Time’s up

Conclusion of Africa overland trip (Nairobi-Johannesburg) , Maun, Botswana

My stopped watch, and to-do list

My watch stopped at the very moment the overland truck pulled out from the campsite in Maun, Botswana, leaving us with all our worldly possessions gathered at our feet, the cries of ‘keep in touch’ and ‘have fun’ still ringing in the air.  I suspect a few hearts also stopped when our travelling companions, arriving at the Namibian border later that day, realised with that dull ache of acceptance that no, nobody on the truck had the keys to the safe and the luggage lockers, and that no, neither could they cross the border unless they broke into the safe which held all their passports. 

It was the following day that I picked up the keys from the kitchen counter in my brother’s house in Johannesburg and, for just a fleeting moment, thought nothing of it, so used was I to seeing this grubby little shoelace that had been cooperatively shared among the group over the last few weeks. Then the cold trickle of realisation beaded its way down by back, and on through my hungover cranium, in which a caveman equation was taking shape; ‘keys here Johannesburg, truck not here Namibia, bad’.  Without a word I dangled the keys in front of Helen and Natali (who had also finished her trip with the flight from Botswana to Jo’Burg, and was staying overnight with my welcoming brother and sister in law), seeing in their faces the self-same equation taking shape.  Like the three disciples of Shaggy we all declared ‘it wasn’t me’, before reaching a shared consensus that yes, this was bad, and no, we wouldn’t be popular, but yes, it would have been funny to be a fly on the wall at the Namibian border the previous day.  We still don’t know who it was that smuggled the contraband back from Botswana to South Africa, all of us agreeing that it was academic anyway; the end result being the same*.     

*It was Helen.

My watch stopping at the very moment the truck pulled out of the campsite in Maun lent a spooky punctuation to the conclusion of our overland trip, and our time in Africa as a whole, a reminder on my wrist that it was time to move on; an opportunity to look forward with excitement and back with fondness.  With this in mind it seems an appropriate time to mention the overall theme of this blog: you can’t leave your self behind.

I wrote a little about what this theme meant in my first ever post, explaining that my tao of travel revolves around how your ‘self’ reacts to new situations, how travelling is merely a case of placing your self – the beliefs, expectations, assumptions, worries, insecurities, and peculiarities that make you you -  in a different place.  It is not something you can leave behind at the airport, and it is my contention that nobody can enter into a new situation without the starter pack of your ‘self’ already primed.  The reference to the philosophical concept of the ‘self’ is not an accidental one.  In part it’s a reflection on the ideas above, but also it’s a joke, albeit an oblique and cynical one, on the clichéd view that travel is a way ‘to find your self’.  Meet someone who is travelling to find their self and all you will find is blankness. And probably an arsehole to boot.

What I have tried to write about in my posts during our time in Africa is just this: how my self has reacted to the situations we have been presented with.  I’ve thought about writing more of a travelogue, but it simply isn’t me.  Writing of how we did X,Y, and Z in places A,B and C, with beautiful sunsets just doesn’t come naturally to me – the things we’ve done have been amazing, the places awe-inspiring, and the sunsets have been beautiful, but I just don’t know how interesting it would be for you reading it.

So instead, and this is an indulgence for sure, to close the chapter on our time in Africa here is a retrospective on how my ‘self’ reacted to Africa:

…there was a recklessness, a conviction, but also a fear of disappearing for a year, all wound up in the phrase of ‘why the hell not’?

…there was the apprehension of starting what was, in effect, a new job in an utterly different place and being told ‘you’ll be able to handle it better’

…there was ‘the handover’ from one life into another

…there was a reflection, in those early days of the new life, on ‘expectations’

…there was an explanation of why Bonifus (our favourite child at the orphanage) would be the perfect dinner party guest in ‘the kids are alright’

…there was, in what transpires is the most popular posting, some toilet humour in ‘the toilet; a comparative study’

…there was a real estate pitch in ‘great views, comfortable accommodation, room for pets, your new home awaits!’

…there was my reaction to being sucker-punched by the sheer inhumanity of proper rural poverty, and I still maintain that ‘if you only read one post, make it this one’

…there was a step-by-step pictorial guide to self-imposed injury in ‘an idiot’s guide to packing shopping’

…there was the strange topic combination of belief and sleep walking in ‘I don’t believe in anything’

…there was a water-collection domestic, and the hope for a better future, in ‘Maji Imeisha.  Water – all gone!’

…there was some parenting advice in ‘crime and punishment’

…there was a heavy dose of vitriol and barely-concealed anger at corruption in ‘mzungu tax’

…there was a plea to say thank you, say sorry to heal a rift, tell someone you love that you love them, in ‘opt in’

…there was the great escape in ‘I predict a riot’

…there was the tricky subject of benevolence in Africa in ‘entitlement and expectation’

…there was a piece-by-piece take down of the journalist Mathew Parris and some do’s and don’ts for taking an overland trip in ‘happy clappy claptrap’

…and there was the psychedelic combination of dust and sweat in ‘mokoros and mushrooms’

So, have I found my self? Course I bloody haven’t.  You can’t leave your self behind, as these posts demonstrate.  What you can do is try to cause a few chuckles, raise a few eyebrows, and maybe even trigger a few tears.  I hope I’ve done all these things. 

Eastward bound, tally ho!

