Across the Limpopo: A Family's Hazardous 4,000-Mile Journey Through Africa

Homeward bound to England in 1977 after four years, South Africa-based TV correspondent Nicholson, accompanied by his wife and two young sons, spent four months traversing black East Africa in a Range Rover from Johannesburg to Cairo. Their 4000-mile route took them to Victoria Falls, Mount Kilimanjaro and the still primitive Serengeti Game Preserve where they witnessed the earth-shaking mass migration of animals toward new grassland. Their adventures and impressions are recounted in lively fashion: sharply contrasting landscapes from park-like areas to mountains, forests, savannah, farmland, bush and desert, and hospitable, large families eking out an existence on the land or in cities under brutish conditions, victims of political and religious strife. Traveling in blistering heat, torrential rains and sand storms, the family negotiated near impassable terrain and narrowly missed encounters with bandits, guerrillas and lionsa sometimes hair-raising journey, which the author notes would no longer be possible under present deteriorating political conditions. Photos. (August 1)