I watched the elephants march across that red dust savanna as if they had an appointment with destiny. I know that I did. That’s why I’m here. But I didn’t realise it until much later. Much, much later.
Do you ever have those moments when you think that the hand of fate is doing more than just beckoning, it’s actually pushing you in a certain direction? I honestly can’t remember what it was that set me off on my great African safari. But I can clearly remember what kept me there. It was the film ‘Out of Africa’: “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills . . .” Thus opens Karen Blixen’s poetic account of her sojourn in Kenya from 1914 to 1931. Seventeen years. Did it change her life? I don’t know. But it changed mine. I managed 30 years. But then she had lost the love of her life. I found mine.
There was a high degree of chance about my going Africa. I was working in London in the days when a pay rise to £4,000 a year meant I had sufficient disposable income, even after paying the mortgage, to afford for the first time to venture out of Europe and fly long haul. Even now, this is a great adventure, to go out and discover that enormous world out there beyond your usual comfort zone. Scanning the brochures for somewhere with good weather, the choice came down to Tobago or Kenya. I can’t recall why the Caribbean lost out but, as my leave came around, we found ourselves on board a Sudan Airways 707 to exotic Nairobi. Well, as it often is in August, it was grey and drizzling. But never mind, it was still exciting. We set out on a classic African safari to the Masai Mara and camped on the escarpment to the west overlooking that vast savanna. It was the time of the great wildebeest migration and there were wild animals everywhere. Lions prowled around our tents at night. Comfort zone, what was that? This was nothing at all like home. It was an adventure beyond our wildest dreams. We were hooked. I went home and bought a Land Rover. I was going to do Africa properly.
Planning an expedition is more logistics than day dreaming, more left brain than right. There was a lot to do. I mean for a start, where were we going? ‘Africa’ is a pretty big target. Just to give you some idea, it’s bigger than the USA, China, India and Western Europe put together. It’s huge. And there weren’t many maps. Even now in the Google era, it’s not much better. I suppose it would have been possible to ‘just go’, but you need to know how much fuel to carry and, based on how long it might take between stops, how much food and water. And money. Route planning would be essential. Then there’s the fact that I love doing it: poring over maps, working out distances, researching places to see and things to do. It’s nearly as much fun as the trip itself. But it’s not the dots on a map that appeal, so much as the spaces in between. And in Africa there were, and still are, many wide open spaces. They went onto the skeleton itinerary: the Sahara desert, the Congo rain forest, the East African steppes, the Kalahari and the enigmatic Okavango ‘swamp’ on its doorstep, the Namib. All of which made the the foot of Africa at Cape Town the natural ultimate destination. Far to go!
It was a challenge to estimate the longest distance between fuel stops, in the absence of much concrete information. Possibly a thousand miles, what with the Sahara and the Congo. At 20 miles to the gallon, forgive my old imperial units, that would require 8-10 jerry cans in addition to the built-in fuel tank. Much later, we got wise and fitted extra tanks. But the hindsight of experience was still far away. There was the issue of spare parts, namely what might break and which we should take. Our Land Rover outfitters provided a recommended list, much of which I’d never heard of in spite of my engineering degree. What’s a half shaft? Why do we need two of them? What makes them break? Do I really need to change wheel bearings? Would I know how? Now what about food and water? We could take tins and dehydrated foods, rice, pasta, that sort of thing. But we would have to assume we could find some fresh foodstuffs as we travelled. How much water would we need to carry? How could you even calculate that? I devised a formula based on drinking, cooking and washing and hoped for the best. It would never be enough, but neither did we want to overload the poor old Landy which already was sagging on its springs. And what about health? What were the threats? We could do something about malaria once we were into the tropics, but was there anything else we needed to know about? We had all the inoculations going: typhoid, paratyphoid, measles, hepatitis, cholera, yellow fever, it was a long list. A doctor friend advised whisky. “It cleans the gullet”, he told us. “Take a wee dram every night”. Finally – it seemed that ‘finally’ would never come – we faced up to the issue of visas. The dilemma was that even if we could get visas in London for countries like Cameroon or Central African Republic (CAR), they would only be valid for three months and it would take longer than that to get there. This was a real hassle, which kind of resolved itself as we went, but it was a constant headache. Unfortunately, it’s only got a lot worse since then.
