The Ukimwi Road: From Kenya to Zimbabwe

i wanted to recommend this book to a friend who is about to travel to tanzania, so i came to check the author murphy's name and the spelling of "ukimwi" again. i'll second the reviewer who was surprised at the negative reviews. i read murphy's book while i was a tourist on safari in tanzania (which i also recommend if you can afford it). murphy's book was an interesting balance to my touristic experience. i wouldn't say it give me an ultimate insight into the "real" africa, but it was an important read for me then and now. it prepared me to have some conversations with tanzanians that i wouldn't otherwise have had. it allowed me, among other things, to know what i was seeing when i passed a small building in dar es salaam that read "ukimwi." it helped put in perspective what it means for a nation to be able to spend $2 per capita total on health care costs (at least when i was there). it made me able to make some of my own observations -- say that the gross national product of burundi was approximately the same as the market capitalization of most u.s. microcap stocks -- and form my own conclusions. so i didn't find murphy overly judgmental. i seem to remember her giving opinions, but mostly i felt as though i was given a complex picture. i'd highly recommend it. other recs re: africa very generally: basil davidson's *the black man's burden,* any novel or film by sembene ousmane, naipaul's *a bend in the river,* the french film *lemumba,* and of course plenty of other excellent african novelists and playwrights. o, and the epic *sundiata.*

Since 1964 Irish writer Murphy has been traveling the world by foot and bicycle and writing about her experiences. An outspoken loner, drawn to the more remote parts of the globe, her beautiful but rugged experiences fascinate and educate the armchair traveler - without inspiring similar ambitions.As a 60th birthday present to herself, Murphy undertakes a 3,000 mile journey through Eastern and Southern Africa on her Dawes Ascent mountain-bike, "the cyclist's equivalent of a Rolls-Royce," named Lear. The trip was a "self-described unwinding therapy.....a carefree ramble through some of the least hot areas of sub-Saharan Africa."But "carefree" it is not, though nothing - not heat, torrential rains, hunger, illness, hostility or impassable roads - can stop her.Murphy is greeted in Nairobi by drought and a mothers' hunger strike which rapidly degenerates into a riot when paramilitary troops arrive to disperse the women. Leaving the city as quickly as she can, Murphy contemplates the contrast between Western luxuries and construction projects alongside the shanty towns and hungry children.From her first stop in a dusty village for a Tusker beer, AIDS predominates and a pattern is set which endures thoughout the lands and cultures she passes through during the coming months. By day she enjoys the solitude and scenery of rural Africa; by night she is embroiled in local discussions of politics and Western incursions and AIDS, often dodging individual pleas for help in getting to the land of opportunity - the West.Ukimwi is Swahili for AIDS. In Africa, wherever she goes, it surrounds her. Some blame Western conspiracies and medical experiments; missionaries preach behavioral changes and deny condom distribution; men say they cannot survive without a variety of female partners; wives say their husbands refuse condoms; prositutes say they would have no business if they insisted on condom use.Everywhere Murphy meets widows, orphans and more orphans.She at first resists the pull of AIDS. For her this is a pleasure journey and she can do nothing to slow the epidemic. But it has become part of the fabric of culture, threatening traditional family life, taking the most productive and leaving behind the old and the young to fend for themselves.In addition to the scourge of AIDS, Murphy finds much of Africa suffering from economic collapse, spurred in large part by misguided Western "development projects" that destroyed the local agrarian economy, often displacing the people and departing, leaving behind devastation and tribal strife.She meets hospitality and hostility, and takes what comes; be it a bedbug, mosquito-infested tourist hotel, or an earthen floor, or a spontaneously offered bed in a local home. She sets out at dawn hardly knowing whether to expect a corrugated wartorn road or spectacular mountain scenery or a beguiling path that ends in a swamp (through which she is guided by a silent tribal elder). She pushes Lear up rutted mountain tracks and hurtle

This is an unusually well-written and consistently interesting travel narrative. The author does come across as a tough old crow at times. (I can't imagine why she feels entitled to sneer at hikers who use the Lonely Planet guide.) But who else would have braved such an arduous journey in the first place? I can understand that her opinions about women's issues and the AIDS epidemic might be irritatingly opposed to yours. But isn't one of the points of traveling to meet people who aren't like ourselves?

A couple of years after reading The Ukimwe Road, which I found to be excellent reporting, I was surprised to find so many negative and emotional views posted here. I have repeatedly recommended this and other Murphy books to friends as good entertainment and the most unbiased sources of on-the-ground information in print. Where Dervla Murphy has gone, we can learn truth that is seldom found in more conventional sources. The picture she painted of the seriousness and extent of the AIDS problem in Africa was well supported by her first-hand (if anecdotal) evidence. Subsequent developments have shown that her alarming portrayal was accurate, and hers was in print *years* before the authorities began to recognise the scope of the problem. She did an excellent job of illustrating the wide range of psychological devices used to deny or minimise the problem. Her portrait of the plight of a well-informed woman who despaired of protecting herself against AIDS, saying "You just don't know what it means to be a woman in Africa" still haunts my memory. Official accounts, however alarming, have not yet caught up with Murphy's detailing of the cultural and social situations that have made the present disaster inevitable. Slowly and belatedly, news accounts are reflecting what she told us years ago. She can hardly be faulted for failing to suggest a solution, when any solution must involve massive cultural change: iconceivable to the locals as well as to western liberals.This is not a cheerful read, like some of her other books, but it may be one of her most important.Bias note: I have read and enjoyed almost all of Dervla Murphy's books, and bought a couple. I'll buy the rest for my permanent library when cheaper paperbacks appear. I do not share her political views (which I believe are far to the left of mine), but I do not find that this has made her observations any less valuable. She has my respect.

The wondrous Dervla Murphy, in her 60's, bicycles from Nairobi to Harare! Taking no more than she can carry on her bike, she sets out in search of one more great adventure, but on the road she is drawn ever more deeply into the pain of the people she visits. Yes, she has harsh words for the insulated outsiders (tourists and aid workers) who dash along the roads in air-conditioned Land Rovers with little thought or understanding for the people of the land, but those remarks are only a minor aspect of the book. The heart of her account is the little roadside towns where she seeks food and shelter every day, and the people in the towns, especially the women, who share their sorrows and meager hopes with her. The enormity of the AIDS in East and Central Africa becomes ever more apparent to Murphy as she cycles southward and, in time, the depredation of the disease - called ukimwi in the local languages - becomes the theme of the journey. The book is not all darkness, however. Murphy's cycling prowess and her ability to quickly read her social environment and quietly make friends are wonderful. The writing is a bit dry. Other first-person travel authors might give the reader a juicier read with florid descriptions of perils heroically or comically overcome and pungent local characters. Murphy recounts perils and characters and moments of grace and beauty, but in an even tone and in a minor key.