The Continent That Forged the Man - Conversations with Broadcaster & Journalist, Barry Maughan

Join Shannon Bednarova as she explores the rich cultural tapestry of Africa through the eyes of Barry Maughan, a seasoned international journalist, author and broadcaster with decades of experience covering the African continent. He travelled with his wife throughout Europe and then with his young children throughout Africa in a Volkswagen Combi-van, overcoming unimaginable challenges while discovering the beauty of African humanity and culture.

During his years as a reporter, Barry witnessed the planning and eventual coup d'etat against Haile Selassie, former Ethiopian Emperor and had his life threatened by the East German Stasi for doing so.  He interviewed Muhammed Ali in a taxi on the way to the airport for the Voice of America.  He was almost murdered by one of the notorious boy soldiers of the Liberian president Charles Taylor.  His photo of a skeletal baby and mother during the famine in the Ethiopian province of Wollo helped to turn the world's attention to a catastrophic drought in which hundreds of thousands died. These are just a few of the stories that he shares in this riveting podcast.

Barry will also give his take on the continent geopolitically and who is winning the war for the hearts and minds of the Africans due to their strategic approach to the needs of the people and individual countries.

Discover Barry's love for the variety of African music, from Mali to Zaire to Ethiopia, the music is haunting, exquisite and you will fall in love!

He'll also share must-try Ethiopian food and his favorite food traditions, South African wines, fruits and where to eat east African coastal lobster - washed down with a locally brewed beer, of course! Get insights into travel that reveal the true spirit of Africa beyond the stereotypes.

Links:

Home | Barry Maughan

Books:

Under the African Sun: A Memoir

What Won't Fatten Will Fill

Please Turn Out the Northern Lights When You Leave

DISCLAIMER: All opinions, recommendations and experiences shared on this podcast are solely those of the creator and/or her guests.  Please do your own research and consult the appropriate professionals before making any decisions based on content shared on this show. 

Thank you for listening!  I welcome your feedback and suggestions or you simply let me know if you are enjoying the show. You can reach me at Shannon@ALadyWellTravelled.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Hello and welcome to A Lady Well Traveled. I'm your host and creator, Shannon Bednarova, and I'm delighted that you've joined us today. I would love to introduce you to our guest. His name is Barry Maughn. And Barry is a husband, father, journalist, and an author. He's traveled all over the world and had an extensive career covering Africa for the voice of America for decades. He's a storyteller extraordinaire. And I know we're going to have an amazing conversation that you're going to love. So please join me in welcoming Barry Maughn to a Lady Well Traveled. Barry, please say hello to our listeners.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Well, hello, Shannon. Very nice to be with you and your many, many listeners. I've looked forward to our conversation for a long time. I'm glad that it's finally happening. So let's get rolling.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Well, I am too. And I'm just fascinated by you and all the things that you've done. I'm getting ready to take a trip to Africa, God willing. I'm excited to pick your brain about all the wonderful things that you've experienced. I, of course, want to ask you about your career in journalism. Tell me who is the most interesting person you've ever interviewed. And that doesn't have to be most famous or notorious, but just somebody that you felt was fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