Everything was ready, but there remained the small matter of actually getting out of England, and out of Europe. Two little things called the English Channel and the Mediterranean Sea. We took the ferry to Calais, crossed the Alps, excitedly trying out the four wheel drive in snow, and wound our way down Italy. There were two possible routes into Africa – at this time the eastern route through Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia was closed due to protracted wars, nowadays it’s the western route that’s closed, thanks to Islamist terrorists. One was through Spain and across to Ceuta, or Tangier in Morocco. The other, which we preferred, took us across to Sicily and thence from the little port of Trapani to Tunis. Africa lay in wait, as we thought, like a crouching lion on the horizon.
Across this ancient desert
We’d already learned in Europe that stopping overnight in city car parks was not a good idea, so without delay we exited the city and headed purposefully out into Africa. This proved to be a good strategy, one we followed throughout the trip. The main threats to life, limb, car and pocket come from towns and cities. The places in between are safer, healthier and a hell of a lot more interesting. In fact, people find that deserts are amongst the healthiest of places. The absence of people and the dry climate mean fewer germs and less chance for them to proliferate. It’s even surprisingly hard to get lost. There is a great camaraderie amongst desert folk, and amongst travellers, and everyone helps each other out. We might need that. Having left the narrow coastal strip, we’re soon into the sand, though for the time being, the roads are still good. They serve some distant oil installations. We’ve just passed a sign that says we’ve 651 kilometres to go to our first major destination, the oasis of Djanet in the Tassili n’Ajjer. It’s a remote place on the border of Algeria and Libya. But it’s famous for its rock art. I’d been interested for years about prehistoric cave paintings. These provide some intriguing insights into our collective ancestral history. And here in the middle of the Sahara, it would show that life was not always like this. The desert used to be a verdant savanna teeming with wild animals. Some of the images had been touted as evidence that in times gone by we had been visited by aliens from outer space, who, the story supposed, had built the pyramids and brought technology and civilisation to earth. We parked the Land Rover at the camp site, hired a guide, loaded his donkeys with supplies for a week, and set off.
We dress warmly. In December in the Sahara it’s freezing. Hadn’t expected that. Well, we’re here to learn. The trail leads up a vast rock escarpment, and then another. The cliffs tower over us. And then we’re into a forest of eroded stone pillars. How anyone finds their way, heaven knows. It has an aura of absolute antiquity, as if it’s just been the rocks and the wind for tens of thousands of years. Which, of course, is pretty much the case. And as suddenly, our guide ushers us into a shallow cave and there in front of us is evidence written in pictures that this region was once very different. The world’s climate underwent a major change from about 8,000 years ago. Over a period of a few millennia, luxuriant plains turned into the vast dust bowl it is today. And all its people migrated out, probably towards the River Nile. The art is absorbing. Here are antelopes, giraffes, long horned sheep, an elephant. There is a troupe of tatoo’ed black African dancers. A roan antelope, clearly identifiable from its tufty ears. The closest you can find any of these nowadays is far to the south in Nigeria. There are cows, sheep and dogs. Lots of hunters, some with swords. A Roman chariot. The painters were at work here over a very long period of time, it seems. But I’m looking for gods. And aliens. We need to go to a place called Sefar, though ‘place’ is a bit circumspect, it’s just another part of the pillared maze. And here they are. The so-called ‘Great God of Sefar’ is an image amongst many drawn in red ochre on the face of the cliff. It’s artistic, it’s engaging, it’s animated. But it’s not a god. Anyone who has seen traditional African dancers might recognise the the outline of a headdress. The marks on his face are just striations in the rock. But I’m also looking for, eagerly anticipating, the painting of the spaceman. And here he is too. With a similar headdress to the ‘great god’ (I’ve now demoted him), he carries a spear in one hand and a dead chicken in the other. It might be a ceremonial offering, a sacrifice perhaps. Maybe supper. Perhaps the guy is a chef and it’s party night. But he sure is no alien. Myth busted. Indeed, the history of our distant forebears is written in these pictures, on rock faces and in caves, not just here but all over Africa. But it is a story of humanity versus the climate and the passage of time, not of fanciful gods or imagined aliens. It’s humbling to think that someone very much like us sat here with a stick of ochre and made a statement, sent a message into their future. Our present.
