May 8, 2024 • 47 mins
On The Dirty Lie Podcast, join hosts Adesuwa and TMT as they delve into the life and voyages of Mungo Park, famed Scottish explorer known for his exploration of the River Niger. They discuss and critique the romanticized connotation of the term 'explorer' and highlight its ties to colonial intrusions.
Taking a deep dive into Park's famous account from his book "Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa," the hosts analyze the long-standing impact of colonial misinformation like his claim of a non-existent "Mountains of Kong."
The podcast also brings up recent controversies and pop culture incidents, adding a light-hearted touch to the intense historical discourse. Join in this journey as we work together to uncover the true tales of Mungo Park.
The podcast discusses Park's inherited wealth which aided his exploration ambition, contrasting his parent's hope of him becoming a minister. The tale of Park's first journey to Africa’s interior in 1794, braving climate, diseases, and language barriers to discover more about African societies and their rich cultures, sheds light on his personal tenacity and curiosity.
Aside from recounting Park's journey, the podcast also underscores the equal humanity and respect Park attributed to African people and their cultures in his renowned book - "Travels in the Interior of Africa."
The narrative then delves into the darker aspects of these explorations: their role in resource extraction, neo-colonialism, and neo-slavery prevalent in countries around the world today. The podcast ends on a thought-provoking note, highlighting the need to question ethnocentric views while recognizing the existing connected global societies before European explorations.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello and welcome to the Dirty Lie podcast, a podcast about facts,
figures, and weird things from the past.
I'm your host Adeswa and I'm here with... Hi, I'm TMT.
Also, the video we just took, I just added you on IG so you can repost it or...
I don't know, what do you do on IG?
You repost. You repost it on your story, so... because that's what people do.
(00:22):
How are you guys doing? Welcome to the pod. Welcome to the podcast.
Me and my bestie are here to talk to you. Miss Westy. Miss Westy.
Don't try to test me. It's gonna get messy. It's gonna get messy.
Just bless me. Oh man, I think even Northwest is doing better than Drake right now.
(00:46):
Yeah, she's doing better than most people, I think. I think most 11 or 10 year
olds are doing better than most people in the world. That is actually true,
because they don't need to know anything about what's going on. They do not.
Unlike us. And we're here to talk to you about some things that are going on,
including and not limited to Mongo Park.
I will just tell you, today's topic is Mongo Park. Okay. I think I know who Mongo Park is.
(01:10):
River Niger, maybe? Yes. Sure. Okay.
I know some things. Like, I've just heard this so many times.
I've heard Nigerians make, like, bad Mongo Park jokes. And I'm like, okay, yeah.
You know when you just infer what a situation is based on context and nothing else?
Like the name Mungo Park to me, while we were growing up, always just seemed like a funny name. Yeah.
(01:35):
But it's like his real name. Uzui Wege. Yeah, he's Scottish.
Mungo. Munga. That's weird. It's M-U-N-G-O.
And like his dad's name was Mungo Park and his son's name was also Mungo Park. Mungo Park the third.
Why would you want that name to continue on? Like if you put me through that
(01:57):
name, I'll put other people through it.
It's like NYSE. Fair enough.
Bill's character. Rumble Honey is the name of a child on TikTok.
Rumble Honey. Yes. And her brother's name is Slim Easy.
Are they white they do have like a quarter black
in them but yes primarily are they white trash white
(02:18):
no mormon white which is even i
think the dad's name is like something lucky
blue is she the girl that makes like yes bubble
gum from scratch from scratch yeah which
i genuinely love i think she is
i saw a tiktok thesis saying that i
(02:38):
think this lady is one of the greatest as comedians of like
people just don't understand for her to
use that deadpan voice and so yeah
i love her from her honestly genuinely people hate
on her comments i love it yeah i like
because she's also stoic like she doesn't ignore them she doesn't respond
she doesn't like she doesn't respond positively or negatively she
(03:00):
doesn't make her content it's like the comment section doesn't exist in her
universe and i love that okay so let's go and talk about mongol park so i can
run to arise and talk about tinubu i just pulled up a picture of him it's quite
handsome mongol yeah i thought you're talking about tinubu for a second.
(03:21):
Where is our president you know like
let me say something i just can't really keep talking
about where is our president like i've had this
conversation more than once since he's been
been elected he's been elected and he
has done a little disappearing act more than
once but you know who else did a little disappearing
(03:43):
act our last president mama dubai yeah when we know where he is which he would
just be sick in london like we just didn't see or hear from him for it was 90
days i think exactly 91 or 92 yeah that sounds like a biblical thing it was
insane i mean i But I feel like we just knew he was in London and he was sick,
but we were just like, is he alive or not?
(04:05):
Is he dying? Are we going to have another one of those situations?
We did have one of those. That's true. But okay. Let's talk about Mungo Park.
I have three facts for you, and you have to determine what is true and what is the dirty lie.
Okay. Fact one, Mongol Park discovered the River Niger.
(04:28):
Fact two, Mongol Park really, really loved black people.
Africans thought they were like whole human beings. Right.
So he... He was like, they're human just like us. That's fact two. he was not a racist.
He was not a racist man. Like the other men of his time he was like those are human beings guys.
(04:52):
And fact three Mungo Pak Mungo Pak died on the River Niger.
Geesh. Okay. Did he discover it? Did he love Africans? And did he die on the River Niger?
Where's River Niger? I really don't want people to hear you say that.
Right. Okay. Because we do know that River
(05:12):
Niger and River Benweb flow through nigeria
right and the confluence of river nigeria and
river benway where they meet do you know where that is yeah
when the meeting point like where is
it delta i don't know lokoja he's talking about delta is that i thought lokoja
(05:34):
was just a dam oh kanji is a dam are they both dams lokoja is a city in nigeria
right it is the capital city of Kogi state,
in fact. Oh, that's where Fab is from. It is.
Fab is not from Lokoja. Oh, how do you know? How do you know?
I just, first of all, know a lot of things about our friends.
(05:55):
Should I call him and ask him? I also, second of all, know a lot of things about... Nigeria.
That is true, but Kogi state's first... I'm a nice from...
I'm a nice from Lokoja. Mm-hmm.
And Fab is from a different area. He's closer to where Dinomela is from.
Which is not Luko chat. That explains a lot. They have like a thing.
(06:15):
I can't see. You can't see it, right? Like in their eyes. There's a Yoruba section.
And I think they're called the Owls. It might be a specific sub-tribe of Yoruba people. Okay.
And yeah, Fabio is like a stone thrown away from where Dino is from, which is Aito.
Yeah. I asked Dino where he was from and he said the US of A.
(06:37):
The United States of Aito. Have you tried to interview him?
I have. Okay. It's audio only. Yeah. So people can go shake their booty to that.
Wait, the facts. Wait, which one did you say was Eli? We haven't even looked
at him. I haven't decided yet. So my options are one, he discovered River Niger.
Yeah. Two, he wasn't racist. and three he
died in river niger i think he
(06:59):
died in river niger he discovered river
niger i feel like that might just be like a nigerian ism
that probably wasn't or was um he
wasn't racist what decade what century was this
the was this the 20th century or 19th this is like 1700s century 17th century
i doubt he wasn't racist i'm just gonna say he discovered river niger as a dirty
(07:25):
lie he discovered river niger as a dirty lie yeah that's just my guess okay guessy guess.
Yeah you're correct they do teach you or did teach you i don't even know if
they still teach yeah i didn't know about mongol park growing up i think in
secondary school i was taught that Mungo Park discovered the River Niger.
(07:49):
Was this geology or history? I think this is like history.
Right. I didn't do a history module in school. I feel like, I mean,
I was only in Nigerian school system for about two years. Mm-hmm.
Removed history in 2007. Okay, this is after.
I don't know. I truly don't know. I do remember it being a thing of like,
(08:10):
Manga Park discovered the River Naitra.
It was an early Nigerian curricula.
My two options were, was the Nigerian education system wrong?
Or was a white man in the 1700s not racist? Which one? It's not your heart's choice.
He wasn't racist. It's true, which is crazy.
