About book Mimi And Toutou's Big Adventure: The Bizarre Battle Of Lake Tanganyika (2006)
Foden is better known for novels like The Last King of Scotland and Zanzibar, but this book shows that he is equally adept at non-fiction. The Mimi and Toutou of the title were a pair of British motor launches sent to gain control of Lake Tanganyika during the First World War. The commanding officer's first choice of names, Dog and Cat, was rejected by the Admiralty as being too frivolous. He retaliated by naming them with the French equivalents of 'Miaow' and 'Woof-woof', adopting a hint of the ridiculous that the expedition never seems to have escaped.tIt would be easy to dismiss the expedition as a harebrained colonial adventure if it hadn't actually succeeded in sinking the German armed steamers dominating the lake. Most of the members had little or no relative experience, while their eccentric commanding officer insisted on wearing a skirt and bragging about fictional big game hunts. Their accident-prone progress through the Belgian Congo involved accidentally setting fire to the bush, running aground on sandbars and running out of water in the middle of the dry season. Hauling eight-ton launches from Cape Town to Lake Tanganyika would be a major undertaking now, let alone in 1915, and Mimi and Toutou were expected to fight a battle at the end of it.tAs with most colonial ventures, it could never have got underway without the involvement of far more Africans than Europeans. Given the conditions in the Belgian Congo at the time, their involvement was unlikely to have been entirely voluntary. As is common in the accounts of colonial expeditions, the Africans are presented as a faceless mass while the Europeans are individuals. Where Foden goes beyond many of his peers is that he devotes an entire chapter to the reasons for this, describing his efforts to find some sort of oral history among the people who live on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. To his frustration, the opportunity to record the African view appears to have been lost.tAll things considered, Foden covers the episode from several different angles, and always with an eye to the absurd, which makes this both a fascinating history and a good read.
As I have myself crossed Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika and am a huge fan of Huston's African Queen I read Foden's book with great interest. Mimi and Toutou were two armed motorboats transported by rail and on foot from Cape Town to near Kigoma to take on a formidable German naval presence. The Belgians, allies of the British also make an appearance.This very well-written, densely researched book is worth buying alone for the portrait of the vainglorious Geoffrey Spice-Simpson, inveterate liar, incompetent naval "commander" and wont to wearing a skirt in the tropics. The final engagements with the German "navy" led to a relatively small number of horrific maimings and deaths.The book also contains a sketch of the most distinguished participant in the WW1 East African war, von Lettow-Vorbeck, who effectively beat the British with his askaris and his skilful guerrilla tactics. When news of Germany's defeat in Europe finally percolated to Africa, Lettow-Vorbeck, wishing to surrender, was told by the enemy:"Awfully sorry, old chap, but we have no facilities for prisoners of war here. Would you mind frightfully marching your chaps to Abercorn?" I am open to correction but I recall this was a distance of some 1000 miles. Abercorn, now Mbala, has a statue commemorating the parlous British victory. I have seen it. Lettow-Vorbeck, an honourable Prussian, had no truck with Hitler. In the early 1950s a Brit or a South African financed a return visit for him to Tanganyika. He received a hero's welcome.But this book is primarily about the arduous trek made by Spicer-Simpson and his men, many of whom were as unhinged as he was.
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An interesting narrative of a little remembered theater during the "War to End All Wars". As luck would have it, the oldest lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy at that time was chosen (because he was the only on be available) to lead an expedition to the center of Africa. The expedition was transporting across land and then utilizing two boats in an effort to claim Lake Tanganyika as Allied territory. The bombastic martinet, Geoffrey Spicer-Simpson took credit for much of what those under him accomplished. He was one of those egoistic characters who thought he knew everything and embellished and/or made up most of his 'deeds.' The author, on occasion refers to Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and to "The African Queen" for added flavor. It is a fun read about an interesting sub-element of the First World War.
—Bruce
Real-life WWI events that prompted C.S. Forrester to write The African Queen. The "Mimi and Toutou" in question were two small gunboats, commanded by a rather ludicrous figure, one Geoffrey Spicer-Samson of the Royal Navy. Spicer was a thorough eccentric -- and also laughably incompetent in many ways -- yet he managed to assemble an odd (and rather unwilling) crew and make it all the way up the Congo (some 2,800 miles) to Lake Tanganyika. (This journey, obviously, was the genesis of the Forster tale.) While there's no Bogart-Hepburn romance at the heart of the book, the real tale is just as improbable and engaging.
—Kay
I really loved this book. It's my favorite sort of combination of history, personal interest, humor and a good story. It's also about Tanzania, at least partly, and there are very few decent books written about Tanzania."Mimi and Toutou Go Forth" is the story of a fascinating battle that took place in Lake Tanganyika, in western Tanzania, during World War I. Mimi and Toutou were 2 British warships that were carried all of the away across the inhospitable rain forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo for the express purpose of fighting a brief battle with 2 German ships that were already stationed on lake. The concept and people that brought these boats to Lake Tanganyika were bizarre and there journey and battles were even more bizarre. The story is of particular interest to us because one of the German ships mentioned in the book is still functioning on Lake Tanganyika. Even after 100 years, it is still the best ferry on the lake and we saw it while we were visiting Kigoma with Rob's parents!"Mimi and Toutou" is fun, entertaining and an easy read. Plus, it looks like no one else has read it here on Goodreads. Check it out.
—Rob and Liz
