Every Saturday at 2 p.m. growing up my brother David & I parked our butts in front of the TV for 'Jungle Theater'. We wasted many an afternoon watching the studio jungle-set adventures of Johnny Weissmuller & other Tarzan wannabes. Sundays were reserved for 'Sci-Fi Theater', another arena for bad 1950's films, which often included Godzilla flicks with awful out-of-sync voice-overs.
There are two points to be made here; (1) 40 years later & there's still nothing worthwhile to be found on Saturday afternoon TV, & (2) Most of what we 'know' about Africa is still wrong.
It was probably the mix of bad Tarzan reruns & old comic books that led to my choice of Africa as the milleu for most of my fantastic fiction. The thing is, I don't think I chose Africa, it chose ME. The things I've learned in the process of researching my stories have been rewarding in every sense--except the financial one, of course.
In developing my characters & backdrop for my first novel Butterfly & Serpent, & the short stories leading up to it, I relied heavily on Jomo Kenyatta's autobiography, Facing Mount Kenya which is not a book you tend to find in most public libraries (I found it in my high school library, actually). Locations such as the mighty Lake Turkana, the ancient Christian rock churches of Ethiopia & the ruins of Great Zimbabwe are important characters in the follow-up book which is in progress.
My biggest fear is someday somebody from Africa is going to read my stuff & he/she will proceed to tell me everything that I got wrong. And all I'm going to be able to do is throw up my hands & howl, "AAAARRRGH! He's right, how could I have been so stoopid?"
There is a history beyond what you'll learn from any Tarzan flick. Tarzan, by the way, wouldn't last a week in Africa. Or maybe Richard Pryor was right & they'd all think he was just a crazy white man, living in the trees with the baboons. Our schools take great pains to avoid the rich history Africa has to offer us. Oh you'll hear the wonders of ancient Europe--Rome, Greece, maybe the old empires of Japan or China thrown in--that's assuming any of you young whipper-snappers are even paying attention to history class. But Africa? Huh. It might as well not exist, baby.
Word up, charlie, your ancestors strolled out of Africa many moons ago, so you might as well reconcile yourself to that fact. We've all got a little African in us.
