5 comments about The Rough Guide to West Africa 4 (Rough Guide Travel Guides).

1. This Rough Guide offers thorough, helpful information for travelling around West Africa, including events, hotels, restaraunts, cutoms, traditions, safety precautions, language reference, etc. I especially liked the fact that each time CFA's or other currency were mentioned, their dollar equivalents were also calculated. The Lonely Planet Guide does not do this. Also, this Rough Guide is organized better and easier to read than the Lonely Planet. The problem with the Rough Guide, though, is that while it gives all the necessary information to get around, it does not offer any subjective advice that the naive West Africa traveller would want to know. For example, The Lonely Planet guide gives the same information as this book about a campsite in Niamey, but adds that it is ugly, with few trees, and many people have been robbed there. That is something I want to know. I certainly found all the necessary information in this guide, but it is still insufficient in many ways.



2. Yes, this is an interesting guide. If you are either an adventurer and/or an armchair traveller, by all means try it out ! Yet, this is not the kind of book it clams to be, namely a travel guide. Few people would find it relevant to their travel plans while in Africa. If you want advice from Lonely Planet, who published this book, then get their other book "Lonely Planet West Africa", much more thorough and relevant for most travellers.



3. At the moment, there are two main contenders on the market with comparable books on West Africa: Rough Guide and Lonely Planet. Neither is perfect.

   Rough Guide may feel a bit more professionally-made, and has been made on a bigger budget too, but it suffers from terminally boring writing style.

   I said this before and I`ll say it again: if people who write guidance for your tax returns were to write guidebooks they would probably come up with similarly uninspired language.

   The book does not offer the same level of self-righteous (and often annoying) rhetoric about evils of capitalism as Lonely Planet. I find this aspect commendable: some of us want the travel guide to give us facts and not explanations for whom to vote and what to think.

   However, on balance, I have to admit that Lonely Planet is better resarched and more accurate, and also less bulky. If you have plenty of luggage allowance and money's no object, buy both, otherwise, stick with Lonely Planet.




4. The Rough Guide series is nice, if sometimes odd, for understanding what to do and what not to do in particular countries or regions. Usually, its best to get both Rough Guide and Lonely Plaent and compared the information between the two, just to avoid any unfortunate occurances. But thats just me. Anyway, this book basically covers travel in West Africa: Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Senegal, the Gambia, Cabo Verde, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria and Cameroon. Theres basic travel information, as well as notes for getting into and out of each country, and things you can do while your there. Maps, religious information, notes on social mores, currency info, food and so forth are all covered throughout the book. There are also some useful phrases in French (the most widely spoken language in West Africa), as well as some phrases in Hassaniya Arabic, Mandinka, Bamana, Twi, Susu, Hausa, Yoruba and other indigenous languages.
   Fans of Afro-Pop should check out the back of this book, which is full of cultural references. There are lists of significant books, movies, musicians and songs. Sure, it is a bit dated, but some old favorites are included on the list who are well worth checking out. In fact, I should restate that, given the mercurial nature of African society, it is pretty likely that many things in this book have changed since it was published. Before doing anything in this book, you might want to look it up online or something first.



5. As most of the reviews point out, the battle here is between Lonely Planet and Rough Guide. I bought them both, as I usually do before a big trip, and after studying them both will take the RG. They are both good in terms of information on hotels and restaurants, I just found the layout of RG a bit better. Cultural and travel basics are better organized up front, the maps are larger and much clearer, and the references to the maps in the text easier to decipher. But for me the big plus is that the RG contains much better information about moving between countries, and information about specific transport options from area to area - boat, bus, train - is much more detailed. If you are planning a multi-country itinerary the RG is, IMHO, much better. They are both equal in terms of info, I think, I just feel like for me RG got the details right.

1 comments about Going Home.

1. It is fifty years since Doris Lessing published Going Home, an account of her return to Rhodesia, the country where she grew up. By then in her thirties, she had already achieved the status of restricted person because of her political allegiances and her declared opposition to illiberal white rule. These days Zimbabwe makes the news because of internal strife and oppression. It is worth remembering, however, that fifty years ago the very structures of Southern Rhodesian society were built upon oppression, an oppression based purely on race.
   
   Fifty years on Doris Lessing's Going Home an historical record of this noxious system, a record that is more effective, indeed more powerful because of its reflective and observational, rather than analytical style. Doris Lessing, a one-time card-carrying Communist, laid a large slice of the blame for the perpetuation of discrimination firmly at the door of the white working class. Though not all white workers were rich - indeed she records that many were abjectly poor - what they had and sought to preserve was an elevated status relative to the black population. She describes white artisans as white first and artisans second. Though trade unions actively sought equal pay for equal work, they never campaigned for any kind of parity for black workers. On the contrary, they demanded the maintenance of racially differentiated pay rates. How's that for the spirit of socialist internationalism and brotherhood! (I accept there is a misplaced word there...). In fact Doris Lessing records that it was the relatively liberal capitalist enterprises that demanded more black labour, their motive of course arising from cost savings, not philanthropy. So trade unions spent much of their time making sure that companies hired their quota of higher paid, white labour.
   