We’re on the move again. We pass a heavily loaded Tuareg camel caravan, accompanied by families of laughing girls dressed in their best finery. They’ve either been shopping or are on their way to a wedding. A delightful confirmation that nothing much changes. I’ve found a point half way between Djanet and Tamanrasset, each not much more than a settled oasis, which is pretty much 200 miles from both. An enormous sense of contentment washes over me. There are no fences, no ‘keep out’ sign boards. It’s just us, the Land Rover and Planet Earth. We can’t tell any longer what day of the week it is. It doesn’t matter. Well it does, shops close on Fridays around here. But there aren’t any shops anyway right now. I keep having odd dreams that I’m late for work. But I’m not. I don’t ‘work’ any more. There are no deadlines. We get up with the sun and sleep when it’s dark. Except here, even in mid winter, it doesn’t really get dark. The Milky Way is emblazoned across the vault of the heavens and the brighter stars, like Sirius and Aldebaran, pop out like spotlights. When the moon comes up, it’s like daylight, bright enough to read by. The only oddity is the silence. It’s so quiet that I can hear the sound of blood coursing through my ears. It sounds like a bit like the distant rumble of motorway traffic back home. The background hum of the universe.
But even here we’re not long alone. People have been before us: there is camel dung under the thorn tree. I decide to try it out as a fire lighting survival skill. It’s a no-no to cut trees, there are too few of them. It works, to a degree. More smouldering than burning, but enough to let us cook on an open fire. Soon the birds find us. Little desert wheatears that hop around the fire place pecking for scraps. And although we’ve pulled a good half mile off the ‘road’ (it’s just tyre tracks in the sand), the drivers of the few passing vehicles slow or stop to check we’re OK. It’s the way of the desert.
Into the darkest jungle
We became quite adept at navigating the desert roads as they turned into sandy tracks through Niger but getting into the Congo was a mission. We were able to get visas in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, as well as for CAR from whose capital Bangui that mysterious giant country sat quietly waiting across the river. And wait we did too. There is supposed to be a car ferry. In fact it was moored right in front of our riverside campsite. But, so it was said, the river was too low, there was not enough water to float it. In any case, the story went on, the engine had packed up and the captain had gone on leave. But by now, we had learned some of the ways of Africa. All is not always how it seems, or how it is said. There is usually a back story, and it usually involves money. With a number of fellow travellers, and fellow Land Rovers, we debated our options. Drive a few hundred kilometres up river and hope there would be another ferry. Put our vehicles on a barge and go downstream where there may be deeper water. Or dream up a way of persuading the boatmen that their ferry, disabled or not, could actually be got over to Zongo on the other side. It made sense to try this last idea first. My thought was this: get them to attach to each corner of the big metal ‘bac’ one of the small dugout passenger canoes powered by 40hp outboards. The combined force surely should be enough to propel the ferry plus a few vehicles the couple of hundred yards to the sandy flats on the other side. Money could be made all round. This sufficiently motivated our boatmen, their ranks now supplemented by a dozen or more ‘advisors’, supervisors and observers, that they agreed, quoted a price, beckoned us drive aboard, and duly attached said motorised ‘pirogues’. The ferry hesitantly pulled out into the stream. At which point, the price went up. Never forget it’s Africa, we reminded ourselves. Whatever you can think of, they will be one step ahead.
The jungle, for that is what it is, is dark, dank and pretty impenetrable. It’s quite oppressive, although we didn’t realise that until weeks later when we drove out into the more elevated lands to the east and were able to cast our eyes back over the broccoli-like treetops of that vast forest. It appears, however, to teem with life. For the most part though, it’s insect life. We passed great clouds of multi-coloured butterflies that fluttered up from puddles in the sandy track. There were whites and blacks, blue swallowtails, clear winged acraeas, and multi-hued blues and skippers. At night, giant moon moths would flap around our paraffin lamps. Whenever we stopped, clouds of little back ‘sweat flies’ would buzz around our faces stinging any exposed skin. But it was the mosquitoes that dominated our night time sleeping strategies. As soon as the sun showed signs of dipping, out they would come, clouds of buzzing jet fighters of the insect world, laden with bomb bays full of malaria parasites, encephalitis viruses and other things we dared not even think about. This region was HIV Central. The best advice about disease is to avoid catching it in the first place. We learned to put on long sleeves and long trousers, however hot it felt, liberally apply insect repellant (taking local advice as to which types actually work), and don’t scratch even the most trivial of wounds with dirty finger nails. The ulcerated lesions that can otherwise occur on your legs eat into your shin bone and, having made you lame, then attack your nervous system creating fever, delusions and insanity. Difficult to cure, terrible to behold, easy enough to avoid. If you are unfortunate enough to pick up malaria, and it’s common enough in these parts, it’s vital to hit it with drugs without delay. Back home, they would take days to do a laboratory diagnosis and by then you could be dead. Again, local advice will tell you which pills will do the job and where to get them. You won’t need a prescription, it’s an occupational hazard of living in these climes.
