News from Ted
After a few days in Mombasa, Malindi and Lamu, I rode on to the border at Lunga Lunga. In a strangely fearful mood.
Monday, January 27th
Rain stops. I drive on. No more tarmac. Packed sand. Looks like slippery trouble after the rain, reinforcing my expectation of disaster but it proves easy enough after all, and dries out quickly. But my thoughts stay morbid. A man walks past with a panga [like a machete] I imagine what would happen if he struck out with it. Mentally I kick out at him. It slices half my foot off. I develop an macabre and quite fallacious tale about a motorcyclist, white as death, riding up to a hospital gate and falling off the machine in a faint. Only when they have carried him in and pulled of his boot do they find half his foot missing. “We never knew how it happened because he died without becoming conscious. Lost too much blood.” As I ride I am stuffing the truncated foot into my boot to make the heroic ride, trying to imagine the pain. Only now, writing this does it occur to me that the panga would have taken half the boot off too.
[Today I find these gruesome fantasies quite astonishing.]
It seems clear, as I ride along, that all these thoughts and reactions proceed from some mechanism inside me – some permanent reservoir of anxiety which every now and again rises up and floods over. But where is the spring that feeds these black waters, and what unseen process releases them? I wonder whether I have ever been as aware as I am now of what is going on inside me. I have long ago recognised the converse – those times when light and dry and confident, I have felt free of fear and even been able lately to consciously communicate that feeling to others. But have I known myself in that other state, and what wounds have I inflicted on others thinking that mine was a normal, reasonable attitude.
[I rode on to Tanga and then, later in the day, embarked on the main highway through Tanzania, stopping for the night at Mwebwe.]
January 28th
The day brought no disasters. Even my five-shilling bed at Mwebwe had no fleas. The mosquito net allowed me to listen to their insect whine just a foot away from my face without flinching. But I dreamed, fearfully, of a huge, unpleasantly dominating man who constantly interrupted otherwise innocuous or cheerful scenes to threaten me with homosexual demands.
There have been such dreams before, not often but very potent (“There’s a stain on him somewhere”). [This was a dream I had in my childhood.] Thinking on about the day and the night as I rode on to Morogoro, it occurred to me for the first time that perhaps in my childhood I had been the subject of some such attack. So many things fit into place with such a hypothesis (my recollection of a fearless childhood up to the time I went to hospital in Shrewsbury – followed by pronounced fears, irrational quailing before masculine authority, etc.) I suspect it. But it could be true. Would my mother have any idea at all? I shall write to her, gently.
It occurs to me also that on the same day I had a recurrence of the skin rash which moves around from back, shoulders, arms, to thighs and belly, is evidently not a local thing but probably connected to general state.
(Another memory: The headmaster at Gunnersbury Prep. School wanting to punish me in the bathroom for sending for elbow grease. How terrified I was, naked.)
From Mombasa to the border, road was good. Through palms, tall ferns, villages. Dirt road from Lunga Lunga to Tanga – same sort of open leafy country. [Picked a sample cashew nut from tree.]
I was amazed to see that the cashew nut grows outside the fruit. In Brazil I discovered that the fruit itself, which I have never seen in Europe, is quite delicious when stewed.
Tanga, on sea, port, has open streets. From there the road passes endless sisal plantations. – all unusually green. Overcast. Mountains to the right up to Kirogwe, then over hills down to Morogoro where mountains again on the left.
One hour in bank to change £5 cheque. [There wase just one endless queue to get to the cashier].
Met Creati, the m/cycle man who had bought all the Triumph spares from Dar.
[Apparently the Triumph dealer in Dar es Salaam had closed shop and sold his spare parts to Mr Creati who was so impressed by my story that he kept reducing the price.]
Sells me speedo cable for 50/-. No 40/-. No, have it for 30/-.
[Odometer stopped working on road to Mombasa, at 5,904 miles.]
Add on to reading for reaching Mombasa – about 25 miles, plus 150 to Malindi and back. Then Mombasa – Tanga – Morogoro 307 miles. New speedo cable in Morogoro. Reading at 5,904.
Mikumi wildlife lodge in National Park. Stopped on road in to stare at elephant by roadside, which stared back with mouthful of grass. Lodge very attractive, swimming pool, overlooking watering hole. Elephant, zebra, bush pigs, vultures by pool. 100/- full board. (got a resident’s rate; 50/- bed and breakfast)
Maribou storks assembled outside the Mikumi Lodge, Tanzania
Met an Indian from Zanzibar, small, neat, heavy shock of black hair brushed forward over intense face. Left Z after revolution with British passport. [He thought it entitled him to go to the UK.] Went to Kenya High Commission who confiscated his passport– “You won’t see that again.” He believes they burned it. That was in 1963. His life’s ambition – or dream – is to float off Zanzibar coast on a raft and try to reach Australia. Wants to make it 12 feet wide, 44 feet long, from Mangrove wood.
Two Canadian engineers working on transmission lines alongside the new Tanzam highway. Last section being built from Morogoro to Ngerengere.
One of them talked knowledgably about Tanzania. Says: 11 million people – country has no known wealth (no minerals or oil yet found.) Nyerere [the president] is absolutely honest. Some tribalism (i.e. Some ministers appointing members of own tribe.) But not serious as compared with Kenya. No starvation, but primitive diet. Mostly maize. Per capita GNP $60. Some efforts towards co-operative farming.
Two American embassy wives asking well-meaning questions.
January 29th
Drove on alongside the Great Ruaha river (muddy red) and then across a range of low mountains. Mountains steep-sided, forested, green. Baboons, very beautiful land. Mostly overcast. Some sun at lunchtime.
Off road and up to Iringa for lunch: sambusa, kebab and chai (1 shilling, 70 cents).
First rain shower. Drive on. More heavy rain. Then on and off. Villages very sparse, small, primitive, offering nothing. Meant to stop at Igawa but couldn’t see anything there to keep me. Pushed on to Mbeya. Heavy rain, desolate, big rock barriers gathering heavy cloud, becoming more wild and mournful as light fades. Polaroids deepen gloom. [I was still wearing Polaroid goggles, for want of anything better.]
Everything drenched. Me too.
To Mbeya as night falls. Guest house like seaside boarding house. 50 shilling bed and breakfast. Very expensive, but friendly. Finnish agricultural research officers experimenting with different methods of maize production. Area unexploited. Says southern highlands could feed the whole of East Africa. One acre can produce 6 tons of maize properly farmed (or three tons maize, three tons weed). Asians everywhere travelling “on business.”
[I found the rain very dispiriting. As I said in the book, I think I “missed” Tanzania.]
That’s all for now. I hope I’ve taken your mind off current events for a few happy minutes.
The heat on the road to Mombasa melts the patches on my inner tube, and I’m stuck.
Kibwezi, 18th and 19th January
Could have been just another place. Jumble of buildings on a dirt road. Buses pulling in. Stalls selling fruit and a few vegetables. Main store on the corner (Asian of course).
[I cursed myself for not having what I needed to repair the tube, because of the heat. I got the bike to a BP station and found a post office to phone Lucas. The operator, in his tiny kingdom, treated customers like his subjects.]
Post office was a small room next to the store, with old standard switchboard and a tetchy African gent playing the plugs, very sharp with his customers.
“That is the correct method to deal with this matter.”
[Lucas agreed to send a new tube by car next day. I looked around for somewhere to sleep and chose the “Curry Pot Hotel.”]
Two ‘hotels’. Mine had big front bar with splendid cash counter with bars. Tables, chairs, usual girls with headscarves, loose overalls (blue), and swinging big legs around in loose easy way they have. Smaller room behind, then inner yard, more tables and chairs, one paraffin lamp, rooms off it. “Gents” is a bed of charcoal in cement bay. Lots of corrugated iron, painted. My room is painted silver. Mattress in plastic cover. Pillow too.
Experience transformed by the three men who befriend me. The “insurance” man – plump, floral, on his Yamaha, rescues me in my punctured state. Takes me to Paul Kiviu at BP station where I also meet the policeman, Samson. Two nights in town, drinking endless Tuskers, talking. Very animated first night. Girls are afraid of me – never slept with “Mzungo.” [Swahili word for white man.] One says she’ll come back but doesn’t. Paul works hard to convince them. Second night more philosophical, melancholy – apart from brief flurry of argument about insurance.