Mokoros and mushrooms

Bovu Island, Zambezi River, Zambia

“Tell him about the dust” Brett hissed as I stood in his wooden stilt hut, the Zambezi River pulsing by outside the chicken mesh windows. I had a satellite signal booster pinned to my mobile phone, the phone itself clamped to my ear, and a sense of the surreal swirling around me like the eddies in the river.  "Oh yes, and there was lots of dust Dad” I added, keen not to offend the sense of self-imposed responsibility Brett had assumed for me phoning my father. “Um, anyway, I’ll try to call again soon, hope you pick this up okay, see ya”.  Pressing cancel on the phone I wondered if maybe I should have signed off the answerphone message with the instruction to “triangulate these coordinates and send help”.

The man himself

Brett is the manager of a wilderness retreat called Jungle Junction that is located on Bovu Island in the middle of the Zambezi River, accessible only by mokoro – the wooden dugout canoes that have ploughed this river for centuries.  Much beloved by hippies who, over the years, have come for a few days and stayed for months, Brett is the resident hippie-in-chief who takes his responsibility to the local community almost as seriously as he does to the steady consumption of magic mushrooms.  I liked him a lot, and tried hard (but largely failed) to construct a cogent narrative between what was going on in his brain and what actually came out of his mouth.   His insistence that I phone my father, apropos of nothing at all, as we sat sharing a lunchtime beer was, I figured, just the public airing of a Disney family movie that was playing in his mind.  And why not? Making a mental deal with myself I agreed that I would sink into this surreal world for a couple of days but if the word ‘dude’ ever escaped from my lips I was on the first mokoro out of there.

The dust Brett was so insistent on me mentioning on the answerphone message referred to a task we’d agreed to complete as a fair’s fair favour in return for him cutting us a great deal on the accommodation costs.  Jungle Junction have committed to building a school for the local community who live on the banks of the Zambezi, just across from the island, which will remove the need for the children to walk the 12km round trip to the current nearest school as they do now.  Our task was to sweep out the partially constructed shell, removing the cocktail of construction dust and goat droppings.  We were, of course, happy to do this but as is often the case in Africa one needs to think carefully before acting in a benevolent, and seemingly consequence free, manner.  This school is being funded (to the tune of $250,000) by donations made to Jungle Junction from ex-visitors, but the school itself belongs to, and is the responsibility of, the local community.  So, one must really ask the question that if the local community can’t be arsed to sweep it out then why the hell should a random group of tourists?  Paul Theroux, in his majestic book about Africa, Dark Star Safari, repeatedly returns to a broader version of this simple question about the efficacy of international aid, and I paraphrase – ‘if they can’t be bothered then why should we be bothered’?  If a doctor leaves her aid-reliant nation to work in the developed world then why does the developed world replace that doctor?  If a headmaster fiddles the books at his school then why should there be a constant stream of volunteer teachers?  The questions go on and on, but as I’ve already written about the phenomena of entitlement and expectation, you can probably guess which side I fall on in this debate.

100 kwatcha per millilitre kids

The compromise we made was that we would sweep the school provided we were accompanied by a troop of local children.  So liked pied pipers we gathered a dust-busting squad and set to work, sweeping out the school and gathering a week’s worth of black bogies.  As it turns out it is not just Kenyan children who find the concept of body hair fascinating.  Unbeknownst to me at the time there was quite a gathering behind my back as I swept and sweated with my t-shirt wrapped around my mouth and nose, bandito style.  One little girl, it transpires, traced  her finger around the hair on my lower back before rubbing both hands into the sweaty mess and then rubbing it all over her own body.  Weird, I know.  And before you ask, no, I wasn’t sharing Brett’s mushrooms.  But I figure that if Beyoncé can bottle her own drippings and make millions then there is surely a gap in the market for a l’eau de Chewbacca (Tagline = makes you feel grrrrrrrrrrrrrr).  That is how celebrity perfume making works, right?  Because if not I’m chucking away this bottle of Shakira’s newest excretion that I bought for Helen.    

Anyway, Brett will be happy.  I told my Dad about the dust, and now I’ve told you too.  Anyone need a shower?

<2,000!  I’m sure this will not be nearly as exciting for you as it is for me, but the blog has passed the 2,000 page views mark.  I’m just delighted by this and would like to thank you all for stopping by to read the vomit I spew onto my keyboard every so often.  I really am grateful.  I do enjoy reading your comments, and it fascinates me to know who is actually making all these page views.  So, why not leave a comment to say hi – post it as ‘anonymous’ in the drop down box if you can’t be bothered signing up for a Google ID , and just stick your name at the end.  It would be great to know who is staring back at me from the abyss. 

And a special thank you again to those of you who have become followers – family, old friends, and new friends.  I know it’s a hassle to sign up to be a follower, with little reward, but if it makes you feel any better I do lovingly stroke my cursor across your little thumbnails every time I go into the blog while muttering to myself ‘ooh yeh, you’re my favourites, that feels good, like that little stroke do you? NOW OBEY ME FOLLOWER’!  Anyone else want to sign up? You know you’ll love it!>  

Happy clappy claptrap

Nairobi to Johannesburg, via Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana

I’ve always thought of happiness as something that is alighted upon in retrospect; a flickering remembrance, an epiphany of nostalgia, the isolation of a moment that was not, and could not, be planned for or expected, and could certainly never be engineered.   The instruction to ‘don’t worry, be happy’ has, to me, always had an air of mild menace about it.  Have you ever, for example, been cheered up by someone instructing you to cheer up? No? Me neither.  But being cheerful, being ‘happy’, is surely a worthwhile ideal and perhaps those with sunnier dispositions are those who can isolate and process these moments quicker, recognise them for what they are, enjoy them immediately, and store the memory of them for longer.

