Africa by Accident

Music: Mot Ngay Ban Va Toi by Nguyen Duc Cuong

I finished reading The Black Nile about 2 weeks ago.

P/s: so far i've read 16 books this year, which is far from the target of 30 i've set back in January. But then again, at the time i didnt know i would be doing my masters.

When i bought the book earlier this year (yes i brought this book, and a few more from home), i wanted to read a book on Egypt. But the title turned out to be misleading. I made the mistake of assuming the Nile and Egypt are synonymous, how ignorant of me. The author of the book is a journalist who travelled from Uganda, through Sudan..and ended up in Egypt, on the Nile where possible, and keeping as close as possible to the mighty river whenever he had to travel by land. I also found out there's actually the Blue Nile and the White Nile, which finally merges into the Nile that we all know.

In the first part of the book i was disappointed, mainly because it wasnt a story that i expected, and he was talking about the traveling mostly. But later on, when he started talking more about the conflict and civil war in Sudan, the things he saw, the people he met and the stories he heard along the way, it became interesting.

I rarely read about politics and war in Africa, most were new to me, having only been interested in reading about the middle east. Therefore all this new information was quite revealing. Oh the things we dont know. I also always assume that Egypt is in middle east, which is obviously not true. Anyway, the only familiar issue to me was when the author made some references about Joseph Kony.

So i ended up really liking the book, and finally understood why the author titled it The Black Nile. I was also suprised and disappointed at the same time to know that Malaysia, i.e. Petronas is indirectly (or directly even) related to the war in Sudan.. The travel was done a few years before Sudan and South Sudan became independent countries last year (this i knew, but not the history of how or why it happened).

Unsurprisingly, its another war story triggered by the fight for oil resources. Its just appalling to realize that millions of people have died around the world because of oil, and i am a part of it by virtue of being a consumer, and i most definitely cant live without it. What a sick world we live in. Here are some excerpts from the book that mentioned Malaysia.