Once Mozambiquan, forever smitten

Posted on June 26, 2013 by danielnuth

Mozambique

(Photo: RWH)

In Mozambique, ghosts of Portuguese and Swahili settlers wander amongst faded colonial grandeur, unnoticed. The inhabitants of the remote north have quickly returned to the lives that they lived for hundreds of years before the colonists arrived. The only memories of the old times are the Portuguese language, the food and pastel mansions crumbling among the mud huts.

Over several hundred kilometers the road from southern Malawi to the Indian Ocean deteriorated from tarmac into a mud track, furrowed and ruined by rainy season run off. Villages became less frequent until we found ourselves driving through thick tropical forest bare of any kind civilization. This was a welcome change after seeing nothing but hand-ploughed land since the Sahara desert. It did not really strike home how densely and universally inhabited Africa has been until we found a place that wasn’t. Camping in this thick jungle was not easy. We had to pick a path through the thorn bushes, creepers and giant car-trap spider webs. It was worth it though, to sit tight around our campfire, to listen while distant drums beat from a wild Africa that flowed out wide and black beyond the flickering light.

Find Bas in the elephant grass (Photo: DN)

Driving so far away from civilisation was exciting but came with a little apprehension. What would we do if something happened? What if the car died or even worse, a crash? The road was white sand and stones, flat and unused but blighted with potholes that could swallow the car. Driving at midday is the most treacherous. The sun sits high overhead and casts a flat light that renders all the bumps and holes in the road invisible. It was under these conditions that we lost control of the car. At 40mph a sea of potholes materialized from the blinding white road and knocked Tess into a skid. The back of the landie drifted out wide on the carpet of small rocks. Bas pulled it back but we swung out the other side even more violently. For 150 yards we skated across the surface, each exaggerated skid brought us closer to flipping over. The rubber of our tyres squealed under the strain and the luggage flew around possessed. One by one we lost our cool and started to scream in fright. Bas wrested control of the steering and ditched the car over the edge of the road, down a gully into tall grass where we rolled to a halt, every one breathing hard.

Bushmen (Photo: RWH)

We stepped out of the car, a little shaken. Rich crawled underneath to assess the damage. Nothing seemed wrong. We couldn’t believe we had been so lucky, or unlucky depending on your point of view. Tess creaked back up the embankment onto the road and set off again towards the coast. As we drove, my mind was filled with imagined scenarios. People say that above the bandits, the terrorists and the wildlife you are most likely to come a cropper in Africa as a result of the roads. They are right, and what would one do if it happened miles away from the nearest civilisation. Our near miss brought the reality of a serious injury or massive mechanical failure into sharp focus. Would we have enough food? Who would go for help? Someone would have to walk to the nearest village for assistance and it would likely take several days, longer still for the people waiting with the vehicle. It seems there is a reason the road less travelled is not, well, more travelled.

Ibo, a tiny island a few miles off the North Mozambique coast at Pemba, was our destination. At the end of a sandy track, too bright for my cheap sunglasses, were a large baobab tree and a driftwood kiosk selling cokes. We left Tess in the hands of the kiosk man to guard and took off our shoes. Wading through the mud into the shallow mangroves we approached a dhow bound for Ibo. Ibo is an abandoned colonial holiday spot scattered with decaying buildings. White sand and sharp crags of black volcanic rock encircle the island. The atmosphere on Ibo is very much that of island life. Nothing happens too quickly, everyone knows one another and there is no crime.

(Photo: DN)

On our second day in Ibo a small boat took us out to snorkel at a shallow reef. The water was a warm, blue world. The coral was dotted with great wrinkled clams that snapped shut in a fizz of bubbles when I touched them. I have never scuba dived and this underwater landscape was a new experience for me. It was thrilling to dive and mingle with the marine creatures imagining for brief moments that I was allowed to be one of them. I wore myself out chasing bright little fishes through coral corridors. They flitted easily away from my pursuit like sparrows escaping a hawk.

Shallow reef snorkling trip (Photo DN)

Our boat chugged slowly through the chop as we returned from the reef, our skin drying slowly in the low sun. All of a sudden the Captain shouted to us from the wheel, the engine rattled and cut out. Warm and a little dazed I pulled my fins on and bowled out of the boat. The cold water broke on me with a start and everything was suddenly silent and black. The open sea was cold, dark and deep. Alone for a few seconds before the others plunged in beside me, I was taken by a trace of fear. Perhaps it was the chill, or the deep unknown beneath me but it felt unnatural after the shallow, colourful reef. Quickly a shadow passed below me, easy and swift. It banked left and joined three more shadows. Each beat its tail hard and then whipped off into the blackness. They came again, this time closer, slowing as they passed. There were four dolphins batting though the water, wet pebble eyes considering me as I floated.

I kicked hard to get close. They did not flee, they flanked me slowly as if to encourage me to come with them. Arched streamlined backs, they began to dive. Snatching a breath I dived down with them and almost imperceptibly the nearest glanced back at me, noting that I had followed. The four strong bodies spiraled deeper and deeper. I could not keep up. I returned to the surface, panting.

Several more times they passed us; we were awkward in their world. They urged us to play, but our sluggishness disappointed them. After a while they left us to find better sport and we returned to the boat. Everyone was vibrating from the encounter, speechless and yammering at the same time. The interaction was magnetic. A simple, good-natured relationship had developed in only a few minutes between each of us, alone in the dark sea, and a pod of dolphins. The experience was alien and yet wonderful. As we set out for home we saw the pod coursing ahead through the water. The furthest of them leapt out of the surf sending a fan of droplets from its dorsal fin that caught the light.

At dawn the following day we returned to the mainland. The dhow sailed nimbly through the shallow mangroves bringing island women and their wares to the market in Pemba. Huge cloth wrapped baskets and nylon sacks filled the small boat’s hull leaving only the edges for numerous passengers to jostle for seating above the spray. The bright and beautifully patterned clothing of the Mozambican women was striking in the dawn light. The lines on their sun-weathered skin were also worn well.

Mozambiquan Fishwife (Photo DN)

The road south from was smoothly graded, prepared by the Chinese for the construction of a new highway. Natural gas has been found off the coast so Pemba will soon be the newest raw material exploitation centre in Africa. This will probably lead to a brief explosion in the tourist industry on Ibo and surrounding islands. The property will be bought up and converted to luxury hotels for the gas company employees. In a few years the gas will dry up, the industry will leave and the island people will once again return to their small, quiet lives.

(Photo: DN)

In Ilha do Mocambique the contrast between old colonial majesty and island tradition is also stark. The main square is cobbled black and white like the streets of Lisbon. The tessellated motif imitates the pattern left in the dust after island women have swept the earth in front of their door. The market brims with fruits we had never seen before, breadfruit, flat bananas, sun-dried mangos. At the seafront young men skip up the streets from the fishing boats with the catch of the day, sharks in their arms and rays on their backs. Old ladies hunch over charcoal fires cooking red snapper on skewers. Tongues of flame lick the spiced fishes, drops of lemon spit and crackle.

Our fish supper (Photo AV)

With a huge tropical fish for our dinner we left Ilha and drove down the coast. A few kilometers after the last village we made a way through the bush to the beach and lit a fire. After a brawl with numerous large purple spines and several punctured fingers our meal was scaled and ready. The fish cooked on the wood fire while we lay watching the southern constellations track the sky. These shapes that had been so foreign to us now seemed like home, more so even than the northern stars since roofs have become a rarity. As we waited for our dinner we mused, even fretted a little about how much the trip has changed us. We have occasionally entertained worries that we would not easily reassume our old lives. After eight months speaking almost exclusively with each other, how will we converse with people whose opinions, habits and characteristics are unfamiliar? How will we kick habits like walking barefoot through the middle of town or showering only twice a week?

Skills we have learned which are indispensable here will quickly become useless back home. The capacity to sleep soundly in a hut that is crawling with spiders as big as your hand will no longer be necessary in Cornwall. The ability to gather wood, build a fire and cook a fish on it will also seem distinctly obsolete when we cast our mind back from the queue in a fish and chip shop. Perhaps the most difficult thing will be to reintegrate with western opinions. There is a marked difference between the acceptable topics of conversation in Africa and at home. In Cornwall a few eyebrows might be raised if we try to argue the benefits of restoring the ivory trade, discuss Mugabe’s commendable achievements before the economic collapse or the futility of charitable work in Africa. On the other hand it will probably be good for us to learn to keep our opinions to ourselves occasionally. The fish was great.