The reason for this little reflection on happiness is that yesterday, as the sun pounded like a strobe light into my eyes and the truck bounced, dipped, slipped and slid over the rough road, a thought popped into my mind, as clear and as bright as the sun scorching my retinas; ‘I’m happy’.  Aided by my mature self’s drug of choice – music –I wanted to do a little jig inside the bouncing truck, perhaps have a tumble dryer dance-off with my travelling companions, all of us collapsing eventually and inevitably into crumpled, giggling heaps.  I didn’t do any of this, of course; I’m not a complete prick.  Christ only knows what the all-female contingent (my wife, two English girls, and three Argentinian girls) would make of a sweaty, unkempt, wild eyed solitary male’s instruction for them to dance.  There’s only one end to that situation, and with the exception of me learning the Spanish for ‘I’m scared’, it’s not a good one.  Mind you, on reflection, just give me a moment…

Back now! Just had a short break to, er, have a little think about possible alternative endings to that daydream.

Anyway, to the point.  This isn’t a post about happiness, there’s quite enough of that nonsense floating about the web, most of it starting with the words ‘God is coming’ (look busy).No, this is about overlanding – what I think it is, what I think it’s not, and why it’s making me happy. I’m inspired to write about this mainly in riposte to an article (suggest you read it before continuing) written by Matthew Parris in the January 2010 edition of the Spectator magazine in which he lazily criticises those who go on overland trips, such as the one we are on, for giving off an “aura of inwardness”. 

The article had been ripped out and left in a see-through plastic envelope in the restaurant at the Kande Beach campground, on the shores of Lake Malawi.  I like Parris’ writing – he writes with authority, with charm, and with humour – but this article annoyed me. It annoyed me with its lazy generalisations, its smugness and tone of condescension, and for the fact that the affluent, right-leaning, and middle aged readership demographic (in which I include Parris himself) of the Spectator are those least likely to go on an overland trip, but who are being encouraged to sneer at those who do. 

In the article, and in a failed attempt to be generous and less judgemental, he writes that “these are the young people who didn’t choose a package holiday to Ibiza, who wanted to do something more real”.  Leaving aside the laziness of using the meaningless cliché of ‘more real’, I’d like to know what exactly is wrong with choosing a package holiday to Ibiza?  It’s such an unbearably smug throwaway line, one which he knows his readership demographic won’t question, one that makes so many assumptions about youth, class, the correct form of hedonism, and the relative merits of booking a package holiday vis-à-vis packing up the Saab and taking Harriet and Toby to a gite in the south of France.  Everyone has to write for an audience, mine is you nutjobs, but making assumptions about what this audience thinks and feels is dangerous, and insulting, territory. 

He concludes his article by benevolently offering some advice to us overlanders, suggesting that one way to overcome our “aura of inwardness” would be to venture outside the campsites and visit local schools, where we would, apparently, be welcome.  Really Matthew?  Have you thought this through? Let’s test your logic with a simple yes/no quiz shall we?

• Would you welcome groups of tourists into British schools so they could gawp at the poor conditions but get some cracking ‘Real Britain’ holiday snaps surrounded by excitable children?
• If you were a teacher yourself, with a class size of 80 plus, would you appreciate your lessons being disrupted, and then having to calm the children down once the visitors swan off?
• Are you aware that corruption is just as bad in schools as it is in other government functions in parts of Africa, and that maybe the teachers who do welcome this intrusion and disruption are those who directly pocket the small ‘donation’ made?
• Do you think it actually benefits the children’s education, which is after all the purpose of schooling, to have a group of mzungus turn up out of the blue whilst they should be concentrating? 

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions then it’s a bloody good job you packed up politics to become a journalist.  Mind you, if you answered ‘no’ to these questions then you’ve just admitted to writing something ill thought through and poorly researched.  Lazy, lazy, lazy.Continuing with the school theme: must do better, C minus.

Overlanding, in my experience of doing it thus far in Africa, simply isn’t a cultural experience in the way that Parris hopes for and recommends.  It can’t be – it’s all about onward momentum, about seeing beautiful places, and about picking up a snippet here and there of the culture which, yes, sometimes you do need to work for by stepping outside of the truck, the group, the campsite.  If you’re reading this as a prospective overlander with the hope that booking a trip will immerse you in the ‘Real Africa’ then I’m sorry to disappoint.  But it can be done – go and live with Africans as a volunteer, give yourself enough time to make friends with your hosts, stay away from the tourist route, ask questions.  Then go on an overland trip to see more of this incredible, often infuriating, but always awe inspiring continent. Just make sure you pack the following: realistic expectations, a hangover remedy, a willingness to put the group before yourself, and always carry with you the maxim of ‘how would this make me feel’ before blundering into a random school or sticking your camera into the home of an elaborately and beautifully dressed Masai family.

And if you need any more help in preparing here’s a list of do’s and don’ts, garnered mainly from the stories our brilliant Tour Leader Tim has told us from his seven years on the road (he’ll be so pissed off I pinched his best stories, but this is the abridged version so there’s still room for his book…):

Do…

· Accept the fact that the Tour Leader is, de facto, alpha male or female and therefore has first refusal  in the primal mating game that a group of (mainly but not exclusively) young people will inevitably descend into at some point

· Drink in the bar at the campgrounds, be sociable with other people (unless they are taking notes and looking smug), and buy the driver a beer after a long drive

· Take personal responsibility and understand that it is you, and only you, who is responsible for your actions.  Don’t get so drunk that you are admitted to hospital then sue your tour operator because you felt under pressure to drink

· Listen to the advice of people with experience, and if a sign reads ‘inside campsite = safe, outside campsite = not safe, this is not a joke’ don’t go for a little wander down the beach and then act surprised when you are forcibly relieved of all your possessions

· Be nice to your Tour Leader as despite it looking like the best job in the world, it’s bloody hard work

Don’t…

·      Respond to your group health briefing about the importance of safe sex by saying that ‘yeh, I went to chlamydia once, it’s just off Majorca isn’t it?’

