eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781496949738 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 01/31/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 992 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
Read an Excerpt
From C to C
The Fugitive Returns Home
By Richard Kimball
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2015 Dr. Richard KimballAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4969-4971-4
CHAPTER 1
FIRST/EARLIEST CAPE to CAIRO (or Vice Versa) JOURNEYS - Why?
Historical Background
Individual histories are a celebration of life itself. Sheridan Hill says it well: "You can't know where you are going until you discover where you've been – and who was there before you."
To many of those from outside of Africa, it is the "dark continent". Dark may refer to the unknown, the unknowable, enigmatic, being dirty, inhabited by "primitives", or being a place of fear. All of these views have been exhibited in the writings of the early White and Asian explorers. Remember that there are at least 56 countries (depending on the year and whose politics you adhere to) within the continent considered as Africa including islands such as Cape Verde and Madagascar. Its area is almost three times the size of the United States with a population approaching 900 million! The direct distance from Cairo to Cape Town is about 4,500 miles (7200 km.).
The current cultures within Africa are some of the most diverse in the world. To generalize anything as "African" is at best a limitation, at worst an insult. Much of Northern Africa is in the so-called Saharan zone, but it is not clear where the boundary is since desertification is rapidly increasing yearly! This general region is now inhabited mostly by Moslems, many of whom historically originated in the Middle East. There are many Blacks also in this area who are either indigenous people, remnants of the Egyptian Old Kingdoms (see historic chart p.) before the invasions from what is now Syria and Iran, slaves brought in later from Nubia (now Sudan), or recent migrants.
Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the Saharan region, is inhabited by both Pastoral and Agricultural peoples. A few traditional Hunter/ Gatherers also still exist. An average of 20% of the population (in some countries it is only 5%) now live connected to urban areas and are becoming part of the Western/technological cultures. Over 3,000 languages are still spoken in Africa with Yoruba, Arabic and Bantu off shoots (including Swahili) predominating. With external colonization for over much of the last 3000 years (particularly over the last 500 years), foreign languages such as English, Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and French have become widespread.
What is an African? Who is an African? These are difficult, if not impossible, questions to answer. If you believe in the "Out of Africa" (all homo sapiens originated in Africa) premise, then we are all Africans - at least genetically. Why did some of our White ancestors leave our "home"? Were they "kicked out" as some researchers speculate? Did they leave for adventure? Greener pastures? So far, the information we have is little, and the speculations are many. In this sense, Africa is still the "dark continent" because its true history is mostly unknown.
There is nothing inferior about Africa. The use of terms such as savage, simple minded, dim-witted, uncivilized, primitive, inferior, dirty, vermin, sub-human and brutal beasts by outsiders, usually people of European origin, stems from their own fears and insecurities as well as interests in really dominating rather than understanding these cultures. These biases also come from a need to justify control and colonization and the Muslimizing, Christianizing and Civilizing by missionaries, armies, farmers, resource exploiters, slavers and other traders. Was the exploitation by Arabs and Europeans revenge for possibly being "thrown out" many millennia ago? Was it due to the genetically more aggressive who left because they could not fit in to traditional, group-oriented cultures and then returning to teach their ancestors a lesson? Prove their superiority? We may never know. All we do know is that Africa may be the home of all humans, and we have a lot to learn from it.
Africa is humanity's "Heart". Whites are not superior or more advanced as many believed. We have a shared origin, history and biology. Some early agriculture, architecture and technology came from Egypt. The Greek and Roman Empires used some African culture and resources in their development. Europe benefited from the creation and development, especially science, from West and North Africa under the Arabs. Most of their gold came from Africa. Swahili traders from the east coast brought a lot of raw materials, such as metals and ivory, to Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Foods, such as bananas, coffee, cocoa, black-eyed peas, yams, sorghum, millet, kola nuts and watermelons came from Africa.
