Travels in Africa

In June, 1970, Fred and Donanne Hunter headed to Ghana to cover what might be the last great exhibition of tribal ritual in Africa: the enstoolment of the Asantehene. Donanne and I had been in South Africa to cover the election. Now we started north from Johannesburg to witness an event of signal importance in […]

In the spring of 1970, The Christian Science Monitor’s travel page ran a series of articles called “Going Places.” Fred Hunter, the Africa Correspondent, was in the neighborhood of Victoria Falls. The travel editor asked for a report. Here it is: There is really only one way to see Victoria Falls: drenched and with droplets […]

On a bright, windy day Fred and I visited the Zimbabwe Game Farm. We had just begun our eight-month trip becoming familiar with some of the territory he would cover as a foreign correspondent. We would make many new acquaintances. None equaled the one we made this day. Walking through the Game Farm, we came […]

In a galaxy much like ours, but in a time far away, there was a country called Rhodesia, a place named by white buccaneer settlers for Cecil Rhodes, a man who stole the country from the Africans who lived there. He gave it to the settlers in perpetuity. “Perpetuity” was running out when we first […]

When Donanne and I went to look at the house on Rosslyn Lone Tree Estates, we met a thin, young Kikuyu with a well-modeled face and dark, alert eyes. He fetched the keys from the servant’s quarters behind the house. They dangled from a piece of bent wire. The young man led us to the […]

When Donanne and I first arrived in Nairobi where I would start work as the Africa Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor, we, of course, had no place to live. What this meant: Hotel-living at first. We lodged at the Norfolk Hotel, famous for high-living British colonials riding horses through the dining room in long […]

Fred and Donanne Hunter returned to Africa on July 20, 1969, the night Americans landed on the moon. They were together this time. Formerly a USIS officer in the Congo, Fred was arriving as the Africa Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor. Donanne had finished her secondary education in South Africa as the daughter of […]

Fred Hunter returned to the States from the Congo uncertain what lay ahead. Would he stay in USIS? What about marriage? Here’s what happened: When I returned from Africa at the end of my two-year tour in the Congo, I felt torn about a future in USIS. By and large the work was satisfying – […]