·      Buy your driver a beer before he exits the truck after a long drive, thank him for keeping you safe, then report him after the trip for being an alcoholic in a bid to claw back your holiday costs through compensation.  Yes, this really happened, and yes I hope the two blokes who did this get run over by a real drink-driver

·      Go on safari and ask either ‘what do elephants hunt?’ or ‘will we see tigers?’

·      Crawl out of your tent after a heavy night, start moaning that you’d been promised there would be elephants roaming free in the camp but hadn’t seen any, and then realise your right arm is elbow deep in elephant dung

·      Read smug articles about overlanding by otherwise excellent journalists and decide it’s not for you

And if that’s not enough, how about this to close: overlanding - it makes me happy, and it could make you happy too.  Now how about that dance my dear, snarf snarf. 




Video: A very short video of the correct way, in my opinion, to welcome a new passengers onto the truck...

Entitlement and expectation

Tanzania – Meserani, near Arusha

‘Give me pen, give me book, give me sweets, give me money’ the little boys chanted as we jumped off the truck to re-fuel. In yet another example of how you can’t leave your self behind my reaction was ‘give me a break’. I’m not immune to nor naïve of the reasons behind the steady flow of children begging, and within me there is an element of sympathy, albeit detached sympathy. What I don’t have is any desire to hand out freebies; to further embed the sense of entitlement and expectation that fuels these requests. The same sense of entitlement and expectation that results in the little boys pointing at us and drawing their forefinger across their throats as we drive away, our pens, books, sweets and money still safely inside the truck. 

At some point in the past other tourists must have acquiesced to these requests, figuring ‘what’s the worst handing out some sweets can do’? And maybe they’re right, and I’m a misanthropic scumbag. Or maybe they’re idiots – well-intentioned idiots, but idiots all the same, leaving a legacy of entitlement and expectation in their wake for the next mzungu to deal with. By throwing a passion fruit skin at the head of the death threat making child and then being severely rebuked by their more compassionate wife, as an entirely fictional example. Or to give a real example, and following our theme of entitlement and expectation to its logical conclusion, the gift of £15 million the Scottish National Party leader, Alex Salmond, gave to the Malawian premier, Bingu wa Mutharaika. Which Bingu promptly spent on a private jet. Rather than on, say, hospitals or schools or infrastructure in a nation where 40% (!) of the national budget is from foreign aid. Think about that the next time you painfully glance across the tax entries on your pay slip, and then write a very simple letter to Alex Salmond which reads: You IDIOT!

The good news is that we found an absolutely splendid way to contribute to the local people who, joking aside, are extending their hospitality to us as guests in their country. And what is this method of contributing directly to a local school and clinic that is free for the Masai people of Meserani in northern Tanzania? Drink as much as you possibly can. Needless to say, we took our benevolent responsibilities very seriously, with the suitable lack of sobriety such a task such demands. The Meserani Snake Park camp ground is a regular and favourite haunt for the overland trucks that plough the well-trodden eastern Africa route, situated as it is near to the Serengeti National Park and the Ngogoro Crater. Owned by a quite delightful older couple, known affectionately as Ma and BJ, they decided long ago to say a firm ‘no’ to the requests for bribes running a business in Africa often demands, and invested a portion of their profits instead in a clinic and school that is free for the local people. And where do these profits come from? The bar, of course, populated as it is by thirsty and carefree overlanders who are more than happy to roll off a truck and straight into a friendly bar where they can literally drink for charity. On occasion a penny-pinching tourist complains that the beer is 500 shillings (20 pence) more expensive than other campgrounds and Ma, smiling serenely, replies ‘you’re quite right, but that beer you’re drinking might cure a child from malaria’ before continuing to playfully tell the overland tour leaders off for drinking and smoking too much. The overlanders love Ma and BJ because they serve up cold beer with big smiles, and the Masai people love Ma and BJ because they serve up free education and health care with big hearts. 

I love Ma and BJ because they made us feel so welcome, because they have cultivated a feeling of home in a place where so many are so far from home, and because they have found a way to be both well-intentioned and impactful. And because they gave me a t-shirt. The other campgrounds better do the same now or there’ll be trouble.

I predict a riot

Kenya, Lake Naivasha and Masai Mara

We went to the Masai Mara and saw lions and elephants and giraffes and hippos and blah blah blah.  Who really wants to read about game driving? Well tough, I don’t want to write about it, watch a David Attenborough documentary.  Wild life trumps wildlife every time in my book so I shall tell you of how we escaped from a riot. 

I should clarify my terms somewhat.  When I say ‘riot’ I mean ‘protest going on riot’, but there’s never been a catchy song title of ‘I predict a protest going on riot’ (not even by the nice young men in Coldplay), so you’ll excuse the hyperbole. When I say ‘escape’ I mean ‘bribe an enterprising mob so we could gun the Land Cruiser across a swollen river bed, up the mud bank on the other side, and not get rocks hurled through our windows, dragged out of the truck, beaten and robbed’.  Given this context I’m comfortable with using the term ‘escape’ without guilt.