You learn some intriguing things travelling away from your customary place of civilisation (that is the point after all!). In the Sahara, there was a curious flash of emerald light on the western horizon as the sun set. I’ve since heard reports of a similar phenomenon from Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, so it wasn’t our imagination. Here in the Congo jungle, as the sun sets and the air temperature falls, the excessively humid atmosphere is no longer able to retain so much water and it falls as fat rain drops from an otherwise clear sky. Odd!
There are expatriates working still in this part of the world. We’re passing through miles and miles of plantations – rubber trees and oil palms owned by Unilever – and we come to a halt in the town of Binga. One of our travelling companions has promised we shall have a cold beer this night come hell or high water. Espying this convoy of three foreign registered Land Rovers, one of the plantation managers, a Frenchman by the name of Hubert, stops to ask if we’re OK. Well we would be if we could find a cold beer, where could he recommend? Hmmm, there really isn’t anywhere, unless you come to my home . . . Lead on, we cry. And we follow. As did the beer. Perfect. In the Congo, we encountered young Peace Corps volunteers and elderly Norwegian missionaries. I’m not sure they’re still there. I hope not. This country was deserted, desolate and inhospitable, and it has since become a lot more desperate. Fresh food was hard to come by. The missions and companies imported theirs from back home in tins. Whereas almost everywhere, including in the desert, you can, at the very least, find stalls selling tomatoes and onions, here in the Congo nothing much grows. In Aketi, we were offered termites. But we declined. It was all there was in a town dominated by a massive stone catholic church. On the other hand, in the regional capital of Kisangani, we were treated by the head of the tourist office to elephant trunk rings and monkey stew. He thought it would cheer us up while we scoured the town for fuel and, in my case, while I learned to become a half way competent Land Rover mechanic. After these months of overland travel, between the rough roads and the overloading, something had finally given way. We’d broken a leaf spring. But hey-ho, there was an agent in town and we’d got a replacement in short shrift. Now all I had to do was unwrap the pristine service manual and figure out how to replace it. With impeccably good timing, this too was when the famously unknown half shaft gave way. But by now, I was under the car, out with the diff, clean up the broken ends, slip in the new one, tighten up the bolts and away we go. This too was when we needed all those jerry cans. From this last opportunity to refuel in Kisangani – and even here we had to negotiate commercial bulk rates with the depot – it was the best part of a thousand miles to Eldoret in Kenya which, at the time, would be the next likely place we could refuel.
Kisangani was a dump, I don’t know if it’s changed since, it’s not on my list of places to return to. And this northern part of the Congo was godforsaken. It’s beautiful in its own way but, oh my, human civilisation has just not taken root here. This next part of our journey was a little lighter as we passed through Ituri, the territory of the Pygmies. These engaging if diminutive people were only too ready to chat and trade as we passed. Tightly packaged grains of panned gold. Elephant’s teeth. Monkey skins. Skin quivers full of arrows tipped with beaten nails. They said a skilled hunter could bring down a flying bird with a good shot. The Pygmies have been marginalised by their Bantu overlords, but their stature is to do with diet rather than DNA. The jungle is protein deficient. Trees and insects grow well here, humans do not.
The narrow dirt roads crossing the Congo can be closed for weeks at a time during heavy rains as trucks slip and block the way, or worse, sink deep into the mud never to re-emerge. Up ahead was a narrow bridge. A man was gesticulating. His bicycle had fallen and was blocking the way. Over it hovered an ill-defined dark haze. We approached cautiously, only to suddenly reverse at high speed. The man had been carrying a haunch of meat in his pannier and he’d been attacked by a swarm of killer bees. Bicycle, haunch and bees were now obstructing the highway. We were told later that these bees are known to attack people, chasing them into rivers. They are carnivorous. Their stings, multiplied a hundred times, are deadly. They will hover above the hapless person as they try to hide submerged in the water. We drove through at speed, windows and vents closed tight.
