reader the history of many countries, the character of many people, and the spirit of Africa itself.

Kaupuscinski spent forty years as a foreign correspondent, reporting from all over the world. This from a biographical paragraph in this book:
"He witnessed twenty-seven coups and revolutions and was sentenced to death four times. HIs books have been translated into nineteen languages."

RK writes in a way that makes the reader experience everything he had, from desert furnaces to steaming jungles. And he shares basic history without turning into a dry lecturer. I learned details about situations that I remember seeing in the news but never completely understanding. Rwanda, Liberia, Ethiopia, these and more are covered here and made familiar to the reader.

I liked the author for his attitude while he was on the road. He wanted to see and write about not the tourist Africa, but the real one. This is from a couple of paragraphs RK included as a sort of foreword:
"I lived in Africa for several years. I first went there in 1957. Then, over the next forty years, I returned whenever the opportunity arose. I traveled extensively, avoiding official routes, palaces, important personages, and high-level politics. Instead, I opted to hitch rides on passing trucks, wander with nomads through the desert, be the guest of peasants of the tropical savannah. Their life is endless toil, a torment they endure with astonishing patience and good humor."

This was a wonderful book, I enjoyed it very much and will certainly read it again some day. I also plan to include RK's other titles in my reading plans for 2023. There are already quite a few piles on my Next Year desk, but a another little one won't hurt, right? Right!

NEL CONTINENTE NERO, ALLE FALDE DEL KILIMANGIARO


”Another Day of Life - Ancora un giorno” è un documentario d’animazione del 2018 di Raul De La Fuente e Damian Nenow che racconta il viaggio di Kapuściński in Angola durante la guerra civile (1975).

Evitavo gli itinerari ufficiali, i palazzi, i personaggi importanti e la grande politica. Preferivo viaggiare su camion di fortuna, percorrere il deserto con i nomadi, farmi ospitare dai contadini della savana tropicale. La vita di questa gente è una fatica, un tormento che tuttavia sopporta con incredibile serenità e resistenza. Questo non è un libro sull’Africa, ma su alcune persone che vi abitano, sui miei incontri con loro, sul tempo trascorso assieme.

Come raccontare il continente africano potrebbe essere il sottotitolo di questa raccolta di articoli giornalistici, memoir, aneddoti, note e appunti di viaggio.



Kapuściński cominciò a viaggiare in Africa alla fine degli anni Cinquanta e ha continuato a farlo con il suo inconfondibile stile per qualche decennio in avanti, scrivendo pezzi su vari argomenti e diverse nazioni del continente nero, evitando gli stereotipi, le tappe obbligate e i luoghi comuni, fermandosi ad abitare nei sobborghi più poveri, ammalandosi di malaria cerebrale e tubercolosi, curate negli ambulatori locali, rischiando la morte per mano di miliziani, raccontando la vita della gente: semplicemente mischiandosi, incontrando e condividendo con la gente comune, senza però snobbare quella più celebre.



Ovvio che tocca partire dalla storia della colonizzazione europea, arrivare alla fine della stessa, e poi le rivolte che sembrano accendersi come fiammiferi, che l’Occidente è sempre pronto a “impacchettare” ad arte. Kapuściński era bianco ed europeo nell’epoca in cui la gente d’Africa si stava liberando dei bianchi europei, li scacciava, si riappropriava del potere e del paese.
La prima tappa fu Accra, Ghana, nel 1957. Seguì il colpo di stato in Nigeria del 1966, la presa del potere di Idi Amin in Uganda, hutu e tutsi in Rwanda fino al genocidio del 1994, i bambini soldato, il Kenia, la Somalia, l’Etiopia (la carestia!), l’Eritrea, il Sudan, la Tanzania, Zanzibar, Nigeria, Mauritania, Mali, Senegal, Liberia…



Rimane bloccato nel deserto per un guasto meccanico e prova le allucinazioni e il delirio da disidratazione, si muove con mezzi pubblici sovraffollati, oppure fa l’autostop, arriva in posti sperduti, rischia la vita
Pur parlando del problema climatico (il caldo, la siccità), della povertà endemica, del mondo magico, dei conflitti tribali, e quindi di quelli che si potrebbero definire stereotipi, quelli dietro cui noi occidentali ci siamo sempre nascosti, Kapuściński sa andare oltre, sa comprendere la varietà di quell’immenso continente. Reporter come ce ne sono stati pochi.

Un viaje a las venas de África, relatos de sitios casi vírgenes y culturas apenas en contacto con la civilización moderna.. testigo vivencial en primer persona de la descolonización y tiranía local de esos tiempos. Solo como el gran maestro puede redactar. Se mencionan miles de tribus exterminadas, se presenta Africa como un continente politico que sus pueblos desconocen tales fronteras. Cada tribu con idioma y costumbres muy distintas. Una manera profunda de entender el continente de fines de los cincuentas a principios de los noventas. Excelente material informativo.

The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski is many thing, too many things in fact & rendered over far too great a period of time to be completely coherent, though much of the writing, especially the pieces written about Africa later in the author's career, are quite compelling.



