JOURNEY INTO A FAMILY

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By retracing grandfather's 1929 route in Africa, Cincinnati couple will get to know a man they never met

Monday, October 12, 1998

BY MARK CURNUTTE
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Dave and Becky Kimbell will trek across Africa. (Craig Ruttle photo) | ZOOM |

Dave and Becky Kimbell couldn't stop thinking about the box sitting on the back seat as they drove home from Indianapolis.

Inside were dozens of forgotten letters and hundreds of photographs documenting the trip that his paternal grandfather took through Africa in 1929 and 1930. The box had just been given to them by Dave's parents.

The idea came to Dave and Becky at the same time: We should retrace his route.

After two years of planning, the once-in-a-lifetime adventure began Sunday when the couple left their Cincinnati home. They'll tour Britain, following Dave's grandfather's path there, before flying from London to Cape Town, South Africa, on Nov. 4.

That's the day -- 69 years earlier -- that Charles Kimbell of Hinsdale, Ill., started his trek across what was then still widely referred to as the Dark Continent.

Dave and Becky organized records of his grandfather's trip. Charles Kimball is at left in the photo. (Craig Ruttle photo) | ZOOM |

Dave and Becky had visited Africa once, but this would be different. This trip would also be a journey into the heart of a family.

"I never knew my grandfather," says Dave, who was born in 1966, 15 years after Charles died. "This was a unique opportunity to learn more about him. That played into our decision."

The Kimbells have assembled Charles' letters into book form. In revisiting his stops, they will record their observations on a lap-top computer. They plan to write a book comparing their experiences to Charles'.

They've picked a good time to attempt such a project. Genealogy continues to be one of Americans' favorite hobbies, and family histories are popular reading these days. Many non-professional writers are attending seminars across the country to learn how to compile stories about family members.

The Kimbells will try to visit hotels that Charles stayed in. They will carry copies of his letters and photographs and will try to find people -- the young children of some of Charles' hosts and acquaintances -- who still live there.

"He's really made it easy for us," Becky says.

Says Dave, "We don't proclaim to be experts, but we have a unique story."

Before committing to the trip, they made a list of pros and cons.

• Pros: A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They have no children yet. They are young and healthy and experienced travelers.

• Cons: They'd have to save every spare dime, then spend it all in one shot. They'd have to quit the career-track jobs they had just landed at Procter & Gamble.

Becky, a St. Louis native, was in corporate communications and most recently worked on P&G's olestra project. Dave, from Indianapolis, was in marketing. They met as students at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., and were married in 1991.

Becky was the one who pushed for the trip.

"This is an opportunity to grow spiritually, intellectually, culturally, to understand other people," Becky says. "We wouldn't want to look back 10 years from now and regret not going."

Like his grandson and his grandson's wife, Charles was 31 at the time he landed in Cape Town. He was single but had a traveling companion, Alan Dawson. They would become brothers-in-law when Charles married Alan's sister, Mildred, in 1931.

Mildred, now 92, visited with Dave and Becky at her summer home in Wisconsin. In those conversations, Dave learned that his grandfather sold his Chris-Craft boat dealership in Chicago to pay for his trip. Charles returned from Africa, married Mildred and moved to New York to sell advertising for Country Gentleman magazine.

Mildred has noticed similarities in her husband and grandson. "They're both full of interest," she says. "They love doing things and seeing people. They both are somewhat daring."

A passage in one of Charles' letters told Dave that he and Charles were kindred souls. The words convinced Dave the trip was worth the risks. Charles wrote on Dec. 24, 1929:

Here it is the day before Christmas -- you all are decorating the tree -- it is probably cold and you have snow on the ground and we're on the White Nile -- 800 miles from a railroad -- the heat is so intense when we get stuck on a sandbar or stop to pick up native products we almost die. I feel like Christopher Columbus ... or Livingstone or Sir Francis Drake. But such is the penalty of a wanderlust spirit.

But Dave and Becky knew before leaving that such spirits travel in Africa today with less freedom. Today, many nations that Dave and Becky will visit were European colonies 70 years ago.

The couple will stop in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Egypt but will be unable to follow Charles' path through Sudan. The U.S. government advises citizens against traveling there because of suspected terrorist activities and anti-American sentiment.

Civil war in Mozambique, even though it ended in 1990, also will keep the Kimbells out of the nation's northern region. Thousands of land mines remain unaccounted for.

But they will follow Charles' route through Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, where U.S. embassies were bombed by terrorists on Aug. 7.

Charles rode in an Indian mail ship 2,000 miles up the east coast -- from Durban in South Africa to Mombasa in current-day Kenya, a British colony until 1963. Such ships no longer sail today, Dave and Becky say.

While on a stop in Beira, Mozambique (formerly part of Portuguese East Africa), Charles noted that airborne cockroaches were "flying elephants with ears."

It's in Mozambique today that travel brochures warn of tsetse flies, which cause African sleeping sickness. The Kimbells have gotten several shots to protect themselves from as many diseases as possible.

They are packing light. They'll take jeans, T-shirts and boots and some of Charles' records in their backpacks. Becky will carry a still camera. Dave will tape the record parts of the trip with a video camera. They'll have the lap-top computer.

To save money, they'll camp in backpackers' hostels. They won't splurge on hotels "unless we want to get clean," Becky says.

They have backpacked through through Europe, Australia and Southeast Asia. They spent a month in Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe in 1996.

But those trips were much shorter and didn't require as much preparation as this trek, which they figure to finish in six to eight months. Those earlier trips also didn't have the ability to bring an already close family together across three generations.

Dave's father, Alan Kimbell, 65, of Indianapolis, and his wife, Anne, recently decided to join Dave and Becky on the South African leg of the trip. Mr Kimbell visited Asia and Africa to recruit foreign investment in the Hoosier state as director of the the Indiana Department of Commerce.

"It never crossed my mind to do this," Alan Kimbell says. "I'm thankful to have the chance to do it now."

The family has grown closer.

"Any common interest can do that," he says. "My mom says she gets goosebumps thinking about us doing this. This is one of those laces that ties a family together."

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