Wild camping on the coast (Photo: RWH)

In the morning we lifted our mosquito nets to see the sun creeping into the world over the brow of a shimmering silent sea. The earliest fishermen were scudding along the horizon in their shallow bottomed sailing boats as we paddled about in the water. It was difficult to leave such a lovely scene but like on so many other perfect mornings we packed up and set off to the next destination on our journey. We were heading to Chimoio where Alki would find her bus to Tofu in the south of Mozambique. Alki would leave the trip for a couple of weeks to go on scuba safari, pursuing giant manta rays.

On the road to Chimoio our clutch failed, the first major mechanical failure of the trip and real disappointment so close to the finishing line. At the side of the road, in the midday heat dismantling the master and slave cylinder. We succeeded only in making the problem worse however as we were unable to put it all back together. The only solution was going to be to remove the engine or drop the transfer box. As we did not relish the idea of doing this at the side of the road we decided to attempt to drive without a clutch until the next big town to get it fixed. The next big town was Mutare in Zimbabwe.

After dropping Alki at her bus we departed for Mutare making quite a scene. In order to set off we had to push the car up to first gear speed. Then like a bobsled team we were to run alongside the moving vehicle and leap into our seats. What actually happened was Bas and I both went for the same door, in confusion I trod on Bas’ flipflop tripping him onto the tarmac. I then jumped for the door, hit my head on the frame and bounced back out to join Bas on the tarmac. These antics were viewed by large crowd of market goers and pedestrians who all dutifully cheered and jeered our ridiculous display. There was a similar farce at the Zimbabwe border crossing. The border is on a slight incline so we recruited the help of the surly border soldiers. They reluctantly put down their AKs to throw a their weight behind Tess, who choked and jerked into gear and pulled away leaving them in a cloud of black smoke. Welcome to Zimbabwe.

Dancing with Demons from the DRC

Posted on June 4, 2013 by danielnuth

A huge plate of chips-a-myeye weighed heavily as we stepped among the crumbs of broken concrete in another filthy trucker stop town. We arrived at our chintzy bed and breakfast, the “Triple J Hotel’s” [sic], and were about to turn in when Bas noticed music coming from a dimly lit building across the road. I was sent off to investigate while Rich, Bas and Alki remained. I found the building lit but empty and the music resonating from still further away so I pressed on into the solid black night. Cat’s moaned as I picked my way between warped shacks and squalid passages. After walking for much longer than planned I found a tiny square covered by a ragged tarpaulin and hemmed on all sides by surrounding buildings. The music bounced and roared in the tight space. Yellow glare from a single bulb cast faces into shadow, fusing a mass of black bodies into a single dark beast dancing, shouting, writhing and fighting in celebration.

As I watched, a white eye from the depths of the beast fastened on my white face and a stillness spread from it. A legion of eyes turned to see me while the mud-caked sound system continued its lonely crashing beat. Moments passed and I began to imagine a flicker of hostility in this dark well of eyes when the body of a woman leapt across the light and grabbed me by the arm. She dragged me roughly beneath the tarp and smiling, danced me to the middle of the crowd. The instant she did so the mass dissolved into individual bodies and danced with me.

As I jumped and stamped along with the rhythm of bare feet beating the packed dirt my dance partner was dragged away into the crowd by a thick arm. An African buffalo of a man replaced her and danced for a short while under the glow of the bulb without breaking my gaze. As I tried to turn away to dance elsewhere he took me by the hand and dragged me out into the shadows at the edge of the music. He spoke to me quickly in a language I didn’t recognise and tried to drag me away down an alley between two buildings. I resisted but he was strong and I was lead down three or four backstreets.

Suddenly we stopped and the man stared at me showing a muddle of fear and anger that I could not differentiate. He then pushed open a sheet of corrugated steel in a doorway and turned on a light to reveal a heap of sleeping bodies covered in soiled blankets. He crashed around waking all, to show them the guest he had brought. He told me his name, Nicko, and pointed to his mother among mire of fabric. She blinked her tiny wrinkled eyes as Nicko buzzed around her explaining my presence.

A friend of Nicko’s was able to translate. Nicko was Congalese, his father had had his arm cut off with a machete, then been killed by the army. These people were all refugees from the war in the DRC. Nicko returned from his mother and told me urgently that I had to leave. He said I must not dance at this celebration I must stay here in the room with the refugees and his mother until it is over as it is not safe for me. I suggested that it would be perhaps better if I left altogether and he agreed.

As I walked back towards the party I saw that Bas had followed the music as well and was to be seen dancing with gusto in the midst of the crowd. He had clearly become worried that I was having fun without him or perhaps had been kidnapped, in that order of importance. I pushed through the crowd and was forced into further dance offs. I danced along and tried to keep up with my being passed from person to person like a new toy. Eventually I was able to get a word in Bas’ ear. “I am not sure we are particularly welcome here, I think perhaps we ought to go” He looked around. Outside the dome of dusty light there stood a semi circle of men watching us, arms folded and brows low in the dark. “I see…” whispered Bas back at me. We began edging our way towards the alley that we had arrived from but our way was blocked. Several people were carrying the body of a man towards the centre of the dirt floor. They lowered him to the ground and people started fanning this, seemingly unconscious, man with their clothes. The man began to convulse on the floor, kicking his legs out and arching his back while people feverishly wafted their jackets at him. A young man in a clerical collar, silver jewellery and dark sunglasses approached. He took hold of the fitting man firmly by the head and began loudly repeating a prayer in Swahili. The man on the floor was soon rid of his demons and leapt to his feet. Four more people replaced him on the floor and commenced fitting and writhing to the visible delight of the crowd. As the priest wrestled with them I noticed another white face in the crowd. Rich too had surrendered to his fear of missing out and followed us. While the crowd was engaged by the miracles being wrought before their eyes we slipped away towards home.

Nicko caught us before our escape was complete. He crushed us in turn across his thick chest as he bade us an earnest farewell. He proudly told us he used to be a driver before he was forced to flee the Congo. To prove this he pulled his wallet from a pocket and opened it. The small nylon wallet was almost bare. It contained no money, no photos, no scraps of paper or receipts. There was only a single card bearing the words “RDC – Permis de Conduire”. I wondered why he carried the wallet with him at all. A fugitive’s few possessions are still possessions I suppose.

Tanzania: Car Jackers!

Posted on May 30, 2013 by danielnuth

Many months later, fleeing from the dark, we would remember these dazzling steps along a sandy ridge in the Sudanese desert. At midday we had tramped away from the quivering road to an old fort on the dunes. Among the crumbling ruins we found a hovel concealed in the shadows of the fort’s walls. A man clothed in rough cloth became visible in the doorway; he beckoned us inside. Slowly, hibiscus tea simmered on coals and he watched us. He murmured gently as it boiled, “on your road you have a danger, you have to move as one.” He said, “you see it first and run. Before the time to chase, you run, all in their place and all eyes forwards.” The hermit hissed as he spoke. Quietly finishing our tea, we spat back the hibiscus petals that fell into our mouths. We did not make sense of the man’s words until the day we were chased.

Broken Brake line (Photo AV) Tanzania was in bloom as we crept up behind the lonely blue hulk of Kilimanjaro. The rocky Mwenzi peak looked like the prow of a great ship, wrecked on an atoll in a wide green sea. A smattering of snow at the summit was a rare and melancholy sight, simply because it bears such cruel comparison to Hemingway’s“impossibly white” mountain of a few decades earlier. In Tanzania the borders of game reserves are less well defined than in Kenya. Elephants scuff the bark from the trees at the side of the road and impala flee, bouncing across the plains, from the roar of our engine. We found our camps by pushing a path from the road into the 10 ft elephant grass to fall asleep with the rustle of crickets and the barking snarl of leopards. At Lake Challa we climbed down 100m of steep jungle to jump from rocks into splendid blue water in the crater. In Moshi we tried to sell our old tyres. We were discovering that they were worthless, even in Africa, until we met a man plying a trade in recycled shoes made of tyre rubber. This was particularly opportune as Bas was woefully undershod subsequent to a disastrous flip-flop blowout a few days earlier.

In the sparsely populated interior of Tanzania, our route took us through several vast national parks, this gave us all a great sense of moving through the real Africa, the wild, empty Africa of Livingstone and Stanley. We traversed hundreds of kilometers of green bush, red dirt and sunsets stained violet by the rising dust. In the Mikumi national park we came across a male water buffalo grazing a few metres from the road. In person they are enormous, like a huge cow, reinforced for Africa, with heavy crescent horns and a square frame of thick muscle. Rich got out of the car to photograph the placid animal when another, very different, bull arrived from the bush. The second had a broken horn and a face covered with scars and bitterness. He took an immediate dislike to Rich and dropped his head low to scowl through his thick brows. We shouted to Rich to get back in as the animal was clearly spoiling for a fight. While buffalo damage to the car might be a fun story, buffalo damage to Rich would be difficult to explain to his mother. Rich could not reach his door so leapt onto the back ladder and scrambled into the window as the bull feinted a charge at him.

