Book Description

‘Zanzibar was to be a profound influence on my early life, it became home to me, this was the world I knew and the place I would always be naturally drawn back to. Zanzibar was one of those special places, with even the name evoking ideas of an enchanted land. I was fortunate to live there at a time when it was a peaceful autonomous island, spared from the revolution that later tore it apart.’ Starting from his early days spent in this exotic island when it was an independent Sultanate, Roger Webber goes on to describe his travels throughout Africa, covering a period of 66 years and nearly every country in that vast continent. It includes the great journey from Cairo to Cape, travelling up the Nile, and later on passage down the other great river of Africa, the Congo. In Return to Zanzibar, Roger begins with his memories of an island explored in detail, recounting every aspect of its geography and history and examining how this small country had so much influence over such a large part of the continent. Following Zanzibar's amalgamation with Tanganyika to form Tanzania, in which many of the ways of the original country disappeared, Roger returned as a doctor to be faced with epidemics that were ravaging East Africa at that time. From this base he explored surrounding countries and much of the rest of the continent. Return to Zanzibar is a personal story of Africa in all its many facets.