He wasn't racist. He wasn't. so i was
(08:31):
wrong or right you were right the truth is that
he did think africans were whole human beings he did
yeah i thought he said he did
it he he oh you thought i was saying he
wasn't racist like so that him being
racist would be true yes no that's
not the way our questions work i gave a statement right
(08:52):
and i said which statement is a lie and the statement i said
was that he wasn't racist you thought i see why your brain
tricked you there but maybe i didn't have it tricked
you into winning but yeah he wasn't racist okay mongol park did not discover
the river niger and wow it's been so long since i've done this because i forgot
it was two truths not two lies oh i see what you're saying girl sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry like
(09:20):
it's been so long. Yeah. Did you miss me?
A little bit. I missed you. Bring me back. Bring me back more often.
I will bring you back as often as possible. Okay. I should, yeah.
So he was, okay, which one do you want to start with?
Should we start with his discovery or not? Yeah, discovery sounds good. Okay.
Mungo Park was a Scotsman, Scottish explorer.
(09:42):
Hi, I'm Mungo Park. That was terrible. Is that a Scottish accent?
It's a Scottish accent, lass.
He is known for his discoveries of the River Niger, but actually he's known
to be like this, maybe one of the pioneers of this new wave of European explorers, right?
Right and helping europeans map
(10:05):
out the interlands of africa because at that point of
time they were focused on the coast and they hadn't
really had people go into like the is it the hinterlands or
the internal hinterlands right go inside
inside and he's the
part of the new wave i will use the word
european explorer but i feel like the word explorer it's
(10:27):
a weird word to use because they were not just exploring
i feel like they were surveyors they were spying the way for colonialism paving
the way for colonialism they were literally like mapping and they were paid
by governments like so exploring makes it seem like they're just a young lad's
going to go discover something for fun yeah like it's uh what's that word it's.
(10:50):
Yeah it wasn't altruistic they did
it for fame they did it for pay and it's
always like mostly supported by maybe the military the
navy and like the royal houses like the government is
like spying really but we just call them
explorers because they made a scene like that and
hollywood has you know yeah they've romanticized it
(11:12):
yeah so he was part of something called the african
association and it's kind of the beginning of
and it was the association for promoting and discovery of the interior parts
of africa and it was founded in london on the 9th of june 1788 and it was a
british club that was dedicated to the exploration of western africa right Right.
(11:37):
Mungo Park wanted, he was super famous because he came down to Western Africa.
And around 1796, he explored the upper Niger River area.
And then he now wrote a very popular book called Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa.
(12:02):
Now, the thing about this book is that a lot of it is fan fiction. alright,
Like included in this book very famously is something he called the Mountains of Kong.
In which he said that there is a mountain range located in West Africa,
(12:22):
beginning near the source of the Niger River and spanning the majority of the
African continent from east to west.
So first of all, he made up a mountain range.
He made up a mountain range and it was featured in Maps of Africa.
Nice. through to like the late 1800s like
he just made this drink made up a daughter you
(12:45):
say drink made up a daughter kendrick made up a
daughter made up the rumor i fed it to kendrick
i just don't believe drink does not play chess that
nigga's playing have you not seen the video first person shooter
he does play chess oh my gosh drink is
just yawning a lot of dust and i'm just going to to
say i enjoyed i so thoroughly enjoyed
(13:06):
kendrick dissing drake especially because
he's just like it's not that deep but i don't
like you a lot of people don't like you i think you're corny i think
i've realized a lot of people do not like
that man and it's something to be said especially because there's
so many people in this life who want to be
liked so badly and it's like i don't
(13:27):
like you and that's okay i've gotten so okay
with people not liking me and i think as a child like
i don't know i would things yeah i'm
also a firstborn i'm the firstborn of many if you don't like me that's fine
it's actually fine like you can't like everybody if everybody likes me there
will be something wrong with me because i don't like everybody do you like every
(13:50):
food do you like every drink i don't like planting we don't oh why i have a
song called i don't like planting for or something.
I'll play for you one day. But yeah, you kind of like everyone.
You kind of like everyone. But yeah, so...
Mongol park created a mountain range in
africa but he also had a theory he had a theory that
the river niger and the river congo merged to
(14:11):
become the same river and like spanned
the whole of africa and that was like his theory
that he was trying to prove obviously that is not
true river niger goes into the bight of benet
and atlantic ocean whatever but it
doesn't touch the river congo so yeah
he comes he in scotland he's like
(14:32):
an apprentice to be like a medical doctor slash surgeon he
was the seventh child in a family of 13 his father's name was also mongopak
and he grew up in a place i can't pronounce like every single one so it's cell
selkirkshire Scotland at Fools Chills on the Yarrow Water near Selkirk.
(14:55):
Sounds like something from Lord of the Rings. Like what?
He grew up on a tenant farm. He went to the University of Edinburgh where he
studied medicine and botany. No, he grew up on a tenant farm.
Well, I don't know if he... Farmers were rich back then. True.
He grew up on a tenant farm that his father rented from the Duke of Bucluck.
(15:17):
Don't want to hear that word again.
I guess they were, when his dad died, he received £3,000, which in 2021 money
would be about over a quarter of a million pounds.
So I guess he was. His parents originally wanted him to be a minister in the
(15:40):
church, but he went to study medicine and botany.
And after that, he decided to be an explorer.
Flora and his first journey
to the interior of africa was in
september of 1794 he is
credited as being the first white man
(16:02):
to reach the river
niger and so that's
the whole mongol park discovered the river niger thing is
because he's the first white white person to reach the
original niger but how did he reach there he was probably
guided by some people he paid guides yeah
some guides who had been who had never been there
(16:24):
before to make sure that he was the first or
like you were that for mongrel he paid guides um particularly two in particular
are very important something that's super funny about this age of african exploration
that is going on in England is that.
(16:46):
The arabs had been here seen that done
that they had designated trade routes you
had very popular arab people
from like the arabic region who had written extensively extensively about the
hinterlands of africa about the training routes about the different empires
(17:07):
even up even tracing the fall and rise of different emperors so like the mayan
empire the early empires when they They'll rise, they'll fall.
And because of the trade relationship that you had between the Arab region and
Africa, both Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa.
(17:28):
They had very clear understanding of their diplomatic relationships, their trade routes.
Differences in languages differently. Yes. And so you even have Mohammed Ibn Said.
I can't remember the last part of his name. I know that's the first part.
I know this last part, but I think he's called the father of algebra. he also
wrote extensively about the hinterlands
(17:48):
of africa before this region like the trading systems
their hierarchies the different empires
and you also have you have
some explorers like so the closest europeans came
to this was like you did have people from southern
spain and portugal because you know those
those eras like before the portuguese decided the
(18:11):
portuguese partly decided to try and circumnavigate because
you know they were fighting each other up there
and then and you had like the spain and the portuguese already having
trade relationships with people in northern africa and they
were like where are they getting all these things from and they're like they're
getting it from sub-saharan africa but you can't really cross the desert especially
as a white man you're gonna die so they decide to circumnavigate because where
(18:35):
was all the gold coming from all the space it was from us it's particularly good,
this is sand I said the sound like a.
Have you seen dune you ever
seen dune okay because the
spice desert people i see i see
okay we had a lot of gold and other
(18:56):
natural resources which like till today they're still mining from
us so obviously it was a lot you also had
the great empires of what's that
guy mansa musa like mali was
he mali i think it's like the timbuktu to
appear anyway yeah who literally
crashed the price of gold because of how
(19:18):
much gold he gave out on his way to mecca for
hajj that's destroying economies that's
crazy man like it was really chaotic really
how much gold can you give out
to crash the world economy giving out gold
also like give out something else give out
spices and there was a lot of talk about like
(19:40):
the hausa empire i mean they'll
call hausa like busa there was so many things
but it's basically like what modern day hausa people
shared the old empires and lots of things i found interesting was just also
the nature of trade diplomacy and relationships before the slave trade like
(20:03):
anytime we talk about the slave trade i think sometimes we talk about it in terms of the.
Transatlantic the transatlantic no no not just the
transatlantic but like the effect of the transatlantic we
think about the loss of lives and stuff like that but
like i feel like we don't consider like i think it's
12 million over 12 million people were taking taken away from africa but also
(20:25):
the wars that resulted in that in like the need to capture slaves also possibly
killed more than 12 million people within like never left the shores of africa
of course and And also that need for bodies,
right, for people for capturing also destroyed.
Communities community trust and empire and
(20:47):
this probably desensitizes us the way we look at
each other in a way that probably affects us till now yes
i did a i read a study on this and
a history paper when i was in university and it talks about how and like the
theory the thesis was basically that people from coastal regions in africa have
(21:08):
much less trust than people from yes and like Like they draw the line to slavery.
