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Rating: 
Summary: A different view
Review: A couple of years after reading The Ukimwe Road, which I found to be excellent reporting, I was surprised to find so many negative and emotional views posted here. I have repeatedly recommended this and other Murphy books to friends as good entertainment and the most unbiased sources of on-the-ground information in print. Where Dervla Murphy has gone, we can learn truth that is seldom found in more conventional sources. The picture she painted of the seriousness and extent of the AIDS problem in Africa was well supported by her first-hand (if anecdotal) evidence. Subsequent developments have shown that her alarming portrayal was accurate, and hers was in print *years* before the authorities began to recognise the scope of the problem. She did an excellent job of illustrating the wide range of psychological devices used to deny or minimise the problem. Her portrait of the plight of a well-informed woman who despaired of protecting herself against AIDS, saying "You just don't know what it means to be a woman in Africa" still haunts my memory. Official accounts, however alarming, have not yet caught up with Murphy's detailing of the cultural and social situations that have made the present disaster inevitable. Slowly and belatedly, news accounts are reflecting what she told us years ago. She can hardly be faulted for failing to suggest a solution, when any solution must involve massive cultural change: iconceivable to the locals as well as to western liberals. This is not a cheerful read, like some of her other books, but it may be one of her most important. Bias note: I have read and enjoyed almost all of Dervla Murphy's books, and bought a couple. I'll buy the rest for my permanent library when cheaper paperbacks appear. I do not share her political views (which I believe are far to the left of mine), but I do not find that this has made her observations any less valuable. She has my respect.
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Summary: NONSENSE
Review: I disagree 100% with the other reviewer. It's a very moving book wich gives you a completely personal view on the effect aids is having on Afrika. Dervla Murphy is still going strong. Her views on "overlanders" are a bit harsh but she has a point. These groups are very often only intrested in themselves an can be very rude to the Africans. I have seen that more than once in Malawi and Tanzania.
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Summary: Save your money!
Review: I have lived and travelled throughout Africa over the past 10 years. Although Murphy is a highly praised author for her other books I found this one to be poor. There were such touches of arrogance that sent me through the roof.To paraphase a section, "I can't understand why people travel by organized overland Lorries . I travelled solo and maximized the experience" and yet she always had to seek out only those Africans that spoke English...This might seem trite, but it summarizes the attitude and sometimes misinformation that flowed through-out the book
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Summary: Horrible book, truly awful
Review: I too have lived, travelled, and worked in Africa, specifically in some of the areas where Murphy passed through. There are good travel books, and there are good books about AIDS in Africa -- this is neither. Really, a truly lousy book.
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Summary: Dervla rides bike with flat tires
Review: I wish that I had read the reviews of the reader below before I bought the book. I, too have lived in Africa on and off for years and found the book a bit sophmoric and off the mark. It might be great for an unknowing armchair traveller, but her attitude I found most annoying. More air needed in the tires for this book to coast down hill...
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Summary: Interesting
Review: Remaining rather drained from one of her other recent trips (the trip to Transylvania, for D. Murphy fans), Murphy decides to take a trip just for fun (the fact that she decides to bike through several African countries alone at age 60ish for a relaxing break tells the reader a great deal both about her and about what the book will be like!). She isn't even planning on writing a book for this trip. Yet as she travels along, she sees the ravages of "the slim disease" (ukimwi, or AIDS) everywhere. She also sees some of the causes of this, such as the poor treatment of women, imported Western values that haven't meshed with local customs (leaving societies in a state of moral limbo), and so on. This prompts her to share some of her experiences with us. This book has many good qualities. The best is the author herself. She can describe her situations aptly; I greatly appreciate her language. She is genuinely interested in learning about the places she visits, and in meeting their people. She isn't afraid of new experiences, and knows how to laugh at mistakes that she makes, and be flexible when needed. Another likeable aspect of the book is the places she visits. Unlike many trips, which only visit big or well-known areas, Murphy makes a point of visiting non-touristy villages where she can actually see what African life is like. Lastly, while her discussions on AIDS are difficult to read, they seem more frank than could be found in most books. On the other hand, this book did have some weaknesses. The biggest weakness that I saw was her opinionated responses to situations. While her thoughts are certainly more likely to be accurate than those of many tourists who just go in, take some pictures of famous monuments, and take off again, she certainly has her own share of bias. It made me uneasy to read it. I've read some of her other books; I tend to admire her and think I have a fair clue of roughly how much to accept or reject from what she says. Yet in this book she spent far less time on observation and far more time (it seemed) on sharing opinions. She also didn't seem to know exactly what she thought. For example, she criticized many missionaries for pushing abstinence, blithely ignoring the cultural ramifications of that. Yet at times she indicated that the solution was the current situation, except with more condoms, at times a return to polygamy was advised, and at times she thought the Africans should indeed go for sex with just one parter, their spouse. And would women best be helped by gaining more freedom, in a Western style which didn't fit with the rest of their culture? In sticking with African ideals that cruelly exploited them and left them extremely vulnerable to AIDS? Granted, no one knows the answers to these questions and so uncertainty is certainly okay; however, I felt that she overcriticized others who genuinely want to help. All in all, this book was a good book, and I would recommend reading it. It gives a great deal of information in an interesting way. However, I would caution all readers to take her comments with a grain of salt, and consider carefully her opinions.