Canoes were invented in Niger 8000 years ago. What about coins? Probably also from Africa. Textiles, riding horses, political systems, forging and smelting metals (iron, copper, tin and gold), slavery, wheeled carts and, yes, cave paintings all came from Africa. Arab dhows traded with China, the Middle East and India before Europe. Early cites were found in Egypt, Benin, Mali, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and Congo. Pottery, weaving and dyed textiles were found in West Africa. A lot of this technology stopped after the Portuguese, and later the other Europeans, destroyed their manufacturing facilities. Agriculture was developed 9000 years ago in North Africa. There were many Nation States in most of Africa before they were developed in Europe.
Africans were not fully human in the eyes of the Christian missionaries and European colonialist/traders. They also believed that Africans could not have produced a civilization on their own. Most Europeans were not open to other cultures, languages and so forth. There was always repression and control by Europeans – as well as rebellion. Some Colonialists hoped to civilize the locals through "education". During 1884 – 1885 Europeans "divided" up Africa into sections controlled by foreign countries without any input from Africans! Selfish exploiters! Was that part of Christian teachings?
WWII exhausted Europe resulting in "Independence" movements following Ghandi in India. These political movements erupted throughout the world through revolution, overthrowing the capitalists, peasants against urbanites, USSR/China Marxism, ethnic power, Black empowerment, liberation of minds and some democracy. Their leaders included Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana (1957) and later Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyrere and others. They were mainly for revolutionary nationalism and economic freedom from exploitation. Did they have the skills to form and maintain such governments? Would they become new autocrats? Create a new form of alienation? Can wars be for positive development or only for power? Would Africans form their own kind of communities? A new European-like model? Reduce unemployment? What about educated people? Poverty? Skills? Should they keep the Whites? Control? Debt? Doctors? Churches? Population control? Foreign aid? As it turned out, they usually had enough resources but also groundless optimism. Warlords and coups began to dominate.
Some leaders were put in control by their colonial masters. Fragmentation led to even more dependency on the capitalists. What "model" should they follow? Would the farmers benefit? In Zimbabwe ignorant peasants took over large farms, and they failed! Would there be new colonialists such as the Chinese? Could they break with history and jump from "primitive" to socialist without going through other stages? Multi-party states? Indigenous self-development? A new Feudalism? New revolutions? Was there any basis for optimism? A new battleground for superpowers? New exploiters of the locals? Too many people? Some of these questions will be answered as you explore the countries connecting C to C.
First Travelers From C to C - The Origins of Cairo to Cape Town Journeys
What was the first ship to "go the distance"? Was it the Phoenicians? It is said that they circumnavigated Africa in around 600 BCE. It took three years and they made many stops along the way! They went down the East coast and then up the West coast to enter the Mediterranean Sea and return to the Levant area. They sought wealth such as gold, ivory and other treasures.
Who were the first land travelers to transverse Africa from south to north or north to south? Did Egyptians who traded with areas now known as Sudan, Ethiopia and Congo also travel further south? Did the Bantu peoples, or others, migrating from West Africa to the south (and then into Central and East Africa) continue north to Egypt some 2000 years ago? Did any Greeks or Carthaginians travel as far as the Cape of Good Hope. Could the first person to transit Africa have been an Arab trader? They traveled widely and seasonally by water from Cairo (and areas of the Middle East) to East Africa. Could they have continued to the South? Could they have gone by land?
From the 15th century onward, adventurers and explorers from Europe have continuously tried to penetrate what seemed a closed continent. Some were motivated by self interest while others by power, fame, money, gold and greed. Others had curiosity in finding some "lost" or unknown tribes, saving the "heathen and down trodden of the earth" as well as experiencing the adventure of exploration.
