Malawi

Simple crossing and I’m soon running along the shores of Lake Malawi, in search of a place to stay. I have no clue, no notes for the northern end and no internet time in weeks previously to find anything (my bad in Sumba ...). I am expecting an easy day and relatively early end to it but after 5 tries at assorted lodges and campsites, all either closed or in dire straits, I am thinking I may instead be in for one hell of a long day down as far as Senge Bay, halfway down and the first place in which I have a known, and recommended, target. Each of these side-sorties requires bumping along some dirt and rock-strewn track for a few hundred metres and it is really starting to tick me off the time I’m losing for making each unnecessary run, and for the perceived damage it may be causing to the truck (am I alone in apologizing to the truck for mistakenly driving over, not past, a rock, or into a pothole that causes the gear in back to bounce ...?).

Quickly running out of time and patience I luck up at Chitimba Lodge, just south of Livingstonia. Run by Eddie & Carmen, a Dutch couple who’ve been in the area for years it’s a fantastic refuge on the sandy shores of the lake – and, he informs me, both sited on the only decent stretch of beach as well as the only decent accommodation/campsite from there up to the Tanz border so he’d pretty much cornered the market for those heading north. It does get all the overland trucks in, and there were 4 the first night by the time darkness fell (I was alone on arrival ...) but all were very well-behaved and good company – except for their insistence on hitting the road at 0500, necessitating 0415 tent packings ... 

Internet, beer and food are all available but expensive; there’s a lovely boma to lounge about in, and the beach is both stunning and mercifully free of wild dogs, begging children and persistent hawkers that are usually so prevalent in such conditions. Stayed up well past my usual 2000 curfew and caught a dvd the first night (of the 3 I stayed) which was a wonderful treat, having not seen anything of a tv since leaving the UK.

A side-note rant (my blog, my themes ...): I have an ... issue ... with adults who drink soda pop. For your Jack and Coke: fine; but as a solo beverage? No; it’s just juvenile. And don’t get me started with adults who go out for a nice meal and order a Coke to go with it ... Don’t drink wine? Fine; drink water - not 5 table spoons of sugar and caramel flavouring as an accompaniment ... But I rant here about this because it was staggering to witness the size of the women emerging from these overland trucks: UK, Europe, Aus and NZ were all represented, aged 17 – 27 for the most part and they were, almost 100% of them, if not right massive then great-doughy-never-done-a-minutes-exercise softies – and every one drank soda pop like it had been denied them for the past 12 months and would be extinct the next day ... I never saw any one of them, out of over 80 total pax and the majority women, never saw any of them order anything but pops. I watched a table of four, viewing photos on a laptop, order Fanta’s and Cokes by the round, each in turn. Now, I appreciate the necessity of stepping up when it’s your shout to keep the economics of group buying in equal fairness, but does anyone, of any age but most definitely anyone in their 20’s, require 4 Cokes in under an hour?? And help me with this one: Girl, massive, comes up to the bar and asks for a bottle of water. When handed a small size, she asks if they don’t have the large bottles. No; just these. “Um, okay ... Then I’ll have a Fanta orange instead please.” Really?? Where – where - is the (possible) logic in that thought process ...?? And with all of course an obvious lack of correlation between size, and soda ... Baffles me.

Side note two: Kuche Kuche (yes, pronounced just like when pinching a baby’s cheeks), the local brew, is the worst beer in Africa. Hands down, there’s not even a close second. In a combined effort, the best Eddie and I could come up with to describe its taste was like a flat, or soured, beer but with added sugar - and formaldehyde. The rest on offer were all Carlsberg’s: Elephant at 7% was not nice; regular; and one called Special Brew which was alright (5.5% I think) but which made me feel like I should be in my local park back in the UK swigging from one for breakfast as is usually the case with that version of a Special Brew (but it at 9% for that ‘kick start the day off right’ impact ...).

Right, anyway, back to travelogue ...

Refreshed and rejuvenated, I continue south, now very much ‘on the tourist track’ and following the overland groups well-trodden (but for that proven) path but a nice drive, up into the hills with panoramic views and the sun gleaming off the lake to my left, before sloping back down to shoreside, the air full of the smells of local’s drying fish – or standing on the side of the road holding up a large bream for sale (tempting, but at noon just how long’d that fish been hanging about roadside, urgently on offer ...?). Next stop was Kande Beach, which displays both the continuing betterment of the beach moving south from Chitembi, as well as a campsite that needs a good scrub and improved sense of keenness for customers. It seems to be a destination location both for there being no other competition in the area but as well for offering appealing extras for overlanders – horse rides along the beach proving to be the most popular (and these are provided by an outside group). Otherwise it all seemed a bit tired and just coasting along on auto-pilot. The overall flatness I felt on being there was compounded not only by how lovely and friendly Chitemba had been in comparison, but as well for a cold front sweeping in across the lake bringing grey skies and a harsh wind that has me in longs, two shirts and a fleece by 1600. A planned at least 2 night stay is cut short with an early departure the next morning and I continue southwards, hoping to outrun the stormy skies.

Unfortunately they follow, and I am under the cold and slate grey skies until crossing into Zambia ... I put in one more night, at Senge Beach, just south of Llongwe and recommended as the highlight of some fellow travellers trip through a few weeks prior who I’d chatted to at Sumba’s Country Club. No. Nice enough there, and a fantastic dinner of fresh grilled catch-of-the-day (hopefully not purchased roadside at midday) but there was no hot water (despite happy-smiley signs on the door asking guests not to enjoy the hot showers for too long ... trust me folks, I didn’t waste a drop ...), camping is behind the lodge so views are almost entirely blocked, and nothing much of anything else going on except for the fella running the souvenir hut at the exit for the beach who did a complete Forrest Gump wave at me every time I even so much as looked up from my book, 200 feet away ... The one highlight was running into a motorcyclist I’d last seen at JJ’s in Nairobi, who’d also come down on the same route as me but a few days behind (but covering more mileage, faster, from Hippo Camp onwards as he does 80 kph to overcome corrugations whilst I do 20, and far more nimble around the potholes, rocks, etc ...) – we had a great laugh over a few beers about what we’d both gone through, a shared ‘wasn’t that just ridiculous’ camaraderie ...

In the end I cut short taking in the rest of Malawi – which unfortunately contained the rest of the country’s highlights I’d had passed along to me which may have made for a better overall impression than my north-to-central run had – and swung west for Zambia and some sun; realized I’m beached out, and much prefer desolate in-land locations to swathes of sand and rasta-themes ...

And then Malawi sealed the ‘done-with-here’ deal with the police setting up a speed trap at the base of a long steep hill, hitting every vehicle with their radar gun as it emerged around the top bend trying – if they’d even seen the sign displaying an inexplicable drop from 100 to 80 – to get down to speed against the pull of gravity. This proved useless and the police were gleefully – and I mean laughing out loud at just how fantastically funny this all was - nabbing every single vehicle coming round the bend. There was no reason at all for the location of the trap, totally in the middle of nowhere and with nothing in the way of a safety concern around necessitating bringing vehicles down to 80 for the hill, just a pure (and just so goddamned amusing) cash grab and - seething - I handed over my 5000 kwatcha fine (for comparison, a night’s camping fee had been 750 per night ...) and, slower and with clenched jaw, continued for the border ...

Western Tanzania

So, of course, in keeping with the folly of my exit from Burundi, I add to it by screwing my Tanzania entrance as well.

On hitting the tarmac you rise up a gentle banking turn until a low concrete building is on the right, then a clear ahead stretch is seen of wonderful new road to a roundabout a few hundred metres ahead. On passing I note the building is for the Police, who have stopped a local minibus on the side of the road and are giving the driver the customary hassles; but I pass unheralded.

