A Leaf in the Wind: Travels in Africa

by Peter Hudson

Details the experiences of the author's journey through Mali, Zaire, and Somalia, and describes the traditional African cultures he found, under attack at Westernization

Genres: Africa

267 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Peter Hudson is a writer, farmer and charity worker. He has been visiting Africa for over thirty years, and indeed there are few parts of the continent he has not seen from the back of a bush taxi, donkey or bicycle. He has written four books about what he has found there, including his most recent, Under an African Sky, which tells the story of a village he has been visiting annually for tweny years. Peter lives in mid-Wales with his family.

Reviews

[Stephen Wood · Rating 3 out of 5]

One needs to remember that this book was written more than 30 years ago, when the author was a young man in his middle 20s, and it was his first book. He travelled across the whole of Africa from west to east. Of that immense journey he has selected three areas to tell us about; his stays in Mali, Zaire (the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1997) and Somalia.

The political situation in these areas has forever been muddled, unstable and accounts for much of the problems which beleaguer them, but there is little about that in the book. It’s a travelogue. The author immerses himself in the landscape and the people, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but don’t expect any kind of reasoning for why these places are what they are.

When he visits Zaire I found an interesting comparison with the account of Tim Butcher in his book “Blood River”, which I read recently. Hudson’s account precedes Butcher’s by nearly 20 years, but the differences in observation are striking. For example, Hudson travelled the same roads over which Butcher was barely able to pass on a motorbike, yet Hudson rode in a 22 wheel truck. Hudson describes an infrastructure, whilst wobbly, that is far more robust than that which Butcher found. It’s a validation of Butcher’s findings that The Congo is losing the benefits of its colonial heritage and reverting to a lawless jungle.

Somalia is a place we associate with dangerous militia activity, endemic hostage taking and piracy, and Toyota pick ups with a heavy machine gun slung on the back manned by men in balaclavas patrolling the streets. There is no mention of this in Hudson’s book, even though it existed back in the late 1980s. Only 5 years after his visit the events in Mogadishu which led to the film Black Hawk Down took place.

Everyone, almost without exception on the author’s journey, is extremely welcoming, friendly and helpful (except for the petty officials). It must be how he saw it of course, but I can’t help thinking there must have been a great deal below the surface that he either didn’t see for some reason or chose not to go into, which makes the narrative sound a touch naïve.

All that said, I enjoyed the book, and as the author went on to write more I shall seek him out and see how his writing evolved.

[John Benson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was Peter Hudson's first book written when he was still in his 20s and chronicles a trip he did through Africa in 1980. He traveled for a year and visited many of the African countries north of the Equator, but in this book, he chose to highlight his time in Mali, Zaire (now DRC), Somalia and Djibouti. He captures these places well, most of which you could not visit now due to their political situation. I found his writing to be one that captured the landscapes, interactions with people, and the hardships of travel very well. I found it to be a very well-written and enjoyable book. Worth reading even if the events in his travels happened almost 40 years ago.