   Even in the 1950s, she remarks on the likelihood that many Africans were already better educated than their white counterparts. White youth shunned education as unnecessary, while Africans saw it as a possible salvation. She notes that the people who treated the African population the worst were recent immigrants from Europe, particularly those from Britain, who tended to be less educated themselves and drawn from the ranks of the politically reactionary. Such people, apparently, were equally critical of immigrants from southern Europe, and expected Spaniards and Greeks to work for African wages, not the white wages that they themselves demanded.
   
   The situation in Rhodesia, clearly, had to change. Not only was such crass discrimination unsustainable, it was also comic, as are all racially posited class systems. While the South Africans over the border created honorary whites of the Japanese they increasingly had to do business with, the Rhodesians went through their own equally idiotic contortions. An example of such nonsense is quoted by Doris Lessing when she remarks that there was a privileged group of Africans who were granted the right not to carry passes with them at all times, as long as they carried a pass to record their exemption.
   
   But it is also worth remembering that Doris Lessing, herself, was a banned person, unable to travel to certain places and very much under the watchful eyes of the authorities. In Going Home she observes a society that had to collapse under the weight of its unsustainable contradictions. The fact that this took more than twenty years after the book was written was nothing less than a crime, and probably contributed to the subsequent and equally lamentable reaction.
   
   Doris Lessing records seeing a British film towards the end of her travels. She describes it as a "cosy little drama of provincial snobberies and homespun moralities played out in front of African farmers in their big cars". Fifty years on, Britain is probably cosy and provincial, and the snobberies are still rife. But now it is not Rhodesia where these reactionaries look down on people of other races overpay and under-educated themselves. It is not in Africa where corporations would dearly love to employ cheaper labour, imported if need be. Rhodesia's white privilege of the 1950s was obviously absurd. But there are some parallels with economic and class relations in the Britain of today and, like all good books, Doris Lessing's Going Home may even add prescience to its qualities.

2 comments about Journey Through Ethiopia.

1. This is a fantastic book...great pictures, informative cultural and historical information and very readable--a delight for the armchair traveler as well as the serious scholar who may be planning a trip to that region or has an interest in learning more about the region for whatever reason.



2. In this excellent book you find courfol and spectacular photographics from a varied country with a great amount of natural beauty.
   Combined with the insightful text reading this book really inspire you tonce visit the magic country of Ethiopia

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5 comments about Adventuring in Southern Africa: The Great Safaris and Wildlife Parks of Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, Malawi, Lesotho, and Swaziland.

1. Prior to my trip, I purchased 4 travel books on Southern Africa then found this guidebook at the Miami airport. It was by far the most accurate and contained all the "need to know" information. Unlike the others, it contained excellent hotel and activity descriptions plus gave detailed information on each region. Sure you want to know some local history but I'm more interested in where to stay, where to eat and what things I can do. At the end of the trip, I left my first 4 guidebooks in Botswana and brought this one home!



2. This book is full of interesting and pertinent travel information; it is a MUST for anyone interested in game-viewing and travelling in southern Africa. The author gives best times to travel depending on what you want to see, and for each country, lists brief history/present politics, places to stay--easily accessible to remote--and how to get there and what you may see. He also gives a comprehensive packing list, medical info, and tips on game viewing. Out of the 4 books I bought on southern Africa, this is the one I referred to most often. This book, coupled with The Kingdon Field Guide to African Mammals, is an invaluable southern Africa traveller's necessity.



3. This book is an outstanding resource to be read prior to traveling to South Africa. It covers many different aspects of what the experience will entail. These include the history, etiquette, positives and negatives of each type of travel, various diseases and safety precautions one should take. In addition, he thoroughly delivers every aspect of each south african country...ie. countryside, animals, weather, and history. This book in interesting, exciting, and educational!



4. This book is an outstanding resource to be read prior to traveling to South Africa. It covers many different aspects of what the experience will entail. These include the history, etiquette, positives and negatives of each type of travel, various diseases and safety precautions one should take. In addition, he thoroughly delivers every aspect of each south african country...ie. countryside, animals, weather, and history. This book in interesting, exciting, and educational!



5. ...I bought this book to make plans for a trip to Zambia but the chapter about this country is only 40 pages long, both verbose and superficial. Don't get fooled by the "Adventuring" in the title, unless your idea of adventure is to hop by plane from lodge to lodge at $200 or $300 a night. More importantly, except for the park entrance fees, this book doesn't list any price at all (I got them from two other, excellent, travel guides). Comments on cheaper accomodations are few and disenchanted. The maps are equally few and over-simplified (the roads don't even appear!...) Finally, I looked at the chapters about the other countries and it certainly didn't change my opinion about this book. Note also that the date of the last edition (October 97) makes it relatively outdated.

1 comments about The Trouble with Africa.

1. Though this artist is, first and foremost, a talented painter; much to my delight, he is also an excellent writer. His writing is vivid, thoughtful, and candid; his stories, fascinating. Lucky for us that this painter tried his hand at writing and shared the Africa he knows with us!

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