Bill Bryson came across as a little too clueless to me, it irritated me while reading and not even his sense of humour made up for it, it even felt unapropriate at times.

So, I didn't like the book that much but I'm still glad I got the chance to read it. It's not every day you get a book as well travelled as this one and just having it with me, knowing of its history, made it all worth while!

I'll pass the book over to Ekomuppen at a meet-up in central Stockholm today :)

I received this book from VictoriaWagtail today at a BC-meeting at Espresso House.

Amazing reading a book that has travelled so far and been read by so many!
Will continue its travel soon.

I actually liked the book, especially when the writer makes fun of himself, his fears and worries and so on.

And on and on it goes...

Mycket kort, strax under 50 sidor men väldigt rolig trots det allvarliga ämnet. Kunde inte släppa den när jag väl börjat

Same as number 86. Forgot to write in English. Short and funny book despite the serious subject. Very hard to put down and some beautiful photos.

Fick den på bokmässan av stab92

Greetings to Sweden, the country of the next Convention in 2013!

Just a little update, as the book has reached participant no. 88 :-) We are now on page three...

88. Deepswamp (Oskarshamn, Småland, Sweden)
89. Panzeranzi (Göteborg, Västergötland Sweden)
90. elis-fromSweden (Stenstorp, Västergötland Sweden)

new: 90b. babelfisk (Jönköping, Småland Sweden)
90c Vilda (Sweden)
90d BAMP (Linköping, Östergötland Sweden)
91. MLA (Oslo, Oslo fylke Norway)
92. zimort (Gjøvik, Oppland fylke Norway)
93. lunacia (Sandnes, Rogaland fylke Norway)
94. Haugtussa (Stavanger, Rogaland fylke Norway)
94b. Travelina (Ullern bydel, Oslo fylke Norway)
94c. Askeladda (Skien, Telemark fylke Norway)

95. marja-leena (Oulu, Pohjois-Pohjanmaa Finland)
96. Thalasse (Turku, Varsinais-Suomi Finland)
97. hippolein (Helsinki, Uusimaa Finland)
98. Tarya (Helsinki, Uusimaa Finland)
99. lunatum (Savukoski, Lappi Finland)
100. sumako (Kuopio, Pohjois-Savo Finland)


101. bigailann (Abingdon, Oxfordshire United Kingdom) ships only within the UK
102. RonOren (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire United Kingdom)

103. miertje (Houten, Utrecht Netherlands)

Thanks! Got this book from stab92!

He do a lot of observation!
A collection of postcards has been started with this book, brilliant! I'll add one of Oskarshamn before I send the book on.

Go on little book!

På resa!

Wow! I wish I had travelled as much as this book!

Thank you for sharing this book! I´m not a big fan of Bryson, but I did enjoy the book. I do think he tried to give a bit different picture of Africa, something that we need in my opinion.

I'll send the book on it's evergoing journey soon!

On it's way to Stenstorp! =)

The book arrived to me today. Thank you!!

A gentle reminder to pass this book to the next reader, please :-)

I am so sorry that I have kept this book for so long. I have explanations but really no excuses. So sorry. But it is safe and sound and will be sent on its way this week.

Thank you for letting me enjoy the book!!!

The book arrived today. I had forgotten all about it. I will read it at once.

No, not my cup of tea! He is, as others have pointed out, superficial and he banters over serious issues!
Now I'll send the book on to BAMP.

Change of plans! I'm leaving the book with Vilda who'll read it in a couple of days and then send it on to BAMP. I hope that's all right.

Thank you for letting it rest with me for a few days. I have a special place in my heart for Kenya and have visited Kisumu, Homa Bay, Malindi, the gedi ruins and so forth. But this reminder was the only appealing part of this story for me. Now it travels on...

Over to you:)

It was waiting for me when I got home late last night and tomorrow I'll take it with me to southern Sweden, where I'll read it before it continues its journey.... to Norway.

Interesting little book of the work of CARE and a beautiful description of Kenya.

The book traveled on to Norway earlier today!

Arrived in the mail today and I'm looking forward to read it.

A short and easy read, fun at times, but not really what I had expected. Still, enjoyed it.

The book will continue it's travell in Norway, and will be sent Monday or Tuesday to the next on the list.

Sent in the mail today from Oslo to the next on the list. Hopefully you will get the book before the Easter holiday (which starts on Thursday - and unfortunately there is no mail deleivered on Saturday).

Enjoy.

Thank you. It arrived in my mail box today, just in time for Easter.

It is now on it's way to the next reader.