We were on our way back from the Masai Mara (big sky, majestic plains, flagrant violation of animal-vehicle distance rules by the local drivers) after the aforementioned game driving, halfway back to Lake Naivasha (hippos, camping), our base for this little jolly around south west Kenya.  As we drew close to Narok, a small town supporting the tourist industry along the only westbound thoroughfare to the Masai Mara, traffic was backing up, with coaches and trucks parked up by the side of the road.  One of the many advantages of being in a Land Cruiser is the ability to use the laissez faire attitude to lane control in Africa and as we weaved our way past the stationary vehicles and down into the centre of Narok we discovered that no, this wasn’t rush hour, this was a protest.  It transpired that the heavy rains had flooded the town the previous night, washing away buildings and (according to unsubstantiated reports) a baby.  This was a protest to the local council about the lack of adequate drainage, with a rhetoric of anti-corruption layered on top, obviously. 

I turned to James Bond’s harder sister Helen to check she was okay and could tell that she’d already mentally scribbled one word across her internal risk assessment form: whatever.  ‘I’m hungry’ she said.  So as she and our two delightful travelling companions, Fran and Anna, got busy behind the heavily tinted rear windows making an impromptu lunch, Tim (more of whom later) and I turned to each other in the front seats with raised eyebrows.  ‘The drunk guys will be about soon’ he said.  ‘Yep’, I replied, insightfully.  Clearly our own mental risk assessments forms had been similar.  Mine read: angry people + booze + ineffectual army presence x mzungus = trouble. I was surprised to see a troupe of young Italians in matching t-shirts dive out of nearby minivans and head directly into the throng, followed by several camera crews.  I figure they were teams on some kind of gap year yoof reality TV show.  Never saw them again.  I reckon that if you’re after some high-end shoulder mounted camera equipment then Narok market might be a good place to grab a bargain.  They might even throw in an only-slightly-soiled t-shirt. 

The army started to move in on a truck, only to be rocked into retreat by the protestors, whilst the riot police were sheltering in a nearby café with looks that said ‘we’re not paid enough to deal with this shit’.  Then the protestors started to burn the road. Yes, that’s right; they dug the road up, covered it in petrol and set it alight.  It was at this moment I realised that if I had to write a job spec for the ideal Africa overland tour leader it would read: Needed – a well-educated ex Royal Marine and biker gang member to lead overland trips through Africa, must be experienced in unpredictable conditions, erudite, diplomatic and great company. A quiet but indisputable ability to handle both oneself and booze preferred.  Tim fits this bill. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of dodge’ he said.

Weaving our way back up the hill and out of town we were flagged down by two chancers urgently pointing over to a field.  Through the crack in the lowered window they explained to Tim that we could cross the river bed and use the back road to pass the town.  Now, chaotic as these situations may be, there will always be someone smart enough to capitalise on the chaos and profit from providing a solution.  If you want to make gazillions, have no scruples, don’t mind living in a gated and heavily guarded compound, and have an ambivalent attitude to how your neck is connected to your head get into ‘reconstruction’.  Or if you live in a small African town that’s gridlocked by a protest and full of mzungus in 4x4s wanting to get home, get a group of your mates together, stand on either side of a swollen river, and charge an illicit toll for safe passage.  My immediate reaction to this shameless shake-down was ‘screw you’.  And that’s why I’d be dead if I lived in Africa, because my 0.01% reactions would simply not fly here.  Fortunately, Tim is not an idiot like me and immediately figured out that not paying the bribe on one side of the river would lead to the other side being blocked as we crossed, punctuated by a rock through the windscreen.  One needed only to see the tourist minivan fishtailing on the muddy bank, spewing black smoke as the clutch gradually burnt out, and with the faces of scared witless tourists peering helplessly out of the windows to know that getting stuck was no fun.  Tim’s reaction; ‘that driver’s a fucking knobhead’.  He and I get on. (Illustrative aside: Tim, Helen and I were sitting around a dinner table near another large group of overlanders from a different company.  Their tour leader, an utterly unlikeable Afrikaans woman, asked them to each introduce themselves and share with the group their favourite animal, which they dutifully and dully did.  I turned to Tim and said ‘just so you know, if you ever ask me to do that I will kill you’.  Tim’s reply: ‘if I ever ask you to do that I’ll kill myself’.  Like I say, we get on).  

Anyway, back to the great escape…Bribe paid, tourist minibus temporarily out of the way, and the diff lock on the Land Cruiser engaged  Tim revved the engine and gently suggested we might want to hold on to something.  It lasted no more than five seconds, it was relatively un-dramatic, it involved only one brief fishtail, and it was, without question, the most exciting thing I’ve done since stepping off the plane in Nairobi two months ago.  Three quarters of the way up the opposite bank I involuntarily let out a guttural ‘GO ON TIM!’   And go on he did. With just the tiniest trace of air as we popped over the upper rim of the river bank he gunned the truck away from the vigilante with the rock who hadn’t got the message that we’d already paid for safe passage, and pausing only to switch the diff lock off, we had indeed got the fuck out of Dodge. 

Read the news media version of events here.  I prefer my version.  They weren't there man, THEY WEREN'T THERE!

