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Travel Stories � Studying Hemingway in Tanzania

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Author: admin | 28 July 2009 | Views: 1495
Ernest Hemingway is one of the most well known writers in the world. However, not many people know about his lifelong fascination with Africa.

Studying Hemingway in Tanzania

For years I knew about Hemingway, having read some of his works, but in the summer of 2002, I fell under Hemingway's spell. That summer, I helped lead a large group of American students, their parents, and teachers on safari in some of the game parks of northern Tanzania: Ngorongoro, Serengeti, and Tarangire. The safari was organized by Thomson Safaris, https://www.thomsonsafaris.com, and my role was to incorporate folklore into the experience.

Studying Hemingway in Tanzania

As I prepared for this trip, I decided to take Hemingway's African stories with me. I could not have made a better choice, as I wrote in a Tanzanian newspaper afterwards:

I had with me the African writings of Ernest Hemingway, the famous American writer who had visited these areas many years ago. I had read some of Hemingway's writings and I knew what a skillful and insightful writer he was. But being in the Serengeti, and reading his stories about hunting there, and about the animals, made this trip even more exciting. Hemingway's descriptions of the landscape, the fauna and the flora ring so true that I could almost see the warthogs running across his pages ("The African," September 14, 2002, p. 8).

With such an experience, it was natural that I began thinking about creating a course on Hemingway in East Africa. Eventually, I created such a course, for Colorado College. In the summer of 2007, twelve students came to Tanzania for the three-week course. Other trips have followed. Hemingway traveled extensively in East Africa, in 1933-34 and in 1953-54. Hemingway was an avid traveler and we cannot, in only three weeks, go everywhere he went. Still, teaching this course has been most satisfying to me.

It offers an opportunity to challenge popular misconceptions and stereotypes about Hemingway, on such topics as hunting, writing and the macho image. I have learned to respect Hemingway more and more, as a writer whose mastery of the craft of writing is both intriguing and enchanting, whose insights into human nature are sharp and original, and who genuinely respected and liked the peoples and cultures he encountered.



A view of the Ngorongoro Crater. Hemingway hunted here.


In front of a baobab tree in the Tarangire National Park. Hemingway hunted in this area.

There are many lodges and hotels in and around the national parks. Above is Ndutu Safari Lodge, in the Serengeti. Hemingway hunted in the Serengeti.

On the edge of Lake Manyara, three giraffes walk in single file, while countless pink flamingoes are busy in the Lake. In his Green Hills of Africa, Hemingway talks about this Lake and various features of the area, including its famous hot springs.

On the way to Kilimanjaro International Airport, after the end of the course, it seems perfect to take one more photo, against the background of Mount Kilimanjaro. What a way to end a course in which one of the readings is Hemingway's unforgettable classic "The Snows of Kilimanjaro."

Dreaming about a Hemingway safari?
You can realize the dream. Besides the course, which students take for college credit, the opportunity of a Hemingway safari--reading Hemingway's African writings while visiting the places and cultures he wrote about--is now open to everybody, between June and August. For more information, contact me at info@africonexion.com.
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