Bartholomeu Dias arrived at or near the southern tip of Africa by ship in 1488. He did not continue his journey. When Vasco de Gama traveled by sea around the Cape of Good Hope in November of 1497, looking for a sea trade-route to Asia, the traversing of Africa from north to south and onward was recorded for the first time in Western literature. The Portuguese were involved in exploiting people, minerals and other resources throughout Africa from before that time until the twentieth century. Did some of their soldiers, traders, missionaries, or government officers transit the continent by land? The Portuguese, like the Arabs, kept incomplete records of their exploits so we do not know for sure. For the Germans and the British, it was the drive to find the source of the Nile, and other places, as well as to "civilize the heathen" and control the world that motivated them.
Dutch traders and settlers seeking the "New Holy Land" of freedom and opportunity disembarked in southern Africa near what is now Cape Town in 1652. At first, they were welcomed as the "great water spirits" coming to give the Zulus and Xhosa new life. Only later did some tribes kill all of their own cattle as a sacrifice in hopes that this "White vermin" would leave. This example of devastation was only the beginning! Settlers killed the local Kung! San, Hottentot and other hunter-gatherers as "black vermin" in order to take over their territory. The Afrikaans language and culture, based on Dutch, German and French, would develop from this not-so-auspicious beginning.
C to C became the historical major "highway" of the British Empire in Africa. It was supposed to be the best way to transect the continent. But, there were vast deserts, incredible rainforests, large rivers, wild animals, competitive tribes and other cultures in the way!
The dream-metaphor of Cairo to Cape Town developed in England in the 1870s by Edwin Arnold, who worked for the London Daily Telegraph newspaper. He, along with the quintessential colonialist-exploiter Cecil Rhodes, hoped to build a telegraph line and a railway linking the Indian Ocean at Cape Town in what is now the Republic of South Africa to Cairo in Egypt. This was the so-called "Red Line" referring to the consistent, and indeed widespread, color on the world maps which highlighted British Colonies.
The telegraph began in Egypt in the 1840s and Cape Town in 1875. Step by step, with delays due to local Sudanese insurrections and the Boer War in South Africa, the two lines transected the continent, finally meeting in Elizabethville in the then Belgian Congo in 1905. Could some worker on this project have traversed the whole route?
Some British journalists in the 1880s mentioned it. Cecil Rhodes picked up on it and reported, "I want only one thing. To see all the lands from Cape Town to Cairo painted in British red." There was even a plan for a great transcontinental railway as a part of Cecil Rhodes's imperial vision for Africa. It would go from Cape Town through Nairobi, Khartoum, Addis Ababa to Cairo - along the line of copper, gold, ivory and other riches. The C to C railway also had a history complementary to the telegraph line, but it was never completed. Barriers such as the Sudd (a large, swampy zone along the Nile river in southern Sudan) and turmoil (mostly political in northeastern Congo) blocked this dream from happening. Even road travel was virtually impossible through the Sudd. There are now only short rail lines from Mombassa to Kampala and Cape Town to Dar es Salaam, through what is now Zimbabwe and Zambia, as well as Cairo to the middle of Egypt. Rhodes was the arch imperialist!
According to some British history, in 1898 a soldier serving Queen Victoria (this was not an official journey but a private one), Ewart Grogan, and his friend Arthur Sharp, along with several un-named Black Africans, were the first ones credited with walking the C to C route. Well, they did not walk the whole way. They often used boats, camels and other means of transport. Actually, they started in Beira in Mozambique and not Cape Town! Grogan had walked much of the distance from Cape Town to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) on another occasion so, in a way, he did travel most of the C to C route, but at different times. Sharp did not complete the journey with Grogan. They certainly succeeded in a memorable, two-year odyssey but did not qualify as transiting the whole route in one complete passage. A sample of their impressions, opinions and biases quoted in the book An African Adventure is as follows:
With loving care I loaded the double 500 magnum, and crept cautiously in the direction indicated. When I had advanced about one hundred yards, two heads suddenly appeared above the intervening grass, and to my mad joy I dropped them with a right and left. At the same instant, I saw a body dash past the scrub on the ant-hill where they had been lying, and popping in another double-barrel, he spun round and came rolling down the slope, a loathsome mangy hyena. Ye gods! Never shall I forget that moment! Then a fourth dashed past, and, mad with rage, I spoiled his sedentary capabilities as he plunged into the grass. Then I sat down on that ant-hill and looked at them lying there, my three lionesses in the guise of disgusting grinning hyenas, while the tears coursed slowly down my cheeks. (p. 15)
Ewart Grogan, was a disciple of Rhodes, and a crusader for the "White Cause". His purpose was opening up Africa. He said he gunned down thousands of animals and found many cannibals. All lies! Is it any wonder that many Black Africans have a deep reserve of rage towards such arrogant Whites, even today? More about this topic will be discussed in subsequent sections.
