Mmm... Books

One of the many reasons I loved Freetown was just around the cornerfrom my hotel. A whole downtown street full of used booksellersstocking loads of English books. The going rate for a good paperbackedition of something good? About 5000 leones, or $2. I am currentlyburied in "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy, and by the timeI left Freetown my backpack was weighing me down something fierce.
Books, you see, are a rare, expensive, and quickly consumed commodityfor me. I'm a reading fiend. Always have been. Even during school, mymost common way of avoiding my readings was to, well, read. Oftenheavy non-fiction, since with scarce time to read for pleasure,literature always seemed to be getting bumped from the lineup infavour of nifty ideas. At home I always have a stack of books waitingon my shelves, a newspaper every morning, and an Economist every week.These things are very important to me.
In theory, solo travel with its aforementioned piles of time to fillis an excellent time to catch up on reading, and I certainly use it assuch. I do get plenty of reading done - in 4ish months on the road,I'm well past the 40 book mark - but this dream scenario crashes intoa wall of practicality in a number of ways.
The biggest problem is my reading speed. I've learned to gobble bookspretty fast, and if I'm not careful I'll tear through a whole book inone sitting. While this, in itself, is pretty fun, when you have asmall backpack (and don't want it to weigh a ton), you can't wellcarry a library with you. I've often had 6 books with me at one time,counting guides and French dictionary. In a 35 litre pack with all myother stuff, this is a heck of a lot.
Second, of course, is availability. English books are not easily foundin largely Francophone West Africa. I'm a good scrounger of streetstands by now, and I know to stock up in Anglophone enclaves, butweight limits make me dependant on finding a steady flow rather thanrare stockpiles.
My final limit is expense. New books are generally way outside mybudget. They often cost as much here as at home (around $12). If that$12 only gets me 5 or 6 hours of reading time, It'd be cheaper to goto an internet cafe and read there! Of course, books are for all thetimes when cyber cafes are not at hand, but still... The exception tothis rule are Penguin Classics, staple of travellers everywhere. Evenwhen you can't find anything else in English, you can usually trackdown a pile of Bronte, Austen, and the like for $3ish a pop. The paperis thin, the print small, and (in the new editions) 100% recycled. Mysaviours.
And so it goes that this trip, like other before it, is giving me achance to work my way through the classical canon. The literarybackdrop for my travels all over the world has often, and oddly, beenVictorian England or 19th Century Russia. More of the first, though -for some reason, although Penguin has a wide selection, it's far morelikely to produce DH Lawrence or Jane Austen than Dostoeyevsky. Thismakes me sad, as Russians are my favourite authors from that time. Along series of Indian train rides even got me through War and Peace!Still, beggars can't be choosers here.
In the end, my literary diet looks something like this: 40% classics,20% new or more topical reading (often begged from other travellers ortraded for at hotels) and about 40% crap. The crap largely comes infrom hotel bookshelves, which seem to be the dumping ground for everyhorrid novel our culture can produce. It's a literary Chinese buffet:cheap, filling, and pretty much devoid of nutritional value. I assureyou, it was not by choice that I read "Confessions of a Shopaholic"one evening in Nouakchott.
When I find a hotel with a shelf full of English books, though, myrestraint crumbles. I can read as much as I want! No rationing! Iusually read all of them before I leave. I regularly steal from them,too, although I think I usually improve them by leaving somethingbetter behind in the place of whatever I'd just purloined. In anycase, these hotels are few and far between, especially once you leavebehind the rudimentary backpacker trail that meanders through Senegal.
Rarely do I fuss about technology, but there are definitely days whenI dream that I had with me one of those e-book doodads, loaded up withevery book I might want to read over the trip.
But no. It's an addiction, and I need to be wary that books don't takeover my life. I didn't come halfway around the world to read, and Ithink if I did have access to unlimiteds supplies, I might give in alittle too often to the temptation to hermit myself when stuck indead-end towns, and miss out on the random interactions which are suchjolly good fun.
Just as I don't want books to dominate my agenda, I also don't wantthem to dominate my perceptions of a place. This is why I'm always abit leery of books about places I am. At all costs I avoid straighttravel narratives, and I'm even a bit cautious about books on thesocial issues or culture of a country, books that I think are greatbefore or after a visit, but not necessarily during one. The familydramas of Victorian aristocrats are incongruous companions indeed, butthat incongruity keeps them from warping my perceptions of, say,Guinea.
The exception here for me is works by local authors. Usually I can'tafford to buy them, as they go at Western prices. Used copies, though,are my friend. I'm well aware that local authors have as much theirown take on the culture as any foreigner, but I can mentally slot itin as part of my efforts to understand what makes local people tick,rather then what white people have said on the subject.
To wit, I just finished reading Camara Laye's "L'enfant Noir", hisautobiographical story about growing up in colonial Guinea. I read itwhile in Guinea, and rather enjoyed being filled in on the details ofplaces and practices I had seen and only partially grasped. I alsoenjoyed it because it represented a milestone for me: the first timeI've read a novel in French and really enjoyed it, from a purelyliterary perspective. A lot of that has to do with it being written ina simple, clean, realist style that is a lot easier for someone of myrusty French to grapple with. The story also provided enough contextfor me to puzzle out what I didn't understand without continuallydiving for my dictionary. I still missed words, and once in a whiledidn't get a sentence, but never missed a whole passage.
Contrast that to my first attempt at reading in French, OusmaneSembane's "Les Bouts de Bois de Dieu", a story about tradition andmodernity set around the Dakar-Bamako railway. There, knotty grammar,obscure terminology, and a complex structure had me scratching myhead. Way above my reading level - I didn't finish it.
In many ways, French books solve some problems for me. I just finishedPaulo Coelho's "The Alchemist" in French, and it took me much longerthan the 180 pages would have in English. So economical! But my Frenchis still nowhere near the lever where reading it uses the samerelaxing part of the brain as English. For the forseeable future,reading literature in French will remain work.
For the next little while, I have it easy. Sierra Leone and Liberiaare both Anglophone, and I should be able to stash enough books to getme across Cote D'Ivoire and into Anglophone Ghana. After that, though,it's a big wall o' French: Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.Not until Nigeria will I hit the Anglosphere again. Best keep theDictionaire close.

Peace

Josh