It’s only once I’ve gone almost as far as the roundabout – in fact T4A is announcing my upcoming right turn – when I am pulled over by a (civilian) car carrying two uniforms. I have crossed the border I am informed. Where? Back there he says, gesturing to whence I came. I say I saw no border but a police stop only and he admits that because of the new road being constructed “we all must share now” and Immigration is in with Police, while Customs is across the road “in a shed.” I follow them back and, while being duly processed for 30 USD Transit Visa (14 days) and road tax, all is great laughs all round at the affair. At Customs – again no sign it is Customs – I must hang about for a bit as no one is to be found there (nor anyone to ask where anyone might be found ...) but after some 10 minutes of walking in circles I am greeted by a man shuffling out of one of the surrounding buildings, slowly tucking his shirt in, snuffling, coughing and generally moving about in a manner that displays a whole lot about his napping, but very little professional motivation. But border #27 has now, officially, been crossed.

And so to Jakobsen’s Beach in Kigoma, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika (and dead in line with where the border with Burundi should, logically, be as it appears on the map). I learn from ‘Jakobsen’ – I never do get his given name – that he, originally from Norway,  has been in the area for over 30 years working with the UN and on retirement was given this plot of land by the Tanz government as thanks for his services – and with a mandate, a caveat, to in turn promote tourism to the area. He has been asked to build 10 cabins on the property but in the past year since moving there permanently has build just one so far; however, he does run a booming trade in access to his private beach, a set of scalloped bays that are truly stunning. He’ll get around to building the other 9 cabins “sometime” ...

Meanwhile - and by (apparently very careful “How did you hear of me? I am surprised to see you.”) word of mouth only (though it is listed in LP – something he is not altogether happy about) - he is more than happy to take on campers at one of two great spots on the site, and has in fact just had a dozen tenting it right on the beach for 3 nights waiting on the ferry back down the lake to Zambia (arrivals on Sunday, departures on Weds). I, however, am for the 3 nights there the only one on the property (with the exception of some long-stay NGO’ers in a self-contained compound by Reception; who greet my arrival like I am from outer space and display no interest whatsoever in interacting; so I leave them to their self-important exile).

By 0800 each morning, my descent from the tent greeted by a pack (herd? gang?) of four Zebra that, with that unblinking, emotionless stare-back of a beautiful girl at the bar who’s caught you eye’ing her up and for her own entertainment and appraisal locks it in without giving back the slightest of reasons why, give a grunted acknowledgement that I may share their space as they graze away about the yard of his house (“They are beautiful, hey? But look what they do to my yard! I cannot keep the grasses!” ... Not your usual gardeners complaint ...), just 50 feet from where I am parked.

Then a few duck-dives about in the lake in lieu of a shower (‘no, crocs, no hippo, no bilharzias – just like at home!’) while the kettle sets to boil and it’s another long lazy day of reading, an easy walk about the property in search of anyone new, and by 1600 a sundowner interrupted by occasional rock-throwing at the ever-present and opportunistic Vervet Monkeys I have grown to treat as the Nemesis to my sense of calm in campsites across the continent ...  Jakobsen has found himself, and most importantly has set himself up in an economically self-supporting way, that piece of Paradise we all aspire to, or long for while thumbing through the travel section. Stunning ...

But, now, it’s the Hard Grind.

Western Tanzania – despite containing Tanzania’s third largest game park (Katavi National Park) is very remote, well-off the beaten tourist track, and very un-supported: it will be at least 2 days until I reach a decent-sized town and on the way should there be any mechanical issues it will be a very long – and not very easily negotiated - tow into Zambia for Lusaka before I will find mechanical support. Plus no fuel, no food, and no water. And no finished – or finished anymore - roads.

A quick run down the ‘highway’ to Ujiji, one of the oldest villages in Africa and site of yet another Livingstone Memorial – this being where he died (the access road to which has been blocked off to vehicle traffic by a huge berm built up across the road by the locals – so apparently not a site wholly supported by the local Chamber of Commerce ...) before turning back to refuel in Kigoma – quite a sorted little town – and take on 20 litres of drinking water and a packet of wieners before turning left at the junction and pointing the compass – and not without some sense of trepidation for the route ahead – ESE.

JAYYYYZUZZZZ - what a drive.

9 hours and 379 kilometres later I arrive in Sitalike - on the very, northern, edges of Kitavi National Park and site to the renowned Hippo Camp – with (if I had any) every filling shaken out of my on-edge teeth and every off-road driving skill I’ve ever earned the past year sorely-tested beyond where they’d ever been before. Plus in those 9 hours passing less than a handful of other vehicles, almost all heading between one works camp to the other, and so of little benefit should I have required any assistance and some of – if not THE most – rugged, damaged roads I’ve ever had to work my way through ... Misery - 9 hours of nothing but hard grind, hillsides on fire for scenery (controlled burn for Tsetse, uncontrolled effects of controlled burn for Tsetse or slash-and-burn agriculture it was impossible to know, but surreal landscape to drive through with flames licking the sides of the truck and ash clouding the sky – all without a soul about for miles to care for the damage being wrought ...) slow progress and hard, hard technical driving in one of the most remote areas I’ve ever gone though ...

I arrived at Hippo Camp just past dark, guided into Sitalike by what I first mistook for car brake lights in a traffic jam going up the surrounding hillside but soon realize is instead yet another burn consuming the ground, running uncontrolled up and away from the town. Hippo Camp is famous for being located almost directly on top of a hippo pool, but is (as per the LP guide and first-hand feedback) all a bit down-on-its-heels shabby now for the death of the owner. I am the only one there I note on pulling up, but there are electric lights running and a very happy-to-see-me fellow running for the truck so it all looks good enough for me here – and no way I’m moving anywhere forward regardless so nowt to do if it’s not ...

Yes, he assures me, camping is fine here, he has “gun for camping, no problem.”  Sorry? You have a gun for camping? “Yes, gun for camping, it’s all fine for you sir, no problem.” Sorry, seriously, I need a gun to camp here?? “A gun? Um, a gun ... uh ... ummm ... AHHHHHH ... No! Not a gun!! Ground! Yes; I have GROUND for camping; yes, yes, no problem, camping ground right here is all fine sir!” Well, okaaaaaaaaay then; yes, camping (without gun) would be very good, yes please ...

I ask, second to the camping requirement, if he has beer. “Beer? You need beer?” Yes, I very much need a beer: do you have any? “Oh YES sir, I have beer!” At which point I grab him up in a huge beer hug – he all huge smile and very awkward hug-in-return - and thank him for being my saviour of the day. “Sir, you must need a beer very much right now so we will have that first and speak of camping later!” At which he quite literally leads me, right arm around my waist, left on my left, to a chair in the patio area while calling out in local dialect to staff unseen (“I need a beer here, STAT!”) and I am quickly facing a frosted 500 ml’s and, for that – and my hosts winning customer service, as he sits in silence near me, ready should needs be but never intruding on my decompression – for that do I feel I may survive now to fight on another day ...

All is fine, if not slightly disconcerting for the constant grumpy-old-bastard calls of the unseen but very close hippo, until 0430 when, awakened by the grunts and shuffles of movement all about me find myself quickly reaching out for both sides of the tent like a sailor cast about in a storm as I am hip-and-shouldered by a passing grazing hippo and rocked wildly back and forth for it ... Least that’s all they can do - not like an elephant who could knock me over and in rolling the truck pancake me – so I look out through my side mesh and follow their grunting and grazing as they pass on by with awe and wonder ... Be a fantastically humorous beast, massive sausages on stumpy legs with great big shovel mouths shaped like the splayed-out lips of a jowly dog asleep on the floor, were it not for their deadly attitude towards those found to be in the way of their return path to the river. But amazing to watch from above, and so close I could have arse-smacked one were I feeling particularly suicidal so early in the morning ...

