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10 November 2007
TRAVERSA AFRICA
During the nineteenth century, as the interior of Africa was being explored by Europeans, many Africans were employed as porters, gun-bearers, cooks, servants, interpreters and guides. Some British expedition leaders, like Livingstone, Stanley, Burton and Speke, took with them members of a group of formerly enslaved Africans called the Bombay Africans.
These were natives of East Africa who had been sold into slavery as children and transported to India; once liberated, they often ended up in Mumbai orphanages where they were recruited to join the expeditions. They consequently became some of the most travelled people in Africa; being amongst the first to cross the continent, discover the great African lakes and the source of the Nile. One even founded the town of Leopoldville, now the Congolese capital, Kinshasa.
John McCarthy is joined by historian Cliff Pereira, author Alexander Maitland to discuss this fascinating but overlooked aspect of the exploration of what was then called darkest Africa; Fran Sandham recounts his walk across the continent - a feat known as the traversa.
Presented by John McCarthy
Photo:Victoria Falls from the Zambia side
This week’s guests:
Cliff Pereira is a historian and RGS-IBG Fellow and guest curator of the Bombay Africans 1850-1910 exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society. Cliff is also chair of an HIV charity in South London and chronicler of Bexley’s black and Asian history
RGS Exhibitions - Bombay Africans 1850-1910
25 September - 29 November 2007
Open Monday-Friday, 10.00-17.00 in the Pavilion
Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR
Tel: 020 7591 3000
Alexander Maitland has worked most of his life in architecture. He is the writer of a number of books on exploration and the author of a biography entitled ‘Speke: and the Discovery of the Source of the Nile,’ published in the seventies, and also of the more recent biography on the life of the explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger.
Wilfred Thesiger – The Life of the Great Explorer
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0002556081
Wilfred Thesiger: ‘A Life in Pictures’
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0002572249
Speke and the Discovery of the Source of the Nile
Publisher: Constable (1971)
ISBN-10: 0094574308
ISBN-13: 978-0094574304
Sir Wilfred Thesiger (1910 - 2003) was a British explorer and travel writer who spent more than sixty years journeying to some of the most remote and dangerous places on earth. He was one of the first Europeans to cross the Arabian Desert known as the Empty Quarter.
John Hanning Speke (1827 - 1864) was an British explorer and the first European to reach Lake Victoria in east Africa, which he named and identified as the long-sought source of the Nile.
Fran Sandham
About ten years ago Fran decided to walk across Africa. It was always something he wanted to do, having read Tarzan as a boy. Fran did the walk without any sponsorship, back up team, companion or timetable, but he had route worked out, although this changed when the civil war prevented him from going through the Congo. The journey took him a year.
Traversa: A Solo Walk Across Africa, from the Skeleton Coast to the Indian Ocean
Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd
ISBN-10: 0715637029
ISBN-13: 978-0715637029
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the content of external sites | | | | | | PRESENTER BIOGRAPHIES | | | | |
 John McCarthy is a widely travelled journalist and presenter with a particular interest in the Middle East. | |
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