This part of Congo has more recently become a battle ground for warring factions, fighting each other, fighting for control of the nearby gold mines, fighting the government in far distant Kinshasa, fighting immigrants and rebels from neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda. Just fighting. There is something in the air here that doesn’t bear living with, and it infects everything. But for us, the road rises, the air clears, the tops of the forest trees are behind us, and the Mountains of the Moon and the plains of East Africa lie before us. After all these months traversing desert and jungle, we’re calling it the Promised Land.
God’s own country
There is something truly delightful about East Africa, particularly Uganda and Kenya, and that is its Englishness. Please forgive me! As a Brit, I feel instantly more at home here than I do in, say, Germany or America, or even South Africa. It’s something many of us have felt. If there is something in the air here, it’s reflected in the phrase ‘god’s own country’. We had a slight confusion passing into Uganda by road. For all those months driving across the French speaking part of Africa, it had been academic which side of the road you drive on because it was too narrow and too rough to matter. Your just pick your way around the holes and bumps. But now we’re back onto tarred roads and I suddenly wonder why the road signs are on the other side of the road. Oops, it’s we that are wrong, we’re still driving on the right. Good job there was no traffic. There’s an hour time difference too, that we didn’t notice. At this time, Uganda is not a place to linger and before we know it, we’re across the Nile, past the border and into Kenya. It really feels like paradise. A fully functioning, English speaking country where you can get a cold beer and a decent meal. And fuel. We do so take things for granted.
We parted company with our travelling companions after a reunion feast at the Stanley Hotel in the centre of Nairobi. Its Thorn Tree notice board served as a travellers’ telecommunications hub in the days before mobiles. Messages posted here reached us on the overlanders’ grapevine as far afield as Cape Town. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It was interesting to see how Africa had changed us all. No-one was unaffected. We had endured weeks of self sufficiency. We had been obliged to be patient, tolerant and inventive. No-one had been there to bail us out. We’d had to forge new relationships, negotiate for what back home would be considered basic expectations. We’d had to find our way on routes that barely existed, navigate rules and regulations that were weirdly flexible. We’d found freedom the likes of which most people never enjoy in their lifetime. And we’d met a lot of really interesting people whose paths we would never otherwise have crossed. There was the country manager for Shell who’d plied us with drinks one Sunday afternoon at a bar by the Niger River just outside Niamey. The team of Israelis serving out their contract at a road camp in a remote part of eastern Nigeria. An Ismaili family in Kisangani who said they had acquired the Tesco’s building back in High Wycombe. Kyriakos, the Greek with the white Jeep who ran a coffee trading company in Bumba, and who explained how, at a very modest cost, we could acquire enough land in the Congo to start a small country. Which nearly got us into serious trouble. Once into Uganda, with the sense of relief of having ‘escaped’ from the Congo, we talked about this idea rather too loudly over bottles of the local bootleg gin known as ‘waragi’. Little did we know, attentive ears outside our ring of darkness thought we were plotting to take over their own country and if we had not moved out rather smartly the following morning, so we heard later, we would have been arrested.
When I met Mike and Shelagh Boyd-Moss, I had no idea how this particular encounter would ripple down the ages. But such synchronicity is not unusual in Africa. Let me explain. Having spent a fair bit of time in exploring the landscapes and wildlife of Kenya, it was time to move on. But before going further south, we determined to divert into the hilly forests of Rwanda to see the Mountain Gorillas. We pass Ruhengeri and up through the forest into the Volcanoes National Park. Strewn across the horizon like a child’s drawing are half a dozen conical volcanoes, their slopes covered in verdant green forest, dank and cold. One of these erupted a few years back, smothering the Congolese town of Goma with lava. The borders of Rwanda, Congo and Uganda converge here. It’s high up, 7,500’. And this little patch of forest is the last home of the few remaining Mountain Gorillas. Visits are carefully controlled but we manage to get on a trip, and the following morning we’re hiking through the mist and the jungle, fending off giant stinging nettles and clambering over clumps of fallen bamboo in search of gorillas. We hear a cracking of branches up ahead. Our guide hushes us and signals us to get down. Although the gorillas have been ‘habituated’, conditioned to accept people around them, they’re still potentially dangerous. And they are huge. A big male ‘silverback’ pops his head over the bushes to check on us. We freeze. Avoid rapid movement, says our guide in hushed French. Avoid eye contact. But the group relaxes, both humans and apes, and soon we’re snapping photographs. A young gorilla leaves its mother’s breast and scampers up a sapling to take a look at us. It bends under his weight, so he swings off and drops to the ground, scraping his knuckles the way apes do, and edges his way over to us. He sits at my feet, and now eye contact is unavoidable, He reaches out and touches my arm as if to say you’re welcome.