Once all appears safe from my perch, the sun’s bright rays having chased even the most lazy of grazers back to the cool of the pool, I’m spotted on my descent and greeted with great smiles, waves and helloooos, and quickly brought a hot bucket for the shower and for that, feeling like a new man, by 0800 – photos of farting, grunting, yawning hippo complete (the wallowing area I learn, by the dawn’s early light, being about 50 feet from my truck ...) along with a few shots of four giraffe seen grazing 100 yards downstream – ready (or at least must get ready and underway whatever my mental state be) for Phase 2 of the Great Grind.

As for Hippo Camp itself: it may be quite rundown, and smell like a cesspool from the hippo waters; but the staff are absolutely wonderful and obviously care deeply about the camp, and doing as best they can for the circumstances and for that – should you be in the neighbourhood - definitely deserving of support; and the natural surroundings and opportunity to interact so closely with the hippo (and giraffe, and whatever else may make its way on through) truly spectacular ... I hope somebody comes in and invests to bring it back to its prior glory; or, that this western Tanz route becomes much more popular and so drives tourist dollars into the camp to allow for local re-development (though apparently a local airport is being built – “for 200 person planes!” which all see as the key to their salvation ...). Because for its getting-right-close-to-nature location and unobtrusive, man-and-nature-both equals-in-this-place-together ethos it sure deserves to be a highlight on anyone’s tour of Tanzania ... And save for the truly-gagging’ness of its overwhelming smell, I did love my stay there and – if you can get there – I highly recommend ... And do hug buddy for me, he’ll get you a beer right quick for it ...

Entering Katavi Park itself, just the other side of Hippo Camp, I am within minutes and yards of crossing the small bridge over the river/stagnant stinking pond confronted by 3 giraffe and a herd of antelope all within yards of the road, glaring imperiously at me as I disturb their morning routine. Fantastic ... And so for that am lulled into a (false) sense that this first phase may be a wonderful route through nature’s wilds ... And it is, but for all the wrong reasons as, within minutes and like stepping through a curtain, I am hit by a wall of Tsetse flies bombarding the truck (and me before I can get my window rolled up and go to town against them with my paperback-novel-of-death), which, in great mass swarms, will then follow the vehicle for at least 80 percent of the park (I’d never guess a fly could do 30 kmh – the speed I could not go above due to the violent corrugations of the road, which were by my recollection the worst I’d experienced anywhere on the continent), super-aggressively banging against the glass of my windscreen and side windows seeking access into the cabin (are there no other victims to be had anywhere in this park for EFF-sakes ...??!!??) and a chance at my apparently highly in-demand blood (and thence prime incubation site for Sleeping Sickness). 

Bastards ... But, as I am to learn, it will not be the only place with them; nor, will their actions/aggressiveness vary otherwise ... Insane, never seen anything like that swarming (until it happened again, then again, on my crossing ...) ...

From Sitalike to Sumbawanga, through hills of fire, great horizon-wide vistas of drab bush land, little human presence, and an unrelenting, gruelling grinding through all manner of road conditions: thick sand, broken rock, dry riverbeds, broken dirt, diversions for road-works, corrugations, isolation, Tsetse flies, a whole lot of nothingness for miles and miles on end ... It is a truly gruelling (or a truly continuing-to-be-as-gruelling-as-was-the-day-prior) grinder for almost 8 hours and I am well-done for it by the end. But also admittedly feeling damned chuffed for having conquered it successfully, all very much alone.

Sumba’s a sorted little town, with internet, post office, car repair and parts shops and enough sundry others to make it a useful stop on a west-east run. Stayed at the Conference Centre (not Community Centre as it’s listed as being on T4A), bit stark and bible’y, but clean rooms and decent hot water. Food was terrible though – hate it when I think I’ll treat myself to someone else’s cooking and it’s shite (and $5 ...). Went up the road after to the grandly named Country Club for a beer (which was fully booked with long-stays in its few rooms) and think the food looks far better there, with a number of tables getting stuck into huge piles of assorted curries (compared to at mine having sat alone gnawing through a quarter of desiccated deep fried chicken and half-cooked chips, which was all on offer). Went out ‘on the town’ with two engineers – one Dutch, one Irish – managing the local road reconstruction projects (both utterly contemptuous of the Chinese companies providing the labour, as the Irishman put it “100 million dollar project and they put 10 guys in a single room and don’t even build latrines for them, just open pits. And they’re all prisoners. And the roads they build are total shit – came in with good quality at low cost, undercut all competition, but now build low cost, low quality. Fooking awful people ...”). Am also told there is no crime in Sumba as it is the centre of witchcraft in the region and all believe if they do something you will not go to the police but instead put a curse on them which is far worse ... All in all a very entertaining evening, until it got too cold sitting out street-side to enjoy another beer, and my companions growing too interested in the local talent, and I called time early.

Ordered by my opinionated companions to avoid the Tunduma border crossing at all cost as (according to them) there had apparently been a lot of hassles there recently, with some of their company cars forced to queue with the truckers and so stuck there waiting to cross for three days. I have no focus on that part of Zambia anyway and Malawi seems to have settled down so I aim further east to cross. Tunduma, which you must almost drive through to get past, lives up to its reputation – all whores and hawkers, with an (I later learn from a motorcyclist who measured it on his drive in) 8 kilometre queue of trucks parked on the side of the road (or, more accurately, blocking the left lane completely) ... I watch motorcycle crashes – bundles of attached goods, in one case a large flat screen tv, spilling out across the road – fistfights, and general mayhem all around while weaving my way through the trucks edging there way slowly forward, in and out of others who are either driverless, or are being worked on so going nowhere. Chaos doesn’t even come close. At the turn away to put the border gates to my back (and so run away parallel to the 8 km queue coming in from the east) my truck is repeatedly struck hard against the side panel by the truncheon of a policeman who apparently finds action easier than words – seems he would like me to stop where I am to allow trucks down the ‘wrong side’ lane first. I can use my words though, and find some choice ones for him in return for his actions - I am no fool though, I know he is out of earshot, I just feel better for avenging such treatment of my trusty Rhino ...

Absolute madness, and I am glad to see it all slowly fade away behind me. Western (to central) Tanzania has been a hell of a grind from start to finish – I am quite looking forward now to decompressing in the ‘beach culture’ of Malawi for a few days ...

Burundi

Burundi was really just a necessary transit country; see the southern source of the Nile, and enjoy a last night of civilization in Bujumbura before the long grind ahead. Chose the excellent Shammah hotel (just up from Havana nightclub and across from Aroma cafe, the two landmarks everybody always gives for the city); again 45 USD but enclosed behind high gates so the vehicle is well-secure for the night in a town with a less-than stellar reputation for safety after dark – which none of the other options appeared to do. Hot and mozzy, but friendly staff, free breakfast and in-room wifi. It’s late now, and hectic on the streets, so I retire to my room instead for a beer dinner and early night.

Setting off early enough for what should be an easy cross of the border and fully fueled given that western Tanzania will be very remote and with little chance of re-supply I set off following the shore of Lake Tanganyika – so close I could have chucked almonds from my snack bag into the waters – until reaching the point where Burton and Speke parted company (and positions and opinions on the true source of the Nile) and being directed to turn left and put the lake to my back (shown as Nyanza Lac on the road atlas). This is where it all went very odd and I’m glad I ran into a guy in Malawi who’d done the same route with the same issues as at the time I thought I’d maybe lost it a bit ...

