Halfway Down an African Moon. Travels in Sub-Saharan Africa

'Half Way Down an African Moon' is a distillation of journeys made in sub Saharan Africa between 1972 and 2005. During these journeys, I came to know an older Africa, of ancient story-telling, wisdoms and simple courtesies living on unchanged beside the almost seismic political and social changes that marked the post-Independence era. It took me many years to realise this and with it the futility of trying to understand Africa through Western ideas and ideology. The views, for example, of a Lagos market woman fashioned by a cosmology of tribal deities and ancestral spirits are a world away from our own beliefs and creation myth - whatever the missionaries may think. One of the two aims of this book is to transmit something of all this, along with the good humour, tolerance and resilience of the people I encountered, to the reader. The second aim is to highlight the destruction of wildlife and its habitat that is transforming whole regions almost beyond recognition and pushing...