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| A review on Mike’s book - Zambezi, Sunday Times Lifestyle – 16 September 2007 Serial adventurer Mike Boon has written a book about his solo journey by kayak down the Zambezi River. Oliver Roberts meets him and tries his best not to feel completely emasculated
Equipped
with a former airborne officer’s gritty acumen, a yellow
kayak and the ability to grow an epic beard, that’s exactly
what Mike Boon did. In the 99 days it took him to reach the Indian
Ocean from his start in Zambia, he had to befriend sweaty militia
intent on blood and suffer hypothermia, and that was really just
the first week. |
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Already
an inveterate explorer — he ran an adventure tour company
with Kingsley Holgate and has twice climbed the Himalayas —
Boon’s Zambezi expedition happened in 2002 and he has just
released a book, Zambezi — The First Solo Journey down Africa’s
Mighty River, detailing the 3000km trip. Riveting, poignant and
sometimes terrifying, the book reads like the unedited diary of
man searching for meaning in perilous solitude.
The
51-year-old adventurer grew up in Escourt in KwaZulu-Natal and
his earliest memories are of searching for new lines up a rock
face in the Drakensberg, shining torches in long grass and spending
nights in tents. |
 ROLLING ALONG: Intrepid explorer Boon revels in the isolation of the Zambezi River |
Once
out of school, Boon was sent to Angola to fight on the border.
In the five years he spent in and out of combat, he became commander
of the 44th Airborne Division and was a “pathfinder”. |
"It’s
true. I’m not afraid"
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Having had his natural exploratory
urge usefully tainted by the cruel courage that combat requires,
Boon’s psyche can now sharply identify the difference between
reasonable risk and fatal folly. He is conditioned for both.
“My definition of adventure has gotten steeper and steeper over the years,” says Boon. “I have discovered that every time I push myself to a new limit, I am aware that there is still something beyond that, and I want to go there.” Boon’s voice has a saturating quality to it, a natural commanding confidence, but it thankfully isn’t tinged with the macho condescension that you might expect from a former elite paratrooper. Instead of talking to me, he engages me, reciprocating dialogue and encouraging me to tell my own terribly unexciting stories. Reading Boon’s book and then meeting him was a test of my own manhood. Almost every page has some kind of MacGyveresque escape. When he casually reels off tales about how he negotiated his way through interrogation with the Angolan military, outwitted a crocodile and narrowly avoided death on the rapids in Sioma, it’s easy to feel slightly emasculated around him. But Boon has the warmth of a favourite uncle, the one who used to pop around on the weekend to teach you how to set things on fire. At times Boon appears proudly cavalier. He seems to revel in touching death’s fingertips, and talks of how he promised his wife, Annie, he would phone her for one last goodbye if he felt he was about to attempt something that could kill him. “It’s true. I’m not afraid of death, but I don’t want to die. I love my life,“ he says. “What I have discovered is that when you haven’t been close to death, you fear it enormously. When you’ve been right there, you see there’s no reason to be afraid.” Being “right there” has become something of a forced habit for Boon. His time as a paratrooper exposed him to horrendous conditions, which are spoken about as flashbacks in his book. “The trip was a form of post-traumatic therapy for me. I revisited places I’d been in combat and it was very, very difficult,” he says. “You normally need someone to help you deal with this trauma; I was alone and sometimes I got really shaky, but I returned to that trauma and I shed it.” When he talks about his life, his days as a soldier, I notice Boon almost constantly removes and then puts back on his glasses. It’s as if he needs them as a physical prompt to jump backwards and forwards in memory. That Boon was inducted into a Zulu clan in 1986 and got married in a traditional Zulu ceremony is not only indicative of his deep love for Africa, it’s another contrasting characteristic for him as a human. Apart from his courageous leanings and his love of isolation, he is also a respected businessman who runs motivational workshops in the corporate world and lists South Africa’s First Lady, Zanele Mbeki, among his admirers. He is now in the planning stages of his next expedition. When I ask what it is, Boon smiles and exercises the impressive crow’s feet around his eyes. All he’s saying for now is that it’s taking place somewhere in Africa and it’s something that’s never been done before. Towards the end of the book is a beautiful passage where Boon compares the progression of life to a river. Considering that he has drifted towards death and managed to paddle away from it more times than one man should be allowed, I ask where he sees himself now. Is he anywhere near the end of his journey? “I’m somewhere halfway down the river,” he says. “The tempestuousness of youth, the turmoil, the rapids, the decisions I made without careful consideration in the early part of the river are now past. “There’s still a lot more to come, but I have the comfort of wisdom from everything that happened in the early part of the journey.” With that, he puts on his glasses, leads me to the front door and says farewell.
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