This book is now safe with me. I have another book to read before I can start reading this one, but I hope it'll not take too long.

It's strange how such a small book can make such an impact. I was touched many times during the read of this book, and I am beyond grateful for being so fortunate to live in the country that by the UN has been crowned to be the bast country to live in. It made it clear to me that the fact that I give to SOS-barnebyer (SOS Children's Villages) every month even more meaningful. Even so, I would like to do more, and have started on a plan to do so.

This book is more well traveled that I had expected it to be, and I am glad for it. I hope its journey will continue, and that it will make an impact on even more people. I am taking it to the bookcrossing meetup here in Sandnes today, to hand it over to Haugtussa, who's next on list.

Handed over to Haugtussa!

I love Africa, and like Bill Bryson; thus I have high expectations for this book.

I liked this little book. - and the image of flying toilets will, unfortunally, stay with me for a while.

This little book ha stayed With me for too long, I'm sorry. But it is travelling on today.

Bill Bryson's African Diary arrived in my mail yesterday. I am looking forward to reading it.

A good reminder and some funny episodes gives this book a good mix of seriousness and humor!
I will send it in the mail to Askeladda today.

How exciting! One of the most travelled and journaled BookCrossing books have reached me in Skien. Thank you very much for sending it, Travellina. I will have to finish another bookring book before I'm ready to start for this one.

A funny book about serious topics. The book is ready to travell to Finland as soon as I get the adress for the next reader

marja-leena has asked to be skipped at the moment, so I will PM the next person on the list.

On it's way to Finland and the next reader,

Til deg som finner boka sier jeg: velkommen til bookcrossing!
Bookcrossere er generøse, vennlige mennesker, bare prøv!

Håper du vil like boka du har funnet!
Les den, skriv et lite bokslipp notat og la boka reise videre!

The book is here, thank you very much!! It's great to be a part of its long journey.

It didn't take long to read such a short book, it was just a tiny glimpse and then it ended already. It also felt like the sole purpose of this little book was to tell readers about CARE - which it was actually! Nevertheless, I've always liked Bryson's writing style and this was no exception.

I enjoyed the small postcard collection that came with the book, and will add another card to it. :-)

The book is now ready to continue its journey.... Who will be the 100th journaler?!

I didn't get any reply from bigailann who was next in the list, but there are some people in Finland who are interested in being part of this ray.

So the book was sent today to hippolein. Happy reading!

Arrived safely in Vuosaari (Helsinki) today. Thanks a lot everybody for sharing. Will try to read and pass on as soon as possible!

Very short account of only one week trip for a good cause. Has all the elements you expect from this writer. Off to donate the cost of the book to local charity and getting book ready to travel on.

Book's here now, I got it from hippolein at today's BC meet-up - with a delicious chocolate :) Thank you!

What a fun little book, and also quite informative. It's sad that so big part of world's population still lacks easy access to clean water or basic toilets and is therefore in risk of many diseases in vain. Another sorrowful fact is that even in this century all children don't get to go to school. CARE is one of the projects that are helping the ones who have it worse.

Despite of poverty and shortages and all the dangers Kenya offers - starting from the ultimately dangerous railway journeys - the book is joyful and describes Africa, its history, nature and people in a hearty manner. For such a short journey Bryson saw and experienced a lot.

Thank you for sharing this book! I'll add a postcard too and mail the book tomorrow to the next reader in Finnish Lapland :)

The book arrived this week. One ring book is ahead of this one.

I read the book a long time ago and somehow forgot to journal and send forward. I'm really sorry I kept the book this long! I'll send it forware tomorrow.

Arrived today. Thank you!

Liked the book. Quite funny remarks. I will read Bryson's other books later.

Osallistun kirjalla Perehdy ammattiin lukemalla -haasteeseen.
Matkustavan kirjailijan tulee olla valmis kaikkeen, esim. pienkoneelle myrskyssä lentämiseen, köyhyyden ja kurjuuden näkemiseen sekä kaikesta näkemästään ja kokemastaan kirjoittamiseen.

On the way to the next reader in the bookray.

Thanks for sending this book onto me. It was wonderful to see all the postcards tucked inside it. Will read as soon as I can and then pass on.

Was a quick and easy read. I enjoyed this book, although I would have liked more detail about what he saw.

Posted to RonOren

Apologies for the late journaling - this arrived a week or so ago, but I simply didn't find time to log in. I've read it already; hadn't expected it to be quite that short. But it's absolutely lovely. As always, the combination of Bryson's random rambling and factual descriptions is highly enjoyable. I'm not sure what this did more - make me want to read more of Bryson's work (again) or make me want to visit Kenya. Not bad for 50-odd pages...

