THE NEVER-ENDING JOURNEY

People of Africa didn’t need to describe the continent: they lived there. So almost every book or report up until the 20th century came from European adventurers venturing into a continent that was ‘dark’ only to themselves. They made notes and sketches that, often without realising it, opened the way for colonial incursions. Ibn Battuta was different. He came from Tangier in Morocco and most fully embodied Lao Tzu’s notion of a good traveller having ‘no fixed plans and not intent on arriving’. Battuta travelled almost continuously for 30 years. He began his journey