It's like people who basically experience the thing more severely have,
like historically more severely, have significant, like deep distrust issues.
(21:29):
Like inherited trauma and stuff like that. Yeah, but even just look at us in Nigeria.
Like how many of us can say we trust the regular Nigerian next to us?
Like even if you don't think, we just were a very low trust society.
This really has nothing to do with trust but
it also does this morning
adesawa sent us a screenshot from her uber basically adesawa
(21:51):
ordered coffee from this place in korea and
this uber guy is bringing it and he says to her
and i quote i hope
there's breakfast waiting for me no he
said he said what did
he say exactly i'm looking for it because i
was like it's the the most bizarre message i've ever seen
(22:13):
i had to clarify with this one like okay hope you
are coming with my breakfast food question mark and
i asked this one i had to clarify because i
didn't understand what she was saying when she she just posted the screenshot
so i said there's what i said i said wait hold on you said sometimes your life
is i said is that an uber and so i said yes I said expecting food she said yes
(22:37):
and I replied your life is objectively worse than mine.
Because never in my life you
know that's famous quotes that means you
sleep there yeah this is worse than
that like this is i will maybe
i'll post it to twitter and see what people have to say because the
(22:57):
worst part about this i wish i took the whole screenshot of the
whole interaction the worst part about this is that i replied with a
question mark and he sends me a
whole bunch of emojis like what's emojis like
food i feel like the conversation is gone
oh no i hope it's there because that's
amazing oh man you can't find conversation after
(23:20):
i think oh send me a whole bunch of emojis like
yammer stew no like i just i
really was like i and i just
think this is happening because i'm in a moment but let's go back to mongol park so
yeah that's why we don't trust other african other nigerians we have a very
low trust and like then we have coups and instability and economic issues and
(23:40):
then everything's from them but we had we had significant trade routes but by
the time mongol park is coming england has decided to,
stop the slave trade.
So slave trade is ending, right? And he comes to Africa.
(24:03):
He reaches the Gambia river in June of 1795. And,
And he ascended it 200 miles to a British trading station named Pisania.
And on the 2nd of December, accompanied by two local guides,
he started for the unknown interior, unknown quote-unquote.
(24:24):
And he chose the route crossing the upper Senegal basin, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, it was a difficult journey.
He's a white guy. There's malaria.
There's heat. There's dysentery.
There's actually like coming in contact with local people who are not really
understanding the language at one point in time he was imprisoned by a chief for four months and.
(24:52):
He actually was just like what he
was imprisoned he escaped and apparently
he escaped a loon with nothing but his horse
and his pocket compass again i just don't believe this i
just don't believe this
but according to the air he escaped with nothing but
his horse and his compass and he then rides
(25:14):
and reaches the river niger you see this a very important part of this story
particularly why i don't believe it is that he only reached the river when he
escapes and loses his local guy bad boy sure main character like this is so
it's given like Like all cowboy wear stuff.
With nothing but my horse and my compass.
I came upon the banks of the famed River Niger. Anyways. Notices Indiana Jones.
(25:38):
Like what was happening here?
He reaches the River Niger. Becoming the first documented European to do so.
He followed the river downward. Took selfies.
And then after about 80 miles, he returns back.
Now it says that when he was returning back, he felt ill.
Mosquitoes and he was ill for seven months yeah anytime i see mosquitoes i've
(26:05):
been like i used to hate them so much as a kid and i see them and i'm like you
kept those motherfuckers out.
He was ill for seven months he says like
a stranger nursed him back to health oh my
god a book called nursing back to health honestly it's the best of
best westerns and then he eventually
look how shaman found her he eventually
(26:28):
goes back to pisania which is the british outpost
which like why is the name pisania anyways and then
from there he gets on a slave ship bound for charleston because he couldn't
book passage directly back to england when he was on the slave ship it says
that he had by that point in time because this has now been like two years plus.
(26:52):
He had learned the Mandinka language and he served as a doctor to the slaves
many of who died on route to it. I don't know.
I mean yeah at least he served as
a doctor according to him i mean according to the
record he served as a doctor also he wasn't qualified as a
doctor he went to no he did he goes to medical school medical school
(27:13):
edinburgh i think so like you know those days like you study
he studied medicine and then apprenticed but
also like i mean a
lot of slaves died during the passage because of have
you bro anytime i like slavery the trans
transatlantic slave trade and like the inhumanity of
(27:34):
it is so extreme it's so extreme it makes
me like want to vomit and cry on the rope sometimes
when i think about it anyway he makes it back to england and people have thought
this man was dead for years so it's like a lot of noise that he's like not only
did i make it back i reached the river niger i've seen the mountain ranges of Africa.
(27:57):
I met the locals. I learned the language.
I met this, this, and this. I had so many experiences. I've mapped it out for you.
He came up with cornrows.
He came up with cornrows and a prison tat. I'm one with the people now.
And he detailed his narrative in a book called Travels in the Interior of Africa. Wow.
(28:24):
Now, so it's been in this book, a part of his book, he talks about,
like when I say he wasn't racist, he was just definitely, like he's not like that guy.
He didn't think we were less than. Yeah, who's that guy that we're like darkness of whatever.
Do you know what I'm talking about? That very famous white explorer that came
(28:45):
out with the darkness of Africa, whatever.
Oh man, I feel like somebody who's listening to this podcast knows exactly who I'm talking about.
About and will let me know but okay
so he this is a quote from his book whatever difference
there is between the negro and european and the
conformation of the nose and the color of the skin there is
(29:05):
none in the genuine sympathies and characteristic feelings
of our common nature the person you're talking about
was it conrad henry morton standee no you
say conrad joseph conrad joseph conrad please can you find
out the name of this book for me henry morton stand where
the henry morton but joseph conrad i'm pretty sure that
came to me when you said is it hearts of darkness heart of
(29:26):
darkness yes so when was heart of 1899 it
was a novella novella okay so heart
of darkness is like this book it's
famed for you know just the barbaric ways
it describes africans and like african tribes
and you know all these like very horrible racist tropes
(29:46):
heart of darkness was a very popular book i
don't know if it was made into a movie or whatever but this even comes after joseph conrad's
writing but is this idea of not just for
conrad it comes after mungo park's writing but mungo park's writing was seen
as being more scientific than like colored like it's not like oh with their
wide noses and their back it's just very straight up like their people were
(30:10):
people another excerpt from his book.
Is that he ran into slaves and
it says that the slaves are very inquisitive and they viewed
him with looks of horror because and
they repeatedly asked if my countrymen were cannibals because
they were desirous to know what became of slaves after they crossed
the salt water i told them that they were employed
(30:32):
in cultivating the land but they would not believe me and.
One of them put his hand upon the ground and said
with great simplicity have you really got such ground
as this to set your foot upon a deeply rooted
idea that the whites purchased negroes for
the purpose of devouring them or of
selling them to others that they may be devoured thereafter naturally
(30:54):
makes slaves contemplate a
journey towards the coast with great terror no now
i definitely like it's so weird isn't so
interesting that he used the word devour because that's
what really happened that's what really happened to slaves they did devour africa
like you literally used it's so crazy that like it
was cheaper for them to work them to death
(31:17):
and replace them with a new human being than to
like keep them alive because old slaves can't do as
much work so like they literally were trying to kill
this is slavery wasn't they were devoured they were consumed just just not even
not in the way that they thought in a much worse way a slow death a very slow
(31:37):
painful death um his book became a best seller even though it did include the mountains of kong.
Between his so what was the thing yeah he wasn't a racist at least not for a
man of his time he didn't discover the river niger because,
(31:59):
was he the first white man to reach
the river niger sorry first european to
reach the river river niger yeah possibly he goes
back he becomes super famous and he
decides to have a second expedition because
he wants to find the source of the river niger but he
also wants to like prove this hysteria about river niger and
(32:21):
river congo meeting in between his first expedition and his second expedition
he marries the daughter of his like the guy who was an apprentice apprenticed
for man do you know how blown you have to be like you go they think you're dead
you come back a cowboy and you marry your boss's daughter.
That guy is blue, man. Plus he has his inheritance. And he has some prison tats and cumros.
(32:48):
He can speak the Mandinga language. I wonder how good he is.
Now that guy came back fresh to death. He married his boss's daughter.
And then I guess I didn't really know what much else to do than to go back and
explore the second time.
The second time he explored, Shah, he bemed.