Thanks for all who shared it and contributed to the lovely stack of postcards. It's a little bonus to be part of a ray that's been going for so long :-). I'll get it moving on to miertje as soon as I can.

Just received the book by mail. Thanks for sendig it!. Looking forward to reading it.

I'm a Bill Bryson fan, so enjoyed the book!
This year I will be going to Africa for the first time and I hope to come back with both my arms intact! I don't have a rollex, nore any other jewellery so I think I'll be fine ;)
Dit boek gaat naar bookguide. Veel leesplezier!

Oops! The African Diary arrived last week or possibly the week before and I got caught up in the beautiful postcards and forgot to write a journal. I will read this very soon when I've finished Stephen King's 11.22.63. about the assassination of J.F.K. and a time traveller who wants to stop it. I'm on the last few chapters so won't be too long. It's Highly recommended!

My sincere apologies to everyone for holding up this book's journey for over a year. I meant to send it before my summer holiday last year, but then I couldn't find the postcards. They'd fallen off the pile of books next to my bed and only resurfaced when I finally got round to moving the whole pile to clean properly. Then the book got put on my mailing shelf, only to be covered up by a huge box my husband put in front of it. And that's where it stayed for a year. I'm really sorry, and I will send it on to the next reader forthwith. Thank you, Olagorie, for sending me a reminder. I knew exactly where it was. :-(

Bill Bryson's African Diary has been to 20 counries already!


Just a little update of the participants...

104. bookguide (Wijchen, Gelderland Netherlands) ----> currently
105. dutch-book (Weesp, Noord-Holland Netherlands
106. Boekentrol (Leeuwarden, Fryslân (Friesland) Netherlands)
107. Berdi48 (Deventer, Overijssel Netherlands)
108. katalobonga (La Garenne-Colombes, Ile-de-France France)
109. Icila (Nantes, Pays de la Loire France)
110. Indy2012 (Strasbourg, France)
111. Nodame (Strasbourg, France)
112. Menelwe ( Nyon, Vaud Switzerland)

...

and then back to

the owner, Catwoman, in Canada.

...

Wow! I can't believe this book is still travelling the world after THIRTEEN years!!!!

Would it be possible to be added to the end of the current book ring and have the book come back to me?

Perhaps I should journal this as an Anonymous Finder and pretend I didn’t have it lurking in my house for 2 1/2 years, but I have to confess I did, moving it from pile to pile and shelf to shelf, but ultimately landing on the huge backlog of ‘to be reviewed’ books, only half-read and, this time completely forgotten. Then a future reader sent me a PM wondering if I still had it and, excruciatingly embarrassingly, I do. I am so sorry for yet another vast delay. I have now read the whole thing and am about to contact the next person, so it will be leaving me very soon.

First reviewed on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2726353828
This is a brief, tantalising glimpse of Bill Bryson’s whistlestop tour of Kenya, visiting projects run by the charity Care and areas they help in. It shows the incredible contrasts in the country, the degrading living circumstances the vast majority of people live in, the beauty, the incredible ability of human beings to make a community in impossible circumstances, but also the corruption and violence that thwarts the opportunities for improvement. According to the map, one of the last places he visits is reached by a beautiful tarmac road, funded by the World Bank, but in reality, it’s a dirt track. Why? A government official diverted the funds. And that’s why charities increasingly work at a local level using microloans to individuals and small cooperatives and train people to train others.

It was also inspiring to read how tiny adaptations can have huge implications for improving people’s health and well-being. I once read how somebody got a toothpaste manufacturer to pay them a large sum of money for an innovation which would save the company millions of pounds. It turned out to be something so simple, so tiny an adjustment that took almost no effort to change but it took a moment of brilliance to think of it: if the opening to the toothpaste tube was larger, people use more toothpaste every time because they’re conditioned to cover a certain length of the toothbrush. In Kenya, one water engineer had vastly decreased the incidence of diarrhea simply by making the mouth of the water containers too small to put your hand in. Genius!

Bryson visited slums, model farms, refugee camps. He was only there for eight days, so it seems rather odd that he was also taken to see archeological remains, Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa-themed restaurant and a luxury resort. I did wonder about that: was part of the remit also to promote Kenya’s tourist industry, ailing due to tourists’ understandable fear of attacks?