Opt in

Kenya, near Makuyu, 60km from Nairobi

Every person you ever meet, every situation you ever experience, every act of love, and every act of hate leaves its mark on you, like a tiny piece of mental DNA slotting onto a chromosome.  And you, in turn, always make small marks on others’ mental DNA.   So in my lighter moments I resolve to make it count, make an impact, make it matter – and if I can, to make it better than yesterday and even better tomorrow.  One must opt in to the web of the human condition because opting out is no real option. I figure that making a small difference means big differences will take care of themselves.

Reflecting back on our time working at Watoto Wa Baraka makes me wonder what small differences we made, however marginal and temporary they may be.  We collected water, we mucked in to make each day that tiny bit easier for the staff and the children, and we set them up with professional documentation that will, I hope, be read and acted upon by people who have the means to make a bigger difference than we did.  I wrote a blog post that explained how easy it is to make a child’s tomorrow better than their yesterday, and some of you responded by saying why the hell not and just doing it.  Thank you – it is you who has made a difference, and maybe reading the below will take you that little bit closer to understanding just how you’ve done that.

On our penultimate day before ending our time with Watoto Wa Baraka we bumped our way back to the orphanage in Mithini to visit a child called Joseph who lived nearby and whose situation had swirled around our minds for the two weeks since we met him and his seriously ill mother.  So applying the tried and tested logic of ‘if not now then when’ we decided that today was the day that their life would become just a little better.  Joseph is ten years old, he has three younger siblings, his father is long gone, and his mother is sick a lot.  When she is well enough she works as a casual labourer at local farms, earning less than one pound a day.  She told us she has typhoid, I think she has AIDS.  She had only just been discharged from hospital when we visited.  They live in their grandmother’s small home, scraping a living from the land, and often foregoing meals which has caused Joseph to have that cruel little joke of a pot belly indicating malnourishment. We learnt from the charming deputy headmistress at his school that his school lunches payment was in arrears so he was not guaranteed a lunch.  To fix this, and pay in advance for the whole next term cost us 90 Kenyan shillings – about 75p. Next!

We went a little bit nuts in the local general store spending every shilling we had on us on food and household provisions – never have I enjoyed food shopping so much.  Dumping the loot on their table his mother, too sick to stand, burst into tears.  Most days are shit for this woman, today not so much so.

With Ziporah translating we explained that we would be sponsoring Joseph, and by extension the whole family.  Each month Watoto Wa Baraka would use the sponsorship money to provide them with food and whatever assistance Joseph needed to continue his studies.  To a bashful looking Joseph we explained that sponsorship is contingent on him working hard at school, and in response to our question he explained that his ambition was to become a pilot.  Maybe he will achieve this ambition, and maybe he won’t.  Frankly I don’t care, I just don’t want him to die of malnutrition or leave school early to work in order to support his siblings.  It’s up to him now to break the cycle so that when he grows up his family have a better life than he had.

So with this last real, and most important, job done it was with a sense of sadness which I hadn’t expected that we said goodbye to the children and staff at Watoto Wa Baraka.  Heading to Nairobi to begin our six week overland adventure to Johannesburg, the children’s shouted goodbyes dimming as we drove out of the compound, I pulled out a small piece of paper on which James, one of the older orphans, had drawn a map of East Africa.  On it he had written ‘a drawing by James Irungu I am giving to Ian like a present’. 

And maybe that’s what I really want to say with this post – give someone something ‘like a present’, and do it today.  Say thank you, say sorry to heal a rift, tell someone you love that you love them. Opt in today.       



To the left - James and I sharing a high five. 'Playing with the boys' from Top Gun was on the radio in the background.
To the right - goodbye group shot.  Helen got widdled on in the excitement. Tee-hee!

< You may have noticed that the blog has smashed through the 1,000 page views mark so thank you to everyone for dropping by.  It would also appear, judging from the comments and referring URLs, that there are some new readers - very welcome, hope you're enjoying it. >



Mzungu tax

Kenya, near Makuyu, 60km from Nairobi

I’ve revealed rather a lot about myself in these blog postings, perhaps too much*. And yet it’s not just me who has revealed more than is perhaps wise.  You, the readers, have revealed what a sadistic lot you are.  My dashboard tells me that the top two most popular postings involve me experiencing either physical pain or discomfort. So it will come as no surprise that when I asked you whether or not I should vent my spleen the overwhelming result was to the positive (83% vs. 17%).  Good for you.  You weirdos.

So allow me to start this venting with a confession.  I’m an angry man trapped inside a calm man’s body.  There, I’ve said it.  I can now commence my 12 step recovery programme 12 whole steps, are you fucking kidding me, why don’t you walk down those 12 steps into my basement full of Get a Grip torture implements!?  I exaggerate somewhat, and the truth is that 99.99% of the time I’m fairly easy going, and my outer self really doesn’t stress the little things.  But sometimes the façade cracks and I lose it.  To be clear, anger doesn’t equate to physical violence in my case – I abhor physical violence, not least because I’m rubbish at it.  But I can, 0.01% of the time, be verbally violent.  My brother once confessed to me that he’d feared I’d had a rapid mental breakdown after he watched me scream obscenities through the car window of a man who’d just dropped another empty packet of cigarettes at my feet after I’d already told him that the floor wasn’t a bin.  In my darker moments I still regret not following the guy home and then returning in the dead of night with a week’s worth of rubbish to dump through his letterbox.  And a machine gun.

