scribbling the cat travels with an african soldier

(Christmas-cracker guns is how they seem, cheap and deadly and associated with mass production in China.) And then there are parts of Africa where ammunition and guns arent available and citizens children among them take up arms against one another with whatever instruments they can find: machetes, hoes, knives, their bare hands. In fact, there are probably parts of Africa where almost anyone over the age of ten is an old soldier and has held an AK-47 in his hands and let its fire chatter into human flesh. Its not hard to find an old soldier in Africa. Hundreds of them probably, most of them silent about the years that were stolen from them and the years that they had stolen from others.

Scattershot in our path were soldiers from Ks war. We were heading steadily toward the Indian Ocean, toward the thick slice of land that curled around Zimbabwes eastern shoulder, nudged Zambia, and almost swallowed Malawi off the map altogether. The greater part of Africa the vast, uncurling spill of cities and roads, and jungles and savannahs lay behind us.

∽eath in the Little Pentagon: The Secret Killing Fields of the Peruvian Army, Ricardo UcedaĮxtract from Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier (Picador, June 2005)īy the time we left the farm, the sun had taken its place in the sky, spreading across the divide of east and west, elbowing out sky and colour and perspective, and sending a flattening assault of rays to the earth.

Maximum City: Bombay lost and found, Suketu Mehta.

The Outlaw Sea: Chaos and Crime on the Worlds Oceans, William Langewiesche.

∺ Season in Mecca: Account of a Pilgrimage, Abdellah Hammoudi.

Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier, Alexandra Fuller.

Of Wars: Letters to Friends, Caroline Emcke.

∻aghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq, Riverbend.

The winner will be announced on 15 October, and openDemocracy has presented extracts from each of the finalists: This extract is from one of seven books shortlisted for the 2005 Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage.

Scribbling the cat travels with an african soldier