Beginning in Ghana in 1958 with a declaration that "the whites in Africa are a sort of outlandish & unseemly intruder" and the hope that Kwame Nkrumah will be an African savior, I sensed that Kapuscinski had been lifted from his native Poland to the African continent without any concept of its pre-colonial history. Rather quickly, he decides that they (speaking of Ghana but seeming to infer all of Africa) lack any sense of time, meaning "western time". The same might have been said of the people in many other countries around the globe whose lives proceed at a much slower pace.

Beyond that, there is a tendency by Kapuscinski to sweeping conclusions & gross generalizations, including "the philosophy that inspired Auschwitz was formulated & set down centuries earlier by slave traders." Many of the slave traders were in fact other Africans & while they may have considered themselves superior to other tribes, they can hardly be lumped in with the perpetrators of the Holocaust.

The author's treatment of Liberia is informative, with that country founded during James Monroe's administration as a place for freed American slaves, but with the result that for 110 years those Americo-Liberians acted as a kind of aristocracy over the indigenous Africans, with Liberia more recently having a particularly bloody landscape. Kapuscinski covers the various wars involving child soldiers, corruption, diamond-fueled leadership & a general disintegration of what had originally been an attempt at bettering the lot of enslaved people.



There are a lot of journalistic exaggerations within the early coverage, much like a writer far removed from his paper aiming to enhance his standing with the editors back in Poland. (To be sure Simon Winchester & other authors do this as well, at least on occasion.) As travel commentary, an encounter with a cobra for example, the book can be enticing but when it is masked as more serious reporting, one hopes for greater clarity of expression. Here is an example of commentary that drifts well beyond the the descriptive to the realm of the unsubstantiated & purely speculative:

Ordinary people here (in Zanzibar) treat political cataclysms--coups d'état, military takeovers, revolutions, wars--as phenomena belonging to the realm of nature. They approach them with exactly the same apathetic resignation & fatalism as they would a tempest. One must just wait them out, hiding under the roof, peering out from time to time to observe the sky, then in time resume that which was momentarily interrupted--work, a journey, sitting in the sun.

Having lived in Africa, my own evaluation is that its people feel extreme, even paralyzing fear in the face of a cataclysm, just like those in more developed countries. My concern with this kind of writing is that someone just passing through a place like Zanzibar in the midst of upheaval, en route to a potential journalistic scoop, should dispense with such expansive generalizations.



The articles on the subterranean Coptic churches at Lalibela in Ethiopia, the horror of Idi Amin in Uganda & the author's account of being stranded in the desert sands of Mauritania are much better. The coverage of Rwanda and the extensive, bloody rift between Tutsis & Hutus is far more thoughtfully composed. But using a German word like Entlosung for "Final Solution" to detail even extensive African tribal warfare seems a stretch. In my view, African tribalism stands at something of a remove from the Nazi extermination of Jews, even if often just as bloody & even though perhaps as many as a million Hutus & Tutsis perished in a small Central African area few could locate on a map.

One of the best chapters in the book is The Well, Kapuscinski's shared journey by camel in northern Somalia, today's semi-independent Somaliland, as distinct from the rest of that fractured country. The mode of transit represents a different culture, a completely different way of life, for...

as we walked, we were participating in a struggle in ceaseless & dangerous maneuvers, in potential collisions & clashes with other groups that could at any moment end badly. For a Somali is usually born on the road, in a shack-tent or directly under the open sky. He will not know his place of birth; it will not have been written down. Like his parents, he will have no single town or village to call his home.

He has but a single identity--it is determined by his ties to family, to the kinship group, to the clan. When two strangers meet, their personal rapport has no meaning; their relationship, friendly or hostile, whether to attack or to embrace, depends on the current state of affairs between the two clans. The human being, the singular, distinct person, does not exist--or he matters only as part of this or that bloodline.

Beyond that, the wealth & status of a Somali depends on & is also defined by his relationship to camels, just as that of the Tutsis is based on an ingrained sense of the importance of cattle. Kapuscinski also informs the reader of an innate quality of sharing whatever one has, at least in much of Africa and even if the village is beset with extreme scarcity of food or other essentials. But even after countless trips to Africa, mostly sub-Saharan Africa, the author still comments:

I have often been unable to determine exactly what the people are doing. Perhaps, they are not doing anything. They don't even talk. They resemble people sitting for hours in a doctor's waiting room but in the end the doctor will arrive. Here no one arrives. No one arrives & no one leaves. The air trembles, undulates, stirs restlessly, like over a kettle of boiling water.

Again, when a journalist moves from place to place on a continent as large as Africa, sometimes randomly, it is undoubtedly more difficult to get a proper feel for the context within individual settings. In the later vignettes, Kapuscinski's writing seems more balanced, more nuanced, less critical & his patience with Africa seems enhanced.