Pius, the insurance man says, “Snake bite is not accident because the snake means to bite you.” So, not covered by insurance. This outrages Samson. We invent examples of accidents to prove Pius wrong. But he insists, any misfortune caused by a live thing cannot be an accident.
“What if someone falls on me from the top of a building?” I ask.
Paul reveals his ambition to irrigate his shamba.
“Employment is a bother,” they all agree. Samson will marry in August.
Paul Kiviu, Samson Ndolo, Pius William Mouka.
“Employment is really a bother.” Samson stretched his legs further under the tin-topped table loaded with empty Tusker bottles, and sank lower in his seat. Black night filled the courtyard behind the Currypot Hotel & Restaurant, and a gentle melancholy washed over the four of us. Paul, the BP garage manager at the Kibwezi junction, nodded his head with its little curly brimmed felt hat.
“Oh it is a bother indeed,” he agreed. “You see, this fellow is not free. He is going round town even after his duties are finished and some person may come at any time saying his attendance is sorely needed in case of a sudden crime, or it may be a fatal accident and what and what.”
Paul had his own reasons to deplore employment. His presence at the petrol station was required every day, Sundays included, from seven to seven, although once a month he managed to visit his wife at the farm thirty miles up the road to Nairobi.
“You see I had to leave this company for two hours this evening. I was forced to go, isn’t it. Some stores came for the canteen, so I must go to search the stocks. This can happen at any time, and I don’t know if I have a job tomorrow.
“What is needed here is a thousand and five hundred shillings. Then I can build a tank for water and then I must have a pump and some pipes and I can put water on my farm and grow many things.”
“It is a bother all right,” said Samson. His voice was now almost disembodied. He wore navy blue trousers and shirt with matching cloth covered buttons over a black skin. Faint paraffin light, reflected off the painted corrugated iron walls of the hotel, failed to reach him and his sold, big-boned body dissolved in the darkness like a ghostship in fog. Only the insurance man was plainly visible now. He had a bright flowered shirt flowing over his fine round belly and his pumpkin face gleamed in the lamplight.
[Eventually, that evening, they found a girl who was willing to take a chance on a Mzungo, and a description of the event is better left to Jupiter’s Travels. Next morning the new tube arrived, and I was on my way to Mombasa.]
First rain fell on me. Saw ten elephants under a baobab tree in Tsavo park on way, and a few giraffs. Baboons at an abandoned gas station. Playing with their children.
From Nairobi speedo works for 328 miles, then stops.
[As I entered Mombasa I drew up alongside two European volunteers in an open car.]
Met Kai and Buran in mini-moke. Straight to Castle Hotel for seven course lunch at 14/- [shillings]. Room at Jimeey’s Hotel. Everyone says how hot it is – don’t feel it myself for a day or two, then everything gets sticky.
The Sunshine Club in Kilindini Street. 3/- for a beer. Smashing girls, tested weekly. Good band with soul singer. Acrobats after 11pm. Extramural fees up to 20/-. Many sailors. Best food at Arab-style Duka. Kima chapati with egg 3/-.
Boy who howled outside hotel window for an hour, dribbling with effort, carried off struggling and howling with hands tied behind his back.
Boy with so-called polio legs. [His legs look terribly twisted and deformed.]
“I’m not asking for help. I merely want to find a kind person to appreciate my problem. I have GCE in (various subjects) and have to look for help where I can. I believe God will look after me. You cannot understand now but one day when you also are in trouble you will see. Etc, etc. How can I want a cigarette when I am starving. Even though I haven’t a cent in my pocket I will not ask for money, only some food. But if I had my fare to go back to the shamba I would not be forced to look here for help. 4.50 is all I need, etc.“
Given a shilling.
“Now give me a cigarette.”
Walks off and [as his legs miraculously become normal] starts to dance down the road.
[I spent a day at the brilliant, sugar-white Mombasa beach.]
The beach at Mombasa Beach Hotel. White sand. English, Italian holiday makers.
[Overheard.]
“We do 60% of the BBC’s work, and all for Weekend. I usually get to the office about 7 or 8 but I often don’t leave until 9 or 10. But I go home to bathe and change and then go out to a party or dinner. I absolutely refuse to go home to bed.”
[This is where the fishermen at the Muthaiga club go for their marlin.]
[I went on to visit the island of Lamu, famous for woodcarvings.]
[While there I met the only person on the whole of my four years who was making a journey something like mine.]
Ian Shaw, 25, New Zealander, been travelling 4 years, first on Yamaha 250, now on 350. Through Far East. Thailand, Malaya, India, now Africa. Fell off through speed-wobble in Thailand. Rolled 100 feet and skinned himself like potato. Hospital stretched him out and poured salt over him. Then washed him and put on mercurochrome. Then sent him off. Drove as fast as he could to make maximum miles to Malaya before setting rigid. Attacked and chased by Karachi mob. No reason. Threatened with shooting and incarceration by Tanzania police. Sleeping sickness in Botswana – thought it was malaria. Now thinks he may have bilharzia. Looks very fit and strong.
[Although we never met again, I visited his home in New Zealand on my second big trip. He was away, but his wife was at home. Just a few weeks ago, as I am copying out these notes, his wife called to say he had just died. She sent me a recent picture of him, fifty years on.]
Back in Mombasa spent one and a half hours trying to sell my shillings back to the Kenya Commercial Bank. [Strict currency controls at that time.]
Two nights with Kai and Henning had been pleasant and relaxed. At the Sunshine until 4am first night, finally taking back with me the persistent lady called “Marg” (to no purpose), and ferrying her back to her sister’s room next morning – a room in a thirties bloc called “Warden’s Court”– grey angular building with steel frame windows on unpaved ground. Sister sprawled on bed, face down. Afro wig on chest of drawers. Room clean, painted but stark.
Spent day recovering. Read a Victor Canning detective tale about an unconvincing Irish millionaire called O’Dowda and his improbably beautiful stepdaughters.
Sewed up my trouser hems (at last) and wrapped up sand, millipede, and silver box for Jo. Then bought food for two Danes and American and made a terrible mess trying to cook it on their electric Glowworm stove.
Later went out on a night trip to Fort Jesus – marvellous effect by night – soaring ramparts on hewn rock base with rounded crenellations, sloping back slightly, seeming quite impregnable. – can walk right round it – nothing to break the 16th Century mood – and then round Mombasa port – copper ingots from Zambia, rolling stock, freighters, and a tanker berthed and brightly lit, drums of chemicals strewn around, very little apparent supervision. Road winds between sheds and sidings for about a mile. Yugoslav trucks and trailers. Effect is to draw Africa together.
Remember massive derricks on freighter – forest thick. Locomotive with cyclops eye. Kikuyu guard. Tall suave – “You can pass”.
Leaving Mombasa, Monday, 27th
Left next morning, reluctantly, in cloudy weather. Mood of uncertainty developed into deep anxiety – quite inexplicable – which grew worse. Realised that this was a phenomenon to deal with and explain. No apparent rational basis, but undeniably I felt unsafe, threatened. Thought of Ian Shaw’s episode with Tanzanian police – “I can take you out and shoot you, or a I can put you somewhere where nobody will ever find you. We are the law here.” Was it that? Unlikely. When had I felt similar mood before? During second week in Nairobi just ten days before – though had done nothing then to precipitate it. Temptation to read omens, foresee disaster. Should one submit and delay action? Weather is unsettled, very humid. Hot waves of fetid air blow across the road from areas of forest recently drenched by showers. First time I have smelled that tropical hothouse vegetable smell. I drive very carefully, gingerly – anticipating accidents where I would not normally. On the ramp of the ferry at the southern exit from Mombasa.
Some drops of rain hit me, and I seem to be heading for black saturated cloud with dark streaks of rain below. Then road veers away at last moment and circles the gloom. Can’t help reading supernatural significance into it – a general reprieve. Lightens my mood but does not dispel it. At the border I am still uneasy, particularly as I am telling (for the first time) a modified story of my identity and purpose. I am a builder bound for Botswana. No idea of going further south.
[The newly independent post-colonial countries are deeply suspicious and hostile towards anyone with connections to White Rhodesia and South Africa.]