I know you should ask that because it's uh interwoven with our trip to length of uh Africa. Sometimes you can interview someone and uh it's uh such a serendipitous event that uh you don't make most a lot of it at the time. But I'd have to pick uh Ibrahim El-Tahwi. Now that name probably does not ring a bell, but he was second in command to Abdul Gamal Nasser, who uh wants the coup in Egypt. When I first met Ibrahim, I met him as the president of the Young Men's Muslim Association. While being naive in a way, I um occasioned that to be very similar to the president of the Young Men's Christian Association, an exalted position, but um as it turned out there was much more to the story. We met on a cruise liner around the Mediterranean littoral as we were getting set to land in Alexandria. We struck up a conversation, and uh lo and behold, um we were both storytellers, and most of the stories were true, but we headed off, and uh I always felt like even when he uh told me that uh he was a general in the Middle East, uh generals are dime a dozen, not to be disparaging, no, but that that that is the case. And uh it turned out that uh whenever I met him, he was surrounded by men in uniform. Uh, so I figured he had some uh gravitas to him. We uh we met the first time, just the two of us, and had a long chat, and then he invited me the next day to uh to meet uh his wife and uh me to uh show off my my beautiful wife, and uh it just blossomed. When we landed uh the night before, he gave me his card and said, if you're ever in Cairo, then look me up. We weren't planning to go to Cairo, we just um decided that um let's uh take the card in good grace and move on and probably never see him again. It didn't work out that way because of Moamar Gaddafi closing the borders to Libya and and um thwarting our attempts to drive across North Africa to Morocco to winter. And uh we decided we're in Alexandria either we turn tail and go back up to uh to Europe for the winter, or let's go down to Cairo and uh and I've got the guy's card. So uh we went down there having troubles with uh finding accommodations for our combi bus, uh Bridget and ourselves. And so I said, let me just show up at uh his offices. Well, his modest offices were uh really officers, because he had like uh five or six um office assistants. Back then they were called secretaries. And uh I presented myself and I thought, I'll uh cool my heels here for a half an hour and then he'll come out. And uh lo and behold, um the door swung open about a minute after uh the um office assistant had gone in, and a big hug and Ibrahim came out and oh hi, how are you doing? I thought, well, go into his office, and it was like uh ten times larger than anything I'd ever seen. You know, hot um uh carpets and and sofas and but what happened next was crazy. I'd like you to meet a few of my friends. Okay. Uh this is Mahmoud Fowzi, he's the minister of war. Minister of health. I met half of the Egyptian cabinet. Well, then it had dawned on me, I think I'm missing something here. He in fact turned out to be the second in command of the entire um Egyptian government, and the right-hand man to Abdul Gamal Nasser.

SPEAKER_02 5:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

And anyway, what flowed out of that was a beautiful um uh relationship, friendship, I would dare to say, of maybe uh 30 years until Ibrahim passed. But what he did for us then to truncate it, he found a place for uh Bridget, uh Combi to uh park, a place for us to stay, uh uh first-class accommodations. Man. Brought uh his lieutenant uh Basri around each morning. And uh we uh he had asked us, well, what would you ever like to see in Cairo and surrounds? And I made a list of, and I thought, you know, well, what in soon was it? Nothing to see in Cairo. Wow. The museum, the sphinx, the pyramids. Yeah, and and the opera house where the original uh version of Vida was performed. And so for the next 10 days, it was a magical carpet ride. Every day we were picked up in an air-conditioned limousine and everything was paid for. He was at our Lieutenant Basary was at our beck and call. And uh and then when we got time to um leave and to go south, because we would made our decision not to go back to Europe at that time. First class tickets down to Aswan, and Bridget was put on a train and with an armed guard in the front, so nothing happened to her, and she arrived down there, and the serendipity of it. It just um it just shows that um you gotta open your mouth and just talk to people. You don't know who they are. I didn't do it for any um, you know, reason to gain favor. We just hit it off. And and I subsequently interviewed him in my uh capacity as a journalist as well. I would say that he was probably the most fascinating person that I met. And when we when we talked, it wasn't politics or economics. He loved one football team in uh Egypt, Al Ahli, and I like Zamalek and their fierce rivals, and we just kibbots about that and food and culture. Wonderful, wonderful experience.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

That's fabulous. I love that story. Now, for our listeners who don't know exactly what Bridget is, please elucidate.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

Bridget is the uh Celtic um goddess of travel. And uh anyway, let me back up. We were both in uh New York and in jobs that we didn't like, and we said, Ah, let's go to Europe. We didn't have children. So uh to the dismay of our our uh parents, off we went in a tramp steamer across to Antwerp. And but in the interim, we had bought Bridget. Bridget was a 1969 Volkswagen combi bus, but it was outfitted as a home, well, a very small home where you could live. And the top went up and and the whole thing, and she was our um vehicle all throughout Europe and uh the length of Africa, and only once let us down. Um, and that was the stupidity on my part. And when I had to sell Bridget in South Africa at the end of our journey, it was like losing a family member.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

