Travels in Africa

Fred Hunter covered sub-Saharan Africa for The Christian Science Monitor in the early years of the ‘70s.  Here’s the fifth and last of several accounts of a trip to Southern Africa before independence swept the region and everything changed. Madagascar floats (but only metaphorically) tranquilly 250 miles off the African coast.  It struck Donanne and […]

Fred Hunter covered sub-Saharan Africa for The Christian Science Monitor in the early years of the ‘70s.  Here’s the fourth of several accounts of a trip to Southern Africa before independence swept the region and everything changed. The first part of the trip had taken Donanne and me not only to South Africa, but to […]

Fred Hunter covered sub-Saharan Africa for The Christian Science Monitor in the early years of the ‘70s. Here’s the third of several accounts of a trip to Southern Africa before independence swept the region and everything changed. To prove to my editors that I was doing my job I was eager to interview Gatsha Buthelezi, […]

Fred Hunter covered sub-Saharan Africa for The Christian Science Monitor in the early 1970s. Here’s the second of several accounts of a trip to Southern Africa before independence swept the region and everything changed. After interviewing and writing stories from Joburg, Donanne and I pushed on to Windhoek, the capital of diamond-rich South-West Africa (now […]

Fred Hunter covered sub-Saharan Africa for The Christian Science Monitor in the early years of the ‘70s. Here’s the first of several accounts of a trip to Southern Africa before independence swept the region and everything changed. In early 1972 the British and the white minority Rhodesian governments negotiated terms to settle the dispute between […]

On our travels in Africa we will pause now and then to meet some of the people. Here’s my encounter with one of the more unusual professionals in Nairobi: Like other professional people from Kiambu Town, Kamau rides the bus to Nairobi every morning. Unlike his fellow passengers, he does not work in an office. […]

After sending Donanne onto Nairobi, her fashion piece completed, Fred and Monitor photographer Ed Pieratt ventured into Ibo territory, the former Biafran heartland. It must have been at the famous Onitsha market that Ed and I hired a cab to drive us to Port Harcourt in the oil-producing region at the coast. Of course, we […]

Fred Hunter visited Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, several times while serving as The Christian Science Monitor’s Africa correspondent. In August, 1971, he spent three weeks gathering material for a Special Report the paper wanted to publish on Nigeria. The country had just survived the Biafran insurgency, the failed attempt of the Ibo people to […]

After a night in Mbere District, Donanne and I headed back to Nairobi before another rain made the roads more problematic. Mbere’s pervasive stillness was lovely for a weekend, but how would we feel if that weekend stretched into a lifetime? Would Anastasio escape? That seemed unlikely. Barnabas’ prospects were better, but his father, who […]