Angry Buffalo (Photo DN)

This was an incident that prompted the development of a system for unexpected hazards. Should we need to get out of a situation quickly and someone is trapped outside the car they must climb to the roof, rather than gamble on the temper of any of our fickle door mechanisms, and then slither down into a window while the driver makes good the escape.

We have a system for communication from the roof as well. This was developed after a surprise elephant encounter in thick woods (the person on the roof had no means of telling those in the car that they were eye to eye with a grey wall of angry wrinkles).

When parking Tess we have learned a rhythmic tapping system from a pair of parking wizards in Istanbul. This has now been expanded to include other signals. Two taps for stop, three taps for go, and a continuous frenetic rapping for “an elephant is about to pull my head off!”.

We have many and varied systems for coping with the problems that have arisen so far on the trip. One is a system of co-piloting Tess in the worst of off-road conditions. The navigator uses a map and an old shabby sat-nav with an African tracks program to give the driver real time guidance on the contours of the road ahead. We have a code for communicating the location of approaching holes, rocks, mud, deep sand etc. The system allows us to effectively use six eyes instead of two to scan the road ahead. In addition to saving us from several catastrophes when we had no head lights the “six eyes is better than two” approach allows us to pretend we are racing in the (as yet un-realised) Cornwall to Cape Town Rally.

Before leaving Tanzania for Malawi we visited Ruaha national park. As we arrived the sun rose over a hill and shone silvery on the surface of the river. The waters of the Ruaha wind long loops among giant granite shards that burst roughly through the rolling green landscape, polkadot with Baobab trees. Being off-season and fairly remote we had the park to ourselves. We lost the day following elephant and antelope over some of the most breathtaking scenery we have encountered on the trip so far leaving the park long into the greying twilight.

Ruaha River (Photo DN)

Conversation bubbled through the car as we rumbled along the ruined track away from Ruaha. A few kilometres from the park gate we came across a pickup flashing it’s hazard lights in the narrow track ahead. Our voices lowered as we noted that there was no way past them. We could not think of a reason for a pickup to be on this isolated road and car-jackings being prevalent in this area, we paused a hundred metres short to investigate. I took the binoculars from the dash and focused on the distance. “There are a few men standing around the pickup, they have guns!”

Bas pointed out calmly, “everyone has an AK here that doesn’t mean very much”. “True” I replied, “but this is different, they aren’t slung over the shoulder like a rusty farm tool, these are on a short strap across the chest, and their hands are on the grips”

There was a hush in the car. “We should wait a little, to see what unfolds before we approach,” said Rich “Maybe turn the car around incase we need to get out of here quickly.”

Bas got out to help Rich to turn the car without dropping a wheel into either of the ditches running along the sides of the dirt track. Tap tap…tap tap…tap tap…TAP. “That is enough we will make it around”, said Rich.

Bas crept down the track to check on the pickup again. As soon as he raised the binoculars he started shouting, “they have seen us turning, they are after us!” At that moment the distant engine snarled to life and began burning towards us in a cloud of red dust.

Bas ran back down the track towards us, “go go go they are coming.” He leapt onto the ladder at the back and beat out the emergency rhythm on the bodywork to show he was aboard and we should bolt. As we gathered speed on the rough ground Bas scrambled up onto the roof and held tight. He cast a backward glance at the headlights that cut a swathe through the darkness behind us then slipped in through the passenger window.

The track flew around several bends and straightened. Rich threw a furtive look back in the mirror. The lights were gone. They must have given up. Maybe they knew we could not go back through the park gate. We were penned in. We consulted the map and found an older route away from Ruaha Park. The old road returned to the main track after 60 km. We had to take the old road and hope that we could reach the junction faster than they could or they would head us off. Minds set, we raced away though the high grass and low branches; this path had not been used in a long time.

Our spotlights shone a yellow corridor in the obscurity. Rich drove among the potholes and corrugations faster than we had ever dared before. The only sounds in the car were the raking branches, spitting stones and barked instructions. “Pothole 1…Rut running 2 to 3…Wooden bridge 300…Wet ford 100m”. My heart was beating tight as a bowstring as we approached for the crossroads.

For 90 minutes we drove, all eyes pinned on the road ahead, Hole 1 to 2, Rock 3, All silent. All stock-still. The sound of the car shaking itself apart on the ruined road jarred. Rut 3, Rocks 2 to 3, Ford, may be wet

How far is it, 17km.

Rock 3, Ditch 1, Soft Sand for 50m, 3km now

We peered into the distance, eyes bloodshot now from staring, the junction appeared. It was dark, too dark to see if anything waited for us there. We approached at ramming speed and skidded through the junction without stopping. No one saw the pickup, but who could say in the dark. We drove on for five kilometers, regularly scanning the mirrors, nothing. Still not safe, but we were forced to stop for respite. Rich’s white fingers were peeled from the wheel and he was thrown in the back to recover. It was another hour before we reached the nearest town. Lights and people, at last. The tide of adrenaline receded slowly over a jittery beer and we collapsed into a motel to sleep.

Kenya: The Swahili Coast

Posted on May 25, 2013 by danielnuth

Like a worried war-time family gathered around the wireless, we crowded around a small window in a Greek hotel room to see a torrent of protesters surge around the Landie, hurling rocks and abuse at the riot police. In Tahrir Square we ate roasted sweet potatoes bearing inverted impressions of the anti-government pamphlets in which they were wrapped. In Sudan the people marched in anger at the murder and concealment of two student protesters. It has felt to us as we have traveled that the world is in mutinous temper. Kenya revealed itself to be no exception.

While we were discovering Uganda and Rwanda, elections were taking place in Kenya. We had not particularly intended to avoid Kenya during this period but it was a happy coincidence considering their last elections were marred by quite widespread political and intertribal violence. On our return we crossed Kenya quickly, arriving on the Swahili coast after only the briefest of stops to attend a party that confirmed every rumour we had heard about the Nairobi expatriate scene.

Our arrival was greeted with the warmest of welcomes from Bas’ parents, William and Lucy Wallace, and their friends Martin and Dawn Whetstone. A wonderful week was spent lounging by the pool, visiting idyllic beaches and mixing with the who’s who of the Malindi social scene. As we sipped cold beers in the Driftwood club we quickly forgot all about our intrepid expedition. We were delighted to be given the opportunity to speak at the Driftwood and tell a few of our tales as part of a cervical cancer screening fundraiser, which was excellent fun.

On our final night this paradise was sadly a little tarnished. While sitting up late trading safari stories with the Whetstones and Wallaces, conversation was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of gunfire. Five shots echoed from the night and then it was calm. For several minutes we waited for more, hushed, then a crescendo of automatic fire filled the air. The volleys became more regular as shots were traded. It was a pitched battle between two well-armed adversaries and the sound was close by. David, the askari,estimated that the shots were 200 metres away, near the beach. The clash continued for half an hour and then stopped suddenly.

Martin and Dawn were calm and pragmatic as one might expect from old hands in Africa. “We would have heard on the phone if there was something to worry about” said Dawn. We speculated that it might have been Somali pirates fighting the police. Raids on the North Kenya coast were more common a few years previously before the international navy presence in the Gulf of Aden was increased significantly. After a nightcap to settle the nerves we retired to bed.

In the morning, the town was going about business as usual, it takes more than a gunfight to upset the balance in Kenya. It transpired that the police had stumbled across a terrorist militia, training in an abandoned building by the beach. In the resulting battle 4 policemen and 8 militiamen had been killed. The remainder of the militia had scattered. The story at the Driftwood club was that Bob, an 80-year-old ex-pilot and policeman, had spent the night keeping watch on his roof with a rifle, while his two askaris patrolled the grounds. It seems that lessons learned in the Nairobi police force die hard.

With a fond farewell to the Martin, Dawn, William and Lucy we set off through Tsavo national park on our way towards Tanzania. A few hundred kilometers south and the wet season was in full swing, a mixed blessing. At 6 o’clock in the morning during a particularly miserable camp in the gravel of a petrol station forecourt we found ourselves in the heart of a tropical storm. It became apparent that we had pitched our tents in an almost imperceptible trench, which was quickly filled by the deluge, drowning us and all of our sleeping bags with us. On the other hand, however the recent rains had covered the, normally arid, Tsavo savannah with a lush green blanket. The red dirt track that transected the park was gaudy in its bright contrast to the insufferably verdant plains. The landscape was all the more beautiful, as one is so accustomed to seeing dry African savannah in wildlife documentaries.

