Ó Chósta go CóstaBy Frank Reidy Cló Iar-Chonnachta, €15
Travel writing in Irish is surprisingly vibrant, although not always very good. Cló Iar-Chonnachta has been at the vanguard, with Gabriel Rosenstock's quirky and frequently profound Ólann mo Mhiúil as an nGainséis, which reflects on travel throughout the world, and Cathal Ó Searcaigh's Seal i Neipeal, in which Ó Searcaigh reveals far more about the nature of his relationship with the youth of Nepal than any TV documentary could.
Cló Iar-Chonnachta's latest offering, Ó Chósta go Cósta, by Frank Reidy, is as sumptuous and well designed as its previous books. Reidy, a former army officer, recounts his travels in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. His writing can't compare with the elegance of the poet-travellers Rosenstock and Ó Searcaigh, but the simplicity of this book makes it more suited to non-proficient Irish speakers – who, alas, now make up the majority of us. Reidy writes about everything from tribal initiation practices to megalomaniacal warlords in easily digestible sentences, which is an accomplishment when using a language that so rarely is used to convey such things.
He touches on all the usual east Africa topics: the Happy Valley set, Tsavo lions, Masai, Roosevelt’s safari and so on. Occasionally, however, he offers something really new that makes it not only worth the price of the book but also worth getting some
Gael Linn classes for, so you can actually understand it. My favourites were how Swahili is taking on English with comedic results, like keepleftifor a roundabout, his insight into the fish-eating El Molo tribe of Lake Turkana or, most intriguing of all, the fact that the Air Corps had a jet ready to shoot Idi Amin out of the sky if he approached Irish airspace in 1977. Now there's a what-if? to savour.