Kenya customs man engages me in an elaborate conversation about my journey, my views on Kenya, on Britain and the effect on it of losing its colonies. I am very wary. It sounds like a polite political screening. The policeman at the gate observes the sword and says it is an offensive weapon and therefore illegal. He is smiling and full of jokes, but I still feel he might do something about it. On the Tanzanian side the examination is more cursory. I am asked to show my traveller’s cheques. A slight schoolmasterly fellow in a light suit and specs suggests that he change my Kenya money. There will be no need to record it on the document, since I will be spending it immediately, no doubt. He is obviously going to cash it on the black market himself and wants no record of its existence. I let him get away with it gladly, feeling that it may buy me some protection. Against what? I don’t know, but the feeling of precariousness is still with me, and I feel the need of any security. He is a lousy advertisement for Nyerere [President of Tanzania] however. Then the storm breaks, and a short deluge descends on the tin roofs.
I have missed my last opportunity to buy petrol 30 miles back. The Michelin map has let me down. There is no longer petrol at Lunga Lunga, due to lack of business they say. A Mercedes drives up – TZ plates, and I solicit a couple of litres from two tall, well-dressed Africans. “You’d better wait and see if they let us through first. If not, you can take the whole car.”
Afterwards the driver lets me siphon a litre or so but stops me then. I have only a five-shilling piece and offer it to him. He takes it saying it’s not much use to him – but it’s worth more than twice the petrol he gave me.
That’s all for now. See you next week.
Yesterday Lucas flew me to a remote tribal area, home of the Turkana, north of Nairobi and close to Lake Rudolph. This is my second day.
Lodwar, January 10th
[Outside the hospital, on the sand with Doctor ”Jerry” who invited me here. We’re waiting for the flying doctor who does operations.]
Outdoor surgery. Doctor arrives in LandRover. Soon a woman arrives with her baby boy. But no interpreter. Crowd gathers. Finally, George [the interpreter] gets there. One child on point of collapse with TB, malaria. Very far gone. Will die. Others with mild cough, OK.
“I can tell the healthy ones now from their skin and general appearance. Use methods of diagnosis which are old-fashioned in UK now.“
Old lady eyes almost closed and full of sticky liquid. “They leave these things so long.” An infection that gradually closes the eye until they turn up and scrape the lashes on the eyeball, causing inflammation. She will wait until the Flying Doctors do the next batch of eye ops.
Little boy has his mother worried because his testicles are the wrong shape. Jerry lays him in the sand. Sits him up, and lays him down again. Then: “Tell her it’s all right. There’s nothing wrong. It’s only the shape of the skin.”
Old woman has headaches, then her left arm goes numb.
“Arterial disease is almost unknown here. They hardly ever get old enough.”
Fifty is old in Turkana. The patients are made to queue up by George.
Jerry insists on words like “patient,” “prognosis,” etc. They seem very strange here.
He looks at them one by one, while the others look on curiously, perhaps one minute, five at most. On the back of some obsolete buff forms, torn in half, he prints her name as spelled out by George. The words usually mean “under the fruit tree” or “by the river” or “in the big rain.” And record the circumstances of birth. Then he scribbles his diagnosis, a treatment if it’s straightforward. And tells them to come in next day.
He can handle most things that turn up but has a hard time getting blood to pull back the really desperate cases. He lost a small boy the day before for want of hydrocortisone and has a limited arsenal of drugs. On the other hand, they work much more efficiently where the recuperative well-springs have not been muddied by exposure to drugs before. He thinks the Lodwar hospital loses about the same proportion of patients who could theoretically have lived as a good Western hospital – but the reasons are different.
Pain threshold is much higher. They hate hanging about in hospitals. They insist on sleeping outside on the pathway or in the sand.
No graves except for special cases. Bodies are thrown out for hyenas and vultures. Very little concern for suffering of others, except in family. People die in the ward and nobody thinks to call the doctor. Father will come in and shove sick child off the bed to make room for himself.
Native medicine is extensive. If there is internal pain or deformity the skin is cut around the affected area, in many small incisions, half inch long. Doctor can often follow the course of a growth by these cuts and the newness of them. They have their natural remedies too.
[Immanuel, in the straw hat, is the son of the Mzee, or Chief. He loves pranks, interfering with the fake authenticity. The other “Westerner” is a hospital assistant.]
Immanuel and the Mzee: “With one spear we can kill a lion or an elephant or a giraffe.” Accurate at 20ft. “The Turkana will never change their customs. We want more schools so that children can get good jobs in city and send money back to their parents. But they will never forget their tribe. Only the bad ones.”
“If any other tribe tries to overcome us we will beat them.”
Invincible. Killing another man adds no particular glory or lustre. A little extra respect, but nothing compared to ownership of animals. No indication that a person’s life can be improved other than by material things.
Immanuel says girls have to be very careful not to give the impression of greed. Before marriage they avoid at all costs letting a man see them eating, often going without food for long periods if men are around. If by chance she is seen, she will try to marry immediately before the word gets out.
The most respected men have up to 15 wives. Immanuel’s father has 500 cattle, 1000 goats, plus camels, donkeys etc.
Remember how the girls walk, leather skins polished and rounded to the shape of their buttocks, switching from side to side. There is obvious pride in being able to do this well. They move always in a very girlish way, a movement one only sees among professional dancers in Europe in folk ballet. The pronounced arching of the back, which is natural to Africans, has much to do with it.
[I was flown back to Nairobi the next day.]
Nairobi, Friday January 11th
To the movies to see “All cops are ???”
Could have been any British cinema, but for the pepper on the peanuts. Pretty ugly impression of life in London (Battersea).
[I spent another week in Nairobi. With the bike nicely serviced, and with a new set of pannier bags across my tank and new tyres and innertubes, I set out for Mombasa. Then 150 miles down the road, at Kibwezi Junction, I had a puncture, which led to even more intimate relations with the native population.]
See you next week, Cheers.
Nairobi, Tuesday, January 8th
Mike Pearson, the bluff and hearty boss of Lucas, Nairobi, says:
“I say! We just bought a plane. Where would you like to go?”
So I told him I’d got a postcard from a doctor working with the Turkana tribe in Lodwar.
[Before I left London a few letters from readers arrived at the Sunday Times wishing me well. One was a postcard from a doctor doing volunteer work at Lodwar in Kenya inviting me to stop by. Of course he never imagined for a moment that I would.]
Lodwar, January 9th
Arrived yesty. Cessna 310. Brand new. £34,000.
One and a half hours from Nairobi. (Cost about £100 here and back.) Alongside Rift Valley – far too small to relate to the size of the continent. Bumpy because of midday heat. Drive [Fly] with road map. Bob Croft [the pilot] is a farmer. 80 acres of coffee and a Guernsey herd. Content with Kenya. Would like to stay in spite of gathering problems, blatant corruption.
The hospital ward. Cherubic Irish face [Jerry, the doctor] with huge lenses gleaming up, astonished.
Black bodies with green cotton wraps round their middles, flapping and wrinkled breasts, dusty soles, here and there a bandage where operations have been performed. A batch of post-ops after visit by Flying Doctors. Mostly for hydatid cysts – local menace, either in liver or spleen, grow to enormous size, like grapes in juice. Dogs might be host.
Men like having their feet cut off. There’s a thing that swells the foot up and can be stopped but foot stays big. Also very painful.
Prisoners there with police. One pretty girl with spindly limbs dying of malignant tumour, but no-one can be told, or their rage and grief would be uncontrollable. Also, says Jerry, if parents are told their child will die they just leave it to starve.
[There was mission overseen by a Bishop Mahon.]
Long talk with bishop. “I’ve given up thinking. I never did very much of it, and now I don’t bother at all. Just get on with it, let the future take care of itself.” Caricaturing himself. Quite ready to accept that he’s just creating problems. “What can you do? You can’t just let people starve.”
Sitting opposite me, back to an open-lattice wall with lozenge shaped openings. Breeze bursting through, which he “built himself” – well – arranged with others to build. He had a mould made in Kitale. They pack in sand and a sprinkle of cement. The flies were buzzing around my head, attaching themselves to my eyes and lips, as they do, but I was uncomfortably aware that there were no flies on the bishop.