He bemed. He died. right and this leads to the final truth yes where did he
(33:16):
die honestly modern day nigeria yeah but you remember you said did he die he
died on the river niger he died on the river niger,
so there's like two different versions of this that i've seen the most popular
version is that he goes back he comes back to find the mouth of the river niger
the source of the river niger i thought you were going to say he came back to
(33:38):
find the mountains of kong gone.
And he was telling his friends i swear what you just said like
not this he didn't think i like saw uluma rock i
was like it's spread across no so
it says so basically he comes back he
dies and the british government are like
how did he die so they ask this guy
(34:01):
isako who is the guy
who took into the river in the first place to go
and like investigate and find out like how he died so his
second expedition is like a long is a bigger expedition yeah
so he comes back and he is
like you know what i'm going back to find to prove my theories right that that
(34:24):
river niger meets river congo right so first of all like a lot of them were
just dying of dysentery fever probably like malaria,
there were 35 pirates two seamen a lieutenant Martin a British officer.
(34:45):
A fellow scotsman or something like anyways there's
just a whole bunch of them and they set out on this journey and quite
a few of them were like dying at some point in time
one of them goes mad one of the three european soldiers
goes mad they have their guide they have.
Three slaves the isaac who like who
was like a guide and also the previous journey he
(35:08):
gave him letters to take back to
send home and like he'll continue with
the rest of the party and the guides now the idea is
that like by this point in time like they were becoming like
kind of really paranoid and mad like they had fever and
dysentery and whatever and so one version of
the story says that as they were going down the river they would
(35:30):
just literally think everybody in another canoe
was an op and would shoot on them like they were
just like spraying guys so so okay
so one version of this story is this that there are.
A lot of like a lot of the europeans were like sick
had fever they were paranoid and angry
(35:50):
and frustrated on their journey and like they were often just
opening fire on people they were doing drive-by shooting
on keno basically on natives on natives and
that because of this behavior of mongol
park and his crew the people were yawning
each other that there's a bunch of crazy white guys
who are just killing broads up and down the river like
(36:11):
they just had flu the gist was past them
does that make sense like people were letting people know that there's some
crazy white guys on this river just killing people for no reason and so by the
time they got to a certain area in nigeria modern day nigeria i think like north
what would be North East Nigeria?
(36:34):
Yeah. That one of the like Hausa chiefs, kings, rulers, whatever.
So I was like, oh, those are those bandits that have been literally disturbing our peace.
And so before they even come near the shore, they open fire on them. Guns or arrows?
(36:54):
Arrows. Oh, nice. And they're getting marked.
Apparently, in a mongrel park
jumps in the water to avoid the arrow and dies. Like, so they all die.
The other version of this story, the version that's on Wikipedia.
But like, the thing about it is, and I'm not going to lie to you guys,
I was looking for the original source, which is Isaac Coe's account of what
(37:16):
had happened because every...
Every story quotes his accounts because he's
the one who did the investigation right but the
story on wikipedia seems to be the story that
the british sold rather than
like the story that is on the actual accounts
but i couldn't find the actual accounts and then where i did know it
(37:37):
was sourced i was just not going to pay 20 pounds
for that book i'm so sorry y'all you can't go
buy it it's called mongol park's ghost but i
was listening to a bbc podcast on it
and the guy quotes the actual thing and
he was like his account is that mongol park and his goons
were shooting up the place so they got got the version
(37:58):
on wikipedia and like the official version
from the british is that mongol park
did not pay a chief the right dues so
he got got but like he was like passing through
and he didn't pay chief dues and so then he killed them
i tend to not think that that's the
case because you know why i'm from
(38:20):
a low trust trust i don't
trust i definitely don't trust i just don't trust yeah but one
thing about it is that like i don't i don't want
to say like he was like moronic because he was
shooting up the place but that does sound moronic but again like
i don't know maybe this guy had malaria in his brain what can you
(38:40):
say a lot of these guys would lose their minds
on this journey the book mongol park.
Ghost and the podcast if you listen to bbc i.
Think it's history extra i listened to a few podcasts on
this but the the guy basically talks about
how they even had ramifications for later expeditions like mongol park like
(39:03):
made people think that these guys coming down are crazy so like they came in
with like a violent temperament yeah so like they expected everybody else to
come in with a violent temperament.
The book mongol parks goes is talks a bit about mongol
park but it's mostly about the expeditions that come after including like
one expedition to see if river niger actually met
(39:26):
river congo and what's their business trade right
like bro their business is exactly what they're doing now
like extraction of resources right
it's just about extraction of resources like you
one thing they have been is consistent and
i like how they always just historically framed it
as curiosity yeah or like fun or
(39:48):
good for you no no no no no it's extraction
of resources and i think this industrialized extraction
of resources even down to what we're seeing now with sudan
with congo the drc even with northern
nigeria with even that you have chinese people being
arrested in quara states for illegal
mining in nigeria today we must think about the extraction
(40:11):
of resources it's literally weakening environment our
people our economy our psyche
and we get nothing back in
return bro not even bah like there's no it's another it's neo-colonialism it's
neo-slavery it's actually insane like these people are even opening stores and
(40:31):
refusing to let Nigerians enter like it's actually that story was a bit funny
because I looked into it and I just stopped because.
I saw the video of people trying to enter did
you see that i didn't but i think it's on
consulate grounds it wasn't consulate no or
it's on it's it's part of the chinese chamber of commerce
(40:52):
so maybe you're not allowed you're not allowed you definitely cannot
be allowed to stop the germs from entering anywhere but you can
charge in un no okay so
the video i saw they're not letting the germs it was true no
so basically some people some abuja people had heard about it
so they were like there's no way and then they went there and they
talked to the security and security's like oh yeah it's a
(41:13):
rule and he'd lose his job and he was very calm he wasn't even trying to fight
them he was just like yeah it's just what he was told like he's not allowed
to let Nigerians enter there it's really insane yeah and obviously like there's
no there's no way to there's no process of verifying where you're from or your intentions,
it's just if you don't look Asian you can't enter dig it.
(41:37):
So i think that in itself is insanely problematic
it's beyond problematic it's also illegal
it's illegal it's not country i mean
there's a school there's like an indian school somewhere legal indian language
school that said that nigerian students are not allowed i mean we're we're dealing
with a lot but yes mongol park did not discover the river niger if i've told
(41:58):
you anything today so he did not discover the river niger which seems obvious
the river niger was not only in existence. There were.
Trade routes they were trading posts they were
empires kingdoms languages people
and like international too like
the very important thing for this my most
(42:21):
important takeaway from reading all these things is that
we had international relations diplomatic relations
with other nations i mean we weren't a country then
so the different trading places were different nations
to themselves anyways but you also had like
people coming in from the middle east
and northern africa like we had like the world was connected even the orient
(42:46):
especially the orient towards east africa like we were all connected with each
other the whites were just nothing they know yeah and also there's crazy for
them to be centered in our history it's like Like, you guys would have been part of world history.
Yeah, and there's probably a good reason why. Like, I feel like a lot of other
foreign bodies would come in and they would find ways to extract value.
(43:12):
But the European version of that was so rooted in...
Exploitation. It just destroyed the entire continent. Like, we've been trading
with Arabs for centuries.
I mean, they have their own... Yeah, they have their own new stuff.
But still, you're right. Right. The level of like... It was just industrialized. Yeah.
I'm about to go and talk on Arise right now and interview, I think,
(43:36):
the German Chancellor. He wants to talk about climate change.
Sounds fun. It's like, we're suffering more. You are doing more.
I don't like... Germany is like a massive... You know, they produce a lot of cars.
And those factories are in Western slash Eastern Europe.
Although they started to move some of them to China but yeah good luck with
(43:59):
that enjoy another thing is I was curious,
did Mungu Pak's son learn from his father's mistakes and just stay home you
know become a doctor no I think he died in India or something he said he wanted
to go and explore okay well,
that's another Mungu Pak I don't think he had a child I think that's the end
(44:21):
of the Mungus well thank you guys for working with us for listening to us for learning with us.
Remember, you can, if you have the confidence of a mediocre white man,
you can do anything you want to life.
You can go and discover the great world of check dancing more.
