Riding the Demon: On the Road in West Africa (review)

Book Reviews205 more so than the other sections, supply enlarging historical context. Blue as the Lake's closing and title section gathers three essays that are set in the recent past. We revisit Chicago and encounter New England, where Stepto has made his home for the past twenty years. The closing essay, "Vineyard," an extended tour ofMartha'sVineyard in the 1990s, deftly draws together the book's several Unking threads: place, famüy, identity, and the story teUing that has shaped the author's relationship to aU three. It also brings the book fuU-circle, meditating as it does on the legacy of Idlewüd: an appreciation for the outdoors and for famüy ties. "[Grandfather] . . . would have approved ofmy walking to the post office [on the island] for my maU. . . . His sole suggestion would have been, 'But can't you find some woods to walk through along the way?'" Stepto teU us what he is making of theVineyard—an Idlewüd of his own. Race is a humming undercurrent of Blue as the Lake, one that animates its reflections and narratives. The book is not about race, but it is about some particulars ofone person's—and his family's—life thus far, and in those particulars Ue countless resonances. Reviewed by Alison Swan Riding the Demon: On the Road in West Africa by Peter Chüson The University of Georgia Press, 1999 216 pages, cloth, $24.95 Ifa movie is ever made ofRiding the Demon, it wiU be something Uke a cross between Out ofAfrica and Mad Max. Peter Chüson writes a fascinating and harrowing book about the people who travel, guard, and make their living from what passes for the national road system ofNiger. The "bush taxis" Chilson rides in simultaneously make him contemplative about his Ufe and mindful for his personal safety, and also provide him a window (probably paneless and missing a hand crank) onto West African culture. "They (bush taxis) are bowls of human soup, microscopic slides of society, mobüe windows on the raw cultural, economic and poUtical vitality ofAfrica." Chüson makes it clear early on that this kind of travel is not for the faint ofheart. "Accidents on United States roads attract stares, slow traffic, and are quickly cleared away. On African roads, car wrecks are as common as mue markers." Accidents are only the most extreme manifestation of peril on 206Fourth Genre Niger's roads. A simple trip of, say, fifty mues first requires finding a bush taxi in working order with a driver wiUing to hazard the trip. Then there are "booking agents" and guards to be bribed, black-market gasoline to be bought and, God forbid, a mechanic needed to improvise a carburetor for an aging Peugot with twice-turned-over odometer. That device has probably stopped working along with the speedometer—leaving passengers to wonder at just what reckless speed they are being whisked to their destination , or doom. Guiding Chüson on this perilous journey is Issoufou Garba, whose own particularjourney that forced him onto the road reads like one long detour. "He worked six years as an accounting clerk on an agricultural research project; learned French; became bored as a government extension agent; failed as a street vendor; risked his life smuggling gasoline into Niger from oü-rich Nigeria; made a fortune; was arrested, jailed, fined; lost everything. Now he owned three bush taxis."To say that Garba is a true professional is somehow to grossly understate the skiU set and sheer intuition it takes to transport strangers across the face of Western Africa. Garba knows where to stop on an unmarked road to find smugglers of iUegal gasoline, knows when to wait out a drunken, armed gendarme, knows where to buy true Islamic gris-gris—fetishes guaranteeing safety—rather than sham ones sold in the marketplace. The dangerous culture of this world is almost entirely male oriented: men drive, men guard, men fix, men tempt fate. One ofthe fascinating side trips Chüson takes us on is to meet Hajia Maritou, one of the few professional women drivers in Niger. Although Hajia's husband is a devout MusUm, he "aUows his wives a...