They’ve got an irrigation scheme going on the river further up. Should have about 50 acres at next rain in April (aiming for several hundred). But it’s hard work and only some of them are industrious. Without direction the channels would choke up.
“Did you see an irrigation scheme in Sudan? I flew over and saw a huge area.”
[I think he was talking about Kashm el Girbar.]
[I arranged a party and bought two goats, so that I could photograph them dancing in daylight.]
Those metal cans each carried five gallons of corn beer. They use a hard-fibre bun called an Aikit on their heads to support heavy objects. I brought one back, together with a spear, a wrist knife and a very low carved wooden seat.
The bartender.
Bishop Mahon (continued). Face that could equally suit a study or a stock pen. Tobacco-stained teeth, straight silver hair, physically fit, lean, golden skin, shorts, tea stained shirt, 9 years in Nigeria, 6 in Turkana, Medical Missionaries of St. Mary. Mission hospitals in various outlying villages (Kakomari?) Also has Danish volunteers as well as Irish pastors and sisters. Finds the Danes better suited, much less demanding than his church people, although can’t quite explain what motivates the Danes. Their unselfconscious, naturalistic behaviour can outrage the sisters, especially at the Norwegian swimming pool. The nuns, he thinks, are too often doctrinaire, officious, and their inflexibility makes it hard for them to survive the pressures. But his mission is dabbling in other things. Irrigation schemes and the Lake Rudolph fish project. FAO man reported the Lake capable of producing between 50 and 150 thousand tons of fish (Nile perch, up to 250lbs)
Got it started. A big British iron trawler is there as a development vessel. Asian traders to set up refrigeration (freezer on a lorry, which crashed: then on aircraft which also pranged on landing). But after good, early catches, yields dropped, and scheme failed to fulfill itself.
Mahon relates the up and downs of his missionary life in the way older men often describe the hopes and disappointments of their sons, with a wistful fondness and a rater irrational belief in the basic goodness of the life and its intentions, whatever the outcome. He would not willingly return to a Western life (hardly any I met could stomach that; its selfish, indulgent nature is too blatant now) but there are few expectations out here. He is resigned to criticism of his “meddling” in matters outside the brief of his mission. One feels that the technocrats of Oxfam, and the specialised relief agencies, have often snubbed his people. He is himself aware of the criticisms.
“We project a terrible image on these people, going round in Landrovers, living in concrete buildings. But if we build with mud, the termites work their way up the walls and eat the door jambs and attack the roof. We’ve tried most things. There’s a chap out here who lives in a tent. He’s very happy doing it, but he’s doing harm, because when he goes, I can find no-one to replace him who would put up with those conditions.”
He warns his people always about imposing their standards on the Turkana. “My only hope is that after a few years we can overcome the bad effects by showing them that we care as people.”
It is not difficult to find evidence of the corruption of tribal life by white civilisation – the universal phenomenon. Bizarre mixtures of western and tribal dress. The inevitable stories of missionaries (more often Protestant than Catholic) determined that native women should cover their breasts. The souvenir selling. The tin roof syndrome. The self-conscious proclamation of haughty pride before the camera followed by the outstretched hand for a posing fee. But the process is irreversible now. And it would be naïve to allocate blame too easily.
H. Johnston, 1902:
“The Turkana are very treacherous.”
“The Turkana are very conceited and idle.”
E.D. Emley, 1927:
“The Turkana is a careless and cruel herdsman and a most efficient liar.”
P. H. Gulliver, 1963:
“Although a general recognition exists that one must give hospitality to travelers, yet each man will attempt to evade responsibility, telling the most bare-faced lies if necessary.”
“A feature of social life which reacts strongly on character is the continual begging – begging that has to be satisfied sine it amounts almost to seizure ––– the only limits that I am aware of are that a man may not beg another man’s wife.”
And by the same author, who seems to have been the recent authority – “Savage and wild as the country he lives in, so he will remain, in my opinion, to the end of time.”
In 1963 there were no schools, no foreign administrative interference. Only the ultimate white sanction of a punitive expedition to prevent warfare. Today there are Flying Doctors from Nairobi, mission clinics. The opening for these intrusions was provided by the big drought and the cholera of the sixties, which persuaded the Kenya Government to open the Northern Frontier Province.
Huts from sheaves of long grass bound together.
Clay pots; three-legged stools, headrests.
Spears, wrist knives with leather guards.
NO musical instruments at all.
There was a British District Commissioner at Lodwar who refused to allow any of his people to wear European dress. They all had to dress like Turkana. Name was Whitehouse. Now Resident Magistrate in Kitale. He put the hawser and pulley across the riverbed to take supplies when the river was in flood. River usually runs six to nine months. March onwards. Now dry. Palms similar to Atbara, but drier.
Next week: The surgery.
The road from Moyale, on the border, to Nairobi had a bad reputation. It was unpaved, of course, and boasted a rich variety of stones of all colours and sizes but I found it relatively easy. There was game of all sorts – I saw my first wild ostrich and giraffe – but no traffic, and it was dry. The vibration, however, finished the job on my luggage rack which broke, leaving me stranded on the roadside with all my stuff. Then, as though the story had been written, a Peace Corps man drove by. He carried my gear on to Marsabit, a township on the way, where a blacksmith fixed it.
I slept on a floor in Isiola and then climbed up the side of Mount Kenya. The higher I rode the more like England it became. Then, on a farm gate, I saw a sign, “The Thompsons,” and turned in on a hunch.
The Thompsons, a slice of old England in the heart of Africa.
Arthur Thompson, Ruth & Charlton. 3000 acres, south of Isiola at Timau. On northern slopes of Mount Kenya. He, older, gray-haired, ulcers, from Northumberland. Came as a soldier after farming background in England. Traces of Geordie accent mixed with colonial. Places much emphasis on ‘classlessness’ of ‘White Highland’ community. She younger, plump, pretty, strong-natured. Small boy “Charlton” (his father’s name).
“One’s enough,” he said.
Ruth Thompson and son, Charlton.
Maize, wheat, barley, pyrethrum, 80 Jersey cattle, 1000 or so sheep. Fields of grass, Napier Grass (Elephant grass). Reclaiming the “Dongo’s” (Wash-outs – i.e. areas denuded by rain).
“Had a good life for 30 years, but it’s nearly over now.”
Where to go when Kenya government has bought the farm for African settlement? South Africa? Good prospect. “I can’t see Europe letting it go. If they do there’ll be no way round.” i.e. Shipping. Strategically important. “For the same reason I think they’ll leave Rhodesia alone.”
Africans: “You can’t trust them. Even if you want to, you can’t afford to. Because even if an African wants to be honest, trustworthy, there are others who can put pressure on him. After the six months I did screening (The Kikuyu during the Mau Mau emergency.) I learned that much.
Kenya government: “Every swindle goes right back to the top. There was a CID man brought here by the Govt. to help police. He resigned because every time he followed something through, it led to the top and was hushed up. Kenyatta has a farm with dairy cattle and wheat. The maximum moisture content was 14.5%. He put it up to 15.5% until he’d sold his wheat, because it was too wet. Then he put it back to 14.5%. The millers let it out, because they were paying more for water. Price of milk went up for the same reason.
“The self-help hospital is paid for through Kenyatta’s personal account. 3,000,000 has gone in – 70,000 has gone out.” (K.shillings, or £s ?)
Future: “Fifty per cent of population is under 14. What will happen when they leave school. There’s nothing for them to do. Once they’ve been to school, they can’t lift anything heavier than a pen.”
Aid? “All these tarmac roads don’t bring in a penny. The amount of money that’s come into Kenya in the last ten years is nobody’s business. Nothing to show for it.”
World Bank financed roads.
“If Europeans had been left here for the last ten years, Kenya would have advanced at a great rate.”
Saw the maize. Hardly a foot high. No irrigation. “They’ll get nothing off that this year.”
Settlement: “They get plots of dry land, one or two acres. Can’t survive. It’s not suitable for Kikuyu farming. Was much better used as it was, for grazing. The Kikuyu needs rain. Their method is to exhaust a patch, then move on and let it go back to brush. The Kikuyu goes round in circles. Round hut. The woman grows yams round the hut. Outside is a bigger circle, the man plants maize. And round that he hunts.”
