Journey Without Maps

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Journey Without Maps (1936) is a travel account by Graham Greene, about a 350-mile, 4-week walk through the interior of Liberia in 1935. It was Greene's first trip outside of Europe. He hoped to leave civilization and find the "heart of darkness" in Africa. The interior of Liberia was at the time unmapped (a US Government map had the interior as a large white space marked "cannibals"), and so he relied on local guides and porters.

Greene set off from the northern most point of the country bordering Sierra Leone near the town of Kailahun (near Pendembu) and traveled in a south-eastern direction through the jungle highlands. He crossed through a section of French Guinea, going between the Liberian towns of Zorzor and Ganta, before turning south-west and arriving at the coast at Grand Bassa. He then traveled to Monrovia.

Greene's account provides many insights into what Liberia was like in 1936. The country has not modernized much since, in particular away from the coast, so much of it remains unchanged to this day. Greene did encounter a number of whites along the way including American and English missionaries, a German adventurer, gold seekers and other beachcombers. Most of the primitive villages he passed through had encountered white people before, but it had been years, and so for many of the younger people it was a new experience. Greene documents the deplorable public health, there were only a handful of doctors in the whole country. A long list of diseases visibly ravaged the typical Liberian (venereal disease and malaria in particular were almost universal, with various weeping sores and wounds from insects and occasionally leprosy). Greene drank whiskey the entire trip going through cases of it. He underpaid his porters, who could at times go for 2 days between meals, but he says he learned to love them anyway (Greene never details how, or if, his porters made it back to their home village).

Greene's novel The Heart of the Matter (1948) was based on this journey.

Greene traveled with his female cousin Barbara Greene who, in the 1970s, produced her our memoir of the trip contradicting Greene on almost every point.^[1]^[2]

[edit] Notes

^ Michael Shapiro (2004). A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk about Their Craft, Lives, and Inspiration. (page 35).
^ Barbara Greene. Too Late to Turn Back. ISBN 978-0140095944 (1991 re-print PB).