Last week was a 0.01% occasion.  It had been coming – I could feel myself getting more irritable, less patient, and it was sitting on a packed and steamy matatu that it happened.  Matatus are minivans that serve as the public transport in Kenya.  They seat 14 but regularly cram in 25 or more.  I’m sure some travellers enjoy the novel experience of being crammed into a rusting death-trap, figuring they are experiencing ‘the real thing’.  I’m not one of them.  The reason these matatus are crammed is because of police corruption, because the swathe of underpaid and unscrupulous traffic police will take a bribe before they prosecute a driver for overfilling his vehicle.  The impact is that ordinary Kenyans continue to experience discomfort at best, death at worst, and that there is a smaller competitive market in matatus, and therefore less competitive imperative to reduce prices.  Plus they stink.

Each matatu has a conductor who collects the fares and manoeuvres the passengers for maximum capacity.  And each conductor is a chancer.   They regularly try to scam the passengers by withholding change, claiming they received a lower denomination bill, or in the case of mzungus (white folk) straight overcharging.  On this 0.01% day he tried to overcharge me five times the fare.  Five times!  And I lost it.  To the amusement of the other passengers (for they hate the conductors too) I started shouting at him.  I recount here a slightly censored version: ‘what is this you mother-crusher, a mzungu tax? Yeh, I’m talking to you scally-wag.  I’m not paying a mzungu tax you flipping thief, give me my change or I’m gonna turn that smile upside down!’

I got my change.  We parted company with my suggestion that he go away and perform a biologically impossible act upon his person.  My anger at this one incident was probably unjustified.  But anger at corruption, which was really the root of my displeasure, is not unjustified.  Corruption in Kenya trickles down the many layers of government and has become normalised.  And as with all trickle down theories it is those on the bottom rung who feel its impact the most. 

Take this one, particularly insidious, example.  The Kenyan Ministry of Education have recently declared that all children in education must have a birth certificate before they can take their national exams.  Education in Kenya is a big deal, and Kenya has a high literacy rate as a result, and a massive youth population who are about to take this country into a new era of prosperity.  And yet the very poorest children who would benefit from education the most rarely have birth certificates.  Watoto Wa Baraka, the organisation we have been working for, are helping the children they sponsor to procure birth certificates from the local government.  To do this the local sub-chief has to write a letter to the government ministry confirming that the child does indeed exist and is a certain age.  And to do this incredibly simple, yet important, task the sub-chief expects a bribe.  Watato Wa Baraka always refuse and politely explain that they are helping the children in the sub-chief’s area, and maybe he could forego his personal interests on this occasion so that the child could be educated.

And all credit to them for keeping their cool and their principles.  I’m fairly certain that my reaction would be to not only suggest the sub-chief conduct the aforementioned impossible act upon his person, but I would help him do it with a broom handle.

And before you ask, you weirdos, no I won’t conduct this experiment myself and post pictures.    

* Note to current or future employers/clients – it’s all fiction**, I’m completely normal and really quite exceptional at my job. 

** OK, so it’s not fiction, but the rest of that sentence is true***.

*** Maybe.



A matatu.  Pronounced maa-ta-tu.  As opposed to a Yorkshireman's ballet outfit - ma -tutu.



<I’ve calmed down now.  I would like to make a special mention for those of you who have left comments – they really are appreciated so keep them coming.  And a double special mention to those of you who have become followers – you’re my favourites.  I’m on a soft promise from a literary agent that if I get 5,000 followers a publisher may take interest.  Only 4,990 to go!  Any ideas to send this blog viral are most welcome.  Whilst you’re thinking why not become a follower yourself? >

Crime and punishment

Kenya, near Makuyu, 60km from Nairobi

Having no children of my own puts me in a perfect position, I think, to pass judgement on how to raise children correctly and, more importantly, to objectively point out where parents are going wrong in their own efforts at parenting.  This constructive and impartial criticism is, I feel, a valuable service; particularly for new parents.  It is, after all, important to listen to outside views if you want to take parenting at all seriously.

I’m joking!  You can stop sharpening the rusks into daggers and emptying the rattle into an IED.  Dora the Explorer need not switch careers into Dora the Assassin.  Worry not, I’m the last person you’ll ever hear trotting out the limp cliché ‘everyone’s opinion is valid’, the motto on the flag of the fictional Nation of Cretin.  In the Nation of Cretin everyone’s opinion is valid, no matter how ill informed, illogical, or evidence free the opinion may be.  One result, among many, is that creationism is taught on the same science syllabus as evolution. It’s a good job the Nation of Cretin is virtually every nation on earth a fictional place, otherwise I fear I might start receiving death threats from its citizens – the cretinites.  Having said that, I am tempted to post that first paragraph onto Mumsnet, perhaps supplemented with a five point parenting plan. I think receiving a death threat in crayon and alphabet spaghetti would be rather fun.

So, having established my non-credentials in the raising of children I’d still like to share with you what, in my non-credible opinion, is the most effective (and funniest) piece of child discipline I’ve ever seen.  Little Daniel is five years old, and he has a sweet tooth. That’s him in the picture below, cute huh? He was caught with a pocket full of sugar that he’d pilfered from the kitchen, and was sitting in a dark corner licking it off his fingers.  I thought this, in itself, was pretty funny, but the punishment he received from Zach (Orphanage Manager whom Helen childishly, although accurately, keeps accusing me of having a bro-mance with), was even funnier.  Little Daniel was forced to wear a sign around his neck  and carry a cup of sugar around the compound before having to stand on the stage in the dining room with a torch played onto the sign.  He was embarrassed, he was teary, and he was ridiculed by his peers.  He’ll get over all these things.  He stole - that’s bad news even if it was just sugar.  Hopefully he won’t do it again, and therefore the punishment fitted the crime.  Just my opinion.