“Was at the police station about some maize and a sheep stolen by one of his workers. Can’t get the police to take any initiative. When you’ve been used to something better, you miss it. There used to be only one police station at Nyuki, and one European to keep discipline over a huge area. But it was much better. The African cannot keep control over other Africans.”
Perfect lawn, flower beds – “You can grow almost anything here. Roses, etc.” Cooch grass, very spongy. Dove cot, like the Cotswolds.
“The European DC had a gardener, cook, houseboy, a kitchen wallah. The African DC moves in, his wife is gardener, cook, houseboy & kitchen wallah.”
[The Thompsons kept me for two nights, then I rode on to Nairobi and sought out the Lucas offices.]
Nairobi, January 6th
Total mileage, 7,500. Journey mileage (i.e. on the bike) 6,600.
The Delamere [A post-colonial club. I’m taken there by the Boss of Lucas, Nairobi. I made notes of conversation with members.]
Big game fishing. Marlin, off Kilifi (N. of Mombasa).
New Zealanders: “Aren’t allowed to boat a fish under 800lbs.”
How do you measure it?
“Calipers. Along and across. Doesn’t take long. They’re fighting all the time.”
The Mauritius. 1,100 lb fish. Talk of one at 3000 lb.”
They say, “Your boat’s in absolute shite order.”
Blue eyes all around. Dark, polished wood bar. Painted stone or cement pillars, mock Georgian, built in 1910’s. Parquet floors. Wine cellar below. Rooms broad, spacious, undivided, cool.
“Whatever they say, life is still pretty colonial here. The Africans pretend to object, but….”
Lambs kidneys Turbigo. Smoked Sailfish.
“It’s still a bloody good life here. Of all the emergent states it’s still the most stable.”
Publicity for Lucas – a sponsor.
[Lucas were generous. They paid for a hotel room.]
Two Africans sitting in hotel bar at lunchtime. Grey flannels. Short sleeved shirts. Swahili, punctuated by “Anyway,” or “Let us compare this thing” or “We must analyse this thing in detail,” or “ Is it better to make the wrong decision at the right time, or the right decision at the wrong . . “ As English parvenu used to lard their English with French.
Still there at nightfall. Beers coming at 3 or 4 an hour.
Africans are enjoying their freedom with ideas, split hairs with gusto, wear their education like tribal feathers, love to read out passages of official English – Customs Nairobi & document from Moyale.
[They] take refuge in nonsense where sense won’t win the game. But the Europeans can certainly work with them.
Overheard in hotel: Asian man (in turban) and African man replying to Asian woman.
She: “Look, can you see? One eye is higher than the other.”
Asian: “Well, your nose is crooked.”
She: “Yes I know. It was a bad accident I had. Very bad. Now I have the feeling when I look that one side is higher than the other.”
African: “You should take a hammer and straighten it.”
She: “You shouldn’t think it’s so funny.”
African: “It’s better to see something than nothing. But if you lie on the ground, I’ll give it a good kick.”
Next week: Flying into the past.
On my way south from Lake Hawassa, the first stop was Yavello where I had an extraordinary dinner with two drunken teachers who tried to stuff their food into my mouth. I recorded none of this. Happily, when I came to write the book I remembered every detail, but not with pleasure.
January 1st, 1974
New Year’s Day. Leave Yavello for Mega. Road is mostly very good. Instead of a hard day’s struggle I’m there by midday.
On the road to Mega.
Injera and Wat at small “hotel.” [Injera is a pancake made from a grain called Teff: Wat is a pepper stew of goat meat.]
The hotel at Mega. There were string-beds through the blue door, but I didn’t stay.
Now there’s a battle between two tribeswomen, with plaited hair, and silver beads and bangles, and the hotel women in neat dresses and bandannas. It’s all over two small enamel mugs, which appear to have contained butter. The tribes-ladies wear candy striped shawls, red and gray. Their necklaces, more than a dozen each, like chain mail on their necks. (When they say “yes” in conversations the voice swoops up.)
Now the policeman has been brought, and very neat he is too. Trying to arbitrate between the girls he just gets hopelessly tied up. In the end there’s a tug-of-war with girls pulling each of his arms, and he brushes them off and strides away to save his dignity. The TW’s have sticks with which they polish their teeth. Wear loose fronted garments, like a pinafore across their breasts, and a long shawl wrapped round and over one shoulder which falls to mid-calf. They are the Burani tribe – cattle, sheep, and camels. The battle was over a cup of butter, sold to the hotel for four cents which the Tribe woman says she was still owed. This butter is a waxy-looking paste, but which Bridget [my friend in Addis] says can be made very tasty with various herbs.
I coveted the embroidered wall hangings and could have had them for a song but thank goodness I realised they were much better left where they were.
[An Israeli construction company was in the early stages of building a road from Mega to the border at Moyale.]
Go for a walk to watch road construction. They’re filling in a “wadi” over a concrete spillway. Huge Caterpillar earth movers, swinging around like bumper cars. They grade as they tip. Back to hotel where Vassi Fissaha, the Ethiopian civil engineer working on the road, is waiting to leave for Moyale. He is very fat with a round face, becomes interested as we talk. Says I could get to Moyale that day, road isn’t so bad. He’s going in his VW Moke, expects to be there 5.30 to 6. Mega already seems exhausted for me. I accept the challenge. Meet American from Nairobi, Geoff Probitts, coming into Mega on a Honda 350. First encounter.
[It’s the first time since France that I’ve seen a motorcycle on the open road.]
He says there’s nothing very terrible on the road to Moyale. I tell him the worst is over for him. I think maybe we were both guilty of optimism. Road from Mega to Awasa has some pretty ropy bits. As for Mega to Moyale, it’s better than Metema, but only just.
First long section is red sand, brush and termite pillars which Vassi says are strong enough to winch on. This continues in the plain below Moyale but interrupted by areas of black earth (like asphalt) in which grass looks blue, and then a wide belt of white chalk.
Here the termite mounds are ghostly white, like unfinished Henry Moore’s, for miles. Lot’s Wife. Road is a 20mph average, 2nd and 3rd gear road full of pitfalls, ridges, heaped dust and sand-filled cavities. Some very big bumps probably fractured the pannier rack. Saw little Dick-dicks (many) and a big deer with thin white stripes down its side. Several times uncertain about road, but on the chalk plain the left fork was the proper one. However, without watch or speedometer, [I meant odometer. It had packed up further back, as had my watch] these journeys are a bit hair-raising. No chance of riding this country in dark, and as the sun plunges below hill tops you know you’re not going to make it. I stumbled into Moyale with half an hour’s daylight to spare, and about 20 minutes behind Vassi’s car.
Had contretemps with students at town entrance. They prevented me from entering main street and insisted I must check into police station first (which was untrue). The style of stopping you to do you a favour (real or imaginary, or even spurious) is very strange, involves the most threatening expressions or gestures.
Moyale on the Ethiopian side.
I was fascinated by these huge and apparently weightless Maribou storks.
Approximately 40 per cent of Kenyans were under the age of 15.
Both Mega and Moyale show some return to the more attractive house building styles of Sudan, with mud roofs (fringed with grass or weed) supported on wood poles, rather than tin. Long low rows of these houses – wooden doors, red earth. People in mixture of tribal and Western clothes. But the prize goes to the old village of Moyale in Kenya where a combination of the best of these styles has been brought to the highest point and decorated outside in ochre wash. with flower and animal drawings.
The tribal village at Moyale in 1974.
Vassi had the D.C. [District Commissioner] of Kenya Moyale in his car, and we were asked to drink to the New Year in Kenya with him. So after several beers we set off to breach the frontier in the VW. The soldier wouldn’t let us pass [even though we were carrying his DC. Speaks for the discipline at that time.] and there was much driving up and down in the dark to find the customs man to get a chitty.
People are very vague in their descriptions and instructions, leaving out important details. Their minds don’t seem to follow through the sequence of events predicated by the problem, so that much effort and time is spent fruitlessly.
Eventually we arrived at the New Bar on the Kenya side. Guiness ads, English signs everywhere, big bottles of beer, and noisy convivial atmosphere produce a pleasant illusion of friendliness and intimacy, rather pub like. It is a bit of an illusion though, and falls flat, just as the first impression in Metema [the border town of Ethiopia] led to disappointment. Presumably, after a hard ride, uncertain of what awaits me I have only to be given the merest token customary comfort – i.e. a beer, and a seat, and a little space in which to speak or listen – and I complete the rest of the picture in my imagination. There are enough people here anxious to imitate Western styles to provide a backdrop for this fancy, as banal as the Embassy [cigarette] advertisements used for ‘art pieces’ on the walls.