The Tsavo national park was the stage for the story of the infamous Tsavo Lions. In 1898 the Leut. Col. John Henry Patterson led a project to build a bridge over the Tsavo river as part of the Great Kampala to Mombasa railway. During the project two male lions repeatedly broke into the camp by night and dragged the Indian workers away to devour them. In an effort to deter the animals Patterson built huge fires and thorn fences around the camp. For nine months he hunted the cats, wounding them on several occasions. Patterson attempted to trap the lions by equipping a train carriage with steel barred cage in which two workers slept as bait. In the morning he found the carriage destroyed and the workers abducted. After 135 lives had been lost Patterson finally killed the pair and their huge nine-foot skins spent the following 25 years as rugs in his home before they were retired to a museum in Chicago.

The Adventures of Salami Man (Part 2)

Posted on April 8, 2013 by danielnuth

The sun was almost extinct as we climbed the steps in front of Berbera police station to find an old man in a wicker chair. Two armed men in dusty berets flanked the Police Chief but he himself displayed no military attire. He wore only a swathe of burgundy fabric, richly embroidered and firmly swept around his bent body. His face was scarred and wreathed by steam from the teacup he rested carefully on a saucer. The steam rose beneath his tiny dark eyes and he inhaled as he looked out over the pinkish town. From behind his teacup the Police Chief listened to Captain Paunch then spoke some quiet instructions. A man in a collared shirt appeared and translated for our benefit. We were to come back in the morning. The Police Chief would not see us now.

Soldiers conducted us to a smart hotel, made reservations for us then left. We were told in no uncertain terms by the manager that, should we leave the grounds, the Police would be contacted immediately. As we sipped coffee and contemplated our house arrest Colin came hurrying with news “The owner wants to see us!” From Colin’s tone we could see the coffee would wait and we followed. At a table on the grass outside the hotel restaurant was seated a smartly dressed Somali man. He smiled broadly and addressed us in perfect English, “”My name is Mohammed Kadar and I am the owner. Firstly, I am aware of your situation. Please know that you may stay here, free of charge, and I would like to invite you to dine with me as my guests.”

We sat and cautiously ordered meals, while Mohammed Kadar spoke “I am a hotelier and property entrepreneur. Over the years I have seen very few tourists in Somaliland and I would like to extend to you our tradition for warm hospitality. I hope that you will return to your countries with positive experiences and that this will hopefully support the growth of a tourist industry in Somaliland.” He then added that perhaps the national news would be interested in meeting us. We were a little uncomfortable with the idea of being used in the media as symbols of social change. As we saw it, this made us potential targets for any group focused on sabotaging that social change. We mumbled a few non-committal responses, “maybe tomorrow or something”.

Barely had we forked a morsel of our fresh fish suppers when we found ourselves staring down the barrel of a camera lens. Considering our being a little stunned by this swift development the group coped well, myself excluded. When my turn came to be interviewed the camera panned to my face. Wide-eyed and sweating I began, “I am delighted to have the opportunity to visit Salami man…I mean Somaliland”. Shit! I froze, mute. My eyes darted to Bas. He was staring back at me. As the silence dragged, he mouthed noiselessly “what are you doing?!!”. My eyes snapped to Rich who had lost interest and returned to his fish. On realizing that this was what most people watching this news segment would be doing, my panic eased and I was able to burble some sentences about how safe it all was here. The little red camera light blessedly went off.

The news crew left us. Mohammed Kadar passed his gaze across our faces and spoke, “I am glad you feel that you are safe here. For so many years the international community has been saying that we are not safe. The UK foreign office forbids visiting under any circumstances. I think that many Somalilanders are beginning to doubt themselves. They say to one another “are we safe, if the world says we are not maybe we are not”. On this thought we retired to bed.

At 7am our escort took us to meet with the Police Chief a second time. In the police headquarters we sat before a broad mahogany desk with our hands in our laps like naughty school children. The anxiety around the table was palpable, we had no idea how serious our illegally exploring Somaliland would turn out to be. Behind the desk the Police Chief was unrecognizable from the day before. Yesterday’s thin frame was lost in an imposing construction of decorated epaulets, brassy buttons and pomp.

The Chief surveyed us, deciding whom he would address. He then barked in Somali “Who is your Chief”. One of the soldiers lining the walls shot a finger at the back of my head dragging the Chief’s eyes to meet mine. It seemed this faded military dinosaur could only operate in a system of clear hierarchy. If previous experience in Africa is anything to go by, rank is assigned in order of beard size and as such I had been designated leader. I was invited to tell our story, which I dutifully did and hoped I was faithfully translated. After a few moments the Chief spoke from beneath wilting grey brows, “You will be taken back to Hargeisa. We will send a soldier with you. First you must go to the Mayor of Berbera, you will go there now!”

We ambled across a hot concrete courtyard to the next stratum of power. We were not in the least bit reassured that our small legal violation seemed to warrant such a high level of appraisal. As we congregated around a similar broad mahogany desk a younger man in a suit greeted us in English, “I have heard about your situation and you will understand that you must go to Hargeisa to see the Minister for Interior”. This engagement had not been made clear to us but we nodded meekly. The Mayor spoke to us, with a detached but reproving air, about the seriousness of this episode and the possible implications of our behaviour. We exchanged frightened glances. Why did we need to see the Interior Minister? Yesterday this was a small bureaucratic faux pas; today it seemed that we were on the cusp of an international incident.With every moment that passed we felt ourselves sinking deeper into a mire of strange politics we did not understand. The Mayor concluded his diatribe with “…of course before you go you will have to visit the Port of Berbera”. This parting shot was a little confusing but we nodded along and allowed ourselves to be lead out.

Next we were driven to a small port outside Berbera. We were met by a man who lead us among the aging wooden ships and shiny steel liners with the manner of an excited tour guide. “This port was recently refurbished in 2009, it receives 5-10 ships a week importing all manner of things including, electrical goods, food, motor parts, fuel etc. Exports include mainly camel!” As he said this he gestured to an enormous Greek passenger ferry. We peered through the stern and saw that the cavernous hull had been partitioned into thousands of small stables, each filled with hay. It looked as one might expect the Ark to look had the great flood struck during the Greek economic crisis.

As our guide proudly discussed his port we came across a surprising realization. The politicians seemed to be attempting to give us a guided tour of Somaliland’s top attractions while keeping us under close arrest. This industrial port seemed to be the Mayor of Berbera’s idea of a holiday highlight. We dubbed this surreal sightseeing as the “Golden Handcuff tour”.

The Harbour Master, who also spared some time to meet us, insisted that on our way back towards Hargeisa we stop at Somaliland’s main historic site, Laas Gees. On our departure he said to me “give them this and tell them I sent you”. He passed me a hand written note. With our chit in hand and a soldier in the passenger seat we set off back towards Hargeisa.

At the entrance to Laas Gees we were astonished to find that our scrap of paper did not cause the gates to fly open with a trumpet blast and drum roll. There was still baksheesh to be payed. After arguing bitterly for his bribe the sentry jumped happily into our Landie for a lift up to the cliffs. Eight people in the Landie was made possible by the park guard’s sitting in the front passenger seat on our bodyguard’s lap. Watching them manoeuvre themselves awkwardly into position with their AK47s still strapped across their shoulders was quite a pretty picture.

The anthropological site of Laas Gees is found among a series of caves and bluffs jutting out from the flat desert west of Berbera. On the walls of the caves are preserved 10,000-year-old images of troglodyte life in a warm palette of ochre, red and brown. From the caves one can cast out over the plain where snakeskin riverbeds lie like ghosts of the cirrus threads that streak the sky. As the sun begins to burn all the yellows of this ageless landscape into the rich reds of the cave paintings it provokes an old contentment, a feeling of fraternity with our distant forebears.

Next day in Hargeisa we were collected from our hotel by two men from the, quite Orwellian, Ministry of Information. They lead us to a large government building where a crowd of people was waiting for us. From the depths of the mob a news crew materialized to interview us. We were reeling from our new found celebrity in the capital as we followed our friends from the Ministry of Truth inside the government building. Through several narrow corridors we found a doorway swamped by a mass of bodies. A thoroughfare was made for us and we pushed through it. As we entered we were instantly petrified before a riot of flashbulbs and lenses. Piecemeal we gathered our wits and realised that the lenses were pointed to our right where a man in white robe stood. One of our guides pointed to the man and said, “Prime Minister”. Strangely we were all, I think, a little disappointed that the fanfare was not for us. It is extraordinary how quickly fame goes to one’s head.

When the crowd in the room had thinned we were seated around a conference table towards the back of the room and the Minister of Tourism came to sit with us. We exchanged the pleasantries that by now we were very accustomed to. The men from the Ministry for Distribution of Opinion filmed our discussion and prompted us with things we ought to say.

