title: An Affair with Africa: Expeditions And Adventures Across A Continent
author:  Alzada Carlisle Kistner 
description: A self-declared reluctant writer and amateur scientist, Kistner sets out to record her hair-raising experiences in Africa between 1960 and 1973 as the wife and assistant of entomologist David Kistner. She dwells too much on hours spent over anthillsAher husband eventually uncovers more than 500 new species of beetlesAbut the wealth of this narrative is its many fascinating anecdotes in a land where danger is a constant companion. In 1960, the couple is airlifted out of the Belgian Congo as that country descends into chaos. They watch unrest develop in Angola and make a hasty exit from a restaurant in Uganda where an entourage led by future leader Idi AminAthen a military generalAcreates an intimidating scene. Kistner is swarmed by ants, stalked by a poisonous mamba and held at gunpoint by drunken soldiers. Most valuable, however, are her descriptions of European and African characters at the twilight of the continent's colonial era. The couple meets with prominent researchers of their dayALouis Leakey among themAbut also with a European crocodile poacher who keeps peace with various tribes in his hunting grounds by marrying their women and fathering dozens of children in scattered villages. Kistner's storytelling lacks pizzazz and authorityARedmond O'Hanlon or Lyall Watson, for instance, describe science and travel in Africa with more entertaining resultsAbut her astounding encounters with a world now receded into history make this an involving personal memoir. Photos. <BR>Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: AHR Roundtable
  Views from Other Boats: On Amitav Ghosh’s
  Indian Ocean “Worlds”
  PEDRO MACHADO
  AT A RECENT AFRICAN STUDIES WORKSHOP at Harvard University, John Thornton, the
  eminent historian of West-Central and Atlantic Africa, presented a paper recounting
  his involvement as a historical consultant for the remake by the media company
  A&E Networks of Alex Haley’s Roots for its History Channel.1 Eschewing the con-
  troversies surrounding the book and its author, the paper detailed Thornton’s inter-
  pretation of key elements of the history of its main protagonist, Kunta Kinte, and his
  life in the Gambia in the late eighteenth century to determine whether such a ﬁgure
  could indeed have existed much as Haley claimed that he had. In her commentary on
  the paper, Caroline Elkins, the equally distinguished and Pulitzer Prize–winning Har-
  vard historian of British colonial violence in Kenya, drew attention to the issue of a
  positivist versus a subjective approach to historical materials and their 