With William Wa (?) the DC and his friends we got merrily drunk and later returned to Ethiopia.
Next day I arrived, leisurely enough, at customs to find two busloads of Jehovah’s Witnesses being put through a fine mill. I’d known about them yesterday, since Vassi had an aunt and a cousin among them.
[They were treated like prisoners of war. All their goods were spread out on the earth, all their books, pamphlets and other religious materials were confiscated and burnt.]
Next week: The best of British on the equator.
PS: The other night I was wandering through the jumbly forest of my hippocampus when I came across a very wise old hippopotamus called Eisenhower who said BEWARE OF THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.
But that was 65 years ago and nobody iin power paid attention. The arming of America took on a life of its own. The arms industry has been diligent and successful at buying political influence, their message has always played well to national pride, their factories provide jobs, their congressmen and senators have well-funded campaigns.
An arms race is very profitable and the fact that it sucks up the prosperity which might otherwise be used to improve living standards and provide health benefits to poorer Americans is not an issue – or, if it was, it’s well buried.
Speaking now as a European, one of the big talking points around our rupture with the USA has been the relative defencelessness of Europe: As though Europe has been negligent and self-indulgent whereas America has shouldered the burden of defending the free world.
As is well-known America’s military reach is vast and hugely equipped. There are at least 128 major bases in 55 or more countries (including 144 golf courses here and there) inevitably causing China to play the same game.
I wonder who might have already raised the possibility that America has itself invented the dragon we now face.
The five hundred or so miles from Gedaref to Gondar were the toughest five days of my entire journey – in part because I was still new to the game. When I returned 28 years later it was virtually unchanged. Then the Chinese came. Today, I’m told, it is paved.
December 17th
By the fourth day I was ready to contemplate the possibility that this journey will never end and to face each problem as part of my life. This is my life and I am surviving it. What else matters? So on the fifth day as I leave the camp I almost immediately find myself climbing steeply against an avalanche of loose boulders to the top of a peak, only to find that a box fell off at the bottom.
Park the bike and walk back down, contemplate the loss of what? Can’t even remember which box is lost, what’s gone? The cameras? Every potential or actual disaster finds me more philosophical. Hear distant voices and engine. Some people have found the box. What are they doing with it? What a way to put Ethiopian honesty to the test! A little further down meet the truck coming up. They are enormous lorries, climbing so slowly, loaded with sacks of grain or cotton. It stops. The driver points to his left. I assume he means he has seen the box. No, he has it there in the cab. I climb in, with helmet and goggles and ride back up to the bike. It is the box with food, torch, washbag, etc.
I am offloaded and settle down to repairing the damage. Bolt torn though the fibreglass. Botch it up with wire. Groups of young men come and admire – and return with a blackened kettle full of cold, clear water for me to drink.
So I set off again. Today the climb is intense. Up and down, and further up and down, and still further up. Always there is a mountain ahead. Loose rocks a constant challenge. Watching the road every minute. Eventually I go over again, sprawling across the middle of the road. Bike flat and my heel jammed under the left-hand box. What’s holding it there? The strap of the boot – there ”for when you come off.”
[Back in London when I was buying kit for the journey, the only items available were a helmet, goggles, a plastic tank bag, gloves and boots. The boots were very simple, but there was a strap and buckle across the arch which seemed to serve no purpose. I asked the kid serving me what it was for, and he said “It’s for when you come off” which made no sense at all. Now it was caught on the axle, trapping my foot under the wheel.]
My goggles have gone. I think they must be in the lorry, which has passed me just as I got the bike upright again. I have found a technique for lifting the bike now, by twisting the handlebar, but with my wrenched left arm it’s a big struggle. Drive on. Bike all the better for a rest. Now country changing radically. Many shrubs, green and red, grassy banks and slopes, with boys popping out naked but for a rag over their shoulders. Alpine country – 18th century Switzerland.
Stop for a rest. Boy of 14 or so pops up through hedge. And holds out his flute. Bamboo tube with holes and binding for mouthpiece. Can make nothing of it and ask him to play. He produces a thrilling and intricate music seeming to play on two registers simultaneously. With embellishments round a simple melody. Lightning finger work.
[I was so wrapped up in my own ordeal that I entirely failed to appreciate the situation. Probably he wanted to sell the flute. The music he played was astonishing – a virtuoso. I left without offering him anything in return. It hurt me later to recall it. A little further along, around midday, I came to a village.]
Chelga (now known as Aykel)
At lunch time. Village confirms Alpine sense. The way groups of people stand around. Less spontaneous excitement. People contained, though curious.
Find restaurant. Quiet. Six men at table. In suits, some with overcoats on. Dark clothes. Conferring discreetly. Much fuss made of them. Their faces shrewd, cunning in European way, but black. Exude power, influence. Mafia?
One of them instructs owner to get my passport. Examining it nonchalantly, with neighbours looking casually, then passes it back. No direct contact except smiles in my direction. Eventually they leave. Behind me, teacher who has kept silent, starts talking to me. The one who looked at my passport is police “general” he says.
He talks bitterly of regime, overthrow etc. Compares Ethiopia to France before revolution. Says I should talk to students in Addis. Warns of bad people on the road who will try to stop me. If I “joke” with them they will steal from me. I must “keep a good face. Don’t walk around Gondar alone.
“But you will have your own trick,” he says.
[I arrived in Ethiopia in the last years of Hailie Selassie’s reign, when it had become an oppressive state.]
On to Gondar. One more ford successfully crossed. Then came off again. The other box ripped away. Repair it with crowd looking on. No hostility. The “improved” road from Chelga is flatter but covered in loose stone. Just as hard. When I finally get on to main road, asphalt, it’s like flying. Feel very good. Triumphant. Deserving. Have all sorts of treats in mind for myself. Luxury hotel with beer, bath and good food.
Schoolboy directs me to Fusil Hotel. Room is $4Eth. Italian hotel. When I get there, boy is there too. Can’t bring myself to send him off but his company is cloying. He wants to please. When I suggest he’s expecting something from me he protests. But in the end, though he helps wash the bike and so on I refuse to give him anything. He gets $10 a month from an American who passed through one day – a Bill Rollafson, a chemist from California. Boy’s father is a priest.
Everything costs more here, and people come up for money. In the road there are some boys who throw stones, some men who look as though they might let go with their sticks. After Sudan the atmosphere is very troubled.
[I rode south to Addis Ababa where some friends, Alan and Bridget, were living. He was there on some UK Government mission. They had invited me to spend Christmas with them. We visited Lake Hawassa, south of Addis, famous among birdwatchers. Then I rode on south towards Kenya.]
A saddle back crane at Lake Hawassa, or so they told me. Not a great picture but it proves I was there.
I wake up every morning wondering what fresh outrage Trump has invoked. Like George Bush, he has looked into Putin’s eyes and presumably drawn inspiration from his soul. I shiver at the thought of what message those basilisk eyes project. Terrorise your own people, go out and bomb something, bask in admiration and gather up your trophies. A peace prize perhaps, a chunk of Palestine real estate. My life has turned full circle. It began in the shadow of Hitler. Will it really end in the shadow of Trump? What a farce.
From the desert to the mountains.
Those days crossing the desert in Sudan were among the most influential of my life, an apotheosis. After my abject performance on that first day, running out of fuel and water and burying myself in sand, the schoolteachers of Kinedra lifted me up and made a hero of me, and from that day on I was treated with the utmost generosity and respect.
My interlude at the tea house among tribesmen of various kinds simply reinforced my admiration. Like every westerner I had heard no end of stories about Arab deviousness and thievery. I took the accounts of their nobility by Lawrence, Thesiger and others with a pinch of salt. Now I had to concede that in their own element they were splendid. The simplicity and respect in our communication was balm for the soul.