I I still hope uh 50 years later, I doubt it, but I just hope that somewhere she's somewhere in South Africa enjoying a great retirement.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

That in itself is a wonderful story, too. You ought to write children's books about Bridget and how she takes around happy families to see wonderful places. That would be That's a good idea. Absolutely. I'd love that.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Hey, hey, you can be my agent and get 80%.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

There you go. Well, obviously Ibrahim was an amazing character, but is there anyone else that you've met in your illustrious career that's left you starstruck, awestruck, speechless? Tell us about that experience because I know you've interviewed a lot of very famous and infamous people.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Well, I did a lot of politics and uh economics, but I also did uh sports. And I've interviewed people like um Muhammad Ali. Wow. Yeah. That's cool. And I'll tell you that the the circumstances were wild because uh this was in uh Muhammad's heyday, and uh we had met at his training camp in upstate New York, and I've still got the cap. He happened to know someone at the uh Voice of America, but he was being interviewed by the World Wide Service of the Voice of America. But anyway, I got wind that uh Muhammad Ali was in the building. And if you're doing sports to Africa, he was a legend everywhere he went. If he showed he showed up one time at the African uh boxing championships, and the building went crazy, they couldn't get enough. I said, I gotta get him on my my sports program. So you gotta be bold.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

No, no, he didn't have any time. He was a taxi was pulling up at in front of the Voice of America in Washington, and he was off to the airport. And I said, I'm in the car, yeah. Oh yeah. And as we're tooling down the road, here I am interviewing him. Just a wonderful, humble person that I can't say that I knew very well. I only had those two encounters with him, but they'll live in my memory because of his graciousness and his wit. I mean, sharpest attack. So that's another person that I'll I'll remember with great fondness.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

That's really cool. I like that story as well. Has there ever been a time you've done an interview and you've just kind of been gobsmacked, embarrassed, or just totally unprepared for what happened? Because being a journalist, you look into the people you're gonna interview, unless it's something you're you're that's totally off the cuff. But let's say you're something happens that's just so out of character that maybe happened that was great, or something that just went off the rails. Did you ever have an experience like that?

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Well, I've joked. Now I have to go to the other side because anyone reading my book will realize that I was one of a handful of foreign journalists embedded in Ethiopia, and we covered the entire creeping coup against the uh emperor. And I uh got to meet those who came out of the shadows who had uh helped mastermind the overthrow of the emperor very carefully, knowing that even in these eighties he was still a very powerful Machiavellian figure who uh broke no nonsense. And um I had um met and interviewed the the person who turned out he was just the um figurehead as president of uh Ethiopia for a very short time. And I met him one day and we had a very nice interview through an interpreter. And uh then uh less than a week later I I realized that he had been slain along with uh twenty-five other officers when uh um the uh person who ended up being the real leader um had one of his henchmen uh open the the door to where the cabinet was meeting and just uh spraying them all and killing them all, and including my my and we had a very cordial uh uh relationship. The relationship it just shows you the tenuousness and danger of uh being involved in your in coverages. But I want to tell you a story that will uh give you an example of that. I used to go out with a a dear, dear friend of mine, uh now deceased, Ian Murray, with first secretary of the British Embassy. He was my inside guy because he knew what was going on for many, many uh years. Well, we would go out at night to hedge baits, these were uh run-down coffee bars, and we would meet with these shadowy figures who were purported to be uh higher in the echelon of the coup lotters. We did this for uh several months, and um Ian was always very jovial and very helpful. One day I got a call and he said, Come on to my office. And I started to kibbutz and he said, Hey, just come to my office. I thought to myself, this is not like Ian. So I hightailed it over to the British Embassy, went in his office, and he didn't say a word. He just had a manila envelope and he pushed it towards me. He says, Open it up. And I opened it up and out rolled a 45-caliber bullet. It was uh a warning to Ian and myself that while we were talking to the purported uh couplawder, then the Stasi, the East German uh police service that that was the the security for the Emperor, had been watching us. This was uh their first warning to back off and stay away, or the next one uh would find its mark. Absolutely. No, it will just it will just show you that um it's not all pizzas and cream out there. And what did we do? We weren't heroes. That was that was the last time we ever met like that. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's nothing to uh to play with.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

