The book review:
I was attracted by this book’s odd title and my own memories of the starkly modern, already decaying edifice of the motel itself that sits forlornly on the Mombasa road just near the Tsavo River bridge. Yes indeed, that building is a focus of the book, yet it is just a jumping off point for a series of essays and opinions about Zanzibar and Kenya in the late 1980’s.

Boyle’s genre was travel, so travel he did. He used the Ugandan Railroad as a literary mechanism. He traced its route from the sea to Lake Victoria and mused about incidents, both historical and current, and people whom he encountered along the way. He started in Zanzibar, which in the late eighties was retreating from socialism and xenophobia, but not yet launched into capitalism. Not surprisingly Boyles found the island wanting, but also susceptible to his usually gentle humor.

From there he tackled Mombasa and the awesomely slow train to Nairobi. The central essay of the book dealt with the man-eating lions at Tsavo River. To his credit, Boyles did the research and provided an entertaining rehash of how Colonel Patterson stalked and finally shot the offending beasts. Furthermore, he dug up interesting aspects of Patterson’s later life and exploits. The Colonel, although not Jewish himself, was a Zionist and had a hand in the creation of the pre-Israel Jewish fighting forces. Returning to the Tsavo River, Boyles noted how little evidence exists regarding the epic struggle with the lions. He sympathized with the bored employees of Man Eater’s as desultory denizens of the road occasionally stopped for coffee or a coke.

Later, when passing through Nairobi, Boyles took a jaundiced look at the role of white Kenyans whom he found reflective but pessimistic about their future in the new Kenya. Today it is worth reflecting upon the fact that much of the pessimism of those times has shifted positively commensurate with Kenya’s political maturity.

Finally, after a detour to Busia, which seemed to occur just so the author could bad mouth Uganda, Boyles ended up in Kisumu where he appeared to be most interested in various bars. Apparently, however, he never found my favorite “The New Friends Paradise Day and Nightclub Bar and Grill.”

As reflected in its odd title, this is an odd book. Broyles does capture the sense of the era. He writes well and tells good stories. That is all he really intended. The book is doubly interesting to East Africanists today because a knowledgeable reader can compare the reality of the late 1980’s to what subsequently transpired.