I have already described my adventures in Africa so now it’s time for some “Polish traces”. As for Polish explorers and travellers in Africa they most often went to North Africa. In East Africa there were only a few of them but their exploits are worth the description.
Probably the first Pole who appeared in East Africa, precisely in Mozambique was the Jesuit, Michal Boym (1612 (1614)-1659). The Polish Jesuit stopped there on his way to China. Found only in 1933, Boym’s letter dating from 1644 describes in detail the Bantu peoples inhabiting these areas and their customs and also the Portuguese living there (he calls the natives ‘Kaffirs’ and the areas where they lived – Kafraria. Kafir – infidel in Arabic or an external name for Bantu peoples. That’s how the Portuguese called the entire population of South and East Africa). He also describes fauna and flora and also mentions the Kingdom of Mutapa whose population constructed the so-called Great Zimbabwe.
African lily from Boym’s letter
Great Zimbabwe
The next Pole in this part of Africa was Maurycy Beniowski (1746-1786) who after a daring escape from exile in Kamchatka reached France from where he was sent to Madagascar in 1773. He spent three years there building roads, channels, draining the swamps, exploring the interior of the island. He had very good relations with the natives who even called him an amphansakaba, that is a king. And it’s not known whether it was because of the desire to become independent of France or the envy of the governor of Mauritius or because he was doing too well but Beniowski was summoned to Paris. He returned to Madagascar nine years later only to die a year later in a skirmish with the French soldiers. As for the person of Beniowski and facts about his life one should be very careful when doing a research. You certainly shouldn’t believe his Memoirs because Maurycy created his own reality. Today, the only traces of Beniowski in Madagascar are a street in Antananarivo named after him and a small monument. But what an imaginative guy!
Map of Madagascar from the time of Beniowski
Another Pole was Henryk Jabłonski (1828-1869), a talented poet who deserted from the Russian army in the Crimea and moved to the French service. In 1856 he was sent as a writer to Zanzibar. He made friends with the consul, married his daughter and in 1861 he was appointed consul. Jabłonski spent 12 years on the island, becoming a great expert on local affairs. In 1866 he even published a geographic work entitled ‘Notes sur la géographie de l’Île de Zanzibar’. He died in 1868 on his way to Paris.
23 years later more Poles came to Zanzibar. And they were Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916) and his companion, 24-year-old count Jan Tyszkiewicz (1867-1903). Gentlemen travelled from Europe through Egypt to Zanzibar. You can find the exact description in the “Letters from Africa” by Sienkiewicz, commissioned by the Warsaw “Slowo”. Although not as good as the “Letters from America”, they are worth reading. Sienkiewicz’s companion, count Tyszkiewicz also described his experiences in letters to his mother. Fragments of these letters were printed in Vilnius in 1928 but in their entirety as “Letters from a trip to Zanzibar in 1891” they were published in 2010 in Lithuania as a bilingual edition. Supposedly the Polish edition has a lot of errors due to the fact that publishers did not know Polish language very well but still it’s great that this book was published.
Count Tyszkiewicz and Henryk Sienkiewicz
At the beginning of the twentieth century Antoni Jakubski (1885-1962) came to East Africa. He walked almost all of today’s Tanzania area, first from east to west to Niasa and Rukwa lakes and then to the north-eastern edge of German Tanganyika, where he climbed Kilimanjaro as first Pole ever (although there is a theory that he ended up a few meters short due to weather conditions). His main goal was to study the fauna of Niasa and Rukwa lakes and he published several articles in scientific journals. Additionally he wrote in Polish: „W krainach słońca. Kartki z podróży do Afryki środkowej w latach 1909-10” oraz „Wyprawa na Kilimandżaro”. During the WWII, Jakubski was a prisoner of German concentration camps and after the war he settled in London, where he worked at the British Museum.
The front page of Jakubski’s book
In the 1930’s another Pole rode the western border of today’s Tanzania and Kenya. I write “rode” because Kazimierz Nowak (1897-1937) went to Africa on… a bike. He couldn’t find a job in Poland so he decided to go to Africa and his wife who stayed in the country was to take care of the sale of photographs taken by Nowak in Africa. And dealing with flat tyres, changing the bike for a canoe or a camel, Kazimierz Nowak travelled for 40,000 kilometres, leaving in November 1931 from Tripoli and ending in Algiers five years later, travelling through the African continent, first from north to south and then from south to north. After returning to Poland, Nowak was busy with lectures, he also wanted to write a book, he had plans for a trip to Asia. Unfortunately, his exhausted body lost the fight against pneumonia and in 1937 Kazimierz Nowak died. The account of his wonderful journey can be found in the book entitled “Across The Dark Continent. Bicycle Diaries from Africa 1931-1936” (English edition published in 2017). I highly recommend!
Nowak’s route. Picture of the map from the book mentioned above
Kazimierz Nowak in action
And that’s it when it’s about Polish achievements in East Africa. I wish you all the best in the New Year!
Bibliography:
E. Kajdański, Michała Boyma opisanie świata, Warszawa 2009, 326 pages.
K. Nowak, Rowerem i pieszo przez Czarny Ląd. Listy z podróży afrykańskiej z lat 1931-1936, Poznań 2012, 408 pages.
W. Słabczyński, Polscy podróżnicy i odkrywcy, Warszawa 1988, 428 pages.
Polish traces around the world 