No, it's not.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Your life is on the line sometimes, and that's not to romanticize or put myself up on the pedestal, it's just part of doing work.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

But you have to be have to be wise and cognizant that there's a time to be brave, and then there's a time to fold your tent and get your head up and pick out a dodge.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

Yeah. Well, no, my la my next question for you, Barry, was have you ever felt like there was a time on assignment that your life was in imminent danger, and you felt like you might not get out alive? And I'm so that was one time, so you've probably got lots of times that well you felt that way.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Another time across the other side of the continent in Liberia, where a coup was Charles Taylor was mounting a coup against the government. And um, I had gone out with a bunch of journalists and uh made a almost a fatal mistake. I uh wandered off trying to do my own thing and came face to face with a child soldier with a uh Bolitnik AK-47. And uh, you know, they are just trained killers.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

And a twitch of his finger, and I wouldn't be talking to you now. Right. He uh demanded my wife said you give me I asked him, Do you want my shirt? Do you want my watch? Do you want my rings? He took them all, left me with just my underwear, but didn't kill me. Wow. And I stumbled out of there with just my underwear on, and I will tell you now, to put this very nicely, it was soiled. Well, I can imagine. Yeah. And uh, and uh but this this just shows you that um it's no game out there, and it isn't that way in many parts of the world. Right.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

I think a lot of people a lot of people think that journalists, oh it's a great job. You just jet around to glamorous places and stay in beautiful hotels and no.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Well, I mean, the other that you have to know, and then the times when you you weep. Yeah. As as one of my chapters of my book, when I covered the famine in Wallo Province, with hundreds of thousands of people died, and we were in the throngs with in our car and people beating on us to try and get food, and then this woman in the and it's my picture, and it went viral, but because it it encapsulated uh the feeling. There she was in her gobby, which is just a loose dress, and she had this skeletal baby on her arm, uh, and with no shame, she just pulled her gobby aside and no milk, no milk. And she thrust the baby into my uh arms through the window, and uh instinctively I grabbed the baby and my handler in English to me says, You can't keep that baby. Uh, we'll get in trouble with the authorities because I was there under false pretenses anyway. Anyway, no doing bring any attention to myself, and I had to give that baby back. And um, so I tried to keep track of them, and I found out that uh uh 24 hours later that baby had died.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

Had died, had passed. Oh my goodness. Yeah, those stories, yeah, and I understand why you're tearing up because those stories have to just stick with you. My next question was what stories impact you the most? And that probably has to be one of them.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

I mean, not just seeing the human misery and uh not just naturally, but inflicted one upon another. Another another story. I was in the outback of uh Ethiopia out towards Somalia, and I was with an interpreter on assignment, and the people live in little round huts. Uh, but this was give hope because of the oneness of humanity. I I sat down and I talked to this person through the interpreter, and I said, What are the things you really want in life? He said, I want three square meals on the table each day for my family. I want no foreign intrusion or as little as possible in my life. Three, I want a better life for my children. And four, I don't want my boys being sent off to a foreign war to possibly die. Duh. Isn't that what I want? We might be separated by ethnicity, religion, culture, or whatever. You scratch the surface, get beyond the surface of the skin. All our wants and needs are the same. When people ask me about Africa, I said the people are wonderful. The governments can sometimes be a problem. But that's the thing I wanted to get out of my book was the beautiful people of Africa. Yes, yes. We'd be stuck in the quagmire with Bridget, and there's no way to get through. Out of the villages would come people, and they'd be singing and they push us through there, and they were actually offended when I offered to pay them for it.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

And they're like, I just knew it was, hey, we're doing this because we love it that's right.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

