His first visit to the continent was in 1933 with his second wife,
Pauline. Together they visited both Kenya and Tanzania. During this
time, and even before he went on his first African hunt, Hemingway
became sick with dysentery. For several weeks, he was laid up in a
hospital in Nairobi, where he met other adventure-seeking men from
America and Europe. After mending and continuing with the safari,
Hemingway returned home to write The Green Hills of Africa. The book’s
poor sales depressed him, but the two shorter works he penned on the
trip, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber and The Snows of
Kilimanjaro, are considered classics about African hunters.
In one way or another, we have all had contact with the work or read about the life of the famous American writer Ernest Hemingway. We certainly don’t associate Hemingway with hunting expeditions or wilderness. Those who know a bit about the man have read of swashbuckling tales of drinking, bull fighting and hard living. We knew him as an avid sportsman who even penned one of his great books, The Sun Also Rises, around the annual running of the bulls in Spain. However, what the average person might not know is that Hemingway travelled to Africa to hunt twice in his lifetime and wrote several short stories and novels about the experience. Hemingway is even credited with bring the Swahili word “safari” to the English language. Although he was not considered one of the greatest hunters, his love of the experience propelled him to an understanding of the Kenyan people, a feat that was unheard of for his time.