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Driving across Africa sounds fun, right? On an adventure vacation, one of many she's taken for fun and profit, Ann Jones meets up with a crazy-hearted traveler who decides that it's possible --- and definitely fun. However, Ann ends up on the wildest trip she could ever imagine. LOOKING FOR LOVEDU is her story.
In order to fund the trip, Jones happens upon the story of the hard-to-encounter Queen of the Lovedu (pronounced Low-ay-bay), the woman warrior who is the leader of this legendary tribe that thrives on the feminine (and feminist) principles of compromise, love, and understanding. The quest takes them across the Dark Continent in five days, but those five days turn out to be everything that the trippers did not plan.
Jones encounters the ugliness of mud and angry fights with her road beau: "Sick and exhausted past measure, Muggleton (the road beau) hoped for a five-star beach resort with surfboards, while I longed only to rest here among the Pygmies and clap my hands until the trees began to dance." But then some truly uplifting truths are revealed with her new traveling companions, a couple of other women who want to see the real Africa. This is when her journey comes alive and her quest takes a turn for the serious.
The travelogue that ensues throughout the book is an interesting look at African history, but it is the very end of the book --- the actual encounter with the Queen --- that makes LOOKING FOR LOVEDU an exciting discovery. Jones has an opportunity to experience a culture few have ever known and, in doing so, changes the way we all see the patriarchies of the Western world and creates a yearning for the strange but clear-headed view of the Queen and her Lovedu.
LOOKING FOR LOVEDU feels like a story a good friend is telling over a good meal --- and is meant to be savored as such.
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
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