Zambia Kenya Tanzania

Murphy takes this bike ride across Africa when she is sixty years old, certainly an inspiration. This book also seems a little more thoughtful and less given to large generalizations about people and cultures than the other book I read by her, Cameroon with Egbert. A good travel/mild adventure book. ( )

Accounts of the author's travels through Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia in the mid 90s. One constant theme is the ever increasing poverty and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic that has wiped out entire families.

Accounts of the author's travels through Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia in the mid 90s. One constant theme is the ever increasing poverty and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic that has wiped out entire families.

What to make of a trans-continental cyclist who apparently knows almost nothing about bicycle maintenance? Or of a 60 year old Irish woman who at times seems to measure her progress in beers consumed rather than miles? Dervla Murphy, famous for riding just about everywhere in this instance rides into a world of poverty, disease, ignorance and every now and then hospitality - although less than you might imagine. The Ukimwi road is the AIDS road, transmitted by truck-drivers and prostitutes. Murphy, who rides with no agenda, is frequently mistaken for an AIDS researcher and accused of withholding the knowledge of a cure of a disease that white people introduced in order to wipe out the Africans.

There's very little pleasure in this journey - the pain of the saddle, the bug infestations, the ignorance and the disease wear at the reader as much as at the rider. You wonder why she does it, but Dervla Murphy has two things going for her, the stoicism that came from an extraordinary upbringing, and the knowledge that a bicycle will take you to a place - along a road - that no other form of transport (except perhaps walking) will allow. The Ukimwi road is a real place, but very few Europeans would ever know it as Dervla Murphy has. Through her we have a glimpse of it, in all it's disturbing pestilence and hopelessness. There's no uplifting conclusion to the story, and very few bright points along the way. The best that could be said - and perhaps this is a lot - is that somehow life goes on. ( )