Of course, it bothered me that I never caught even a glimpse of the headmaster’s wife. A world in which women were invisible would quickly become intolerable to me, but I was passing through their world and had to accept their customs. The fact that the Bescharyin were all huddled together in the same truck bed, men, women, chlldren, and a foreigner, was proof that custom can give way to necessity. As I was to learn during the following years, it is custom that rules the roost everywhere, however much it is attributed to religious belief or idealism. Arbitrary custom cements society, and it can only be broken by often painful necessity.
Look to Iran for grim proof, if it is needed.
Now the journey continues…
December 13th 1973
From Kassala. Along the railway line. Cracked dry mud. Much of it corrugated. Seemed bad at the time except for some flat stretches where a secondary track close to the line could be used. Before Kash’m-El Girbar, bridge and switchback road.
At a tea-house in Kashm-el Girbar I emulated this man and ate a large piece of delicious Nile Perch, while other customers gathered round my bike. “How quick? How fast?” they demanded. When I was ready to leave, someone had already paid my bill.
From K.G itself I was promised “queiss” track. It was terrible – true washboard all the way. Slept with camels 15km from Gedaref.
[In fact, I spread a sheet on the ground a little way from the track and slept on it, to be woken in the middle of the night by a small caravan of camels travelling over me. I looked up at their huge bodies as they daintily avoided stepping on me.]
December 14th
Next day crowds in Gedaref were oppressive. Left straightaway and found road now worse than ever. Some washboard, but mostly deep ruts – one or two feet, leg-breaking and bike-throwing.
Always having to choose a rut only to find it narrowing, unable to get out. Dropped bike three times, one very difficult– have picture.
So to Doka. Night with police.
[Someone had told me there was a police post on the road to the Ethiopian border town, Metema, and they could be trusted, so I slept on the ground inside their compound.]
December 15th
On to Metema, same road, plus rocks, dips etc.
Went to “best hotel in Metema.” Last night. Corrugated iron roof, rough plaster walls on wooden uprights, earth floor, bar with shelves of drink, owner at small table, upholstered chairs and sofa round another table. First upholstery seen since Egypt. Woman shakes my hand and it comes as a shock to me. I have forgotten about women in public – it’s over two months. At first the impression is charming. Dresses of cotton, knee length – a bit dirndlish. They smile, laugh, suggest that life is a light matter, but in the morning it’s less pretty.
December 16th
Morning in Ethiopia. Camel with small flock of birds on its back. Brillian red beaks, grey and white plumage. Another camel with two men sitting back to back, the rear passenger in bright red blanket (Peruvian?) Both smiling. Huts round, of brick, with conical straw roofs, some tied at top. “Hotels” and “bars”. – women with inviting smiles. The women nursing their illegitimate children and their tightly rolled wads of Ethiopian dollars. Later I notice that it’s the girls who are first to stretch out their hands, and it seems that in this country the women take onto themselves the stigma of sin, avarice and corruption. Leaving the men to enjoy a lofty nobility. It may become clearer but one thing is already clear. The relationships between the sexes, however they are customarily managed in different countries, produce rich and extraordinary phenomena.
I was overjoyed to arrive in Metema yesterday, because it marked a solid step forward. Today it rather disgusts me. I can think of no reason why anyone should want to be here except to cash in somehow. Is it a typical border town? Evey hut is a ‘bar.’ Every building bigger than a hut is automatically a “hotel,” with a rectangle of painted metal slung over the door to say so (usually blue or red).
Dawn breaks outside Metema
The customs say I must wait until 3pm. Thought overwhelms me with horror; The travelling is so hard I have to keep moving, just to keep up some sense of achievement to balance the hardship. I listen to a policeman who says I can do customs in Gondar and set off into Ethiopia.
Had a glass of something by mistake when I asked for bread. Yellow tea, with a familiar taste that I couldn’t place and didn’t much care for. (Although it was faintly reminiscent of Bovril.)
Following day, Metema to Gondar. Road vastly improved. i.e. like a normal cart track. Then fords – 1 and 2, terrifying – 3,4,5. Then very steep climbs, very hot. Bike stalls halfway up. Have to carry stuff to the top.
Sometimes the rock is black, sometimes pink which powders into dust. The light wipes out all contours when it hits the dust – can see nothing but a sheet of glowing pink and white. The improvement in the road was illusory. In its own way it was as bad as any. Steep rising and falling road, loose rocks, desperate dashes into fords and up the steep exits, overheating until engine fails. Twice on the ground within a minute. Near exhaustion at times. Back jolting is painful, left arm constantly wrenched when wheel spins on a stone.
Last big ford of the day is too much. Some men gathered to help and suggest I sleep there. They are building a bridge. I am about halfway between two main villages, have come about 100kms. Wash feet, body, socks in river. Drink some. Have tea with road gang; eat half tin of Sudan mackerel. Lie in bed listening to men talking round their fires. One man has voice that dominates with amazing range of expression. All the men, it seems, have two voices – a normal speaking voice and one that jests and mimics and plays on a higher register with very rapid, light consonants and cat-like vowels.
December 17th
Road continues. Leave the bridge builders early. This is the fifth day of my ride from Kassala. Every day the road has seemed just short of impossible _ and each day new difficulties.
[That night I recapitulated in my notebook what had happened in the last few days.]
I am feeling now as if I am being put to a series of ingeniously graded tests. First outside Kassala, the dust mud, cracked and ridged. – carburetor stuck at K.G. Then, after tea when the good road was promised, the washboard for seventy miles, a rattling and shaking that should have torn the machine apart. No relief – if anything becoming more severe. – until the sun moved into my eyes as the road swings to the south west and I dared not go on. Slept on the camel track. Next day washboard continues to Gedaref where I eat fish, drink tea, and get stared at, and escape on the road to Doka. Now the road is both washboard and rut. Sometimes the ruts are two feet deep and hardly that wide and one must ride through them with boots raised for fear of breaking legs against sides. Where the ruts are less serious the washboard becomes correspondingly more severe.
In Gedaref police station (why did I go there? Heaven knows) I met an African refugee from Rhodesia. He said the police at Doka were nice, so when I get to Doka after seven or eight hours driving, I accept the chance to stop honourably. From Doka next day, to all the other hazards are added steep inclines covered in loose rocks. It’s important to remember that these are not consistent hazards. Anything can happen at any moment. It is dangerous to take one’s eye off the road for an instant. I have gone over twice now, not through lack of attention but through taking the wrong line and being caught in converging ruts or in a bad bit of rock. So I am ready for anything and still dreading it. Even inventing impossible hazards for myself, only to see them realised. The impossible ford, the rocky path along a ravine, etc.
Why no puncture? Why don’t the tyres tear to shreds? I think that might finish me. I am full of admiration for the bike and tyres. Why doesn’t the Triumph just die? It has no need to go on, unlike me. It protests, chatters, faints, but always resumes its work like a faithful donkey. What havoc is being wrought inside those cylinders?
On the third day I passed this extraordinary pillar of rock. I saw it again, unremarked, when I went past 28 years later. I wonder if it’s been given a name yet.
It’s becoming more and more difficult to do “business as usual.” A lot of people ordered books from me before Christmas, and it was a little while before I discovered that Trump’s tariffs had thrown a spanner in the works, and all the books I sent to the USA began coming back to me.
I’ve refunded the majority of those who ordered them. The postage, which came to roughly 300 euros, is lost, of course. Fortunately, many of you responded to my “Subscription Offer” so I am certainly not complaining. I can’t resell the books because their all dedicated, but I’ll keep them, so if any of you happen to be passing by in the next year or two, you can drop in and pick yours up.
Cheers, Ted.
After two more days as a guest of the boys’ school in Kinedra the teachers finally gave me permission (because that’s what it felt like) to continue my journey. I was confided to the care of a government official on his way to Kassala, 200 miles away, from the neighbouring village, Sedon.
Wednesday, December 12th
From Kinedra in morning. Thermos flask of tea prepared. Headmaster’s wife has fed me throughout. Drive to Sedon. There is a Land Rover going to Kassala. Forest District Officer, Mohi el Din, needs brake fluid.
Mochi el Din, in the yellow shirt, asked me to follow his vehicle, but they drove too fast for me. They stopped until I caught up with them. I said I would go on alone. He told me of a tea house halfway to Kassala called Khor-el-fil (Crocodile’s Mouth)
Along the way I passed cattle travelling through a mirage.
