Across the Bright Continent: A trek across the African desert, through the rain forest, and inward

Above the Oubangi River: The setting sun silhouetted all before us. Pirogues glided noiselessly across the great river, like a fragment of a dream. People standing in the canoes looked more like ebony carvings than men and women. The only movement was the steady, rhythmic paddling of the oarsmen. There was no sound. To the left, way across the river, was a large sand bank, lined with round, thatched houses. Far down, the river bent, and disappeared into the jungle, flowing mightily toward the Congo and the sea. On a nearer sand bank, children ran, lively shadows against the gathering dusk. On a hill across the river, a fire blazed, a plantation being burned, orange against the growing blackness. There was no sound, no crackling; only the rising flames. **************************** In 1973, Bob and Gayle Cuddy quit their jobs in Sonoma County California, sold their VW bus, and schlepped to Luxembourg on the cheapo Icelandic Airlines. They hitchhiked south through France and Spain, crossed the Mediterranean to Morocco, hitched across North Africa, then went south. They trekked across the Sahara, through Nigeria, and went back to Cuddy’s old Peace Corps village in Gabon. Then it was east, up the Congo River, through the rain forest, along the Ruwenzoris, and to Nairobi. The trip took seven months, and Cuddy kept journals - 400 pages of notes, describing people and places, and recording the inward strains and stresses of this sort of a journey. The journals gathered mildew in the garage until son Zack came upon them in 2013 and suggested his old man do something with them. This book is the result. *********************** Robert C. Cuddy, an award-winning journalist, lives on California’s Central Coast. His career has spanned five decades. He spent two years in the Peace Corps in the village of Ovan in Gabon. He has a Master’s degree in African Area Studies from the University of California at Los Angeles. Read more