Inspiring Book
In response to your question concerning books that have inspired
travel, I have prepared the following piece:
The images of colorful crafts, traditional ceremonies, and, most
importantly, her inspiring neighbors in her village described by
Carol Spindel in her novel, In The Shadow of the Sacred Grove
inspired my fiancée, Vanessa, and I to visit Korhogo and it
surrounding villages in Cote d'Ivoire once we finished our Peace
Corps mandate in Gabon, Central Africa. Kalikaha, the village where
Spindel and her husband, Tom, lived while he was performing
anthropological research, exemplified the idyllic West African
culture that we had imagined before our original journey to Africa.
Once we arrived in Korhogo, we found a place to stay at the local
mission and met a fellow traveler, Marianne, a doctor from a
Southwest American Indian reservation. Together, we contracted a
guide, who led us from village to village each was complete with the
crafts we had read about a year previously.
There were 50* looms where women wove colorful linens, blacksmiths
forged iron tools, newly completed clay water pots dried in the sun,
and mud cloth artists who told us that their village was where
Picasso came for inspiration. (In fact, Picasso never visited Africa
which we did not realize until months later at the Picasso Museum in
Paris.) Our visit culminated with a meal of grilled fish and fried
plantains with the locals as it should have, in the spirit of
Spindel's book, with the personalities of the Ivoiriens outshining
any of their remarkable artistic abilities.
Though we were unable to experience Korhogo as Spindel and her
husband once did, we got an excellent taste of what life is like in
the region due to the background she provided us and our own brief
conversations with the locals. I highly recommend pursuing "literary
travel." It completes the picture and brings home the story the
author intends.
Footnote:
Upon Marianne's recommendation, we then traveled to Banfora, a little
known travel destination, in Burkina Faso which turned out to be a
wonderful digression of waterfalls and wild hippos before continuing
to Bobo Dialosso and the pool of the sacred fish ...
Sincerely,
Michael
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