The Last Banana

the long version

"Shelby Tucker first went to East Africa in 1967, arriving as Vasco de Gama had 469 years earlier, by sea, to visit his Oxford contemporary Marios Ghikas who then farmed on the slopes of Kilimanjaro. Ghikas' grandfather had been one of the first of many Greeks to settle in what was then German East Africa, yet Nyerere's policy of 'returning' land to the watu (folk) destroyed this community. Three stayed on. Marios was one. Anticipating nationalisation, he invited Tucker to visit again to help him spend 'the last banana' of his 'unremittable fortune'. Tucker returned in 1972, travelling overland. These were the first of 16 trips -- spanning 43 years -- that he has made to sub-Saharan Africa. In The Last Banana Tucker (a descendent of slave owners) contrasts the moral force and fruits of the pioneer missionaries and explorers who brought Christianity to Africa with the triviality of modern travel and the surrealism of the 'democracy' expounded in Africa today."--Jacket.