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!>  

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!