We stayed on a couple more days, but Mike and Shelagh, who were on the same tour, had invited us to stay over with them. “Our place is off the main road to Kigali”, Mike said. “So if you’re going that way, come and stay”. It’s the kind of hospitable thing people do in remote parts of the world. So we did. They lived on a tea estate which Mike managed, he’d built it actually. When you’re travelling like this, cooped up in a Land Rover and camping most nights, the little pleasures of a hot shower, a decent meal and a proper bed become great luxuries. One way or another, it was a week or so later that we set out back to Nairobi via the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. Actually, this was pretty well the only viable route, other than passing through a still risky Uganda. We camped over at Seronera and driving along the river the following morning, who should we see but Mike and Shelagh. While we had taken our time, they had driven up to Nairobi, picked up their son Robin and his then girlfriend Debbie, and here they were playing the tourist bit on their way back to Rwanda.
To complete this particular story, it was several years later when I had returned to live in Kenya that I met Robin again. He was by then a business man and rally driver. We competed together several times in the East African Safari Rally which, in those days, was a great five day race around rural Kenya. But that is still not where the story ends. Again some years later, I was visiting my parents back in the UK, and walking up Wincanton High Street were Mike and Shelagh. Still not the end. Many more years later, our son went to school where Debbie was teaching and she became his form mistress. Then I was appointed to the school’s board of governors and was instrumental in selecting Debbie as Head. An intriguing set of encounters scattered across three decades.
Down in the delta
Spaces in between. The little sand swept town of Maun in north western Botswana is 200 miles in any direction from the next ‘civilised’ place. It has become quite a tourist centre and is nowadays connected by a tarred road. But it’s still well off the usual beaten track. The approach from the east crosses the great flat salt pans called Makgadikgadi. To the south lies the sand desert of the central Kalahari where San Bushmen still eke a precarious living. To the north is the Chobe National Park with some of the greatest density of wildlife remaining anywhere in Africa. And to its immediate west is the Okavango Delta. This is a geographic curiosity and a wonderful travel experience. The Cubango River rises in the mountains of Angola but, instead of running into the sea, it flows towards the centre of Africa where, when it strikes the barrier of the Kalahari, it spreads into a vast freshwater delta. Much of the water simply evaporates and what’s left disappears underground. The ten foot sand dune that holds it in is the last visible manifestation of the Great Rift Valley escarpment, a scar on the earth’s crust which can be traced on a map from the Red Sea, through Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, all the way, getting smaller and smaller, to this part of northern Botswana. The river floods seasonally according to the pattern of the rains and the Okavango Delta swells and contracts in concert. At one season, it’s so dry you could drive much of the way through it, but at another, it’s an island-dotted world of water.
We camped at a place called Island Safari Lodge, just outside Maun. It was on the banks of the Thamalakane River and from here we could hire canoes to take us into the heart of the delta. They’re dugouts, called ‘makorro’ in Setswana, and made from a single tree trunk. It’s a leisurely way to travel and you don’t cover much distance. But the experience is unmatched. This is nature in the raw, untouched (until recently!) by human hands. The waterways are the haunt of crocodiles and hippos. Herds of lechwe antelopes bound across the floodplains. We camp wild on islands under the spreading shade of kigelia trees. Depending on the season, wildlife abounds. Bird life is especially prolific. One morning without even opening my eyes, I count 26 different songs. Here you can find the rare wattled crane which I’d never seen anywhere else. You get the most amazing cerise sunsets that are immediately identifiable by anyone who knows this part of the world.
Travelling by canoe brings things closer than when you’re driving a big noisy four wheel drive. Here we spot tiny turquoise kingfishers. There are a dozen different lily flowers. Our boatmen propel the canoes by thrusting long poles onto the gravel bottom of the stream. The channel broadens into a reed filled lagoon. We pause to trade a couple of catfish from a fisherman. He needs salt, which we’re happy to provide in exchange. The blue above and the green all around align to form an exuberant backdrop to the flight of dozens of glittering rubies, sailing, soaring, and snapping at flies. These aerial wonders are called carmine bee eaters. Jacanas splay their toes across the lily leaves. No wonder they’re popularly called lily trotters. Black herons paddle the shallows, flipping their wings like umbrellas to shade their eyes as they fish in a group. The instantaneous change of shape from bird to feathered dome is remarkable to watch. The maze of lagoons, floodplains, islands, channel and reed beds makes it hard for us to figure where we are, but our boatmen know. They find us a nice waterside campsite and head off to a nearby village, leaving us to bathe in the cool water. It looks idyllic, but we emerge covered in leeches. Time to grill our fish.