You can discover the eiffel tower bro
(44:41):
bro i'm about to discover minnesota okay
all right well and i'll put my name in the annals
of history okay that's not true annals is
right yes i don't know the second
option is just wow they just said like that
happy whatever day
this comes out happy week have a good life we
(45:03):
love you guys we miss you guys we're trying our absolute best
i think yeah cool do you think we can try harder
i think you need to open a fund so you
can buy books buy resources and just keep the podcast running
because people really enjoy it and i think they want to support in
any way in any way so just open like a fund look if
you have like a spare 200k 200 naira anything
(45:24):
in between you know yeah because i actually do
buy yeah i buy books to come
and talk to you guys about certain things so that you don't
have to condense a large amount of information yeah but forex man we don't want
to use wikipedia because they miss and they are a lot they do you know that's
one of my agendas we should call this we can rename this podcast wikipedia missions
(45:48):
bye guys all right bye-bye see you later.
Music.
Hello and welcome to the Dirty Lie podcast, a podcast about facts,
figures, and weird things from the past.
I'm your host Adeswa and I'm here with... Hi, I'm TMT.
Also, the video we just took, I just added you on IG so you can repost it or...
I don't know, what do you do on IG?
You repost. You repost it on your story, so... because that's what people do.
(00:22):
How are you guys doing? Welcome to the pod. Welcome to the podcast.
Me and my bestie are here to talk to you. Miss Westy. Miss Westy.
Don't try to test me. It's gonna get messy. It's gonna get messy.
Just bless me. Oh man, I think even Northwest is doing better than Drake right now.
(00:46):
Yeah, she's doing better than most people, I think. I think most 11 or 10 year
olds are doing better than most people in the world. That is actually true,
because they don't need to know anything about what's going on. They do not.
Unlike us. And we're here to talk to you about some things that are going on,
including and not limited to Mongo Park.
I will just tell you, today's topic is Mongo Park. Okay. I think I know who Mongo Park is.
(01:10):
River Niger, maybe? Yes. Sure. Okay.
I know some things. Like, I've just heard this so many times.
I've heard Nigerians make, like, bad Mongo Park jokes. And I'm like, okay, yeah.
You know when you just infer what a situation is based on context and nothing else?
Like the name Mungo Park to me, while we were growing up, always just seemed like a funny name. Yeah.
(01:35):
But it's like his real name. Uzui Wege. Yeah, he's Scottish.
Mungo. Munga. That's weird. It's M-U-N-G-O.
And like his dad's name was Mungo Park and his son's name was also Mungo Park. Mungo Park the third.
Why would you want that name to continue on? Like if you put me through that
(01:57):
name, I'll put other people through it.
It's like NYSE. Fair enough.
Bill's character. Rumble Honey is the name of a child on TikTok.
Rumble Honey. Yes. And her brother's name is Slim Easy.
Are they white they do have like a quarter black
in them but yes primarily are they white trash white
(02:18):
no mormon white which is even i
think the dad's name is like something lucky
blue is she the girl that makes like yes bubble
gum from scratch from scratch yeah which
i genuinely love i think she is
i saw a tiktok thesis saying that i
(02:38):
think this lady is one of the greatest as comedians of like
people just don't understand for her to
use that deadpan voice and so yeah
i love her from her honestly genuinely people hate
on her comments i love it yeah i like
because she's also stoic like she doesn't ignore them she doesn't respond
she doesn't like she doesn't respond positively or negatively she
(03:00):
doesn't make her content it's like the comment section doesn't exist in her
universe and i love that okay so let's go and talk about mongol park so i can
run to arise and talk about tinubu i just pulled up a picture of him it's quite
handsome mongol yeah i thought you're talking about tinubu for a second.
(03:21):
Where is our president you know like
let me say something i just can't really keep talking
about where is our president like i've had this
conversation more than once since he's been
been elected he's been elected and he
has done a little disappearing act more than
once but you know who else did a little disappearing
(03:43):
act our last president mama dubai yeah when we know where he is which he would
just be sick in london like we just didn't see or hear from him for it was 90
days i think exactly 91 or 92 yeah that sounds like a biblical thing it was
insane i mean i But I feel like we just knew he was in London and he was sick,
but we were just like, is he alive or not?
(04:05):
Is he dying? Are we going to have another one of those situations?
We did have one of those. That's true. But okay. Let's talk about Mungo Park.
I have three facts for you, and you have to determine what is true and what is the dirty lie.
Okay. Fact one, Mongol Park discovered the River Niger.
(04:28):
Fact two, Mongol Park really, really loved black people.
Africans thought they were like whole human beings. Right.
So he... He was like, they're human just like us. That's fact two. he was not a racist.
He was not a racist man. Like the other men of his time he was like those are human beings guys.
(04:52):
And fact three Mungo Pak Mungo Pak died on the River Niger.
Geesh. Okay. Did he discover it? Did he love Africans? And did he die on the River Niger?
Where's River Niger? I really don't want people to hear you say that.
Right. Okay. Because we do know that River
(05:12):
Niger and River Benweb flow through nigeria
right and the confluence of river nigeria and
river benway where they meet do you know where that is yeah
when the meeting point like where is
it delta i don't know lokoja he's talking about delta is that i thought lokoja
(05:34):
was just a dam oh kanji is a dam are they both dams lokoja is a city in nigeria
right it is the capital city of Kogi state,
in fact. Oh, that's where Fab is from. It is.
Fab is not from Lokoja. Oh, how do you know? How do you know?
I just, first of all, know a lot of things about our friends.
(05:55):
Should I call him and ask him? I also, second of all, know a lot of things about... Nigeria.
That is true, but Kogi state's first... I'm a nice from...
I'm a nice from Lokoja. Mm-hmm.
And Fab is from a different area. He's closer to where Dinomela is from.
Which is not Luko chat. That explains a lot. They have like a thing.
(06:15):
I can't see. You can't see it, right? Like in their eyes. There's a Yoruba section.
And I think they're called the Owls. It might be a specific sub-tribe of Yoruba people. Okay.
And yeah, Fabio is like a stone thrown away from where Dino is from, which is Aito.
Yeah. I asked Dino where he was from and he said the US of A.
(06:37):
The United States of Aito. Have you tried to interview him?
I have. Okay. It's audio only. Yeah. So people can go shake their booty to that.
Wait, the facts. Wait, which one did you say was Eli? We haven't even looked
at him. I haven't decided yet. So my options are one, he discovered River Niger.
Yeah. Two, he wasn't racist. and three he
died in river niger i think he
(06:59):
died in river niger he discovered river
niger i feel like that might just be like a nigerian ism
that probably wasn't or was um he
wasn't racist what decade what century was this
the was this the 20th century or 19th this is like 1700s century 17th century
i doubt he wasn't racist i'm just gonna say he discovered river niger as a dirty
(07:25):
lie he discovered river niger as a dirty lie yeah that's just my guess okay guessy guess.
Yeah you're correct they do teach you or did teach you i don't even know if
they still teach yeah i didn't know about mongol park growing up i think in
secondary school i was taught that Mungo Park discovered the River Niger.
(07:49):
Was this geology or history? I think this is like history.
Right. I didn't do a history module in school. I feel like, I mean,
I was only in Nigerian school system for about two years. Mm-hmm.
Removed history in 2007. Okay, this is after.
I don't know. I truly don't know. I do remember it being a thing of like,
(08:10):
Manga Park discovered the River Naitra.
It was an early Nigerian curricula.
My two options were, was the Nigerian education system wrong?
Or was a white man in the 1700s not racist? Which one? It's not your heart's choice.
He wasn't racist. It's true, which is crazy.
He wasn't racist. He wasn't. so i was
(08:31):
wrong or right you were right the truth is that
he did think africans were whole human beings he did
yeah i thought he said he did
it he he oh you thought i was saying he
wasn't racist like so that him being
racist would be true yes no that's
not the way our questions work i gave a statement right
(08:52):
and i said which statement is a lie and the statement i said
was that he wasn't racist you thought i see why your brain
tricked you there but maybe i didn't have it tricked
you into winning but yeah he wasn't racist okay mongol park did not discover
the river niger and wow it's been so long since i've done this because i forgot
it was two truths not two lies oh i see what you're saying girl sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry like
(09:20):
it's been so long. Yeah. Did you miss me?
A little bit. I missed you. Bring me back. Bring me back more often.
I will bring you back as often as possible. Okay. I should, yeah.
So he was, okay, which one do you want to start with?
Should we start with his discovery or not? Yeah, discovery sounds good. Okay.
Mungo Park was a Scotsman, Scottish explorer.