Because we're just kind, wonderful people. Yeah. Uh, you're just prescient because all the questions I'm getting ready to ask you, just answer what do you believe is the biggest misconception about Africa and the people that they want really the same things we do, and they are not what a lot of times they're portrayed as in the news or the movies or whatever. They want the same things we all want.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Well, and also, Shannon, I think it's your attitude. You're in their home territory. Sure. If you go in with an arrogant, better than thou attitude, then you're you're not going to succeed. You have to meet them on their own level and as in the a fellow human being. In some cases willing to help, other times needing help. But but also just as one with them, to meet them as as fellow human beings. Both our children, now in their 50s, were born in Ethiopia under trying circumstances. But they grew up as minorities. They've seen the other side of it. Sure. So now my son, who travels around the world, he can arrive, say, in Delhi, where he visited as a child, and he's on the ground ready to work. The cacophony of smells and sound, as you know, they they drive by their horn. That's right. But he's ready to go. His team takes him two or three days to acclimatize themselves. My daughter, who deals in adoptions, she deals with many ethnicities and religions, but she can work with them easier because she's, I wouldn't say a woman of the world, or my son, a man of the world, but they have traveled the world. And I don't want to misquote it, but essence, it says the more you travel, the more wise you are, because you get to see that we're all the same under the skin. Absolutely. You know, our dreams and schemes are basically the same. The more you travel, the more you realize that everybody you know that I'm I'm preaching to the choir here, Madden.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

When you put on your journalist hat for us, Africa currently has a very complex geopolitical situation. A lot of international players involved, meddling in their affairs. There's a lot of Islamic extremists vying for power. There's a lot of uh vying for control of mineral rights and control of resources. And the United States is in the middle there too. So it's China, Russia, everybody. So can you give our audience a 50,000-foot overview of what you see is happening right now? Um, as a Christian, I hate the slaughter of Christians and I'm concerned. Tell tell us about, you know, the the aspect of safety, safe to travel, is it pretty tenuous, depending on where you go?

SPEAKER_00 24:16

Well, as I uh used to say to my uh daughter when we lived uh outside of uh District of Columbia, and uh she would go out with her friends, and I said, Look, you've got enough to do here in uh in the suburbs of Maryland. If you put yourself in a compromising position enough times, the chances are you're gonna be compromised. The same applies to Africa. You get a sixth sense of where you should travel or where you shouldn't travel. Yes, you go by the State Department uh recommendations, but you've got to use common sense, and I think this is where a lot of people go wrong. They don't use their common sense in those situations. Now, the geopolitical. The reason that the Chinese and Russians were able to make initial inroads, this is very important. They met the country and its economy where it was at that time. Graphic example The United States was vying control of Ethiopia with the Russians at the time. The Ethiopians were having to import oil at a certain cost. Well, we had an old oil refinery in um Bulgaria, and we decided to ship it down to Asen, which is a port was then in Ethiopia, it's now in Eritrea. It was outdated, outmoded, and it was found that refining oil through here was more expensive than them to buy it on the open market. Duh, we were not going to the government and saying, what do you need to help right now the stage of your economy? Conversely, next door, when there was a real government in Somalia, the Chinese came in and said, What do you need at this stage? We need a match factory, upgrade our fishing industry. Not glamorous, not glitzy, but that's what they needed to help their economy. That's where the Chinese have come in and done a good job. Okay, for their own reasons, fair enough. But but they are looking and they give the government the feeling that we're going to help you right now to grow your economy. It's not what we necessarily need, it's what you need. And they stepped in and uh they um helped build and maintain the Tanzam Railway when it was going to part. Things like that just epitomize that the United States and other countries in the West just have to have a better idea of individual countries and what their economy needs at the time, rather than just trying to foist some high-profile glitzy deal on them. Africa has to understand Africa. It's a continent. There's 53 individual countries. Yeah, countries. Let's take Nigeria for a while. Okay, everybody buddy buddies up to Nigeria. Why? Because they have one thing that everybody wants. It's called Bonnie Crude Oil. It's an oil that doesn't need to be refined as much. Okay, but they have to be savvy enough to realize once that runs out, where's that country now? Niger with the uh uh the rare earth minerals. Take advantage of that. You've you've got something that people need right now. Don't be taken in by hail fellow well met, and they're finite resources, not infinite. Once they're gone, they're gone, then the so-called friendship's gone, as there were in my day. There were the idiomines, the Mobutu Seisos in uh Democratic Republic.