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Summary: A loner's important journey into Africa
Review: Since 1964 Irish writer Murphy has been traveling the world by foot and bicycle and writing about her experiences. An outspoken loner, drawn to the more remote parts of the globe, her beautiful but rugged experiences fascinate and educate the armchair traveler - without inspiring similar ambitions. As a 60th birthday present to herself, Murphy undertakes a 3,000 mile journey through Eastern and Southern Africa on her Dawes Ascent mountain-bike, "the cyclist's equivalent of a Rolls-Royce," named Lear. The trip was a "self-described unwinding therapy.....a carefree ramble through some of the least hot areas of sub-Saharan Africa." But "carefree" it is not, though nothing - not heat, torrential rains, hunger, illness, hostility or impassable roads - can stop her. Murphy is greeted in Nairobi by drought and a mothers' hunger strike which rapidly degenerates into a riot when paramilitary troops arrive to disperse the women. Leaving the city as quickly as she can, Murphy contemplates the contrast between Western luxuries and construction projects alongside the shanty towns and hungry children. From her first stop in a dusty village for a Tusker beer, AIDS predominates and a pattern is set which endures thoughout the lands and cultures she passes through during the coming months. By day she enjoys the solitude and scenery of rural Africa; by night she is embroiled in local discussions of politics and Western incursions and AIDS, often dodging individual pleas for help in getting to the land of opportunity - the West. Ukimwi is Swahili for AIDS. In Africa, wherever she goes, it surrounds her. Some blame Western conspiracies and medical experiments; missionaries preach behavioral changes and deny condom distribution; men say they cannot survive without a variety of female partners; wives say their husbands refuse condoms; prositutes say they would have no business if they insisted on condom use. Everywhere Murphy meets widows, orphans and more orphans. She at first resists the pull of AIDS. For her this is a pleasure journey and she can do nothing to slow the epidemic. But it has become part of the fabric of culture, threatening traditional family life, taking the most productive and leaving behind the old and the young to fend for themselves. In addition to the scourge of AIDS, Murphy finds much of Africa suffering from economic collapse, spurred in large part by misguided Western "development projects" that destroyed the local agrarian economy, often displacing the people and departing, leaving behind devastation and tribal strife. She meets hospitality and hostility, and takes what comes; be it a bedbug, mosquito-infested tourist hotel, or an earthen floor, or a spontaneously offered bed in a local home. She sets out at dawn hardly knowing whether to expect a corrugated wartorn road or spectacular mountain scenery or a beguiling path that ends in a swamp (through which she is guided by a silent tribal elder). She pushes Lear up rutted mountain tracks and hurtles down, marveling at the African cyclists she meets everywhere - man cycling, two children on the cross bar, wife behind holding baby and toddler, and a heavy load balanced over all. With a cast-iron stomach, she eats and drinks whatever is available (which is generally awful), especially enjoys her beer, cycles through bronchitis and is finally felled by malaria. Even that she comes to regard as fitting - ending her journey in Zimbabwe where "Blacks had been subjugated as nowhere else in British Africa." Murphy concludes that Westerners ought to get out of Africa once and for all - that Western systems have not "taken" and have only undermined traditional culture. Whether you come to agree with her or not, her harrowing, thrilling, eye-opening and heartbreaking journey will stay with you when other travels are long forgotten.
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Summary: Amazing, compassionate - but a bit dry
Review: The wondrous Dervla Murphy, in her 60's, bicycles from Nairobi to Harare! Taking no more than she can carry on her bike, she sets out in search of one more great adventure, but on the road she is drawn ever more deeply into the pain of the people she visits. Yes, she has harsh words for the insulated outsiders (tourists and aid workers) who dash along the roads in air-conditioned Land Rovers with little thought or understanding for the people of the land, but those remarks are only a minor aspect of the book. The heart of her account is the little roadside towns where she seeks food and shelter every day, and the people in the towns, especially the women, who share their sorrows and meager hopes with her. The enormity of the AIDS in East and Central Africa becomes ever more apparent to Murphy as she cycles southward and, in time, the depredation of the disease - called ukimwi in the local languages - becomes the theme of the journey. The book is not all darkness, however. Murphy's cycling prowess and her ability to quickly read her social environment and quietly make friends are wonderful. The writing is a bit dry. Other first-person travel authors might give the reader a juicier read with florid descriptions of perils heroically or comically overcome and pungent local characters. Murphy recounts perils and characters and moments of grace and beauty, but in an even tone and in a minor key.
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Summary: Bleh! Ugh!
Review: This book is a waste of time, a waste of space, and a waste of money. Demonstrates amazing ignorance about the places and people she visits, and arrogantly assumes the right to make judgements about things she clearly does not understand. People who've lived in the areas she bikes through, especially those who've done any work relating to AIDS or women's issues, have an involuntary gagging reflex whenever someone mentions this book.
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Summary: Well worth reading
Review: This is an unusually well-written and consistently interesting travel narrative. The author does come across as a tough old crow at times. (I can't imagine why she feels entitled to sneer at hikers who use the Lonely Planet guide.) But who else would have braved such an arduous journey in the first place? I can understand that her opinions about women's issues and the AIDS epidemic might be irritatingly opposed to yours. But isn't one of the points of traveling to meet people who aren't like ourselves?
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