Book: The Zanzibar ChestWriter: Aidan Hartley Reading level: Ages 18 and upPaperback: 496 pages Publisher: Riverhead Trade Language: EnglishReviewer: Gilbert MwijukeAvailable at: Major bookstores in town As a journalist, Aidan Hartley found work with Reuters in Nairobi, just as the former cold war powers were withdrawing their aid from Africa, provoking conflict across the continent. He traveled the war circuit through Rwanda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Bosnia and other hot spots. “What I was looking for was a war that I could call my own – a complete experience that would define me as the son of my father and involve me as an insider,” Hartley writes in The Zanzibar Chest. He found that war to call “my own” in Rwanda in 1994. He had covered the Rwanda conflict since the first days of the RPF invasion in 1990. “You are in for a quick in and out, so don’t you dare go walkabout,” he quotes one of his journalist colleagues warning him not to take unnecessary risks as they set off from Nairobi to Rwanda. It was on April 9, 1994. Rwanda’s then Hutu President, Juvenal Habyarimana, and Cyprien Ntaryarima, the leader of Burundi, had just been killed while flying together when their aircraft was hit by a surface-to-air rocket and exploded in a ball of flame on the approach to Kigali International Airport. Because it was a bit hard to enter Kigali through Kigali International Airport, Hartley and colleagues took a taxi from Entebbe Airport to the eastern part of Rwanda. While there, Hartley realized that, “I had to stay with the RPF guerrillas… Apart from anything else, I could communicate easily with the RPF because they were mostly Anglophones.” In Kigali, he writes, he would have to speak French, and he didn’t fancy trying out his C-grade schoolboy’s Francais on armed Hutus. So he decided it was better to walk with the RPF to Kigali. “You can’t possibly walk,” Paul Kagame, RPF’s taciturn commander-in-chief told him.In this stunning piece of work, weaving together stories of his childhood in Africa, his family’s history and his experiences as a reporter on the front line, Hartley tells us what he saw. “…There is an amazing depth, breadth and grace of fine writing in this book. It will reside permanently in my memory. No one should dare say the word ‘Africa’ without reading it,” one reviewer wrote.