SPEAKER_02 28:15

You're bringing up some names, my goodness, that I remember growing up with and hearing and going, Woo! What tough people.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

That was that hey, that was that was another experience of covering the rumble in the jungle.

SPEAKER_02 28:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

Talking, going back to Muhammad Abbey and sitting ringside and trying trying to report and call it and seeing Foreman or Ali just hanging on the ropes, and I'm saying, well, he's done for Foreman's gonna beat the heck out of him. But that was the deal. Foreman's gonna wear himself out there with steaming and the perspiration blowing off. Yeah. Just understand that there were bad actors back in my days, and they're bad actors today. Okay. You when you travel, you don't have to try and emulate what we did. Fools venture in where angels fear the trade. After a while, it was one day after another. I'm not making light of it because it was an epic journey. Of course. There's no shaming. Like my son and family went over to Kruger National Park. And they saw the lions, zebras, and giraffes and had a wonderful time. You don't have to go the length of Africa. Or fly into Nairobi.

SPEAKER_02 29:31

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

And go to the game park that's right there in the environs of Nairobi and have a wonderful time. But get over there and see it. The people, see the cultures. And if it's in a controlled environment, so be it.

SPEAKER_02 29:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

So be it. Right. You know, take your take your meds, take your shots. The point I'm trying to make is it's a wonderful continent with sub such variety from Chilimanjaro to the Zambezi Falls, Queen Victoria Falls still. The pyramids. Yeah, I mean Mount Cameroon. Alibella with the uh hewn out of rock in the outback of Ethiopia. But you do your research.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Know the amount of time you want to spend, what's important to you. And if animals are important, then Gore and Gora Crater. You gotta go at the right time of the season, when they're all migrating from the Serengeti, like any journey to any part of the world. You gotta plan, but don't be afraid because it's a continent that's just it's just waiting to welcome you. And be explored. Yeah. The continent is just as beautiful or even more so today. And the people likewise.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

Wonderful. If you could narrow it down, what's the most magical place that you've ever been in after?

SPEAKER_00 31:00

It was a magical event. Okay. Time, a few seconds that will live with me forever. We, as I said, um had landed in Alexandria and met Ibrahim. We were driving the desert road because it was during one of the many wars Egypt was having with Israel. And um we're just driving along. We didn't know where we were, we just knew that Cairo was somewhere off in the distance, and we're just driving all by ourselves. And we come up over a rise, and they're strung out like a string of pearls on the nails with the pyramids. Nice. I swear, I get chills. I get chills right now.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Of course.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

Because and it wasn't even close, but there they were. There they were. And that's something that you'll never forget. Everybody has to see once. I mean, it it's great to see it on television and all that, but and then to get up close and see one stone, one of millions of stones, is higher than you are. Of course. Huge. Huge. And then you got me started now, Killer Manjaro. That the iconic mountain standing all by itself, the free standing mountain with the snow cone on on top. And then you're sitting in Ambasselli National Park, and you've got an adult brew in your hand, and and and then you're looking up at the mountain, and uh the sun's going down, glinting off the top, and then on the one-hand side, along the skyline, there's a herd of elephants eating up the skyline. Iconic. And the final one, of course, I could go on and on. Oh, of course you can. Uh as the Victoria Falls, which you must go to. See, this is planning. Low water, low water. You go in high water, you see nothing. Why? Because of the billions of gallons that are falling over there and throwing up this fine mist. Fine mist, yeah. But that's where the winds take the mists, and and you're given, you know, capes and hats, and otherwise you'll get soaked. And then you can see this billions of gallons of water just flowing over this crack in the earth. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. You have to you have to see that to really believe it. Well, think of me. Uh hey, can I can I come along and you have talking?