Surprisingly, in spite of 40 years of experience on the continent, there are few real interactions with the African people he encountered, with much of the book detailed at something of a distance from the inhabitants, even during a long rail journey from Dakar in Senegal to Bamako in Mali as 1 of only 3 Europeans on board a crowded passenger train and also during the author's visit to fabled Timbuktu. Either because of insufficient language skills or the author's disposition, there seems very little personal interchange with the people of Africa.

Might there not not have been some mention of African leaders who did not enrich themselves while instead doing a great deal to empower the lives of their citizens, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania & Nelson Mandela in post-Apartheid South Africa for example? Yes, there is dirt, disease & destitution aplenty on the African continent but it is also a place of hope, as well as caring & sharing people who embody the promise of a better future.



I most enjoyed some of the later chapters within The Shadow of the Sun, with images cast by the author that will stay with me the longest. I gave the book 4*s, in spite of some inconsistencies & over-simplifications, being pleased to have read about Ryszard Kapuscinski's manifold experiences in Africa.

*Within my review are photo images of the author, Liberian child-soldiers, a subterranean Coptic Church at Lalibela, Ethiopia & a baobab tree in Tanzania, where the author spent extensive time.

I’m a sucker for travel writing but Africa doesn’t really interest me. This is a revelatory introduction to the continent of Africa and Kapuściński is the best kind of tour guide. He takes you to see the good and the bad, the happy and the sad. He leaves you with an understanding of the why not just the what.
Sensitive, insightful and erudite. Recommended even if like me you only have a passing interest in sub-Saharan Africa.

4.5 stars. Kapuscinski, a Polish reporter, writes about his first-hand experiences in many African countries around the end of colonialism. I was struck by some of the less dramatic things... like in a coup d'etat, how he describes the darkness and silence. I never thought of darkness and silence. How could I not have thought of darkness and silence? Here we are trying to escape the country, and I never thought of darkness and silence!

The darkness was so profound that his silhouette ahead of us appeared and disappeared like a phantom. Finally, we sensed boards beneath our feet--it was probably the pier. The old man whispered that we should walk down the steps to the boat. What steps? What boat? p. 94

Earlier, he talks about the locals who go through this kind of stuff often:

Ordinary people here treat political cataclysms--coups d'etat, military takeovers, revolutions, and wars--as phenomena belonging to the realm of nature. They approach them with exactly the same apathetic resignation and fatalism as they would a tempest. One can do nothing about them; one must simply wait them out, hiding under the roof, peering out from time to time to observe the sky--has the lightning ceased, are the clouds departing? If yes, then one can step outside once again and resume that which was momentarily interrupted--work, a journey, sitting in the sun. p. 91

In fact, waiting around seems to be the norm, because the African thinks of time as defined by the event happening whereas the European thinks of time as a separate entity that they must bend their lives to fit. So the African sits around waiting for these events to happen...

What does this dull waiting consist of? People know what to expect; therefore, they try to settle themselves in as comfortably as possible, in the best possible place. Sometimes they lie down, sometimes they sit on the ground, or on a stone, or squat. They stop talking. A waiting group is mute. It emits no sound. The body goes limp, droops shrinks. The muscles relax, the neck stiffens... I have observed for hours on end crowds of people in this state of inanimate waiting, a kind of profound physiological sleep: They do not eat, they do not drink, they do not urinate; they react neither to the mercilessly scorching sun, nor to the aggressive, voracious flies that cover their eyelids and lips. What, in the meantime, is going on inside their heads? p. 18

OK so I'm quoting a lot. So sue me. The fact is, there are so many interesting passages, little surprising bits. The book is full of great observations as well as, every once in a while, panning back to tell of the history of a tribe or of a country. Each country he writes about is given individuality, because there is immense diversity, as he says in the beginning of the book: "Only with the greatest simplification, for the sake of convenience, can we say 'Africa'. In reality, except as a geographical appellation, Africa does not exist."

The best chapters, for me, were the ones on Zanzibar and Rwanda, since they really gave me a context to understand some of what is going on. But all the chapters are good, and they all have different focuses.

What really comes across clearly is that, and this is going to sound obvious, any kind of outside interference, without the kind of understanding of the many different ethnic groups and cultures here, is going to end badly. So often France or England or someone comes in to support one leader over another. It makes me so angry cause I see it in the news even today, just recently with the Ivory Coast elections. Not that there won't be bloodshed or other nastiness if nobody takes sides, (although often it means more high tech weaponry to do the bloodshed with) but it all seems so much more escalated when the world gets involved. And why does everyone think they can get involved in Africa's business anyway? It's so damn presumptuous, to think we know better, when usually we're just supporting our guy because he'd be easier to get our agenda through.

What this book really makes clear is that we don't know better. In fact, we can hardly relate at all to most of what goes on here. How can we relate to the tribe whose whole existence relies on one mango tree? Or a tribe who believes that if your truck breaks down, it's because someone from another tribe cast a spell on it, and not because your truck needed maintenance? Or the tribe who always believes that someone from within the same tribe cast a spell whenever something bad happens, and thus always lives in a state of fear--father afraid of daughter, son afraid of mother? Anyway, there are too many examples to quote.