The atlas clearly shows the road turning east to Mabanda, then south down a lesser or dirt track to Mugina for the border crossing. Simple. However, three things confound the apparent simplicity: 1), the old Afrikanner in Jinja had warned me on their route north Immigration was at Makamba, not Mugina; and as I can see while puzzling over my atlas Makamba is both a town well north of Mabanda, as well as the region both are situated in; 2) the route, though straightforward on the map is not at all, on the ground, as it seems it should be; and, 3) T4A went mad.

As soon as I’ve turned east the route goes from dead flat along the shore to a series of incredibly steep climbs and switch-backs up ever higher into the hills; the road often slashed open with very deep and aggressive potholes that mean I need come to a complete halt to proceed as gently as possible through them before trying to get back up to speed on 12-14% inclines ... And it just doesn’t seem to make sense to go from shoreline, for a border located at the same level, via this ridiculous and gruelling ascent. To where? And why?? Finally reaching the top I spot a sign announcing I’m in Mabanda (though you’d never know it as there’s nobody and nothing much of anything about) so that should be right. But not according to T4A.

The map as shown on the gps has since starting out been a clear, straight line from Bujumburi to Jakobsen’s Camp, my destination, across the border in Kigoma. Which makes sense as all points (Buji, border and Kigoma) are located on the shores of the lake. Now however, as it is directing me 66 kilometers north (to, I suspect, Makamba town) the route shows as a figure 6 – straight down from Bujum, arc up to Makamba and continue in a left roll until back on the shores of Lake Tanganyika at Mutambara. And repeat. Forever as far as it’s concerned apparently ... Any move to transgress off the shown route – which is all clear and new tar as far as the eye can see from Mabanda and with no clear alternate choice to be had – is met with repeated entreaties to “move to highlighted route” and/or the hated ‘recalculatings’ ... From experience I know that sometimes T4A can be baffled by switchbacks and lose its bearing from them so I back and forth through Mabanda a few times before a very appreciative audience of local kids who are finding this all very amusing without result before pulling to the side for a serious review of the situation. There is NO sign, no clue to be had at all, as to where this now-possibly-mythical right turn to the border is at if Mabanda is indeed the ‘turn south’ junction – and T4A wants me in Makamba, 66 km’s north: what does it know that I cannot see ...???

Finally, I (again) throw technology out the window and go for straight map and compass: I know I have to turn south, so by god I will forge a way south whether there be one to be clearly had or not (but I’ll be damned if I’m heading 66 k’s north to prove an idiot follows computer software not his own common sense and map ...). Back and forth I go again through ‘town’ seeking the magic portal: where the hell is the possibly I’m now guessing tiny from lack of traffic dirt route south to the border?? Finally I hammer my way up a terribly broken and very narrow path surrounded by incredulous stares of the locals seated on their stoops – never a good sign that you are in fact making a ‘normal’ move – before coming out at a colection of huts selling the usual unnecessary goods as found everywhere across Africa of top-up cards, soda pops and smokes (but no food).

Still no sign, nor does anybody care as I progress by, so I’m a few hundred metres down a bang-about broken road before a young fella in police blues overtakes me on his moto and flags me down. I have crossed the border I am informed. But I cannot possibly have crossed the border, the border is in Mugina some 20+ km’s south still. No, he is insistent, I have crossed the border and I must return with him. Now I am well and truly baffled (my ability to simply process that Mabanda is now the border and no longer Mugina well gone by now ...). Up we head, more banging about, to a top-up shop, where he mimes I must get my passport stamped. Where I ask? Gesturing vaguely he indicates either the soda or smokes seller apparently. “Ou est la frontier?” I try, with grand Gallic shrug and exaggerated facial gymnastics to convey my bafflement. A sigh in return and he leads me to the edge of the shop to show a low-slung building, well-hidden behind shrubbery and without a sign or even hand-lettering on the sides to indicate it is anything of import. I am, he does not lie, at the border ...

Once back underway, stamped and enthusiastically greeted by all, it’s 20+ k’s down a steep and terrible track before levelling out at (yet another) UN refugee camp, this one quite abandoned, and the decaying building that once housed the border officials – complete with broken control pole and bent flag post. A few more kilometres of the same banging about, albeit on level ground now, and with a sense of wonder that never loses its impact there emerges a stretch of tar from where nothing but ruts and corrugations previously existed and I’m up out of it and into western Tanzania.

Rwanda

Through Kamuganguzi border crossing – all very officious and efficient and a straight 45 USD – then back westwards thru Ruhengeri to Gisenyi and a night at Paradis Malahide on the shores of Lake Kivu. Gisenyi faces Goma in the DRC, the “Dante’esque Hell” of a refugee camp as one observer described it during the crisis of 1994; at one point I think I’ve actually gone and inadvertently crossed the border when I am unexpectedly confronted by a manned pole-across-the-road barrier festooned with lights and overseen by a tall watch tower and, all around, I notice the ground has been cleared and levelled flat for the size of several football pitches ... Clear fields of fire at what has been a hostile crossing for many years ...? Coming then to an abrupt and somewhat baffled halt – which is greeted by perplexed looks by the locals sitting around it, as it is up (though clearly ready to be operational) - then proceeding slowly, waiting to be yelled at to halt, I soon realize I am not at the border but instead crossing a huge airstrip that bisects both the road and a huge expanse of UN refugee camp (man that must have been some landing to execute ...), still well-tended and looking for all intents and purposes ready for another million to arrive at any day ...

(Note also that fuel is very few and far between on this route – if it was available at all - and Gisenyi offers the first (operational station) I’ve seen since the border).

So then down to the shores of Lake Kivu, a front row seat across to the DRC and a night at Paradis Malahide ... Odd place: apparently once graced by Brad & Angelina and recommended by all I find the European owner, Odette, away and – while a lovely setting – it is as no other is for being run by the most junior of local staff. Camping seems to confound them as an option; and, once multiple calls are made to the (absent) manager a price of 25 USD is demanded for the parking lot (behind the resto and so, for that, blocked entirely from any view). Negotiations and repeat calls commence and, finally, 19 USD is left on the table as the ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ best offer. I take it, begrudgingly, especially given it is cold showers only (a bucket of hot can apparently be arranged, but is not pursued by either side) ...

The next morning I feel I am in the midst of an odd crossed-parallels experience when the (now evident) manager asks the couple next to me at breakfast – at our lovely lakeshore table – how their night was and he replies positively, citing the “total silence and peacefulness” ... And I, confused, hold my tongue about the nearby bar that blasted dance tunes til gone 0400, the locals who passed by, chatting loudly, on the road behind from 0500 forward and, not least, the guards on site who kept up a non-stop (and often apparently hilarious) running call-and-reply throughout the night. Maybe it was just me being all a bit delicate, but ...

But wait: I get far more delicate with my next night ...

From Lake Kivu I head for Kigali, crawling up through crazy switchback climbs with expanses of lush green all around, and up to barely controlled road-works (flag operators running out of the surrounding bush waving red as I pass by, causing great brake stands – well, brake stands from 2^nd gear - while they sort themselves out, make a few calls and finally change to a sheepish, or sometimes surly at being disturbed, green-for-go ... Rwanda is incredibly lush, and apparently unparalleled on the continent for agricultural potential with its volcanic soil and, with its elevations, huge annual rainfalls. T4A, however, is baffled by the twists and turns of the route and for every 30 minutes I cover adds another 30 minutes to the clock – I feel I’m driving backwards ... On arriving in Kigali – well, at least I know I’m in Kigali – T4A is still, forcefully, insisting that I have a further 4.5 hours to go (of a total trip calculated at start as being 4 hours in total) and is adamantly “recalculating” ...

