Every Tongue

On my recent trip to Mbeya I brought along a couple of second-hand books that we had been given a while back, to pass the 16 hours each way on a bus. One of the books was The Africans, by David Lamb, who lived in Nairobi, Kenya, for four years and travelled around several African countries as a newspaper reporter. I had expected the title of the book to be ironic, but no, Lamb really does aim to describe “The Africans” in 300 pages. (Given the fact that there is apparently more genetic diversity in Africa than in the rest of the world combined, in addition to immense cultural diversity too, one wonders whether it would actually be easier to write a book about The Non-Africans.)

After the first couple of chapters I was ready to throw the book out of the window as Lamb paints a pretty depressing picture of the continent as a whole. There is little hope, and quite a patronising tone towards Africa and its people. However, the fact that I still had 6 hours before I reached Mbeya and little other reading material persuaded me to keep going. I was glad I did, as there are some very interesting stories, and I learnt a lot about the history of parts of Africa (mainly from the 1960s, when many countries gained independence, to the 1980s when the book was written), albeit told from a particular perspective.

This perspective was evident throughout the book, and I ended up learning as much about the author’s worldview as I did about Africa. Read the rest of this entry →