We take a more direct, faster flowing channel back. It’s lined with swaying papyrus. Otters dart across the stream. A massive splash is a hippo floundering out of the way. Our boatmen laugh. It’s a sign of their nervousness, hippos can be truly dangerous.
Namib
Back on land, we head back out into the desert. Unlike the Sahara, much of this part of the Kalahari is fenced off. This is cattle country, split up into massive blocks of land allocated to ranching companies. Botswana is famous for its beef. We camp one last time in a middle of nowhere kind of place, and we’re woken by the chattering, chirping, clicking and clucking of a band of people. They’re San Bushmen, wearing not much more than loin cloths. We give them a cup of tea and some bread but unfortunately we’re not able to understand their story. We’re on our way into another desert now, the Namib. This coast of south west Africa brings yet more marvels in a continent that has not yet lost its power to amaze. It’s a stark and ancient land. It has a primeval feel about it. The ancestors of these bushmen have lived here for tens of thousands of years. Indeed they may be the last survivors of the original people we’re all ultimately descended from. We may think they lack civilisation but their ways have endured far longer than ours. Some of the paintings and engravings on the rocks in the Brandberg massif have been dated to nearly 20,000 years ago. Somehow, I have a feeling they might be even older. What’s remarkable is that, unlike around the rock art of Europe, there is a continuum here. These ancient people are the true time lords. Their way of life is only now being brought to a close by their encounter with modernism. It’s a sobering thought whichever way you look at it.
The colonial town of Swakopmund has the feel of a Victorian seaside resort with its boarding houses, AA appointed restaurants, and fish and chip shops. There are car parks, toilets and litter bins. There’s even a pier. But the ‘kuchen laden’ are a bit of a giveaway. We’ve got the era right but not the nationality. This is a German town. The high street is Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse and the esplanade is Bismarck Street. The sea is green and furious. The cold South Atlantic currents have welled up from the far Antarctic. Waves pile up a long way out to thrash noisily onto the shore. The yellow desert dunes pile equally high behind us, cascading right to the water’s edge. This is an unusual combination, hot desiccated air meeting the cold ocean. They come together in a dense mist which rolls in daily over the Namib, its water droplets nourishing strangely shaped weltwischia plants which, neither leafy bushes nor spiny cactuses, look like an evolutionary dead end from the beginning of time itself.
This is one of the most photogenic places I’ve been to. The skies are vast, and the far horizons are, well, far. The shapes and colours are vibrant, waving, rolling. Moonscapes that leave you in no doubt that this has always been a harsh and challenging place to live. Humankind has not made much of a dent on this place. Neither god-given nor god-forsaken, it’s just what it is, far predating anything humans may have considered divine. The country has one last thing to throw across our bows. It’s the Fish River Canyon, Africa’s answer to the Grand Canyon. It looks very similar, a vast, sheer slash across the landscape, nearly 2,000’ deep and 100 miles long. Namibia, a remarkable country.
Cape Town doesn’t disappoint as the end point of this epic journey. The famous Table Mountain hovers into sight, complete with its characteristic ‘table cloth’ cloud cover cascading over the city. We go right to the end of Africa to signal the end of our trip. Next stop, four thousands miles distant, would be Antarctica. Along the beaches of the cape, we come across troups of Jackass Penguins. It’s disorientating. This is Africa, what are they doing here? Makes us smile, anyway. Years later, I adopt one as my personal icon: The Lone Penguin.
Out of Africa
Our travels across Africa ended up lasting two full years. You can do it in two weeks if you’re looking for a place in the record books. It was a long way, and it would be a lot longer going back.
So what was it about ‘Out of Africa’ that kept me all those years in Africa? The scenes where Karen Blixen and Denys Finch-Hatton (Meryl Streep and Robert Redford) went picnicking, and where eventually (for the film) he was buried, were filmed in the exact same location on the Mara escarpment that we’d camped on our very first trip out there. I ended up living in a house just around the corner from Karen Blixen’s old home, just down the road from the Karen Country Club. She’s still fondly remembered here. But as she wistfully conceded as she packed up her own life: “You can’t own Africa, you are only ever passing through”.