What followed was a series of similar conversations with each of a string of dignitaries:

Head of the Army

Head of the Navy

Mayor of Hargeisa

Chief of Immigration

Minister For Tourism

Minister for Information

Leader of the Opposition

Attaché for the People’s Republic of Administration and Liaison Officer

We were hungry and little tired of the circus when the white robe of the ringleader swept back into the room. The Prime Minister sat at our table quietly and waited while the cameraman prepared. We also sat silent, star struck. He disposed of the pleasantries quickly and spoke to us with calm conviction of the severe implications for his country of their “unrecognized” status. He described fervently how his endeavours to bring Somaliland forward have been obstructed by this ruling and of the effects these limitations have had on the people of Somaliland. Despite his frustrations his outlook was positive. He was confident of his ability to build a future and his self-belief was infectious. When the Prime Minister left we were moved by his words and more than a little inspired by his ambition.

The following day we explored the streets of Hargeisa, tasting the foods and enjoying the bustle of business in the market. As we walked countless people stopped us in the street. “Hey you are the tourists!”, people would shout from cars “I have seen you on the TV”, “Welcome to Somaliland”. We were unable even to hide in a crowd watching football, we were sniffed out by yet another news crew for interviews. Our fame in the capital was growing it seemed.

After dinner that evening we were picking our way home through the sandy backstreets of Hargeisa when from the shadows a man appeared. He was wearing torn clothes and his face bore the badges of a brawler. “You are the tourists aren’t you,” he said. “I have seen you in your red Land Rover. You are staying at the Jasmine hotel aren’t you?”. We did are best to appease this friendly, if frightening, character and continued home. At the point at which one’s identity and movements are well known by a city’s disreputables it is perhaps time to leave. We returned to Ethiopia the next day.

Although we were a bit arrested and spent the greater part of our trip quite frightened we could not help but depart with a fondness for Somaliland and indeed a strong empathy for their cause. They seem to have done all the right things to earn their independence from Somalia and it must be said that their young and well-educated political class inspires confidence. Perhaps in a few years the international community will change their view and we shall all be passing our summer holidays on the beaches of the Costa del Somalia.

The Adventures of Salami Man (Part 1)

Posted on March 27, 2013 by danielnuth

Ethiopia, the homeland of Haile Selassi, is the heartland of Rastafarianism. As such Addis Ababa it is still firmly in the thrall of the Reggae that Selassi brought back from his exile in Jamaica. Before Reggae however the music heritage lay in Jazz and Swing. In the first decades of the 20th century Addis moved to the sound of Abyssinian Swing. Unfortunately the music lost popularity and in the 1940s and all of the recorded Abyssinian Swing music was lost in a fire. On the walls of many bars in Addis there remains evidence in grainy monochrome of Africans bopping in slim suits and sharp white shoes. However, sadly no record remains of what it sounded like.

Deep in the backstreets of Addis we walked into one such bar with Colin, a musician from Normandy and our host. Stepping through a heavy wooden door and into the smoky gloom, music struck us like a slap in the face. The attention of the room was gripped and only at natural pauses were ripples of applause allowed to flow from the spellbound crowd. This was not the tinny rendition of ‘the girl from Ipanema’ one might hear whilst waiting to speak to the bank. Our fatigue was grudgingly drawn from us and consumed by the energy of the brass lines. The two saxophonists vied for center stage, relishing the competition for our gaze. Wrapped in this veil of stirring rhythms and strong beer we settled the final plan for an adventure. We would deviate from our path south and away from the road more traveled. We would explore Somalia and visit the sea.

Somaliland fought for its independence from Somalia proper in 1991 and has been operating as a separate country since. It is presently trying to distance itself from its chaotic and politically unstable neighbour to the south. However, the only country in the world that recognises Somaliland as a sovereign state is Ethiopia, probably due to a friendly interest in their new port on the Gulf of Aden. Addis is therefore the only place one can find a Somaliland embassy, which would be our destination the following morning.

The embassy consisted of a steel gate in a residential street with only a hand-painted flag exposing its identity. We knocked and a smiling man in a faded purple T-shirt invited us in. No metal detector and no x-ray, not even a frisk. In an office containing two administrative women, identically overweight and identically dowdy, we handed over dollars, forms and a wad of passport photos. We were rewarded with grim facial expressions transposed directly from a human resources office somewhere in Croydon. The administrative staff were surly but efficient and we had all the visas and car permits necessary by the afternoon.

As we approached the border with Somalia the landscape changed. Rocks and sand replaced soil. Leafy shrubs were traded for knots of wiry bush, each bristling with a thousand three-inch spines. Despite its apparent cruelty we felt at home back in the desert. The desert is simple and minimal; it consists of only land and sky. There are no hoards of curious locals pawing at everything, no one to gather into a suffocating audience any time we attempted to drink a cup of tea. There are no whining mosquitoes or giant war-machine wasps. There are barely any fauna apart from the camels grazing lazily. One can lay serenely under the stars, safe in the knowledge that not even rain will interrupt the stillness.

The border was uncomplicated and we were soon in the capital city of Hargeisa. The differences between Ethiopia and Somaliland were marked. The first thing we noticed was the change from Christianity to Islam. All the scantily clad girls of Ethiopia were gone and in their stead were elegant burkahs in cheerful colours bobbing lightly along the streets like Pac-man’s ghosts. We approached a moneychanger sitting among many of his kind in a street market. He lounged like a prince on a bed of old sacking. Before him was a block of his wares arranged neatly in size order. Each brick of money was tied with elastic and placed carefully in the wall of this currency cube. We exchanged 20 US dollars with his lazy highness and received a wad of notes big enough to chock the wheels of the Landie. As we walked away we saw another moneychanger struggling down the road. Among the donkeys and the potholes he sweated and adroitly picked a path for his laden wheelbarrow, piled head-high with money.

Hargeisa is small but packed to bursting with minivans and Toyota land cruisers, resulting in permanent gridlock. The bright burkahs are complemented by the jolly shop fronts. All are painted with large, crude impressions of the products found therein. Khat stands line the streets and they are no exception to this rule. They are painted with bunches of green leafy stalks and usually an accompanying image of a lion or lightning bolt to assure the buyer of the potency of the product.

Even before we arrived in Hargeisa the influence of Khat was noticeable. We had to wrestle for our place on the road with Khat lorries racing to deliver their shipment. Khat is a leafy plant that is farmed all year round to supply the widespread and growing demand as a recreational drug. The leaves of the plant are chewed over a few hours to achieve first a stimulant effect and in higher doses a somnolent effect. The active ingredient in Khat degrades and becomes less potent quite quickly after it is harvested, which explains the terrifying urgency of the delivery lorries.

We settled into a hotel in Hargeisa and went out to dinner with a pair of Somalilanders. The food in Somaliland is confidently spiced and you can taste a strong Indian influence. Berbera on the north coast was a trade stop on the tea run from India during the early 20^th century. Supper was an enlightening experience. Somalilanders describe themselves as a chatty people and true enough we sat quietly while our friendly hosts spoke fluently on the history, culture and current politics of Somaliland.

In 1888 Somalia was divided, Djibouti went to the French, the western horn and Mogadishu went to the Italians and Somaliland became the “British Protectorate of Somaliland”. It became independent from British rule in 1960 and unified with Puntland in the west and Somalia in the South under the rule of Siad Barre. Barre instigated a Marxist regime supported by the USSR, which soon became oppressive. Somalilanders became disillusioned with the idea of a unified Somalia under Barre and fought for there independence, achieving it in 1991. Since then they have gone from strength to strength. Today they have a democratic government, competent civil service, their own currency and strong borders. Excluding two suicide attacks by fundamentalists from Mogadishu, attempting to destabilise them, Somaliland has been safe for 20 years.

The International community refuses to recognise Somaliland as a separate country from Somalia. This is due chiefly to fears of “balkanisation” of the region and particularly violent reprisals by the warlords in Mogadishu. All the Somalilanders we spoke to had a strong opinion on this topic and it is presently a hot political issue. Somalilanders have a nostalgic love for Britain and the times of Empire. They feel, quite reasonably, that they have done all they can to foster a stable new democracy in the wake of British rule and that it deserves recognition as such. We could not help but empathise with the Somalilanders. The refusal to support their case has made Somalilanders feel, at best let down by the British government, and at worst betrayed.

The next day we set off to find the beach. The first military checkpoint was about five miles outside Hargeisa and we were fully expecting to be turned back to register as aliens and pick up a military escort. We did our best to appear legitimate. With our grinning checkpoint faces fixed we pointed at the paperwork we had and repeated, this is good, okay, okay. Eventually the soldier got tired of trying to explain why we had to go back and opened the barrier. Excellent news. We were free to explore Somaliland. Five miles down the road our celebrations came to an abrupt stop as we came in sight of another checkpoint. Four hours and eight anxious checkpoints later, we arrived in Berbera.

Berbera is a small coastal town housing Somaliland’s newest and only port. We found a dusty track to the beach and were confronted with a shock of turquoise water. A vista of steep green mountains loomimg over porcelain sand stretched as far east as we could see and further into Puntland. Reunited with the sea after so long, we were too excited for words. We leapt out of our clothes and ran headlong into the surf. The bright water renewed us. The dust and sweat of the desert were washed away. Every mile driven and every nerve-jangling checkpoint was worthwhile. We shared the endless gold haven with a group of five or six Somalilanders. The men were gleefully tearing in and out of the rollers in their bunched up briefs and sopping outsized T-shirts. Layered head to toe in diaphanous fabrics, the women smiled from the shore.

Washed and worn by the waves we eventually piled back into the car to find a deserted stretch of coastline on which to spend the night. We passed and repassed white colonial buildings along the sea front, dirtied by time but latterly spruced up with bright hand-painted signs depicting the wares if the fruit sellers now residing within. We found ourselves at the tiny airport west of Berbera still looking for the coastal road. I exited the Landie to ask directions.

Despite my walking 50 yards from the car in plain sight, the airport security guard was a little startled by my arrival in front of him. I had, it seemed, interrupted his vacant gazing out to the desert. As he pondered my question, a soldier raised the barrier behind him. Underneath slipped a sleek white saloon car with dark windows and beige furry mat visible on the dash. It stopped and a man stepped out in uniform. He had glinting medals on his breast, mirrored sunglasses and a proud paunch resting on his belt buckle. The officer stepped towards me and waited to be informed of what was going on. The soldier operating the barrier approached.

“Where you go?” said the soldier.

I decided against exposing our plans for illegal camping and said we were on our way from Hargeisa to Berbera and had become lost. I flapped our most official looking documents around while I spoke. The officer barked in Somali, the soldier translated, “where are you soldier, you need soldier!” It was looking like we were busted. It was time to abort this conversation before we found ourselves arrested. Delivering some excuses about being late for Wheel of Fortune and having left the iron on, I made to leave. As I turned, a third man in desert fatigues barred my way. His hand rested on the stock of his AK47 with an unsettling degree of familiarity. He explained that we had been found moving illegally in Somaliland and that we were to accompany them back to Berbera. I was ushered into the saloon and a soldier climbed into my seat in the Landie. Bas and Rich who were out of earshot of my conversation looked at me through the windscreen for an explanation. I offered nothing.

As we sped towards Berbera I frantically evaluated the situation. We were in trouble. It couldn’t be big trouble, surely. We have just broken a small bureaucratic rule. In Berbera there would be a small bribe, more stamps and forms and we should be on our way. Somalia is a bit of an unknown quantity though, maybe we were trespassing, maybe we were suspicious! I didn’t want to spend even one night in a Somali prison, thank you. All of a sudden those words I had disregarded on the FCO website came back to me with a shiver “there are is no embassy presence in Somaliland at this time”. I am definitely over reacting, it is time to remain calm and make some friends. I offered the man behind the mirrors a Marlboro Red. He took one without expression and began to smoke leaving the windows firmly shut. I chanced a little pigeon English conversation. I am from UK… Britain?… England? It is very hot today, it is very cold in England. I barked an anxious laugh, too loudly for the still air in the car. He remained silent and smoked. Perhaps he doesn’t speak English. I smoked as well.

Aswan to Wadi Halfa: The Second Half-a

Posted on January 13, 2013 by danielnuth

Wadi Halfa is a Nubian town on the Sudanese shores of Lake Nasser. This huge man-made lake has divided the Nubian people and displaced them into southern Egypt and Northern Sudan. The deliberate inundation of the old city of Wadi Halfa is still a source of resentment and a favourite topic of nostalgic lamentation amongst the older tea drinkers of New Wadi Halfa. We awaited the arrival of our car by passing five days received into the rich culture of hot drink socialising in Sudan. As we walked the town every corner found the warm smiles of a tea lady and an eager patron ushering us to sit down on cracked plastic stools in the dust for a chat and a chai. With nothing to do but wait we usually accepted these offers.

We learned a lot about Sudan and its people during these kerbside conversations. The Sudanese are the most genuinely friendly and welcoming people we have met so far on our travels and indeed we all felt more at home in Sudan than anywhere we had visited. The Sudanese seem to actually want to talk about their country and the outside world and anything else that comes up, with no agenda whatsoever.

In Wadi Halfa and Khartoum alike, chai women line the streets and each has her own faithful clientele. Despite their ubiquity these skilled, quiet matriarchs never appear prosaic. They always make an impression on visitors. Our chosen chai lady carries the air of an alchemist as she sits low before a coal stove that skips and fizzes. Her fingers move slowly over old jars, picking black and purple pinches then placing them in the pot with a dexterity born of quotidian love. Her thick body is wrapped in a richly dyed sari and her round brown face smiles from inside a headscarf lined with dancing coins. Her eyes skip and fizz.

In all the time we spent drinking tea in Halfa the locals did not permit us to pay for our own tea. If they invited us to sit down then the tea was, categorically, on them. This inexhaustible generosity was discussed at length on cool nights camping in the desert between Halfa and Khartoum. It raised the question of the ethics of accepting gifts from people that one perceives to be impoverished. Some of us would contend that a westerner ought not to let an African pay for tea, or food or indeed offer gifts. Others have argued that it could be patronising, indeed insulting to overrule a Nubian when he is trying to be hospitable, as it is their culture. If one is comfortable accepting food from an African, then to what extent? Would you accept food even if you felt it might be at the expense of your host’s own meal? Perhaps for a Nubian the shame of not being able to offer hospitality to a guest in his country is even more acute than the discomfort of missing a meal. I know I have endured a few foul meals and a few empty bellies during the course of my life on grounds of trying to be polite to a guest or host. There is, I suppose, no right answer but the debate has supported many an interesting campfire conversation.

On our last night in Wadi Halfa we were invited to a Nubian wedding. The Nubian people are Muslim, as are the majority of the Sudanese. They also uphold strongly the traditions of their Nubian heritage. These two value systems are divergent on a few issues and we were interested to see how a wedding, which is at once a religious ceremony and a traditional family celebration, would unfold. Before attending we grabbed a couple of falafels from our favourite vendor. Unfortunately, this prevented the chap from consuming his entire stock himself and forced him to glean at least a little profit from all the hard work his wife had put into preparing the food. We drove to the wedding.

We arrived at a large outdoor area, hung on all sides with colourful fabric. We were alone apart from children running in all directions, all arms windmilling. Needless to say there was no bar so we sat quietly and waited as the dry mud floor slowly filled with shuffling feet. Soon the wedding party arrived to cheers and ripples of congratulatory snapping of fingers. The groom was late in his forties, this was not his first or even his second wife but that did not detract from his delight at being paraded through the crowd. He beamed, the young bride smiled forcedly at his side keeping her gaze respectfully downturned. The couple was filmed while they bobbed through the crowd and televised live on a large mounted set by the band stage for those who could not get close enough to see. After several tours the master of ceremonies stood on the stage and spoke to the guests. His microphone, already set up for the Nubian band, broadcast his short speech distorted by a thick smog of reverb and then the band were welcomed by more snapping fingers.

A gloomy adolescent stepped onto the stage in a white traditional robe and sat at the keyboard. He set the antiquated Casio to electric mandolin and rested his long fingers on the keys. Suddenly the air was spangled with a patchwork of syncopated melodies. A simpering vocalist with a pencil moustache joined with a stream of unbroken syllables while the arrangement was driven by a rich, thumping drum machine set to bass bongo.

The segregated crowd formed into two opposing banks. Lines formed and the guests joined hands, fingers intertwined. The dance began; the steps were simple, reserved and remarkably similar to those of the Hokey Cokey. A portly businessman was talking me through the moves when some unseen person grabbed my hand a little too firmly and dragged me to join the dance. My guide’s judgement had, it seems, been impaired by an imprudent measure of Nubian moonshine. He hauled me into the no man’s land that lay between the male and female dancers. This, it transpires, is frowned upon. As I stood in front of the whole wedding party all I could do was grin like a fool. Then, Allah knows why, I began to dance. Painful moments expired as my smile weakened and my eyes darted about for an escape. The pain was partly the wash of embarrassment but mostly pulsed from the merciless knot into which the two smallest fingers of my right hand had been twisted in the fist of my boozy acquaintance. Fortunately for my, as yet unrealized, career as a concert pianist there is a system in place at Muslim weddings for handling such an encroachment upon the delicate disposition of the ladies. Several stout men in robes advanced on me from the crowd. They sprayed me in the face with some sort of citrus water (presumably to douse my sexual ardour) and courteously but firmly frog-marched me back to the appropriate side of the wedding. Here my dancing partner was grudgingly wrested from me and bundled off somewhere. I spent what remained of my first Muslim wedding attempting to keep a low profile.

The next day we drove to Khartoum.

Aswan to Wadi Halfa: Half-a Tale of Two Cities

Posted on January 8, 2013 by danielnuth

It transpires that Aswan is a tourist hotspot. We discovered this when we tried to buy a kofta roll and paid five times the going rate for it. People visit in order to cruise the Nile and visit the colossal tombs at Abu Simbel. We arrived however to catch the ferry to Sudan. For this reason Aswan is also a focus for African overlanders. We arrived in Adam’s home, an overlander’s campsite, hungry and exhausted as had become the norm. We unloaded our belongings into a mud brick hut and were then given the tour by Mohamed, a Nubian who had spent several years working in Cornwall of all places. In honesty we were reluctant to participate in said tour. It had been a long time since we had eaten and we were anxious to start cooking our late supper. Nonetheless we trailed courteously behind Mohamed as he cheerfully explored various huts and facilities. He led us through the kitchen, which was alive with activity. Six Nubian men were performing a complex food preparation waltz. Some rolled rice parcels; others stirred bubbling pots and shook sizzling pans. We surveyed enviously. We would not be eating for an hour at the soonest, even if we could manage to cook without getting tangled in the gears and limbs of this admirable grub machine.

Mohamed herded us into the communal area where a low table was laid for an enormous feast, he explained that they were celebrating the birth a of a baby boy to one of the men. The smiling father earnestly encouraged us to sit with them on the wicker mats and eat, in so doing he proffered a bowl of cabbage leaf domadas. Despite our grumbling stomachs Rich and I tried to politely decline. Our limp refusal was halfhearted however as we were starving and furthermore Bas already had a domada in his hand and two in his mouth. We sat.

The table was overflowing with dishes. Bowls of tahina, bean fuul and chili sauce, roasted chickens stuffed with risotto rice, curried sausage casserole and pitta breads. We ate until we could not move and then crumbled back onto plump cushions. We lounged there completely immobilized and reminisced about old England with Mohamed until, conquered by the warm cannonball of food in our bellies, we retired.

The next day was all business. We had been procrastinating and the time had come for some serious admin. We drained the rear differential and replaced the leaking gasket, changed the engine oil and filter, changed the fuel filter, washed the air filter, wired in the inverter, split charge relay and second battery. Not bad for a mornings work, we were getting better. In the afternoon we went on individual missions for supplies and food for the ferry. My job was a replacement camping gas canister as I had had trouble with this task in the past and was not willing to hand over the baton to anyone else.

I walked out onto the streets of Aswan and could not believe my luck; the first person I asked knew exactly where to find gas, as did the following six people. Strangely all of them brought me to the same tourist market selling the same Chinese-made sunglasses and plastic jewelry. In an effort to escape I crossed a railway bridge to the other side of Aswan. This was like walking into another town all together. All of a sudden tourism was a myth and I was in Egypt proper. I stepped off the overpass and was promptly mobbed, not by churlish tat retailers with a sense of entitlement but by boisterous livestock. Chickens, goats and turkeys waddled and skipped among my feet, grocers shouted their wares and prices. Butchers hacked cuts of meat from hanging hooks and fishmongers lustily slapped their slimy produce on slick steel trays.

I continued asking my question, and received an assortment of more honest, but still ultimately useless, answers. I wandered behind the stalls and came across a handful of aged souk vendors sitting on low plastic stools. They were talking and laughing volubly so they did not notice my presence for some time. At length, with the help of a small biro diagram on the back of a cabbage, I was able to make my request understood. I waited while the wise old merchants conferred. Minutes passed and I became restless to continue my search. Presently the man seated opposite me wearing a black turban and eyes shot with pink stood up in a hurry as if he had suddenly cracked the riddle. He began rifling through his many layers of smock and with a broad grin produced a gigantic spliff. The men lit up and continued their cheerful dialogue. This was getting me nowhere so I mumbled excuses and ambled shyly away. As I retreated, black turban yelled something to me in Arabic and pointed to the other side of road at a man on a motorbike. I approached the man who said to me in English, “you look for gas can, yes?” Dumbstruck, I glanced back at the merchants and then nodded agreement. He jerked his head at the pillion seat of his motorbike and I climbed on.

We bounced over speed bumps and zipped amongst market stalls, skillfully circumnavigating tuk tuks and articulated lorries. After a few minutes of winding lanes I was completely lost and I suddenly had a thought that brought me sharply back to previous memories of traveling. I dwelt on the fact that at that time I was completely at the mercy of this Egyptian stranger. He had only to take me to a group of his mates, somewhere out of town to rob me, or worse. This feeling of vulnerability is a daily concern when traveling alone but I had forgotten about it while traveling as a group. Thankfully, as is often the case, my concerns were not realized. My guide brought me to a small shop far out of town. We crept through a dark tortuous entrance to find a grisled man hunched, smoking a water pipe. My guide spoke to him and the old man pointed to a high shelf where I could see a gas bottle, bright and blue. My heart leapt. I asked to get it down but the old man shook his head. My translator explained that this was because the bottle was empty. Excellent thought I. Well that was a fun waste of time. Deflated I explained that this was not useful to me. My guide seemed more disappointed than me that he could not help, he brought me back to the souk. I was so close but ultimately foiled again. Perhaps in Wadi Halfa we would get gas. *

The ferry was a scrum. It was Christmas day and we were lead up the gangway by our perpetually soused fixer Mahmet. We followed as his momentous bulk swung neatly through the crowd tearing a path. We hurried so as not to be caught and lost in the sweating wall of bodies. On the bridge, a few notes in the Captain’s hand secured us a few square feet of deck to rest on. We lay in the sun, lazily burning and watching while the boat slowly filled. Multitudes passed into the hull during the course of the day, each dragging several times his body weight in luggage. The majority were Sudanese traders and their families. Their luggage was produce and electrical products bought in Egypt to sell in Sudan. Countless items were roughly tied or bagged, then hauled up to the deck. Perhaps the significant proportion of goods that are lost to the depths, as a result of absent-minded handling, is written off by the traders as acceptable losses. Indeed no one batted an eyelid when a man next to me turned to speak to a friend and let loose a rope carrying eight magimix blenders allowing them to fall 20 ft, smash apart on the concrete pier and then bob gently away on Lake Nasser.

The ferry was a sociable experience. The route from Egypt to Sudan runs weekly and was cancelled the week prior to our arrival. As a result it formed a bottleneck for all the travelers heading south. These consisted of two Swiss overlanders, two Croatian journalists, a Canadian family, an English cyclist and a couple of Germans. The last westerner we had seen was in Turkey so this glut was quite a novelty. Furthermore we had to drink any alcohol we had about us before arrival in Sudan where one receives 40 lashes for possession. A penalty we were, needless to say, keen to avoid.

We popped open dusty bottles of beer that had watched our progress from the roof of the Landie since Perranporth. The first drop of Betty Stoggs dragged us back to a Cornish beach and shanty singing on warm September nights. As the ferry pulled us through the still water to Sudan we sang old pirate songs and swigged our ales. The Captain only rarely interrupted our merriment by stepping from the bridge to make his prayers. At these points we would carefully conceal our beer and impose a brief intermission on our raucous shantying. Spirits were high among the traders as well, they were happy to be on their way home. All on the poop deck had a jolly time.

We are getting used to not being in on the joke

We sang and swapped stories long after the sun had set. We did not understand the naiveté of this behavior until it was time to bed down for the night. More judicious passengers had realised much earlier that a boatload of people occupies a lot more space lying down than they do standing up. As such, on scanning around for a few square feet to lay down our sleeping bags we found none. Rob, our English cyclist from Preston, had flash of an idea. Bag in hand; he darted off for the lifeboats. He strode surely through the marsh of shrouded bodies. In the gloom he aroused frequent sleepy protests when his waivering bare sole found purchase on an unsuspicious face or groin. Sadly Rob’s search was fruitless. Each lifeboat was a snoring can of Sudanese sardines. Rob shambled back disheartened, his feet carefully sparing his earlier victims in favour of a new path of faces and groins. Eventually, we each found a small corner of deck to curl up in and the snug sleeping conditions kept us warm for the few remaining hours before the sun.

To be continued…

* 8/1/13 – We still have not found gas.

Merry Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2012 by danielnuth

Merry Christmas everyone!

You can find our Christmas video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a56bHM4hfMM&list=HL1356340210&feature=mh_lolz

Yesterday we manoeuvred our car onto the Aswan ferry barge, at great cost to our nerves and some cost to nearby freight products that were crushed and mangled in the process of clambering onto the tiny area of roof space allocated for our car. An ordeal I think every African overlander must be familiar with. It was with a fair amount of trepidation that we allowed ourselves to be say goodbye to the Landie for the first time, trusting that it would arrive at the other end of lake Nasser for us to collect in a few days.