SPEAKER_02 33:35

I'll come along. I'm doing Robos Rail, so that's I'm very excited about that. Yes, yes, yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. What foods or cuisines in Africa are must-ties for someone if they are foody? Obviously, Ethiopian food is kind of trendy, and South African mine. But I'm sure there are many, many others that are amazing, but a lot of people haven't tried them. So if you were like, hey, I want to give you the inside scoop on African food, what would you say people should try?

SPEAKER_00 34:13

Well, I mean, you stole my thunder.

SPEAKER_02 34:15

No.

SPEAKER_00 34:16

I love Ethiopian food.

SPEAKER_02 34:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

And and Ethiopian food has uh has taken off here for one reason. It's all on in something called injera. And it's in a basket, and and you have the dura what, you have the lichewat, you have all the various little dishes that are put, and then you use the injera as as a kind of pancake, if you will, and you chicken and with egg, with boiled egg in there in a very spicy sauce called Berbera. Well, that'll knock your socks off, clean your sinuses out. Yeah. But but they have a true cuisine. I'm only uh glossing over a part of it. The part I like the best, two things. The Buna uh ceremony. Buna being Amharic for coffee. Because Kafka province, kaffa coffee, that's where coffee came from. Yeah. Where where it is brewed in special earthen pots, and and there's a it's almost like being in England with the four o'clock tea. The other one I love is when you're sitting around the injera basket. It's a real tradition. Gosha is, and you've washed your hands and everything, and you we'll mix up a mix, maybe a little Dora Wat, a little liche, a little, you know, whatever. To the person to your right or someone you love, you offer and you feed them.

SPEAKER_02 35:47

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:48

That's called Gaucha. Right fly, oh man, you get to South Africa, gotta have uh their version of barbecue, and and it's gotta be washed down with a nice wine from Stellenbosch of the Worcester area. I mean, that's that's heaven. If you went to Mozambique and one of the ports, you can have a langusta.

SPEAKER_02 36:11

Langustina, lobster, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:13

Lobster. Oh, mama, I remember sitting on the dock of the bay with a friend, and um the perspiration is running, and we're having a local beer, and we're just there, there, a dime a dozen, and just eating langusta. I told you some of the drawbacks of international journalism, but there are some of the things that we're gonna do. Some of the goods too. You know, but you can find beautiful products that uh that seem to grow sure uh well in in Africa. The little ladyfinger bananas. They are ambrosia. Things just seem to grow like papaya or pawpaw, just to have the different taste, the pineapple, and the da-da-da. Everything seems to be, they just seem to have a culinary vibrancy about I can imagine.

SPEAKER_02 37:11

I'm gonna look forward to it. Trying whatever's theirs. Now, I love all this beautiful music and the movie Out of Africa. People that have been in Africa are like, oh, that's Hollywood, that's stylized, all that's fine. But I love the same beautiful tonality of all of the African actors in their speaking, and is all that hype, or is there a beautiful culture of singing and music?

SPEAKER_00 37:40

To this day, I cannot hear Ethiopian music without a tear coming to my eye. The Mashenko, kind of a violin, a handheld violin, and the Ethiopian orchestra. The Ethiopian music, I ask, I beg everybody listening to get a hold of Ethiopian music. It's so emotive, it's so beautiful. It runs the panoply of of emotions. It's it's wonderful music. And then you go across to Mali. Man, the Mali music is just every area. The music from Zaire is beautiful. There's there's so much, so much music from the continent that sets it sets. My late colleague Leon Sarkeesian, called the music man in Africa, had a program, a weekly program on English to Africa, and he would highlight this. And I don't care if you've never been there like myself, but it will take you there through the the the wings of of sound and emotions.