I override technology with common sense, map, compass and road signs and arrive within minutes at One Love Club, the recommended campsite - and only one located in central Kigali (the rest are in the surrounding suburbs and good for airport access, etc, but not for easy central access). So ... the Staff Pick in the East Africa Lonely Planet guidebook, and supporting a worthwhile charity providing artificial limbs to amputees and disabled children from both the campsite proceeds (and rooms and resto) and a crafts shop – not least the only game in town for a reasonably-priced room (Rwanda’s economy being NGO’d all out of reality ...) – I arrive to find a desolate place with only a single person to be found on the extensive grounds. Now, I have stayed in some pretty awful places in the past year, but this has got to be the most miserable place yet and I am up and out before dawn’s fully broken the next morning.

Here is its reality outside of the LP guidebook (who are these LP staffers and why do they get their reco’s so wrong so often ...?): the ablution block is at the rear of a meagre piece of grass grandly entitled the Campground (these must be the “lush gardens”), where I find about 12 local staff asleep all over the floors, including across the doors of the toilets and showers, lying there like those windbreaks shaped like wiener dogs old folk place at the front door to prevent drafts getting in ... The stalls are filthy, filthy, littered with wads of toilet paper, clumps of hair, soap and shampoo wrappers and all manner of other detritus that show they haven’t been cleaned in weeks. The shower itself is broken, but there is a short hose to shoot cold water at me. And the block is being used to house turkeys - seriously - with a large male aggressively defending his turf (and ladies) with repeated charges at me as I am being shown around. There will be no midnight toilet breaks that night ...

After returning to the grounds after visiting the Genocide Memorial (see below) I head to the (again reco’d) resto to find not a single light on save for a single bulb lamp at the bar, one surly waitress and not a single other patron. There is a South African agricultural programme on at full volume on the tv mounted above the bar, which is competing with a truly tragic playlist of awful 70’s ballads on the sound system (the theme to Born Free is one ... “Borrrrn freeeeeeeeee, as free as the ...” – god help me - and I recognize John Denver mooning about in there as well). I have a beer for dinner, no menu is offered, nor mention of food made. Back at my truck, almost hidden in the unlit gloom of the parking lot, I find there are now at least a dozen security guards on duty for the night, all clustered about a radio in front of the hasn’t-been-open-all-day reco’d crafts shop, and seated facing me. Now ... I don’t want to be too melodramatic about it (... but ...), given the country’s history and events not 17 years back, a dozen Rwandan men grouped together, each with a club, staring at me, silently, as I climb up into my tent in a desolate parking lot and the only person in the place but for them is something I admit to having found fairly unsettling ... I sleep lightly and pack quickly the next morning ...

Toeing the fine line between interest, acknowledgement and education and Tragedy Tourism I visited three sites connected to the Genocide of 1994 (I’ll leave the details to Wiki): the Genocide Memorial in central Kigali, the Hotel des Mille Collines of ‘Hotel Rwanda’ fame - located right behind the new 24 hour Nakumatt and mall with coffee shop and internet cafe that forms the bullseye for central Kigali – and, 30 km’s south, the church at Nyatama.

It is impossible to be unaffected in doing so, from the events alone, but as well I found these exacerbated by the common statement of survivors, made as fact, not opinion, in the interviews played at the Memorial, that they believe there were but “5% innocent; 95% were involved, or did nothing to help.” And that every time now when one of these survivors goes into a shop, or bank, or passes a neighbour is made to wonder, daily, “did you kill my family?” It’s all “Never Again” and ‘we’re-all-Rwandans-united-together’ now, but, at only 17 years ago, no pr campaign can erase the reality I find colours everything: that any Hutu aged ... what, 34 and above, maybe even less so ... was likely either complicit or an active participant in those horrific events. Even as a tourist I find that fact very unsettling and a disturbing filter on everything I take in throughout the country ... God knows how the survivors bear it.

The Genocide Memorial is an exceptionally well-laid out and operated museum, while also serving as the mass burial site for over 275,000 victims – most unidentified (the Memorial Wall is starkly brief, with maybe a few hundred names in total engraved on it ...). Admission is free, but there is a 15 USD charge for a head-set as tour guide which I went with but found not very necessary given how informative the displays were. I was the only non-African there at the time, with one large group visiting to lay a wreath on one of the tombs, so it was difficult to not feel ... intrusive ... The most moving, and staggering, information provided was via the interviews played on video at a number of the displays; survivors relating how within hours of the radio announcements to “rise up and kill the cockroaches” childhood playmates came over to the house and, laughing, killed the parents and left the boy – aged maybe 12 at the time of the interview – with a panga (machete) cleaved into his skull; the Hutu shopkeeper from the corner, who had always given sweets to the kids and assisted this Tutsi family with school fees when they couldn’t make ends meet, storming into the house when told there was a Hutu woman in it caring for the mother, who had been badly injured at a road block – and on telling her to leave the woman alone and being refused “chopped her to pieces where she stood in the living room” then simply turned and walked back out down to his shop; or children – all the siblings of one survivor, who managed to hide in safety – thrown down a well and the Interahamwe (local Hutu militia) placing lively bets on whose rock thrown down onto them would stop the screaming ... Such as this went on and on – and these being tame in comparison to many ... For every 7 Tutsi there at the time only 1 survived the 100 days of massacre, with an estimated 800,000 victims in total ...

Located in a lovely, peaceful and quite rural area 30 km’s south of Kigali the church at Nyatama serves not only as a Memorial to the massacre there and resulting mass burial plot, but also as a stark reminder of what happened (both there and across the country) – it is the only site where the bones of the victims are prominently on display “to ensure nobody ever denies these events happened” according to my guide, as he took me down into the crypts, and the church itself is filled with their clothing. Over 4500 sought refuge in the church, as they had successfully done a few years prior when anti-Tutsi violence flared, and a further 10,000 on the grounds around it. French troops forcibly evacuated the two priests – a Spaniard and a Belgian – when it was announced there was to be a massacre at the site (but did nothing for the refugees themselves). Radio broadcasts announced the planned event like it was a rural Carnival – “Come on out to Nyatama, beer tent, music and a massacre this weekend!” – and the army, from the local base, cordoned off the area awaiting the Interahamwe’s arrival. Once ready they started in with automatic weapons to ensure there was no resistance to be made, clearing a path to let loose the Interahamwe like a pack of wild dogs, with their ‘traditional weapons’ of pangas, clubs and stones specifically designed to give a ‘grassroots’ identity to the participants (showing ‘popular support’ for the policy) ... There were no survivors; the site holds the 14,500 from the immediate grounds, and over time since then has added on a further 30,000 victims from the surrounding area.

Hotel Mille Collines offered a positive reprieve. The hotel – though not the one physically featured in the movie – offered sanctuary to thousands of Tutsi refugees during the days of madness, the Manager buying their lives with money and free hospitality to the powers behind the extermination policy – and those charged with carrying it out. I had a beer at the pool, and tried to get my head around thousands camped out on the grounds – and it’s not a large place – while inside politicians and soldiers who with a word would have had them all, happily, wiped out dined and drank looking down upon them ... Surreal.

Took a local hotel – after a heck of a lot of looking as everything booked solid in town – to avoid a return to One Badness; finally coming to the Impala, just down the street and a huge step up from the Okapi, which was of course nothing close to as described in the LP. Not cheap at 45 USD – though darn cheap by Kigali standards - but friendly staff, wireless in the room, decent shower and bed, balcony for post-dinner g&t and view of the passing parade, free breakfast and alert watchmen (I watching them, watching me, watching them – and my vehicle ...) – and all one block off the central 24 hour mall for resupply the next day (and banking, for it’d be no-ATM but cash-only travels for at least the two weeks and 2.5 countries ...).

