In 1871, Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone (1813-1873) was hanging out in the village of Ujiji, in what is today Tanzania. He wasn’t exactly lost, but the last few years had been rough, full of heartbreak and disappointment. Livingstone had spent three decades exploring and mapping territory that is now part of the modern countries of Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. But after crossing the African continent, running the Zambezi River, renaming Victoria Falls, crossing the Kalahari Desert, and seeking the source of the Nile, the legendary Victorian voyager was nearing the end of the trail.
That’s when the American (by way of Wales) journalist and huckster Henry Morton Stanley blundered into Ujiji with a caravan, drums, and a parade worthy of the Fourth of July.
It was, perhaps, the most famous greeting in African history, but there is more to the legend of David Livingstone than what Henry Stanley presumed.
In this week’s episode of By Their Own Compass, we are hacking our way through the dense undergrowth of myth surrounding David Livingstone, the Scottish explorer and anti-slavery crusader, to uncover the life of the man who spent years traveling through Central and Southern Africa, fuelled by a potent mix of abolitionist zeal and a total inability to sit still.
This is the story of one of history’s most fascinating travelers, a man who loved Africa and understood it better than most non-Africans of his era. And as always, at the end of the episode, we talk about how today’s travelers can follow David Livingstone’s footsteps and plan their own modern-day explorations of Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
