Travels in West Africa

In 1893 Mary Kingsley, a single Victorian woman, traveled alone to Africa. The sources of her interest in Africa are obscure. Possibly the tales her father brought back to England of his extensive travels lie at the root of her own interest. In any case her account of her travels in west and west-central Africa are a remarkable addition to our knowledge of the region during the early years of the colonial period. Kingsley wrote with a very outward focus. We hear little of her inner feelings, her comfort or lack thereof. Rather, she is consumed with a desire to know the land and its human and natural inhabitants. We begin to taste the real flavor of Kingsley's experience in Chapter 2 in her account of the island of Fernando Po and its prominent people group, the Bubis. She then voyages down the coast, describing the lonely beauty of the great mangrove swamps that border the Bight of Benin. Kingsley developed great respect, admiration, and even affection for the traders, black and white, whom she met in her journey. She traveled in their company and relied on them in what would otherwise have been impossible circumstances. Her views of other white colonials were less sanguine. She expressed mixed feelings about white missionaries, acknowledging the uplifting effects of their moral teaching while disdaining their confusion of cultural with spiritual messages. One of Kingsley's central adventures was her trip from the Ogowe River to the Rembwe River. On this journey, she visited a series of villages each of which was reputed to be more dangerous and depraved than the one before. Her accounts of her lodging in these places are priceless. The difficulties of traveling through swamps and jungles, and across the great rivers of this region, were daunting. Kingsley's accounts of her determination to master the piloting of the native canoes are both funny and insightful. It took a lot for anyone to travel overland, and her perseverance marked her grit, her commitment to finish what she started. The last third of the book consists of three long chapters on fetish customs. Although she lacks a systematic view of the role of fetishes and other spiritual tokens in the cultures she met, her depiction of their impact on everyday life and on funeral customs is enlightening. She delves into the afterlife beliefs of the peoples she encountered; in many of these cultures today, the beliefs she relates are still expressed in a form of syncretistic Christianity. This edition of Kingsley's travel accounts is an abridgement of a much longer, multi-volume original that does not seem to be in print today. Since Kingsley herself prepared the abridgement, we can read it with confidence that it expresses both the details as she recorded them and the priority events or images that best characterize her travel experiences. Gabon, Cameroon, and the areas around them continue today to rank among the wildest, best preserved areas of Africa, both naturally and anthropologica

Single and independent, with a small allowance after the death of her parents, Mary Kingsley decides to explore Africa. She sets off to the Congo, with no entourage nor special clothing and with no knowledge of the local lingo, knowing that this area was renowned for cannibals. Considering that Richard Burton set off to find the centre of Africa with an entourage of 600 bearers puts Ms.Kingsley's trip into perspective.This is not just a wishful fantasy, she has an agenda to research the fetish cults of the natives and collect animal specimens, as well as fulfil the wanderlust that she had bottled up while looking after her parents.She takes everything in her stride, beating off crocodiles - 'he was only a pushing young creature', wading through fetid swamps, falling into a staked animal trap and attributing her salvation to the benefits of a good thick woollen skirt!She has a wonderful way with words; that dry, laconic humour that starts one into fits of giggling; the page-long description of 'Hubbards' sent out by well-meaning, misguided women in Europe for the use of the natives is absolutely wonderful.She has excellent communication skills, getting what she wants from any native by offering him exactly what he wants - tobacco (reminding us of Xabicheh in 'Dead Man') - and if he doesn't want that, then he must need a hairpin to clean out his pipe!I am awed by the determination, bravery, guts and chutzpah of this young woman; even more awed by her writing skills - which are definitely not in the Victorian mold, would that there were more of her books than the two she wrote (the other is 'West African Studies'), sadly this was not to be, as she died of typhoid in Capetown in 1900.A book to savour - highly recommended! *****

Mary Kingsley's "Travels in West Africa" has become a classic, and deservedly so. Her story is remarkable. In the 1890s, unmarried and no longer having to care for her parents, Kingsley decides she should travel in "the tropics" and sets off for "West Africa" (i.e., the West coast of Central Africa). She travels as a scientist, collecting fish specimens, and finances her travels by trading along the way--but mostly she travels for the love of adventure and to satisfy an appetite for the unknown.Kingsley's book is a treasure trove of information about Atlantic-coast Central Africa in the late 1800s. But beyond its historic and sociological value, the book is just wonderful. Her descriptions are vivid, her insights interesting, and her understated humor is a joy. Anyone with a love of exploration and a good story would enjoy this book. Unabridged versions are highly recommended.Readers with a particular interest in Gabon should also see the works of Robert Nassau, an American missionary who was in Gabon when Kingsley traveled there. Evidently they met and discussed all things African at length, though Kingsley makes little mention of him. Nassau wrote "Fetichism in West Africa", "In an Elephant Corral" and "My Ogowe", but doesn't get the credit he deserves. Also of interest is "One Dry Season: In the Footsteps of Mary Kingsley" by Caroline Alexander. Alexander visited Gabon in the 1980s and compared what she saw then to what Kingsley had seen a century earlier.

If you enjoyed Katherine Hepburn's spunky performance in "The African Queen" or delight when Elizabeth Peters' fictional Amelia Peabody prods a villain with her trusty umbrella, you will undoubtedly enjoy the real adventures of Mary Kingsley in Africa. At thirty years of age, her parent having both died, the sheltered Miss Kingsley set off for the continent that had for so long ruled her imagination. Setting herself up as a trader in West Africa, she set out across treacherous swamps and uncharted regions, going where few white men - let alone women - had ever been. Kingsley wrote of her travels with a self-deprecating wit, impaling many of the racial and cultural prejudices of her day. She vastly preferred, for example, the uncoverted "cannibal Fans" to the tribes influenced by missionaries. She distrusted the motives of the "civilizing" European forces, with good reason.My copy of this affordable Everyman edition, ably edited and introduced by Elspeth Huxley, is thick with favorite underlined passages. She writes of harrowing experiences as if she were recounting events at an ice cream social. Indeed, invariably dressed in proper Victorian garb throughout all her travels, she once escaped impalement in a game trap set with spikes - her voluminous skirts saved her. Of an eight-foot crocodile attempting to climb into her canoe, whom Kingsley dealt a repelling blow with a paddle, she remarked, "This was only a pushing young creature who had not learnt manners."Travelling without the vast entourage that other explorers, such as Stanley, seemed to find necessary, she possessed an independence which bordered on eccentricity. She was, as Elspeth Huxley notes, at heart a lone wolf, always preferring to go her own way and make her own judgements about those she encountered. The character of this indomitable, fascinating woman shines through her account of her travels.

Travels in West Africa is a witty, quirky, fascinating work. Mary Kingsley's wry sense of humor had me laughing out loud. A self-educated Victorian woman, she traveled alone to West Africa in 1893 to study the natives' religions and customs and collect fish for the British Museum. Unlike most European explorers, she lived with the people, ate their foods, learned their languages. She continued to dress in proper Victorian clothes despite the heat and inconvenience of hiking in long skirts. She was the first white woman most natives had ever seen. MK was one of the first who felt the white man was ruining the balance in Africa and should stop meddling in the natives' lives and customs. It's not surprising the book is still in print 101 years after first being published. This particular edition is very good.