Despite the road works, grinding climbs and switchbacks and startling number of further mass-burial sites along the route to Burundi – many in places of beautiful, seemingly peaceful ruralness that always triggered in me a baffled “here too??” as I passed – Rwanda is a stunning country to travel through and I thoroughly enjoyed covering it. Very hard to get over – or stop yourself from inventing – a pervading sense of disquiet and skin-prickling unease given the primal savagery the people passing by only so shortly ago embraced with such horrific enthusiasm, but a stunningly scenic country nonetheless ...

Uganda

Border formalities are simple – once I’ve shooed away a few dozen potential ‘advisors’ – though the Kenya side does subject my vehicle paperwork – especially all pertaining to importing it via Mombasa – with the closest scrutiny I’ve gone through yet. And I earn the respect (admiration?) of a group of fellows queued with me on the Uganda side when I query why it is that when I head upstairs to the bank office to pay my road tax fee – in addition to the 50 USD visa- I am made to pay them for the privilege of doing so. Speaking that which is apparently thought but not spoken, I am greeted with laughs, knowing nods and a shoulder pat from one of the gathered gents when I rather derisively dismiss (now that proceedings have been completed) their explanation of a necessary ‘processing fee’ ...

And so to Jinja, Uganda’s ‘adrenaline sports capital’, and the recommended Nile River Explorers campsite. Unfortunately for vehicles such as mine that means a space in the uneven and rock-strewn parking lot and a front row seat to a constant parade of tour buses and overland trucks dispensing people to hit the bar above the rapids, or jump into them from the next-door bungy tower. Not so peaceful, and a not very scenic camp ground when seated at the truck, but definitely lively and with a stunning view of the river from the terrace – with the added bonus of fantastic fire-stoked hot showers delivering better force of spray and constant temperature than enjoyed anywhere previously.

Here I meet two LR’s from SA travelling together: one of wife, husband and 4 year old; the other the family patriarch – very much in control of all he surveyed and suffering nothing he did not accept – and his son (wife in vehicle number one the daughter). Cruelly dismissive of anything his son-in-law had to say and keeping his daughter (who must have been in her mid-40’s) hopping this old lion had lead a very tight (no frills, no laughs, no nonsense) expedition right up through the route I was about to undertake so was invaluable in sharing his coordinates and up-to-date route info. And he did make me laugh (under my breath); didn’t need to understand Afrikaans to feel the crack of the whip when he spoke - he had that group jumping like troops during Basic (save for the grandson, who had him wrapped around his finger; and who elicited comments from his like “This one? He’s no problem at all – not like this lot” gesturing dismissively at the adults assembled before him ...).

Into ‘town’ to view the marker for the northern source of the Nile (not from the city-sponsored beer gardens but instead from the far bank at the lovely, private gardens) with obelisk marking the vantage point from where – it is said – Speke made his calculations and decision that this was indeed the source, a decision later to be proven more an educated guess than one specifically supported by data collected up to that point and making it a contentious call at the time (Burton specifically calling him out on it) that it is believed to have caused him to commit suicide the day prior to debating the point at the Royal Geographic Society in London.

Also a chance for some supplies, and a quick haircut and beard-trim (which extends to eye-brows, nose, ears and forehead) with a set of bare and un-shielded electric clippers (I say “number one” he says “only got this one”) that, with eye-brows now gone and facial/head hair down to a blonde shadow on not-yet-faced-the-sun pale skin it leaves me looking like Samantha Morton’s character in Minority Report : very clean-cut, but also now very featureless ... Swabbed down with that blue alcohol usually reserved for disinfecting combs (Barbasol?) then a quick spray down with aerosol olive oil and I’m out the door well-sheared and slick as a seal ...

Battling through the madness of Kampala – there is a circle route around town centre but nobody can explain where exactly to link up with it nor is it apparently clearly (or otherwise) marked in any way – I made my way to Red Chili Hideaway. An overland classic, it’s not bad at all with only one truck in and another, empty one, arriving later – otherwise its rooms (and resto) were full of earnest volunteers and groups of youths out spreading The Word so a relaxed vibe.

However, did have a odd run-in with the Manager worth relating for anyone looking at it as an option: on arriving I’d been shown where to park, where the ablutions block was for truck campers, etc and had been settled in for hours when a security guard came over and told me I needed to move “over there” gesturing to the parking lot (which is right next to the front gate and guardhouse, is bathed in bright light and up against the bar area). When I asked why he said another truck “might be coming.” I said “is, or might be?” and as “might be” was agreed I said I’d stay put and move if and when there was a need but there appeared plenty of room for both of us regardless. Not 5 minutes later I am interrupted mid-sentence in my chat with driver of empty overlander by a woman (Kiwi, Aussie?) who, striking herself on the chest, announces “I am the Manager here” and proceeds to tell me I need move to the parking lot and just why was I parked right here anyway? When I said her staff had walked me down to this spot and specifically told me to park exactly where I’m at she replies “Well, they shouldn’t have done that and obviously need to be better trained.” Uh, wouldn’t that be your job then, as Manager ...? I reiterated it was no issue, if a big truck arrived and I was in the way I’m fine with moving but not if I don’t need to and with some back and forths agreed this could be the case.

Either way a) not the way to address me, or the issue; and, b) camping in the parking lot with bright lights and music from the bar til midnight is just not on when there are acres of free space across the grounds ... So, good spot, but certainly could be better supportive of us ‘little guys’ ...

Making headway south towards a western turn to Lake Bunyoni I get as far as Mbarara – on decent tar, through rolling hills of verdant green - before darkness looms. Tracks for Africa (T4A, the GPS software) has an annotated recommendation from a previous traveller concerning a riverside campground but on arriving I find a 4/5 star hotel full of gorilla trekkers and, while they are amenable to my camping in their parking lot, they’d like 25 USD for me to do so ... No. So, heading back up towards ‘town centre’ I stop into the Acacia Hotel and am enthusiastically greeted by all and sundry and told by Reception camping is “no problem, no problem for you at all sir!” It’s the parking lot, but it appears to be free as no fee is discussed so for economic parity happily get stuck into a cold beer and goat stew with boiled bananas (Uganda’s staple food, and one I’m taking home, it’s outstanding ...) and with a further bit of internet’ing and a beer or two feel I’ve made fair payment for their hospitality and so retire to my tent for the night ...

... To be then rudely roused at 0230 by guard rapping on the ladder with his nightstick (cue sitting bolt upright, barking aggressively at sight-unseen transgressor ...), insisting I must move into the hotel. When I inform him this was cleared at Reception he backs down somewhat but the mumbles continue as do the gestures towards the hotel. He finally leaves when it is clear I will not be coming out of my bolt-hole, to return with the Night Manager. On, again, explaining my case he is – to his credit – wonderfully conciliatory and says it is fine that I stay as is now that he understands why it is I am camped out in the parking lot ... However, somewhat disturbed by the nights events I make a hasty departure early next morning well-prior to the day shift’s arrival, as I fear there’s been a beeeeet of a misunderstanding and I’ll be a) owing for my night’s camping and; b) someone’s going to be owing for my having been allowed to do so (without paying) and I’d rather not be around to see how either of these two will play out ...

To Kabale and the Lake Bunyoni Overland Resort. Located on a beautiful stretch of the lake just east of the DRC border it “has no hippo, no crocodile and no bilharzias – just like you are at home!” as my friendly man-on-the ground informs me (he, who is soliciting for laundry, being far better and more welcoming than the official one at Reception, who had left me standing at the desk for 10 minutes whilst completing an apparently riotous call on his mobile ...). Pink Caravan, an insane, so-very-Scando tour company where the travellers – aged 17-70 – sleep either in or on top of the old, bright pink school bus, is there as well, but they are behind the resto and I well the other side of the property placed very much alone and for that so close to the lake I must be careful checking my oil lest I do a header into the waters with a miss-placed step ... The only downside being there is an elephant statue located in the water there and a constant stream of Indian families come to have their picture taken at it – many walking right under my tent overhang to get to it and completely invading my personal space as only oblivious, live-surrounded-by-millions Indians can ...