(09:42):
Hi, I'm Mungo Park. That was terrible. Is that a Scottish accent?
It's a Scottish accent, lass.
He is known for his discoveries of the River Niger, but actually he's known
to be like this, maybe one of the pioneers of this new wave of European explorers, right?
Right and helping europeans map
(10:05):
out the interlands of africa because at that point of
time they were focused on the coast and they hadn't
really had people go into like the is it the hinterlands or
the internal hinterlands right go inside
inside and he's the
part of the new wave i will use the word
european explorer but i feel like the word explorer it's
(10:27):
a weird word to use because they were not just exploring
i feel like they were surveyors they were spying the way for colonialism paving
the way for colonialism they were literally like mapping and they were paid
by governments like so exploring makes it seem like they're just a young lad's
going to go discover something for fun yeah like it's uh what's that word it's.
(10:50):
Yeah it wasn't altruistic they did
it for fame they did it for pay and it's
always like mostly supported by maybe the military the
navy and like the royal houses like the government is
like spying really but we just call them
explorers because they made a scene like that and
hollywood has you know yeah they've romanticized it
(11:12):
yeah so he was part of something called the african
association and it's kind of the beginning of
and it was the association for promoting and discovery of the interior parts
of africa and it was founded in london on the 9th of june 1788 and it was a
british club that was dedicated to the exploration of western africa right Right.
(11:37):
Mungo Park wanted, he was super famous because he came down to Western Africa.
And around 1796, he explored the upper Niger River area.
And then he now wrote a very popular book called Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa.
(12:02):
Now, the thing about this book is that a lot of it is fan fiction. alright,
Like included in this book very famously is something he called the Mountains of Kong.
In which he said that there is a mountain range located in West Africa,
(12:22):
beginning near the source of the Niger River and spanning the majority of the
African continent from east to west.
So first of all, he made up a mountain range.
He made up a mountain range and it was featured in Maps of Africa.
Nice. through to like the late 1800s like
he just made this drink made up a daughter you
(12:45):
say drink made up a daughter kendrick made up a
daughter made up the rumor i fed it to kendrick
i just don't believe drink does not play chess that
nigga's playing have you not seen the video first person shooter
he does play chess oh my gosh drink is
just yawning a lot of dust and i'm just going to to
say i enjoyed i so thoroughly enjoyed
(13:06):
kendrick dissing drake especially because
he's just like it's not that deep but i don't
like you a lot of people don't like you i think you're corny i think
i've realized a lot of people do not like
that man and it's something to be said especially because there's
so many people in this life who want to be
liked so badly and it's like i don't
(13:27):
like you and that's okay i've gotten so okay
with people not liking me and i think as a child like
i don't know i would things yeah i'm
also a firstborn i'm the firstborn of many if you don't like me that's fine
it's actually fine like you can't like everybody if everybody likes me there
will be something wrong with me because i don't like everybody do you like every
(13:50):
food do you like every drink i don't like planting we don't oh why i have a
song called i don't like planting for or something.
I'll play for you one day. But yeah, you kind of like everyone.
You kind of like everyone. But yeah, so...
Mongol park created a mountain range in
africa but he also had a theory he had a theory that
the river niger and the river congo merged to
(14:11):
become the same river and like spanned
the whole of africa and that was like his theory
that he was trying to prove obviously that is not
true river niger goes into the bight of benet
and atlantic ocean whatever but it
doesn't touch the river congo so yeah
he comes he in scotland he's like
(14:32):
an apprentice to be like a medical doctor slash surgeon he
was the seventh child in a family of 13 his father's name was also mongopak
and he grew up in a place i can't pronounce like every single one so it's cell
selkirkshire Scotland at Fools Chills on the Yarrow Water near Selkirk.
(14:55):
Sounds like something from Lord of the Rings. Like what?
He grew up on a tenant farm. He went to the University of Edinburgh where he
studied medicine and botany. No, he grew up on a tenant farm.
Well, I don't know if he... Farmers were rich back then. True.
He grew up on a tenant farm that his father rented from the Duke of Bucluck.
(15:17):
Don't want to hear that word again.
I guess they were, when his dad died, he received £3,000, which in 2021 money
would be about over a quarter of a million pounds.
So I guess he was. His parents originally wanted him to be a minister in the
(15:40):
church, but he went to study medicine and botany.
And after that, he decided to be an explorer.
Flora and his first journey
to the interior of africa was in
september of 1794 he is
credited as being the first white man
(16:02):
to reach the river
niger and so that's
the whole mongol park discovered the river niger thing is
because he's the first white white person to reach the
original niger but how did he reach there he was probably
guided by some people he paid guides yeah
some guides who had been who had never been there
(16:24):
before to make sure that he was the first or
like you were that for mongrel he paid guides um particularly two in particular
are very important something that's super funny about this age of african exploration
that is going on in England is that.
(16:46):
The arabs had been here seen that done
that they had designated trade routes you
had very popular arab people
from like the arabic region who had written extensively extensively about the
hinterlands of africa about the training routes about the different empires
(17:07):
even up even tracing the fall and rise of different emperors so like the mayan
empire the early empires when they They'll rise, they'll fall.
And because of the trade relationship that you had between the Arab region and
Africa, both Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa.
(17:28):
They had very clear understanding of their diplomatic relationships, their trade routes.
Differences in languages differently. Yes. And so you even have Mohammed Ibn Said.
I can't remember the last part of his name. I know that's the first part.
I know this last part, but I think he's called the father of algebra. he also
wrote extensively about the hinterlands
(17:48):
of africa before this region like the trading systems
their hierarchies the different empires
and you also have you have
some explorers like so the closest europeans came
to this was like you did have people from southern
spain and portugal because you know those
those eras like before the portuguese decided the
(18:11):
portuguese partly decided to try and circumnavigate because
you know they were fighting each other up there
and then and you had like the spain and the portuguese already having
trade relationships with people in northern africa and they
were like where are they getting all these things from and they're like they're
getting it from sub-saharan africa but you can't really cross the desert especially
as a white man you're gonna die so they decide to circumnavigate because where
(18:35):
was all the gold coming from all the space it was from us it's particularly good,
this is sand I said the sound like a.
Have you seen dune you ever
seen dune okay because the
spice desert people i see i see
okay we had a lot of gold and other
(18:56):
natural resources which like till today they're still mining from
us so obviously it was a lot you also had
the great empires of what's that
guy mansa musa like mali was
he mali i think it's like the timbuktu to
appear anyway yeah who literally
crashed the price of gold because of how
(19:18):
much gold he gave out on his way to mecca for
hajj that's destroying economies that's
crazy man like it was really chaotic really
how much gold can you give out
to crash the world economy giving out gold
also like give out something else give out
spices and there was a lot of talk about like
(19:40):
the hausa empire i mean they'll
call hausa like busa there was so many things
but it's basically like what modern day hausa people
shared the old empires and lots of things i found interesting was just also
the nature of trade diplomacy and relationships before the slave trade like
(20:03):
anytime we talk about the slave trade i think sometimes we talk about it in terms of the.
Transatlantic the transatlantic no no not just the
transatlantic but like the effect of the transatlantic we
think about the loss of lives and stuff like that but
like i feel like we don't consider like i think it's
12 million over 12 million people were taking taken away from africa but also
(20:25):
the wars that resulted in that in like the need to capture slaves also possibly
killed more than 12 million people within like never left the shores of africa
of course and And also that need for bodies,
right, for people for capturing also destroyed.
Communities community trust and empire and
(20:47):
this probably desensitizes us the way we look at
each other in a way that probably affects us till now yes
i did a i read a study on this and
a history paper when i was in university and it talks about how and like the
theory the thesis was basically that people from coastal regions in africa have
(21:08):
much less trust than people from yes and like Like they draw the line to slavery.
It's like people who basically experience the thing more severely have,
like historically more severely, have significant, like deep distrust issues.
(21:29):
Like inherited trauma and stuff like that. Yeah, but even just look at us in Nigeria.
Like how many of us can say we trust the regular Nigerian next to us?
Like even if you don't think, we just were a very low trust society.
This really has nothing to do with trust but
it also does this morning
adesawa sent us a screenshot from her uber basically adesawa
(21:51):
ordered coffee from this place in korea and
this uber guy is bringing it and he says to her
and i quote i hope
there's breakfast waiting for me no he
said he said what did
he say exactly i'm looking for it because i
was like it's the the most bizarre message i've ever seen
(22:13):
i had to clarify with this one like okay hope you
are coming with my breakfast food question mark and
i asked this one i had to clarify because i
didn't understand what she was saying when she she just posted the screenshot
so i said there's what i said i said wait hold on you said sometimes your life
is i said is that an uber and so i said yes I said expecting food she said yes
(22:37):
and I replied your life is objectively worse than mine.
