Short on time and distance to cover. If the Internet was more consistent and I didn’t have to cycle 1400km in 15 days (I have to enter Mauritania before 4th February) I’d write more here. I could say something about the unplanned stop-over in Casablanca, the birthday weekend back on the beach in Tamraght and the great company that’s slowed my progress through Morocco. The stories will have to wait unfortunately.
I may be out of contact for a while as I pedal across that somewhat daunting expanse of land called the Sahara. Until then here are some photos from the last few weeks. See you in Mauritania – inshallah.
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Pedro! “Journey without maps”. Brevity, on my part, is all, certainly in this case. Reason? Story(?) does not deserve more, less even. Greene was a rampant Catholic. Theroux wrote a fairly perceptive intro.; one that could deter a possible reader. Greene was in Liberia for approx. 4 weeks; seemed like 4 years to me, was accompanied by cousin Barbara, a very shadowy figure who contributed nothing at all and who was mentioned, en passant occasionally by about 6 lines of narrative. I cannot understand how he could write that narrative of the two of them, sozzled with whisky, staggering about a small portion of Liberia and being carried by African porters in hammocks. His animal notions of the African females are typical of the late-Victorian attitudes to sex, etc. and, in particular to their social/anthropological mores that obtained therein. I found his comments tasteless, his writing callow and the subject very dubious. I could only term it slightly interesting having spent a good few years in Africa; the nearest to Liberia being in Kano, Nigeria, for a few days only but this, of Greene’s, reminded me of those days; deeply depressing. When subsequently I found myself in Western Zambia, chatting with Catholic missionaries, was I reminded of Greene’s fictions, based of course on realilities. I found more entertaining: not enough for me to consider re-reading any one of them. Frequently, I fast-read his more popular stories and his best, I think, was “Our man in Havana” because it has a wry humour for which I always look in every writer. If I had more time and patience I guess I could have shortened this analysis? I watch out for you.
Love Grandpa
Maxine
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