I found the teahouse without difficulty, and spent some peaceful hours with tribesmen playing primitive music.
A home-made harp made with a wash basin.
A truck arrived and I wandered over to meet them, members of a tribe called Bescharyin.
When I told them I was going to Kassala they said the sand would be too soft and I should load the bike on the truck and travel with them.
Before we arrived one family got out. Behind them are the amazing mountains of Kassala.
In Kassala, Hotel Africa – 30 piastres a night for bed in room for 6. Slept on balcony. Tea boy had holes in feet. Wanted treatment. Gave him Septrin and stuff, through Egyptian teacher of chemistry. He gave me free tea.
After Kassala the route continued south-east past the huge Kashm El Girba dam to the Ethiopian frontier.
On December 5th the ferry from Aswan came ashore at Wadi Halfa or, more correctly, at a ramshackle assemblage still growing to replace the town, which now lay below the waters of the lake. I had hoped to get back on the bike but was refused permission and petrol, so I had to take the train.
My Dutch friend (hatless) dealing with his luggage. My bike was already in the wagon.
With the Dutch couple I had befriended, I travelled to Atbara, where apparently there was only one hotel. They took a taxi and I followed on the bike.
THE hotel. The rooms at the back were cubicles looking out over a verandah on to a courtyard.
December 6th
Atbara: Hotel courtyard. Pale green lime-wash. Green oil paint. Entered to be greeted by five Arabs with sherry and marijuana. A joint pushed straight into my hand. Played some music but they weren’t interested. Interest centered more on Anthony. Why not? He was suspicious, I think. Later, the southern Sudanese, Fabiano, said the chief Arab was a thief who pretended to be drunk to get others drunk. Used the word ‘teep’ but all his p’s are f’s and his f’s are p’s. i.e. pipty and fresident and feople, etc. We got into quasi conspiracy about Sudan’s internal problems and the Eritreans, but my own astounding ignorance left me unaware that the Eritreans were Moslems opposed to Selassie’s Christian regime, and the southern Sudanese, being Christian, are naturally opposed to the Eritreans. I had imagined it the other way round i.e. underdogs supporting each other. Naïve innocence.
Saturday, December 7th
Bent foot brake [lever] back into place by dropping bike on it. Cleaned Oil Filter. Distilled water – to be found. Tightened nuts and bolts. Some movement on barrel nuts. Tappets? Not yet. Chain tensions; primary all right. Rear chain loosened two turns.
In Atbara we met Thomas Taban Duku and then Fabiano Munduk. Both African Christians from the south of Sudan.
With Fabiano, an evening that started when he came to the hotel with his nephew Peter, a four-year-old boy in brightly striped jersey tunic and shorts. They had come from school sports day. All day I had heard martial music of the Empire drifting across. He explained they had been playing musical chairs. We drank two bottles of sherry between us in a bar, then took him by taxi to his brother’s house. Brother is in police (a captain, he said). Saw one room, open to yard, all in brown and over brick. Brother’s wife spoke no English. He got her to give small bottle of home distilled date liquor. (Like eau de vie)
Dates left in water for seven days, then container put over fire. Above it a lid perforated. On that a small bowl. Above it a bigger bowl as a lid and condenser, filled with cold water.
We took the bottle and walked across cultivated ground to look at the Nile. Fabiano said the White Nile was a day’s walk away. He obviously didn’t know the Blue Nile only joins the White Nile at Khartoum, 200 miles further south. We walked back to place where music had sounded. Fabian was dodging about looking into bushes, in the manner of Don Genero looking for cars.
[Carlos Castaneda, a popular writer at this time, described his apprenticeship in shamanism in The Teachings of Don Juan and other books.]
I think he was looking for animals or snakes. We had been hearing about his life in the bush – ‘bus’ – when he and his brothers were refugees from Sudan after his parents had been killed – he said – by the Moslem army of the time. He is proud of his brothers. They are twelve. Two are at Oxford, one doing economics, another librarianship, the others are mostly in the army – all officers He is the youngest and least qualified.
The music came from a wedding party in a community on the edge of Atbara. Large square clearing with canvas spread over large area, illuminated by bulbs strung out in a large rectangle. Rows of chairs all round. Many children jostling for good position, scrapping with each other, but although they pushed each other around quite hard there was no bitterness in their manner, and no crying. Fabiano says the children are allowed to be independent but this only works of course in a simple environment with large family structures.
The band arrived in an army truck. We were given favoured seats, and then plates of food were brought specially for us. Tarmeia, bits of meat, salad, sweet pastry, bread and water. Water in gilded aluminium bowls. When music started men would wander over casually, sometimes two together jigging to the beat, snapping the fingers of one outstretched arm, to indicate their pleasure, and reach over to touch one or more of the players. Then they would retire again just walking away slowly.
[Account of Atbara to Kassala in letter home.]
Monday 10th
[The whole of the following week’s experience is described in detail in Jupiter’s Travels.]
Left Atbara. Tried to find way from town. Took an hour. [Everyone said “the road to Kassala is queiss” – meaning good. But there was no road.]
The road to Kassala.
After three hours, in sand up to axles. No water. Too little petrol. Acid in bottle. No money. Come to Kinedra. School. Welcomed. Fed. Refused permission to leave. Headmaster said, must get more benzene first. From car? But car had none. From District Officer at Sedon. But he had none. By lorry from Atbara. But lorry broken down. By lorry next morning. But no lorry.
[After two days at the school I learned there was a bus back to Atbara. I was introduced to a merchant who was also taking the bus and with my five-gallon jerrycan I accompanied him to Sedon where the bus stopped in the night. He spoke no English at all. We lay on the sand in the smpty square to wait.]
“Sudan seňora queiss? You Sudan seňora? Sudan seňor queiss? You Sudan seňor?” Insistent, quiet, gentle. Just teeth in deep shadow framed by turban. Light touches between legs. Seductive, compelling, out of any moral context. Could imagine it.
At last, there was a bus. Bus arrived at 11.30pm. Ford chassis. Heavy riveted steel body built in Khartoum. Out tumbled horde of people. Many with swords. Scabbards shaped like paddles. Crucifix grips. They are a tribe called Bescharyin. From Sedon until Goz Regeb. Most are nomads. Their hair is long and the strands are glued together with oil, called oudak – animal grease, and wear an ornamental curved stick used as a comb, sticking out like an Indian feather, but horizontally. They wear a waistcoat, galabeia, and trousers with crutch below the knees and tied by cord. Three-tiered clothing. All fell to the ground and slept until 4am. I was happy to sleep too, but it got cold and I had no cover. At 4am the bus left for Atbara. Very bumpy. Much coughing. A sort of stale, damp smell. Two B in front of me, hair dangling before my eyes. No expression. Very stern. After dawn people began getting off. Outside Atbara, my companion, the merchant, vanished mysteriously [while I slept.] A family of B’s descended, a pathetic huddle of humanity set down on the sand, with their bundles of mats, sticks, pots and bags, still cold, kids bare chested. They appeared momentarily unable to cope at all.
In Atbara looked for Fabiano to recover cutting, and lost others in the process. Southern tailor’s shop had African flavour. Clear distinction between Arabs and Africans – each considers itself the elite. Tailors rather condescending about clothes they are making. Material from China, Egypt inferior. Suit costs £2.50 up. Got lorry back to Kinedra. Took road in a wide sweep across desert – the road I missed (or dared not find.) which would have got me here faster.
Lorry stopped about a kilometre from Kinedra. I started humping my jerry can across the sand but was soon met by a boy with a donkey, who relieved me of my burden immediately.
I had intended to go to Sedon to photograph the water pumps, but the teachers of Kinedra would not let me leave. They insisted I accompany them to the river bank to take pictures. Waded in the river. They said prayers. Each had orange-sized patch of sand on forehead. Then visits to the village shops, and the home of . . . . . . brother who has refrigerator. Little bags of flavoured ice. Shabby furniture, not worthy of Austin’s [a popular London warehouse of used furniture.]
[I was persuaded to stay two more days at the school.]
Goodbye, until next week.
PS: Like most people I come into this New Year with grave premonitions. I see absolutely no prospect of Putin stopping the war. Trump’s involvement is toxic. Europe must pull itself together. What can I do about it? What can AI do about it? Watch this empty space.
