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Editor's note: This excerpt first appeared in photographer and author Harold Davis' recent Focal Press book, Photographing Flowers: Exploring Macro Photography with Harold Davis.
The closer you...
From Cape to Cairo by David Ewing Duncan (1989 Weidenfeld &
Nicholson, NY; seems to be unavailable but you can check amazon.com
).
This is an account of one man's journey by mountain bike from Cape Town, South
Africa to Cairo, Egypt. Duncan is the ultimate Ugly American in South Africa: he
accepts hospitality every night from white farmers and then lectures them over
dinner about how racist they are. Blacks in South Africa treat him with suspicion
and hostility. Everything is much more relaxed in Botswana, which has been more
or less ignored by colonial powers.
Zambia, which should be the nicest country in Africa, has been ruined by years
of dictatorial mismanagement. A false report of South African spies being at
large results in a mob of blacks attacking Duncan in a remote village. He is
saved from death by the police, but imprisoned for days. Duncan is lucky; a
French guy was held with little food or water for six weeks because he couldn't
speak English.
Tanzania is horribly poor; Kenya is comparatively rich and Swedish tourist
babes are ripe for the picking. Sudan is home to civil war and despair. Arabs
from the north of Sudan who used to enslave blacks from the south have taken to
killing them instead. The U.N. won't take care of the starving blacks who are
losing this civil war because they aren't international refugees.
Duncan rides across Lake Nasser with 800 other Sudanese. The journey takes 3
days in 125 degree heat. There is no water or food on board. Several people die
but everyone else treats it with resignation or like a big joke. When they get to
Egypt, everyone is incompetent and greedy. The book ends with a whimper.
