A 9 month river and overland trek up one river in the Congo (border of Cameroon and what is now the Central African Republic of the Congo) to Lake Chad and down another to the Cameroon-Nigerian border on the Atlantic in 1924-1925. Part film documentary, part hunting trip, part biological collecting, part investigative work commissioned by the French government AG sucked it up and did what white men used to do back in the day. Went on an extended safari. Describes the weather (heat and tornados) the landscape (rivers, canyons, lakes, mountains), sicknesses, foods, and some of the characters and situations they meet. Would not have been printed today for the condescending attitudes towards the natives but was probably enlightened for its time. AG made numerous complaints about companies and mistreatment of the natives. Not alot of fear of large animals though for sure a fear of fever, tse tses, and malaria. ( )

“Travels in the Congo” is an artifact, a strange viewfinder showing hard to access parts of Central Africa circa 1925 from the perspective of a very oddly chosen “special envoy of the Colonial Ministry.” Andre Gide (a controversial, avant-garde French playwright) is shuttled around in a Tipoye (a porter-conveyed chair about which he is often wringing his hands with guilt, “As a general rule we use our tipoyes very little, as much because we like walking as to spare our wretched bearers.”), on horseback, in various boats and sometimes, to his credit, he walks on his own feet. Gide’s entourage often exceeds seventy people forcibly requisitioned to transport the ponderous equipment of his unclear mission for less than two francs per person, per day. There is little structure or revision to Gide’s reflections—which is why the book never gathers the sort of momentum that makes something hard to put down. Now he is talking about chasing butterflies and poisoning colorful beetles, next he is reflecting on the precarious health of the over-worked and underfed men in whose company he travels, then he ruminates on the capabilities and qualities of Africans in general and often he shares, in captivating detail, the precise nature of the hospitality and celebrations that he enjoys in a tiny village, a dusty Sultanate or in a kingdom of the Cameroonian highlands.

It is typical for Gide to back two sentences like these up against one another: “The natives had all got either the itch or the mange or the scab, or something of the sort; not one of them had a clean, wholesome skin. Saw for the first time the extraordinary fruit of the barbadine (passion-flower).” Much of this book’s charm comes from this unaffected, almost scatterbrained and rarely judgmental attention. Gide’s eccentricities also result in numerous awkwardly comical moments. For instance, “Wanting to get a taste of solitude and feel more intimately the closeness of the forest, I quickened my step and began to run, in an attempt to escape, to outdistance the porters. In vain! They all immediately started off at a trot to catch up with me. Thoroughly annoyed, I stopped and made them stop, drew a line on the ground, and told them not to pass it until they should hear my whistle from a long way ahead. But a quarter of an hour later I had to go back and fetch them; they had not understood, and the whole convoy was being held up.”

Throughout, Gide does his best to show charity and love towards the people who serve him or show him hospitality; he wants to distinguish his line of thinking about Africans from that of the people he considers prejudiced, “When the white man gets angry with the blacks’ stupidity, he is usually showing up his own foolishness! Not that I think them capable of any but the slightest mental development; their brains as a rule are dull and stagnant—but how often the white man seems to make it his business to thrust them back into their darkness.” As his trip progresses, he gets closer to some of his assistants and develops deep-rooted admiration for several Africans as well as various sorts of African music, architecture or customs.

Supposedly, some of his criticisms of the way that European businesses and governments took advantage of Central Africans gave momentum to movements for reform. Ultimately, this journal is not about a transformation of Andre Gide or a carefully plotted criticism of anything—though moments of transformation and criticism can be discerned. This book should be read for the wealth of carefully observed details that bring to life a period in Central Africa’s history that I have never seen described so well and with such fantastically accidental humor. ( )