Af-riikka

On the airport of Dar es Salaam, on way to Finland from Tanzania I realized that I had packed all my books (which would've all been on Zanzibar / Tanzania anyway, being books for my thesis) in the airplane cargo. Thus I browsed the bookshelves of several gift shops at the airport, wanting to find something new to read for my long journey. I picked up this book because of its unusual cover with a pink mud mosque, men with Kalashnikoves, a tank and the title: " The Lost Kingdoms of Africa - through Muslim Africa by truck, bus, boat and camel" . It sounded interesting enough, and I purchased the over-priced book for 20 $. The title of the book refers to the old, pre-colonial kingdoms especially in West Africa: Ghana, Songhai, Mali, Hausa...all those names we had to learn during the course on the History of Africa on my first year in the university. The author, Jeffrey Tayler, succeeds well enough in capturing the mood and mentality of the people while travelling from Chad th...

I have already praised my guidebook for West Africa in this blog several times. It is practically impossible to travel in Africa without a guidebook, if you're not on an organized trip, of course. Travelling in Europe is a totally different matter: there are free guides, magazines and at least tourist offices in most bigger cities, and traffic connections are somewhat clear and posted on the walls, very often. A great advantage is also the fact that often you know most of the cities in Europe, even some smaller ones by name, such as Krakow, Nice or Tromsö. But how many of you had heard of Porto Novo (photo below), Bobo-Dioulasso (photo above) or Djenné (photo in the end of the post) before reading my blog (assuming that you've read most of the posts :))? Thus, embarking on the first trip to Africa without a very thoroughful preparation with the help of Internet (you can't count on having Internet available all the time in Africa, especially in Mali the connections were ve...