SPEAKER_02 38:44

It's I love watching your face as you talk about this because you it's obviously struck a chord.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

I listen to it um two or three times a week. They especially the Ethiopian music, and it's just I'm transported back there to the cultures of Africa, and we can learn so much from them, not to get serious again, but that's all right. They serious a strong familial bond. Like, let me give you an example. The Ick people that live in northwestern Kenya, they uh live near the desert. They, as people get older, pass when they're in their prime, they are given chores around the village, and then they uh watch the grandchildren, great-grandchildren. But then when the time comes, they're allowed to walk out on the desert and die on their own terms, and then their body is brought back and venerated, and um they are never shunned, cast aside. There's always a dignity to which they are um allowed to live out their lives. And we can learn a lot from that. And other aspects of of the of of the covers just caring for one another in ways that um maybe we can we can learn from the the humanity of it all. But uh just because uh maybe your utilitarian value has has lessened that uh you're not worth anything. And this is why uh the vein of that, that the oral tradition is so important in Africa, where for generations uh stories have been passed down, songs have been passed down from old people and youngsters sitting at their knee and learning the songs and the traditions of their ethnic group. Because th this binds people together. If you you have to have a sense of belonging somewhere, and through this uh this oral tradition, this held in such high esteem that it it's indelibly inscribed on the psyche of of of that of that group, that village. They they know who they are. Yeah, and they know that they always have a home. And this is why one of the darkest periods of the continent, and you know where I'm going, slavery. It was so important for them to know where they're from, that each ethnic group had a certain entfanglement away. As a child, it was carved into their face. So if they ever got separated, weighed here and there and separated, they could maybe raid back. And as soon as they see these entanglements, which never go away, you're one of us. And no matter how long they've been away or the circumstances, they are embraced because blood's thick in water.

SPEAKER_02 41:48

Yeah. And I think in a lot of ways in the United States from Western cultures, we've lost our storytelling, we've lost our familial bonds in so many ways. Everybody's too busy being on screens, they don't visit their loved ones and their elders anymore.

SPEAKER_00 42:06

That's why it was so important for people like Alan Lomex and I'm going to make makeup too, to get into the Appalachian regions and to collect the stories and the songs. Because once they're gone, they're gone. This was a way of preserving that that tradition.

SPEAKER_02 42:26

Yeah. This has been wonderful. We've been together over an hour.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

Time flies when you're having fun.

SPEAKER_02 42:32

Oh my gosh, we've had a great time. Before we close, can you tell our listeners how to find you on the internet, how they can learn more about you, your career, and your books, and how they can contact you if they want to.

SPEAKER_00 42:47

Well, you can just Google my name and it will come up. I also have my own website, uh www.barryman. Of course, my book's available on Amazon and Goodreads uh called Beneath the African Sun. And I say very humbly, you'll find it a good read. Because if you like the way I talk, well, that's basically the way I write. I don't pull punches, I don't try to pretend that I'm more than I am, but I think you get the true essence of a uh beautiful continent if I and if I've achieved one thing with the book and with other parts of my career is uh don't be afraid of the continent. Be wise, but go and see it for yourself. And uh don't listen to all the stuff because we know as journalists, um, when it if it bleeds, it leads. There's a lot of wonderful, innovative things going on in Africa. And uh people who go there and come back and uh we chat and they say, I didn't know that. Yeah, because you didn't go, you didn't see, but now you see. So it it's really been my pleasure and honor to talk to you, Shannon.

SPEAKER_02 43:57

It's been delightful. Thank you so, so much. And I hope you'll come back again and speak with us.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

Well, whenever you'd like me. I'd love that. Hey, listen, you can even send a carrier pigeon because we're we're avoiding contiguous states.

SPEAKER_02 44:12

Well, you know what? I'd like after I come back from my trip to Africa uh in May, maybe we can get back together and and compare notes. That would be fun. I'd like that very much.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

I just uh wish you and your podcast uh the very best uh because uh you are uh helping to spread um the good news about uh about Africa.

SPEAKER_02 44:36

Thank you to all of you who have tuned in today to listen to this wonderful podcast with Barry Maughn. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. I've loved every minute. Get in contact with me. Uh my email address is Shannon at Aladywell Traveled. That's Shannon at a ladywelltraveled.com. And traveled is spelled with two L's. Please let me know how you like the podcast. If you've got any suggestions for topics, I'd love to hear from you. You can also share this podcast with friends and family. We're on all streaming platforms. Want you to know that God loves you and created this big, beautiful world just for you. All you have to do is get out there and see it. So until we meet again, bye-bye.