The sign reads: This is my story… My name is Daniel.  I love sweet things and I am a thief.  Like today I stole sugar (also maize and beans) in the kitchen.  You better watch out, I might come after you. 

<We have a winner! From the veritable deluge of two whole entries for the ‘dunny debate’ in a previous post it is after much careful consideration that the plaudits go to Matt, despite strong competition from Rhi.  I urge you to read both comments, but it was Matt’s invention of new African proverbs that snaffled him first place.  Matt (and I think I know which Matt this is) – you are a scholar and a gentleman, and we miss you and R very much. By way of a prize here is a proverb just for you:  Sometimes the gloss of friendship presents itself as Matt. >     

Maji Imeisha. Water – all gone!

Kenya, near Mithini, 70km from Nairobi

Francis doing his best Comic Relief pose. 
He's not sad, he's just a bit lazy and hates collecting water

The rooster crows, the randy goat does his best Barry White impression, the puppies whine, the children run about making children noise, and I blearily wonder if Slimer will ever piss off and stop sticking my mouth to the pillow with ectoplasm each night.  It’s 6.30am and morning broke about half an hour ago.  My bed seems to have sagged another couple of inches during the night.  It’s time to get up.  It’s time to start the daily routine. 

 

Guilt propels me out of bed (another example of how you can’t leave your self behind). The older children have already left for school, and Ziporah – the eternally patient and caring house matron – has been up since 5am doing a selection of the million tiny jobs that make this place function.  Ciggie for me, porridge for the children (made out of millet, crimson red, minging) before they wander off to school repeating back to us ‘good bye children’.  And then there really is no more avoiding it – water collection time.

What’s your reaction when a colleague says they’ve just been for a workout at the gym before work?  Mine is ‘oh, wow, felt that burn huh’? before disappearing as quickly as possible in the assured knowledge that I have just escaped from a PROPERLY MENTAL person.  Well, I’m that properly mental person now.  Except my dumbbells are 25 litre jerry cans, my step machine is a hill, and my water fountain is a small water hole at the bottom of said hill.  

Bleary eyed we bump the wheelbarrow and jerry cans down the hill, 250 metres.  Yeh, well it feels long on the way back.  At the hole the water is scooped into the jerry cans, ideally from my favourite prostrate position laying over a rock, like the bastard lovechild between a beaver and a seal.  It’s then loaded onto a wheelbarrow and pushed back up the hill.  We do this two or three times, and tend to take it in turns for who pushes the wheelbarrow and who pulls it using a rope.  It was this activity that caused a domestic one day (hilarious I thought, not so much she thought) when I decided, as ‘pusher’, to act out the role of an ex-military personal trainer.  This involved shouting to the ‘puller’ (my wife, and a nickname I hope is limited to this activity) such encouragement as ‘you’re pathetic, that’s not the wall you’ve hit, the wall thinks you’re a joke! and ‘you don’t know what pain feels like, pain is what happens if you don’t pull harder’!   The flames were hardly doused when, as she dropped the rope halfway up the hill and stomped off back to the compound, I shouted out (still in character I’m keen to add) ‘yeh, well cry me a river, build me a bridge, and GET OVER IT’!   

Fortunately, the drudgery of this water collection will soon be a thing of the past as an American based organisation, Well Aware, have agreed to create a bore hole, an act that will transform life at the orphanage, and also support the local community.  And when I say local community, I mean local women, for whom a patriarchal tradition dictates that they are responsible for collecting water and then carrying it on their back, with a strap over their forehead.  Women drive this small part of the world, but have none of the power that should accompany their hard work.  It’s only feckless, useless layabout men you see slumped under trees, and it is only they that breathe their stinking alcohol breath over you and stare with their stoned eyes as they harass for a few shillings ‘for their children’.  I swiftly added the word ‘toke’ to my small Swahili collection as when ‘no’ doesn’t work, ‘piss off’ normally does.

Whilst we are on the subject of inspirational womanhood (that’s right sisters, we’re doin’ it for ourselves!) the founder of Well Aware, Sarah, visited the new orphanage with her boyfriend, Bradley, on a whistle-stop tour of Kenya to assess potential projects.  A youthful looking 36 year old from Austin, Texas, she gave up her successful law career to start Well Aware figuring, I suppose, that water trumped writs, that the ground beat the gavel.  She told me about a fantastic fundraising activity they run, the name of which I’ve completely forgotten so I’ll call it the ‘7 day stinkathon’, that requires participants to not shower until they have raised $1,000.  A great idea, and one which some of the commuters on my old tube journey seemed to have embraced fully. 

Her charitable spirit didn’t end with providing a well – on the morning of their departure Sarah handed us a bag full of treats such as porridge and, joy of joys, gen-u-ine Texan beef jerky, explaining that as their trip was nearly at an end they figured we needed it more than them.  Well, on the sight of the jerky I’m not proud to say that I lost my British reserve, and gave Sarah an impromptu, and no doubt fragrant, hug.  It was clearly her powers of lawyerly discretion that prevented her from asking if I could become the ‘after’ example for participants in the 7 day stinkathon, a warning against raising the money too slowly.

The well they are planning to install really can’t come too quickly.  Daubed in chalk against the limestone walls of the watering hole is the legend maji imeisha, the Kikuyu for no more water, written by some wag as a darkly humorous comment on the difficulties of the dry seasons.  Not only will it provide the orphanage and the community with a steady supply of clean water, but it will also reduce the number of water collection domestic disputes.  Now, FEEL THE BURN, MAGGOT!

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