So far, the first officially recognized direct walk from C to C was from September 8, 1928 to December 21, 1929, fifteen and a half months and 7628 miles (12,200 km). It was accomplished by an Australian, Ronald Monson. He used a few porters from time to time to carry some goods, but managed to survive, relatively intact, the unbelievable traumas of walking the whole distance.
The first attempt to traverse Africa by car was in 1913. The expedition was halted in Southern Rhodesia when the driver was killed by a leopard. From 1924 to 1926, two British citizens, Major Chaplin and Mrs. Stella Court Treatt, drove much of the way from Cape Town to Cairo. The total length of their journey was probably over 7,000 miles (11,200 km.). Incidentally, the straight line distance from C to C is approximately 4,450 miles (7050 km.). This journey by car took sixteen tortuous months! They needed a huge support system to supply them, especially with gasoline. The planning alone took eight months! The two vehicles they took were Crossleys, the equivalent of today's pick-up trucks. Eight Europeans were included in the core group. Many Africans were hired along the way for the various tasks that needed doing, from domestic chores to clearing/creating a roadway and crossing rivers. Detours and diversions were inevitable!
The Treatts were bitten by the "lure of Africa". As Stella wrote, "Always deep down in my heart at least, there had been a longing to do something different from the ordinary things of civilized life, and that is why this adventure appealed to me right from the start" (p. 12, Cape to Cairo: The Record of a Historic Motor Journey). So, from September 25, 1924 to January 24, 1926, this stout-hearted group struggled, sometimes only five to six miles (about 8 kms) a day, to meet their dream. Major Treatt had helped to build some of the first Aerodromes in Sub-Saharan Africa during his military service, so he had some experience there and was certainly familiar with vehicle mechanics. For Stella, it was a completely new adventure.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from From C to C by Richard Kimball. Copyright © 2015 Dr. Richard Kimball. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction To The Journey, 1,Dedication, 5,
Disclaimer, 7,
Special Thanks, 9,
Why C To C? How Did This Theme Come About?, 13,
Theme/Symbology - Integrated Wholeness, 15,
First/Earliest Cape To Cairo (Or Vice Versa) Journeys - Why?, 21,
A Brief Autobiography – Before Africa, 30,
How I Finally Connected With Africa, 93,
A Short Word About Initiation And Its Results, 101,
First Stage Of The Journey - Mind/Intellect, 107,
What Is The Mind, 107,
The First Connection: Going to Africa – For The First Time (In This Lifetime?), 109,
Egypt - Can We Really Know History?, 113,
Tunisia - Nothing Is Forever, 135,
Sudan - Pariahs Or Abused?, 147,
Ethiopia - A Cultural And Historical Crossroads, 151,
East Africa: Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania (Including Zanzibar), Rwanda And The Democratic Republic Of The Congo, 157,
II. Second Stage Of The Journey – Body/Emotions, 344,
What Is The Body? What Are Emotions?, 344,
Malawi, 347,
III. Third Stage Of The Journey - Spirit, 533,
Zimbabwe - Africa's Paradise?, 540,
South Africa – Healing The Old And Bringing In The New, 654,
Coming Home: The New Journey, 709,
Integration Of Mind, Body And Spirit, 709,
Conclusions, 863,