Because never in my life you
know that's famous quotes that means you
sleep there yeah this is worse than
that like this is i will maybe
i'll post it to twitter and see what people have to say because the
(22:57):
worst part about this i wish i took the whole screenshot of the
whole interaction the worst part about this is that i replied with a
question mark and he sends me a
whole bunch of emojis like what's emojis like
food i feel like the conversation is gone
oh no i hope it's there because that's
amazing oh man you can't find conversation after
(23:20):
i think oh send me a whole bunch of emojis like
yammer stew no like i just i
really was like i and i just
think this is happening because i'm in a moment but let's go back to mongol park so
yeah that's why we don't trust other african other nigerians we have a very
low trust and like then we have coups and instability and economic issues and
(23:40):
then everything's from them but we had we had significant trade routes but by
the time mongol park is coming england has decided to,
stop the slave trade.
So slave trade is ending, right? And he comes to Africa.
(24:03):
He reaches the Gambia river in June of 1795. And,
And he ascended it 200 miles to a British trading station named Pisania.
And on the 2nd of December, accompanied by two local guides,
he started for the unknown interior, unknown quote-unquote.
(24:24):
And he chose the route crossing the upper Senegal basin, blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, it was a difficult journey.
He's a white guy. There's malaria.
There's heat. There's dysentery.
There's actually like coming in contact with local people who are not really
understanding the language at one point in time he was imprisoned by a chief for four months and.
(24:52):
He actually was just like what he
was imprisoned he escaped and apparently
he escaped a loon with nothing but his horse
and his pocket compass again i just don't believe this i
just don't believe this
but according to the air he escaped with nothing but
his horse and his compass and he then rides
(25:14):
and reaches the river niger you see this a very important part of this story
particularly why i don't believe it is that he only reached the river when he
escapes and loses his local guy bad boy sure main character like this is so
it's given like Like all cowboy wear stuff.
With nothing but my horse and my compass.
I came upon the banks of the famed River Niger. Anyways. Notices Indiana Jones.
(25:38):
Like what was happening here?
He reaches the River Niger. Becoming the first documented European to do so.
He followed the river downward. Took selfies.
And then after about 80 miles, he returns back.
Now it says that when he was returning back, he felt ill.
Mosquitoes and he was ill for seven months yeah anytime i see mosquitoes i've
(26:05):
been like i used to hate them so much as a kid and i see them and i'm like you
kept those motherfuckers out.
He was ill for seven months he says like
a stranger nursed him back to health oh my
god a book called nursing back to health honestly it's the best of
best westerns and then he eventually
look how shaman found her he eventually
(26:28):
goes back to pisania which is the british outpost
which like why is the name pisania anyways and then
from there he gets on a slave ship bound for charleston because he couldn't
book passage directly back to england when he was on the slave ship it says
that he had by that point in time because this has now been like two years plus.
(26:52):
He had learned the Mandinka language and he served as a doctor to the slaves
many of who died on route to it. I don't know.
I mean yeah at least he served as
a doctor according to him i mean according to the
record he served as a doctor also he wasn't qualified as a
doctor he went to no he did he goes to medical school medical school
(27:13):
edinburgh i think so like you know those days like you study
he studied medicine and then apprenticed but
also like i mean a
lot of slaves died during the passage because of have
you bro anytime i like slavery the trans
transatlantic slave trade and like the inhumanity of
(27:34):
it is so extreme it's so extreme it makes
me like want to vomit and cry on the rope sometimes
when i think about it anyway he makes it back to england and people have thought
this man was dead for years so it's like a lot of noise that he's like not only
did i make it back i reached the river niger i've seen the mountain ranges of Africa.
(27:57):
I met the locals. I learned the language.
I met this, this, and this. I had so many experiences. I've mapped it out for you.
He came up with cornrows.
He came up with cornrows and a prison tat. I'm one with the people now.
And he detailed his narrative in a book called Travels in the Interior of Africa. Wow.
(28:24):
Now, so it's been in this book, a part of his book, he talks about,
like when I say he wasn't racist, he was just definitely, like he's not like that guy.
He didn't think we were less than. Yeah, who's that guy that we're like darkness of whatever.
Do you know what I'm talking about? That very famous white explorer that came
(28:45):
out with the darkness of Africa, whatever.
Oh man, I feel like somebody who's listening to this podcast knows exactly who I'm talking about.
About and will let me know but okay
so he this is a quote from his book whatever difference
there is between the negro and european and the
conformation of the nose and the color of the skin there is
(29:05):
none in the genuine sympathies and characteristic feelings
of our common nature the person you're talking about
was it conrad henry morton standee no you
say conrad joseph conrad joseph conrad please can you find
out the name of this book for me henry morton stand where
the henry morton but joseph conrad i'm pretty sure that
came to me when you said is it hearts of darkness heart of
(29:26):
darkness yes so when was heart of 1899 it
was a novella novella okay so heart
of darkness is like this book it's
famed for you know just the barbaric ways
it describes africans and like african tribes
and you know all these like very horrible racist tropes
(29:46):
heart of darkness was a very popular book i
don't know if it was made into a movie or whatever but this even comes after joseph conrad's
writing but is this idea of not just for
conrad it comes after mungo park's writing but mungo park's writing was seen
as being more scientific than like colored like it's not like oh with their
wide noses and their back it's just very straight up like their people were
(30:10):
people another excerpt from his book.
Is that he ran into slaves and
it says that the slaves are very inquisitive and they viewed
him with looks of horror because and
they repeatedly asked if my countrymen were cannibals because
they were desirous to know what became of slaves after they crossed
the salt water i told them that they were employed
(30:32):
in cultivating the land but they would not believe me and.
One of them put his hand upon the ground and said
with great simplicity have you really got such ground
as this to set your foot upon a deeply rooted
idea that the whites purchased negroes for
the purpose of devouring them or of
selling them to others that they may be devoured thereafter naturally
(30:54):
makes slaves contemplate a
journey towards the coast with great terror no now
i definitely like it's so weird isn't so
interesting that he used the word devour because that's
what really happened that's what really happened to slaves they did devour africa
like you literally used it's so crazy that like it
was cheaper for them to work them to death
(31:17):
and replace them with a new human being than to
like keep them alive because old slaves can't do as
much work so like they literally were trying to kill
this is slavery wasn't they were devoured they were consumed just just not even
not in the way that they thought in a much worse way a slow death a very slow
(31:37):
painful death um his book became a best seller even though it did include the mountains of kong.
Between his so what was the thing yeah he wasn't a racist at least not for a
man of his time he didn't discover the river niger because,
(31:59):
was he the first white man to reach
the river niger sorry first european to
reach the river river niger yeah possibly he goes
back he becomes super famous and he
decides to have a second expedition because
he wants to find the source of the river niger but he
also wants to like prove this hysteria about river niger and
(32:21):
river congo meeting in between his first expedition and his second expedition
he marries the daughter of his like the guy who was an apprentice apprenticed
for man do you know how blown you have to be like you go they think you're dead
you come back a cowboy and you marry your boss's daughter.
That guy is blue, man. Plus he has his inheritance. And he has some prison tats and cumros.
(32:48):
He can speak the Mandinga language. I wonder how good he is.
Now that guy came back fresh to death. He married his boss's daughter.
And then I guess I didn't really know what much else to do than to go back and
explore the second time.
The second time he explored, Shah, he bemed.
He bemed. He died. right and this leads to the final truth yes where did he
(33:16):
die honestly modern day nigeria yeah but you remember you said did he die he
died on the river niger he died on the river niger,
so there's like two different versions of this that i've seen the most popular
version is that he goes back he comes back to find the mouth of the river niger
the source of the river niger i thought you were going to say he came back to
(33:38):
find the mountains of kong gone.
And he was telling his friends i swear what you just said like
not this he didn't think i like saw uluma rock i
was like it's spread across no so
it says so basically he comes back he
dies and the british government are like
how did he die so they ask this guy
(34:01):
isako who is the guy
who took into the river in the first place to go
and like investigate and find out like how he died so his
second expedition is like a long is a bigger expedition yeah
so he comes back and he is
like you know what i'm going back to find to prove my theories right that that
(34:24):
river niger meets river congo right so first of all like a lot of them were
just dying of dysentery fever probably like malaria,
there were 35 pirates two seamen a lieutenant Martin a British officer.