Disrupting, but really just an annoyance for my serenity more than anything else but one day’s enough – and a somewhat weird night left on my own out 400 metres from camp and guards on the side of a lake where canoe traffic is a constant (has nobody ever done a canoe-by robbery here ...??) and it’s back up the crazy, hammer-the-shocks-twist-the-chassis road to tar and a straight run SE for Rwanda.

Westward HO! Nairobi - Uganda

After a great week at Jungle Junction in Nairobi (“JJ’s”, 5 USD pn to camp, 3 meals a day avail on request) and a fantastic servicing for the LR by Ben, one of the on-site motorcycle mechanics who started out at a local LR shop and will grab any chance to work on one again, I finally point us westwards and get underway. I find it’s all-too-easy to get lulled senseless in the calm of a well-run campsite, with a truck full of supplies, little in the way of daily expense and revolving door of new residents to share tales of the road and lies about life, but once the decision to make way is made I cannot express the thrill of settling into the driver’s seat, firing the engine (and responding with pride and a pat to the door side for the immediate, strong response and quality of the exhaust  - clean start, well done!) and locking in of the coordinates for the upcoming leg ... Nothing I’ve ever been involved in makes me grin more than these actions, even months into it and their having become a daily occurrence ... Praise be, I am on the road again!

Once clear of Nairobi’s sprawl and crawl it’s clear sailing and smooth tar climbing up and along the crest of the Rift Valley, with vistas for miles that from this height appear to be as unchanged as when man first walked upon this ground a few million years ago (or a few thousand should you be a staunch Creationist ...). Approaching the Equator I am greeted by a hammering hail storm that not only cuts visibility to mere feet but looks to be aiming to strip the paint right off my truck but which stops just in time for the requisite photo op but where, just shortly thereafter, at around the Burnt Forest mark, the road reverts to African Standard and is marred by broken tar, potholes etc until I can take shelter for the night in Eldoret, east of the Uganda border, at New Naiberi River Campsite.

Truly, nobody – not even in Hollywood’s best imagination, nobody – can rock a mullet quite like Raj, the owner and confident Man-About-Town who on introduction quickly reels off a long list of local businesses he owns or is involved in and declares a willingness to supply anything I may possibly require. Very personable, and certainly a good resource if the vehicle’s not performing as expected on leaving the safety of Nairobi’s many mechanics and shops (or your tailors, as he is especially proud of his textile enterprises ...) Raj is definitely a great resource to have to hand. Nice site, well-guarded by a noisy flock of attack geese (and, as I later meet to both our surprises, a pack of dogs as well who run free about the site at night and when in full pack-mentality as I witnessed I’d not be wanting to be meeting in the dark, on my way to the loos ...).

Cleophas is the laconic middle-aged security guard who shows me to my spot (in the parking lot – there are camping spots at the bottom of the site by a lovely little river but with my being the only person staying there it would be an unnecessarily long ways away from anything) but he soon, as per script, launches into a sadly-told tale of financial woe, draining school fees and disabled children ... I hear you Cleophas (and the hundreds of similar tales heard across the continent – I will later, in Kigali, be ... insinuated ... towards covering a security guards university tuition ‘so he may get a good job and get married’ ... ) but, sorry, that is what your government is for; and, if not, any number of overly-earnest NGO’s and church groups. Harsh as it must come across, just because I’m white really just cannot make me, or allow me to be seen as, an open and willing wallet; and I find I have grown very world-weary of the spiel ...

When I can distract him from his tale of woe I quiz Cleophas on the route ahead and he perks up immediately as the other side is his home region and he “knows it very well, very well.” But I do love an African’s version of time and space: so (though I know the specifics already), how far to the border from here? “Oh, just 20 minutes at most!” Really, 20 minutes ...? “Ok, maybe 2 hours it could be.” And from the border to Jinja? “Oh, that is so near my home, just 20 minutes at most!” Really, 20 minutes? I am sure it must be longer than that. “Ok, maybe 2 hours it could be.” Ok, so, really, you have no idea - but it has been a most entertaining chat ... (and 6 hour drive the next day all told ...).

Nor is he so sure of the weather either apparently, for as we speak a massive clap of thunder reverberates across the sky in the middle distance and flash of lightening illuminates the horizon. Going to rain tonight I say. No, no rain Cleophas assures me (cue first, heavy drops of rain). Hopefully the lightening will stop, and not come too close to here tonight I say. No, no lightening will be here (cue massive bolt that electrifies the air around us, turns the darkness into high noon and makes me jump 3 feet in the air to beat a hasty retreat under the better-than-nowt security provided by the flimsy wood shelter next to my truck - Cleophas, oblivious, remains rooted in place, I guess wondering why our convo’s closed off so unexpectedly ...). The rain comes as only it can in tropical countries, absolutely hammering down with an awesome intensity, accompanied by drum rolls of thunder and crashing lightening for a full display of nature’s powers and I make a quick run to the back of my truck to fix a strong G&T before, soaked from just the few seconds I am exposed, taking refuge at my driver’s seat (the dogs by now aggressively roaming about and I have twice chased them off with mock charges, but fear they will grow emboldened soon and I’ve no interest in pausing my travels for a 5-day course of anti-rabies injections) so, for the next 3 hours, sit inside the cab in silence to watch the storm play itself out ...

As I sat there, watching the shadow-puppet show of the trees as the storm crashed around me, I am reminded of a favourite scene from The English Patient, when Ralph Feinnes character tells of having been driven in complete silence for a day, far out into the desert, to “see fire.” At dusk, as the sun flares in expiration on the horizon, his driver points and says: “Fire.” As he states: “That was a good day.” For me, that was a very good night ...

Departing early the next day I am met with miles on miles of some of the weirdest driving conditions I’ve met yet ... The road, all the way to the border, has been grooved into rails of tarmac, forcing you to drive with one wheel on one side and one of the other like some children’s ‘play-driving’ ride at an amusement fair but which does not allow any independent movement one side or the other in order to avoid the usual cast of dangers on the roads (small children darting out, insane truckers without regard to any reasonable rules of the road, sun-stunned/suicidal cattle/dogs/goats, wobbling bicyclists loaded down with people, produce, firewood or bales of grasses, etc). Try and get over a rail, or hit one wrong, and as one motorcyclist I met at JJ’s experienced you are quickly directed straight off the road without any manner of recourse. Absolute, barely-in-control, insanity.

And so, with those thrill-laden, profanity-spewing, white-knuckling miles done, ends Kenya ...

MOMBASA: MALARIA & MUEZZINS

The process, of course, did not go smoothly.

That being said it may have gone as best it could, given the vagaries of trying to achieve anything by (your) schedule in Africa, and that my shipping agents left their common sense at home every day; but, other than that: seamless ...

As I always suspected the ship duly arrived on the original date of Weds 29, not Mon 27 as the agents had insisted the week before (necessitating my scramble to get across to Mombasa to meet with them and plan our course of action on the Saturday prior). Or on the 21^st for that matter, which was the first quoted arrival date. But I was nonetheless pleased on Weds to receive a call at 0900 informing me that not only had the vehicle arrived but had already been offloaded and moved into the secure Customs area and was being audited by my agent’s man-on-the-scene. Good news, but worrying as all very much contrary to the original plan of my being there for eyes-on from step one.