The first place he visits is Kibera, a slum south of Nairobi:
“Nobody knows how many people live there. It’s at least 700,000, but it may be as many as a million, perhaps more. At least 50,000 of Kibera’s children are AIDS orphans. At least a fifth of the residents are HIV positive, but it could be as high as 50 percent. Nobody knows. Nothing about Kibera is certain and official, including its existence. It just is.” (p.10)

“whatever is the most awful place you have ever experienced, Kibera is worse.” 11

The average person in a slum like Kibera pays five times as much what people in the developed world pay for the same volume of water piped to their homes.” (p.12)

He also visited a refugee camp up near the Somali border. It had already been there for years. I remember reading Dave Eggar’s What is the What about life in a Sudanese refugee camp and being impressed about how quickly people become organised. The same was true here, but the terrible thing is, there may be food, water, schools, but there’s not much hope of any real progress. Something I had never thought about before: “It is [...] a fundamental part of aid protocol that you cannot make conditions notably better for refugees than they are for their hosts outside the camps. It wouldn’t be fair and it would breed resentment.” (p.33)

There is hope for countries like Kenya. Since Bill Bryson visited, the country has got richer, but corruption and violence are still rife. Some of the slums in Kibera have been cleared and replaced by flats. But though that should be overwhelmingly positive, it seems there are still downsides: more than one family was assigned to a flat and some people prefer to sublet their flats for money and actually return to the slums themselves. And the government still doesn’t want to take full responsibility. It seems agriculture in Kenya has been a success story, if the quantities of roses and green beans and sugar snap peas that I see in my supermarket is anything to go by. But I worry about the carbon footprint of the air miles involved; shouldn’t I be buying local and in season? And is that income channeled into the local economy or does it end up in the pockets of international companies? Maybe it employs some local people, but are we in the West insisting on ridiculously cheap food prices so farming has to be super efficient and super-mechanised so it doesn’t employ as many as it might? So many questions!



View all my reviews

I wanted to share a photo of the postcards that are included in the book, so this is an experiment.

This book has finally, finally left my house and been sent on its way to the other side of the Netherlands, to dutch-book. Happy travels, little book!

This book has been released as part of the following BookCrossing challenges:
- The Ultimate Challenge - read and release books, with extra points for a monthly theme
- Reduce Mount TBR (To Be Read) - read and release books on the TBR list since before the end of the previous year.
- 666 challenge (6 continents, 6 countries, 6 books): KENYA

Book got here a little while ago. I look forward to this read. Had totally forgotten about this ring, but luckily it resurfaced again. Ready to go on some new travels.

Very quick read. It was okay, Didn't find it especially funny or good. But okay.

Boekentrol asked to be skipped. I will try the next one.

I've sent the book on to the next participant. Didn't put a postcard in the book like the others. Wanted to, but didn't get to it and I didn't want to keep the book even longer.

Book arrived in Deventer, The Netherlands, nice to receive a book which has been travelling so much!

Nice short book, I never read anything by Bill Bryson before, but I like his style. Obviously it is better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish. Good to read that Care's program is working, but obviously there is also a lot they cannot achieve.

Nice to read a book which has been travelling that long and read by so many BC members.
Will contact katalobonga, the next reader in this ray.

I will send this book to katalobonga by post today!

Just arrived. Thank you for sharing the book.
I like all those post cards that are joined to the book. Great idea.

Very interesting book.

What a surprise ! A so well travelled book. Thinking that it w'll be never coming my way I had bought my own copy though.
https://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/15288528/
I can't get to the 3rd page so I don't know what to do next.
Thanks who ?

Edit : After submitting my JE I can now see the previous entries, so thank you katalonbonga and it w'll be on the way to Indy2012 soon.

The book was cocooning at home waiting for our returns home after holidaying.
On its way now.

Welcome in Strasbourg, little travelling book !

Quick read, full of humour, delightfull, interesting... Thanks for sharing.

Given to the next participant at the meet-up.

J'adore Bill Bryson alors pourquoi pas celui-ci.

Pour la dernière inscrite au ring. Bonne lecture !

Received from Nodame, thank you very much! Will be read soon!

My first reading by Bill Bryson and I liked it very much!

Due to the current COVID crisis, I’m not sure when I’ll be able to send it back home. Take care of yourselves and your families.

Back to Catwoman after an incredible journey! Thank you for sharing it!

I released this book into the Bookcrossing community SIXTEEN YEARS AGO this week and it has finally made it's way home. Thank you to everyone who showed this little book a fabulous time during its journey - it has travelled to more places than I have!!

Thank you for the card and notebook, Menelwe!