A Canadian’s life on the road

Chasing Africa: Fear Won’t Find Me Here – A Memoir
by Lisa Duncan

Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2022
$25.00  /  9781771605816

Reviewed by Isabel Nanton

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In her memoir of time spent as a 24-year-old in South Africa, Namibia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and Zanzibar for three-and-a-half-months in 1996, Squamish-based author Lisa Duncan reveals much that is interesting and true about the different environments she encountered during her travels.

By her own admission, she saw “Africa” as a privileged young Canadian crafting from her daily journal a memoir of a specific era in Southern and East African history.  (Kenyan-born myself, I baulk somewhat when folk refer to “Africa” as one place: such a vast and varied continent of 54 unique countries where one – Congo – is bigger than the whole of Western Europe). That small quibble aside, as a single woman armed with her Lonely Planet guide Duncan retrieves courage on the road away from British Columbia where her father was suffering from Parkinson’s disease and her brother from MS. 

Taking a break from this “tragedy unravelling back home”, she lands in a 1996 South Africa still presiding in the glow of a Nelson Mandela presidency, infrastructure still intact, democracy still prevailing in a Rainbow Nation free at last from the shackles of apartheid. And though the interim time has accelerated vast changes there (South Africa bulging with “illegals” escaping Zimbabwe which has given rise to xenophobia), core values endure to smooth Duncan’s journey: joy despite deprivation, humour, a love of music and rhythm, and the traditional, warm welcome extended to strangers, enabling her to make several connections with local people in addition to fellow international backpackers.

Surviving having her passport stolen in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and an earlier bout of dysentery, Duncan concludes that “one thing Africa taught me was that it was better to embrace life’s small wins instead of dwelling on short-term grief and inconvenience.” Amen to that.  This is a gal who early on in her safari bemoaned the lack of air-conditioning in a shared VW Rabbit en route to the sand dunes of the Namib desert, later worrying that her unshaved legs might make her “unsexy.” This reader was pleasantly reminded of how we were all once 24 years old, living intensely in the impetuous moment while looking for romance, which Duncan finds briefly in Harare.  

Her dialogue is lively. She also conjures up vivid images. A harrowing overnight trip on an ancient ferry lands her on Likoma Island on Lake Malawi, where in huge St. Peter’s Cathedral, she is shown a crucifix reputedly made from the branch of the tree where David Livingstone’s heart was buried.  Her description of the enigmatic Great Zimbabwe ruins is clear and intense, as is an earlier thumbnail sketch of the diamond ghost town Kolmanskop on the Namib coast.

The relative ease of travel in a pre-9/11 world stands out, with Duncan able to move relatively smoothly between countries to ride an ostrich in South Africa, relish the stunning Zimbabwe rock paintings, and attend a healing “witchcraft” ceremony in Malawi conducted by Dr. William, plus surviving that certain rite of passage – being attacked by Safari Ants. Hers was the time of Lariam anti-malarial drugs which did induce vivid dreams many of which she shares with her readers. This is balanced with endearing moments, an “instant connection with strangers,” helping assuage her feelings of guilt at being far from her family in B.C. At the end of the day, you can’t take the Canadian out of the traveler, so what does Duncan far from home select to play on a jukebox cafe but KD Lang’s “Constant Craving” which seems an apt epitaph for life on the road.

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Kenyan-born author and Cambridge Press Fellow Isabel Nanton is author of the Sierra Club Guide to BC, Adventuring in British Columbia (Sierra Club Books, 1996, with Mary Simpson). She specializes in writing about East Africa and Western Canada. She has reviewed books for the The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun, and Old Africa magazine in East Africa. Editor’s note: Isabel Nanton has also reviewed books by Oriane Lee Johnston, Mary Bomford, Mellissa Fung,  John Schreiner & Luke Whittall, Joe Martin & Alan Hoover, Diana Lary for The British Columbia Review.

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-24: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, Maria Tippett, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster