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 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.
Cornwall to Cape Town 