Passionate travel, terrible loss
Inside the Belly of an Elephant: A Motorcycle Journey of Loss, Legacy and Ultimate Freedom
by Todd Lawson
Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2023
$30 / 9781771605755
Review by Isabel Nanton
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Reading this book by Whistler author and photographer Todd Lawson was a privilege, enabling me to appreciate and savor the work of a former student of mine at Victoria’s Western Academy (2001-02). At the time, Todd had shared the profound tragedy of his then young life, losing his brother Sean to cerebral malaria in 1999 while the brothers were sharing a vigorous South African motorbike trip. Already then, Todd talked of hoping to pay tribute to Sean’s free spirit, exemplified by the arresting image of his brother on this book cover, looking up at the sky, camera in hand, waist encircled with climbing gear.
What Todd has written and photographed is a riveting, honest book which Bruce Kirkby aptly states in his introduction – examines “mortality, meaning and connection” with a “ruthless honesty (which) reminds me at times of Anthony Bourdain on two wheels.”
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And what a ride it is. Divided into three parts, the book barrels the reader along on the journey of three energetic brothers of immigrant homesteader farming grandparents growing up in Alberta, the lads’ resilient mother losing two husbands before turning 43 — to sharing in brother Sean’s ten years of extreme adventures on the road and ultimate death after four months adventuring with Todd in Southern Africa. In part two, as an homage to Sean who had wanted to make the trip, Todd and partner Christina motorbike through South America, scattering Sean’s ashes at significant places along the way, ashes that have been treasured in the belly of a carved wooden elephant of the title. Part three rounds out this emotional and physical safari, with the two bikers returning to Africa, on a Rotary-funded trip to distribute mosquito nets to children in remote East African villages.
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Sean’s often-quoted motto “wake up early, stay up late” captures his energy and derring-do, shared excerpts from his journal revealing a charismatic young man who grabbed life with both hands. Todd soon samples the “intoxication of travel” when, after a decade apart, the two brothers re-unite in Southern Africa for their motorbike final safari. An addiction to the unexpected grips them both, author Todd using a compelling non-linear narrative arc, playing with timelines and dropping in journal entries, which held this reader’s interest.
One slight drawback of using journals as source material can result in an overabundance of narrative detail but Todd avoids this pitfall. All art is composed of selected detail and he uses vivid images to conjure up the brothers’ Africa. Ostriches race alongside their bikes, the brothers drop acid for an ultra experience of the Namibia sand dunes and when they fall in the Devil’s Toilet Bowl while white water rafting the Zambezi, guide Moses scoops them up. But nothing can protect them from the Mozambique mosquitoes. Sean’s death is raw and visceral, Todd’s grief, palpable.
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Losing a sibling is unexpurgated sorrow.
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As the African-born daughter myself of a mother who died of cerebral malaria in 1991, the magnet of Part Three prevailed when Todd and Christina bestride two workhorse Yamaha AG 200S bikes in a “Motos against malaria” Rotary Club initiative to deliver those mosquito nets to protect children in remote villages. This is epic stuff and this reader was with them every step of the way through Swaziland (now Eswatini), Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Uganda – their bikes Willy and Jessie powering them across serious terrain, with the inevitable hiccups and tensions that erupt between fellow travellers on challenging journeys.
I envied them experiencing the jebena buna coffee ceremony in Ethiopia tied closely to womanhood and was glad that my vicarious trip with them in brutal Sudan, was…vicarious. At the end of the day, 10,200 nets were distributed.
The third part of the book stands the test of time even though in the past 15 years, life in Africa’s 54 countries continues to change rapidly. In Northern Kenya, great wind farms power electricity near Lake Turkana and several of the dirt roads once navigated by the bikers, are now smooth tarmac. Still, travel in Africa remains unexpected and unpredictable, with many of the folk they meet, like Arthur in Rwanda (who lost both his parents in the 1994 genocide), sharing stories that challenge Western comprehension.
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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 Collin Varner, Robert Silverman, Lisa Duncan, Oriane Lee Johnston, Mary Bomford, Mellissa Fung, for The British Columbia Review.
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-26: 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, 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