Book recommendation

Irritating: despite getting my overseas voting application in on time, faxed from the Canadian High Commission in London, I won't be voting because I haven't received a ballot yet. On the one hand, I assume this has something to do with the fact that last weekend was Easter, which took a few working days away, but on the other hand, why is the application deadline so late if Elections Canada can't guarantee that ballots will be received in time to actually cast them? Obviously I should have registered sooner, and that's my fault, but again, what's the point of having a deadline if it's too late? I know of at least two other Canadians in London and one friend in Canada who didn't receive their special ballots either. So hopefully a few people who weren't planning to vote go out and do it for me? I'll be hassling my parents, personally.

I'm a bit sick of thinking about, let alone writing about, elections, politics, social media, etc. So inspired by my friend Rosemary over at the flip side, who has just landed a journalism gig in Nairobi, I picked up a copy of one of my favourite books of all time (if not my absolute favourite, actually), Aidan Hartley's The Zanzibar Chest. I know it's terrible that I didn't yet own a book that I call my all-time favourite, but when I bought it the first time, it was as a gift for a friend who was going to Tanzania for a year, and who read it and then left it with me when she went. So for a year I kind of did own it, but then had to give it back and never replaced it.

Anyway. The book is Hartley's memoir of his time spent working as a stringer for Reuters in Africa in the 1990s, covering some of the worst famines and wars in recent history. Interwoven with Hartley's story, which is essentially a gripping account of how he ended up burnt out and a little messed up from the things he saw, is his later search for the story of Peter Davey, a friend of his father's who was a British officer in what is now Yemen during the first half of the 20th century.

I can't recommend this book enough to anyone with an interest in international reporting, British colonial history or really just with a sense of adventure. There's something about the history of Hartley's ancestors, generation after generation of people spending their lives in what were then the exotic corners of the British Empire, and of Hartley's own experiences in Kenya, Somalia, Burundi and Rwanda (and also a brief stint in the Balkans), that makes you want to just pack your bags and run halfway across the world. Maybe you shouldn't read this if you're going through any kind of crisis of career or identity - it does tend to make life look a bit uninteresting and totally devoid of adventure and spontaneity.

But for all of that, it's not really a 'fun' tale of globetrotting. Some of Hartley's experiences will bring tears to your eyes, and there is a definite sense of the people in the stories being fairly unable to function in the real world, outside of war zones, and of being unable to form proper relationships. Colleagues are apt to be killed, and the journalist's life doesn't really seem to give the same kind of satisfaction as Hartley believed his father, an agricultural officer who worked in Yemen, Ethiopia and Kenya, and Davey had in their work. There's also the underlying element of Hartley's struggle with his identity - he's a white, Kenyan-born Brit who was educated in England and went to Oxford and SOAS, but is clearly more at home in Africa in general and Kenya specifically. The story has it's funny, happy bits and its fairly devastating bits, and as is fairly common in non-fiction where we don't get to make up the endings, doesn't leave you with an overall warm and fuzzy feeling inside. But it does leave you with a bit of awe, and a better understanding of the lives of international correspondents beyond the glossy TV standups.

Read it.