We will be taking the passenger ferry into Sudan on Christmas day. Indeed a wonderful Christmas day it will be, spent huddled in sleeping bags and coats on the deck of the ferryboat attempting to conserve warmth and the meager food supplies that we had the foresight to pack. There are of course less bitter ways to spend Christmas than cold and hungry on a ferry but I can’t think of any at the moment.

Well, that is probably enough from the misery violin. Consequently we will be having the back-up Christmas to end all understudy Christmasses on the 27^th Dec. By this time we will have arrived in the warmth of the Sudanese desert. We have joined forces with a pair of Swiss overlanders, with whom we have made big plans for Christmas dinner in the desert. We will build some sort of clay oven in which to roast a turkey (ambitious perhaps?), cook roasties in the embers of our fire, and Bas has big plans for making a Sudanese version of bread sauce. Most importantly we have coloured party hats in which to drink whatever beer we can find in Sudan. It is going to be quite the shindig.

If anyone would like to call us on (Deferred) Christmas Day 27^th Dec we will hopefully be available on (002) 01026445667

This number will likely be updated with a Sudanese one in the next couple of days so check here for the new one.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our friends, family and readers.

Any Port in a Storm

Posted on December 19, 2012 by danielnuth

As we pulled our mud-caked vehicle alongside the twilight outline of the Flintstone’s Cave hostel in Goreme, Cappadocia we were greeted by welcoming staff and a few friendly Erasmus students.

“Looks like you’ve had fun, what have you been up to?” one enquired.

It would be a few days before the obscure images of the past 24 hours had cleared from our eyes enough to answer that question.

Millions of years ago in Cappadocia, a volcanic eruption or two left this desert region strewn with thousands of slabs of igneous rock. Subsequently the sandstone beneath has been eroded by wind and rain creating a dramatic landscape. Long serpentine gullies sweep around basalt capped golden towers. Lofty plateaus frame a striking scene that is littered with ancient dwellings cut directly into the stone by Troglodyte tribes first and Romans after them. In the warm wind we explored the hills and valleys of this fairytale land. Christian imagery remains intact on the walls of Byzantine churches cut from the soaring towers. Thousands of Christians evaded Roman (and later Turkish) persecution here in vast underground cities. The centurion tasked with flushing out the Christians from these five story bunkers would have had to evade traps such as giant rolling rocks and fallingspears. We spent hours exploring tunnels and chambers, playing out scenes from Indiana Jones and generally larking about.

We left Cappadocia wanting to stay longer but our ferry from South East Turkey was imminent. We roared through the hills east of Iskenderun passing tiny sepia villages, unreal in the glow of scant halogen lamps. We smashed the delicate silence of each town into clattering shards, barking and yelping in our wake. As we awaited unpopulated countryside in which to camp Bas stirred from reflection, “how far do you think we are from the Syrian border?” Somehow it at not occurred to us until that point that, as we flashed through the hills, we were fast encroaching on the disputed Turkish-Syrian border. The mood in the car sharpened and the quest for a camp received new urgency.

Eventually we found our way to the top of a bare hill under gathering clouds. We decided that while it was perhaps unwise to park on a hill in an electrical storm pressing further and bumping into Syrian revolutionaries, the Syrian Army or being mistaken by the Turkish army for either of the above was less appealing. That night our dreams were troubled by phantom conflicts between Turkey and Syria played out in the crack and boom of the storm.

We awoke at dawn to a tap tap on the window and the face of a Turkish farmer peering in. The hilltop on which we had narrowly escaped electrocution and an international incident was revealed in the light of day to be an enormous field of parsley. Like surly adolescents we tramped out of the car to receive our reprimand from an appropriately furious farmer. This did not unfold. In fact the farmer seemed heartily amused by the novelty of finding a Land Rover and three bewildered tourists lost in his parsley. After much awkward laughter, manly backslapping and handshaking we were allowed on our way with a generous gift from our host.

We arrived at the port of Iskenderun by 9 o’clock. After a quick breakfast of parsley sandwiches we registered and parked to await our passage to Africa, the Nisos Rodos. We were to depart at midday. By midnight we had started uploading, things were already starting to feel a bit more like Africa.

After a pleasant 24 hours aboard we were downloaded to Port Said, Egypt. Muted by excitement we took our first breaths of African air as the shadow of our car rolled off the ferry. Our tiny vehicle was lost in a mechanized jungle looming black around us. Monstrous grabbers, lifters and haulers were cut out in monochrome by our stark spotlights. Men with uniforms shuffled out of the gloom, we were not going anywhere until morning. They lead us to a locked compound where we were left for the night.

We cast about. Our new home consisted of a large rectangle marked out by razor wire. The ground was made up of years of compacted grime and leaked lubricants resulting in a nonspecific sticky filth. The compound was inhabited only by a handful of lorry drivers sleeping in their cabs. In the far corner was a single dilapidated toilet cubicle. Inside, a steel showerhead hung from the cracked concrete wall over a squat toilet that could have equally been the drain in an abattoir.

There are none as optimistic as the desperate. We looked at each other, “It’s just one night…it will be fine”. Ravenous, we set about making some food. As I chopped the parsley I watched a skeletal cat sizing up a rodent across the compound. Little red eyes glared back at the predator with unsettling hostility. Gripped by this tiny war I almost didn’t notice the hunched figure that stepped silently from shadows behind. As the outline of a man walked slowly towards our car Rich put his hand on my shoulder and I turned to see a pair of sallow eyes my window. Startled, I locked the door. Several more tenebrous shapes gathered around and began exploring our car with there pallid fingers. Growing numbers gave the spectres confidence and they started speaking to us. “What you doing here, my friend?” choked forth the first. “Nisos Rodos” Bas managed and was met with a chorus of whispered echoes. The first croaked again, “you need anything, my friend?” ruthlessly dragging on the words, “you wan’ beercig’retteshashish?”

“We don’t need anything thank you” Rich stated firmly. The potbellied leader pressed his cracked lips then smiled. “We come back tomorrow, maybe you need something tomorrow” the misshapen bodies slowly melted away. We went to sleep uneasy.

DSCF2521 The next day we were up early, keen to sort our paperwork and escape this dreadful oubliette without any delay. Guided by our excellent translator/fixer, Mahmut, Rich made his way through 11 offices. Each office housed a slightly fatter man in a slightly sweatier shirt than the last. Rich financed progressively bigger bribes and in return inky stamps endorsed certificates proving all manner of things. Nothing inspires confidence like a large illegible rubber stamp. A bureaucratic tradition left over from the time of Empire, perhaps. All was developing well until one such clammy colossus clawed in his nose and, when satisfied with his findings, shot the same chubby digit at an assistant dispatching him to check our chassis number.

This was a catastrophe we had been hoping to avoid. Our chassis number has been previously galvanized over leaving us with no proof that our car is the same as the vehicle that our registration document discusses and not a stolen one. Luckily this problem was managed in a distinctly Egyptian way. Mahmut phoned his friend Mohammed who soon arrived and knocked the chassis number in with a chisel. Despite Mohammed’s skilled workmanship we held reservations about our being able to convince the border guards of the legitimacy of our forged chassis number on account of it’s being written in Arabic lettering.

These delays resulted in two more nights spent in purgatory. The long hours were passed predominantly trying not to touch anything and periodically batting away probing interest from the vermin and the pushers. On the morning of the fourth day we tried the gate. Mahmut conversed with the officer while we sat in our idling vehicle. The guard surveyed us over the mountain of forms, stamped in triplicate, skillfully devouring salted sunflower seeds as he did so, spitting a cloud of chaff after each one. He ambled lazily over and asked to see the chassis number. Rich mumbled something and pointed. The officer peered into the darkness under our wheel arch. He peered for too long, something was wrong. Mahmut was perspiring. Suddenly he darted around the car and, concealed by his body, mashed a wad of notes into an expectant hand. Stony faced, the officer completed his checks and walked back to his office in silence. In the dense heat we waited. Minutes ticked past and nobody spoke. The barrier creaked and lifted; we held our breath unwilling to leave without confirmation of success. Mahmut flicked his hand impatiently and we crept out onto the road. Free. We gathered speed on the road to Cairo and began to celebrate. We jigged about boisterously in our seats and all the tension poured out to the tune of “Free falling” by Tom Petty. We were out, and with a full tank of diesel for a tenner we were on the road to Cairo.

Cornwall to Cape Town

An adventure from the country of Kernow to the southern tip of Africa…

Author Archives: danielnuth