(34:45):
A fellow scotsman or something like anyways there's
just a whole bunch of them and they set out on this journey and quite
a few of them were like dying at some point in time
one of them goes mad one of the three european soldiers
goes mad they have their guide they have.
Three slaves the isaac who like who
was like a guide and also the previous journey he
(35:08):
gave him letters to take back to
send home and like he'll continue with
the rest of the party and the guides now the idea is
that like by this point in time like they were becoming like
kind of really paranoid and mad like they had fever and
dysentery and whatever and so one version of
the story says that as they were going down the river they would
(35:30):
just literally think everybody in another canoe
was an op and would shoot on them like they were
just like spraying guys so so okay
so one version of this story is this that there are.
A lot of like a lot of the europeans were like sick
had fever they were paranoid and angry
(35:50):
and frustrated on their journey and like they were often just
opening fire on people they were doing drive-by shooting
on keno basically on natives on natives and
that because of this behavior of mongol
park and his crew the people were yawning
each other that there's a bunch of crazy white guys
who are just killing broads up and down the river like
(36:11):
they just had flu the gist was past them
does that make sense like people were letting people know that there's some
crazy white guys on this river just killing people for no reason and so by the
time they got to a certain area in nigeria modern day nigeria i think like north
what would be North East Nigeria?
(36:34):
Yeah. That one of the like Hausa chiefs, kings, rulers, whatever.
So I was like, oh, those are those bandits that have been literally disturbing our peace.
And so before they even come near the shore, they open fire on them. Guns or arrows?
(36:54):
Arrows. Oh, nice. And they're getting marked.
Apparently, in a mongrel park
jumps in the water to avoid the arrow and dies. Like, so they all die.
The other version of this story, the version that's on Wikipedia.
But like, the thing about it is, and I'm not going to lie to you guys,
I was looking for the original source, which is Isaac Coe's account of what
(37:16):
had happened because every...
Every story quotes his accounts because he's
the one who did the investigation right but the
story on wikipedia seems to be the story that
the british sold rather than
like the story that is on the actual accounts
but i couldn't find the actual accounts and then where i did know it
(37:37):
was sourced i was just not going to pay 20 pounds
for that book i'm so sorry y'all you can't go
buy it it's called mongol park's ghost but i
was listening to a bbc podcast on it
and the guy quotes the actual thing and
he was like his account is that mongol park and his goons
were shooting up the place so they got got the version
(37:58):
on wikipedia and like the official version
from the british is that mongol park
did not pay a chief the right dues so
he got got but like he was like passing through
and he didn't pay chief dues and so then he killed them
i tend to not think that that's the
case because you know why i'm from
(38:20):
a low trust trust i don't
trust i definitely don't trust i just don't trust yeah but one
thing about it is that like i don't i don't want
to say like he was like moronic because he was
shooting up the place but that does sound moronic but again like
i don't know maybe this guy had malaria in his brain what can you
(38:40):
say a lot of these guys would lose their minds
on this journey the book mongol park.
Ghost and the podcast if you listen to bbc i.
Think it's history extra i listened to a few podcasts on
this but the the guy basically talks about
how they even had ramifications for later expeditions like mongol park like
(39:03):
made people think that these guys coming down are crazy so like they came in
with like a violent temperament yeah so like they expected everybody else to
come in with a violent temperament.
The book mongol parks goes is talks a bit about mongol
park but it's mostly about the expeditions that come after including like
one expedition to see if river niger actually met
(39:26):
river congo and what's their business trade right
like bro their business is exactly what they're doing now
like extraction of resources right
it's just about extraction of resources like you
one thing they have been is consistent and
i like how they always just historically framed it
as curiosity yeah or like fun or
(39:48):
good for you no no no no no it's extraction
of resources and i think this industrialized extraction
of resources even down to what we're seeing now with sudan
with congo the drc even with northern
nigeria with even that you have chinese people being
arrested in quara states for illegal
mining in nigeria today we must think about the extraction
(40:11):
of resources it's literally weakening environment our
people our economy our psyche
and we get nothing back in
return bro not even bah like there's no it's another it's neo-colonialism it's
neo-slavery it's actually insane like these people are even opening stores and
(40:31):
refusing to let Nigerians enter like it's actually that story was a bit funny
because I looked into it and I just stopped because.
I saw the video of people trying to enter did
you see that i didn't but i think it's on
consulate grounds it wasn't consulate no or
it's on it's it's part of the chinese chamber of commerce
(40:52):
so maybe you're not allowed you're not allowed you definitely cannot
be allowed to stop the germs from entering anywhere but you can
charge in un no okay so
the video i saw they're not letting the germs it was true no
so basically some people some abuja people had heard about it
so they were like there's no way and then they went there and they
talked to the security and security's like oh yeah it's a
(41:13):
rule and he'd lose his job and he was very calm he wasn't even trying to fight
them he was just like yeah it's just what he was told like he's not allowed
to let Nigerians enter there it's really insane yeah and obviously like there's
no there's no way to there's no process of verifying where you're from or your intentions,
it's just if you don't look Asian you can't enter dig it.
(41:37):
So i think that in itself is insanely problematic
it's beyond problematic it's also illegal
it's illegal it's not country i mean
there's a school there's like an indian school somewhere legal indian language
school that said that nigerian students are not allowed i mean we're we're dealing
with a lot but yes mongol park did not discover the river niger if i've told
(41:58):
you anything today so he did not discover the river niger which seems obvious
the river niger was not only in existence. There were.
Trade routes they were trading posts they were
empires kingdoms languages people
and like international too like
the very important thing for this my most
(42:21):
important takeaway from reading all these things is that
we had international relations diplomatic relations
with other nations i mean we weren't a country then
so the different trading places were different nations
to themselves anyways but you also had like
people coming in from the middle east
and northern africa like we had like the world was connected even the orient
(42:46):
especially the orient towards east africa like we were all connected with each
other the whites were just nothing they know yeah and also there's crazy for
them to be centered in our history it's like Like, you guys would have been part of world history.
Yeah, and there's probably a good reason why. Like, I feel like a lot of other
foreign bodies would come in and they would find ways to extract value.
(43:12):
But the European version of that was so rooted in...
Exploitation. It just destroyed the entire continent. Like, we've been trading
with Arabs for centuries.
I mean, they have their own... Yeah, they have their own new stuff.
But still, you're right. Right. The level of like... It was just industrialized. Yeah.
I'm about to go and talk on Arise right now and interview, I think,
(43:36):
the German Chancellor. He wants to talk about climate change.
Sounds fun. It's like, we're suffering more. You are doing more.
I don't like... Germany is like a massive... You know, they produce a lot of cars.
And those factories are in Western slash Eastern Europe.
Although they started to move some of them to China but yeah good luck with
(43:59):
that enjoy another thing is I was curious,
did Mungu Pak's son learn from his father's mistakes and just stay home you
know become a doctor no I think he died in India or something he said he wanted
to go and explore okay well,
that's another Mungu Pak I don't think he had a child I think that's the end
(44:21):
of the Mungus well thank you guys for working with us for listening to us for learning with us.
Remember, you can, if you have the confidence of a mediocre white man,
you can do anything you want to life.
You can go and discover the great world of check dancing more.
You can discover the eiffel tower bro
(44:41):
bro i'm about to discover minnesota okay
all right well and i'll put my name in the annals
of history okay that's not true annals is
right yes i don't know the second
option is just wow they just said like that
happy whatever day
this comes out happy week have a good life we
(45:03):
love you guys we miss you guys we're trying our absolute best
i think yeah cool do you think we can try harder
i think you need to open a fund so you
can buy books buy resources and just keep the podcast running
because people really enjoy it and i think they want to support in
any way in any way so just open like a fund look if
you have like a spare 200k 200 naira anything
(45:24):
in between you know yeah because i actually do
buy yeah i buy books to come
and talk to you guys about certain things so that you don't
have to condense a large amount of information yeah but forex man we don't want
to use wikipedia because they miss and they are a lot they do you know that's
one of my agendas we should call this we can rename this podcast wikipedia missions
(45:48):
bye guys all right bye-bye see you later.
Music.
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