Here is another article that followed Greene's steps in recent times too. LA Review of Books:
On Reading Graham Greene in Liberia in a Time of Ebola By Brian Castner.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/...-time-ebola/#!
It offers this explanation:
Quote:
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In the opening chapter, he offers one pseudo-explanation: “The motive of a journey deserves a little attention,” he writes. “It is not the fully conscious mind which chooses West Africa in preference to Switzerland.” But the brief discussion that follows doesn’t answer the question, only vaguely references Conrad, a preoccupation with Africa in his dreams, gangster novels, “a quality of darkness” that he needed to explore. The reader is left to accept this as sufficient motivation to spend a month walking across a country with his young female cousin and 26 local porters. It would be decades before the truth was reported: Greene was an agent of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society, documenting cases of human trafficking. Not a peep to be found in the book.
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