I am told to hurry over to their offices so I can be taken to the docks soonest, which I do and am very pleased to find on arriving at the vast and dirty warehouse that the only thing that has gone missing from my unlocked-and-wide-open-since-Sheerness (UK) vehicle is the (previously well-buried under boxes and tarps) Hi-Lift Jack and, inexplicably, the Hi-Vis Vest off the back of my seat. Some magpie on the ship apparently keen to score the only two brightly-coloured items I’m carrying ... So, RoRo (Roll on Roll off), which has been a huge source of stress and second-guessing since I went cheap and chose that shipping option instead of a secure container has proven to be the right choice in the end as even with replacing the jack I’ve scored a 66% cost savings for going with it.

Unfortunately though, at this point my agents became complete idiots and I, concurrently, am hit with malaria so Thurs and Fri prove a fair test of both patience and fortitude. Through both days and multiple, ever-increasingly terse calls I am unable to get a straight answer out of them about how the process was going to have Customs clear and release the vehicle – or if this had even begun yet. Finally, at 1640 Friday afternoon I am called and informed that my vehicle has been cleared, it is at their office – and that I “cannot have it until maybe Monday as (I) have not paid yet.” Scrambling out of my fever bed I race over to the office – on Moi Avenue, one of the busiest in town – to find my truck parked on a side street, totally exposed and without a private guard in sight. I am, apparently, not to worry about this – it will be fine. I explain clearly that they will not be fine if they do not get my vehicle into secure storage and why the %$#@& am I only being told now there is an issue with my payment that will hold up my actually taking possession of it now that it is released.

They don’t know where it is but their bank says it does not have it. I tell them I transfer funds by Telegraphic Transfer regularly and from my experience (due to differences in time zones) it has always taken 1 business day to the UK, 1 to Canada and 1 to South Africa so why should I accept it is 3 days now and it has not made it through to them yet? It is the only time in 10 months on the road last year and 3 weeks so far this trip that I have lost my temper and unleashed unrestrained wrath and anger. Not my proudest moment – though at least an improvement over yelling at the girl in the estate agents back in UK who cover our house and making her cry because she didn’t have paperwork completed I’d been promised (for weeks ...) – that was when I knew I was not handling the stress of unemployment well and needed to get away again. But still, not good – though it did have the desired effect at least and my vehicle – which they have argued at me for over an hour is going nowhere and will be fine parked on the road until we ‘sort out the payment’ - is duly moved into the owner’s private compound and I am told to return the next day with cash.

(It’s worth clarifying here that it was the agents who asked for a transfer of funds on Weds as a “show of good faith” as they would now be paying for all port fees, etc, up front. And I was fine with this as it’s a secure method for me, easily tracked and reversed if something smells wrong, and far better than having to change a great wodge of shilling into USD and go for a cash payment on release. But never again – cash only at the end of the process, shows of ‘good faith’ be blown .... Also note that shipping agents hold your passport while running through the process – but not at their office as I was to learn - and as you cannot change money without one if a TT goes wrong as mine appeared to you’re stuffed for USD without a second passport or a lot of scrambling about ...)

So Saturday starts with 2 hours in the bank converting Kenya Shilling into USD (bearing passport number two) to pay cash for my vehicle if the TT has still not cleared. On arriving at the offices at 10 as promised the day before (emphasizing I must be on the road by no later than 11 as I must be in Nairobi that evening for a meeting and do not want to drive there in the dark) I find, of course, that nothing has happened - my vehicle is not there, they do not know if the funds have cleared yet, and my passport and docs are “with the boss, not here” And the boss is not there either... I ask if they have gone to their bank yet today and checked the account. No I am told, but they will phone and are again told the bank says it has no such record. But have you actually looked in your account?? Perplexed looks all round. No, we just phone. With restraint I instruct as they cannot do so online (I learn) they must go and personally check the account as I am certain the funds HAVE to be there. Which the young accountant does and *MIRACLE* of course the funds are there and have been since Friday morning. He is most sheepish and explains it had never occurred to him to actually look in the account as they always just phone and ask if the bank has received a telex copy of the transfer docs. As mine obviously does not do so it simply never occurs to them to actually look in the account for the funds – they just took the bank at its word that it hadn’t received a fax and therefore there must be no funds ... Lord lifting Jesus give me strength ...

I ask them where my vehicle is as I must go right now to collect it (and all supporting veh docs, and my passport, which have all – inexplicably and without signed record - been removed from the office) and am told “the guy who was sitting there earlier” has gone to get my truck and bring it back to the office. Which guy? “The guy who was in that chair” I am told. Do you know who that was; do you know his name?? No, but they do think the boss knows him and that this is what he does ...  Two hours later and three phone calls to the boss, who is conspicuous in her absence today, and my vehicle does finally show up – and thankfully intact, though I do find his complaints about the difficulty in driving it are likely due to his having done so right the way across town with it in diff-lock Low ... I wince, pray to the LR gods of mechanical forgiveness and am finally able to get underway.

So for my week in Mombasa huge props must go out to the Royal Court Hotel on Haile Selassie Road for their outstanding facilities, hospitality and huge (free) buffet breakfasts; and to the pharmacy around the corner who offered me sympathy and drugs for all of 4 GBP and got me through the malaria in 1.5 days of fever and 1.5 days of slow recovery (even asking that I please come back to tell them when I was okay as they were concerned for me being alone when ill. But then sternly admonishing me, as proxy I guess, that my Travel Clinic back in the UK was “very wrong” and that Doxycycline was “useless” in the region and not to be prescribed as a malaria prophylactic – good to know given 11 months on it the year prior and 40 GBP worth of it packed into my shave kit for this round ...). Well, at least I can now tick Get Knocked on Arse By Malaria off my To Do list ...

And conversely a huge vote of non-confidence for Renex Logistics, who while very good on initial emails fell apart when it really mattered and seemed completely baffled by both the process of bringing in a personal vehicle as well as the requirements of its owner. In a city with literally hundreds of shipping agents there has got to be somebody who could have done it better. And going with rudeness and a bullying attitude towards me when they had the vehicle and ‘not the payment’ was definitely the wrong tack ... And a big thumbs down as well to the local Muezzin, who kicked off his full decibel warbling at 0450 every morning and kept at it, sometimes for 10 minutes sometimes for 3 hours straight throughout the day until gone 1900, like some drunkle at a wedding refusing to give up on the karaoke machine until he'd run through his full list of favorite show tunes ... Religious freedom: fine. Running riot over everybody else's personal freedoms with your sound system: really not.

So now well past ready to turn my back on Mombasa I change the original plan for an easy run up the coast to Lamu to shake out the truck in favour of the far more ridiculous plan to hoon it back to Nairobi in order to meet with friend who arrives at airport that night and I am supposed to pick up. It is now gone 1300, it’s a 9 hour drive and my trucks been sitting on a boat for the past three weeks and in a yard the six months prior – sure I should just stomp it and go! All went fine with stunning views across Tsavo Park til God turned out the lights at 7 and it was then all a bit white-knuckle on the most manic road I’d driven in a long while for the next 3 hours but the Landy was a champion and we made it in unscathed. But definitely not recommended.

Dragging my sweaty, ponging, dirty-garbed bod into the glare and finery of the Hilton I am pleased to find that their professionalism negates any outward response to my dishevelment , and am informed I have more than enough points for a free room, and then also a free upgrade to the Executive Floor - score! Plus on turning around I find my friend just arriving at the hotel himself so perfect timing; up to the lounge we go and get some Tuskers in to recover. Lived like I still had a real job for 2 lux days and enjoyed a great catch-up, but back to reality by Monday and over to Jungle Junction with the rest of the overlanders passing through to strip the truck down, find what’s missing (what – no corkscrew??!!), get the new tent sorted (and me sorted for sleeping in it after a week of soft beds multiple pillows and aircon), change oils and fluids and generally get us both ready – after a month of being on the ground already – to finally get the trip underway. It’s now a week later since arrival and that process is complete ... Tomorrow, Uganda.