Travels in Africa
Mombasa was just as exotic as its name implies. It has a long history of Arab trading dhows riding the trade winds between there and all those other exotic ports around the north of the Indian Ocean, and of course the slave trade, which still goes on I’m told. The Arab traders live behind heavy timber doors strapped with wrought iron and studded with brass – it’s easy to imagine that there’d be all sorts of secret and exotic goings on behind such doors.
Not so secret, but definitely exotic (at least to a prairie boy) was the cheap hotel I stayed in. Downstairs was a favorite pub for the British troops stationed there. Upstairs was a brothel where they took the bar girls, so there were lots of exotic comings and goings all night long, and with paper-thin walls nothing was secret….
I hung around the port area for a couple of days, watching the trading dhows loading and unloading all manner of bags and boxes of goodness knows what – from pungent herbs and spices to Sony transistor radios.
But I came to Africa to see the interior, so it was good to get out on the road again. One long ride I had was with a liquor salesman, which was really good because he was stopping along the way to take orders, including a visit to the famous Tree Tops Game Lodge where the Queen and Duke had recently visited. No royalty there at that time, just a couple of loud-mouthed American tourists arguing with their little brat of a kid as to whether he could have another ice cream cone - definitely not proper public behavior to the upper-crust British colonials trying to sip their gin and tonics with their noses way in the air – the kid won out of course….
The road was all gravel, and the liquor salesman had to cover lots of ground, so we made lots of dust. Luckily, he wasn’t a drinker, and could handle the Peugot well at speed. The Peugots were very rugged cars that had won nearly all of the grueling East African Safari Rallies, and it seemed he was practicing for the next one. But late one day, heading into the setting sun, we flew around a bend and found a whole herd of elephants on the road! We skidded to a stop just about underneath the backside a big old bull (and it definitely was a bull, as we could plainly see, hanging right over the hood of the car as it was) - then the driver slammed it into reverse and promptly backed into the ditch and got stuck. I guess the cloud of dust must have hid us, because the elephant didn’t stomp on us straight away…… He just snorted and trumpeted and beat up on a couple of trees beside the road. All we could do was sit very still and wait till he finally settled down and moved on, and he wasn’t in any hurry…. It was after dark by the time I could get out to help push the car out of the ditch, and as soon as the wheels got traction, we blasted away from there at full speed again.
Speaking of cars, there were three makes of cars popular in East Africa at that time – Mercedes, Peugot, and Volkswagen, all dependent on your social standing. Of course, social standing was very important in that British society, so you could immediately tell where anyone fit in by the car they drove. Normally in British colonies they rigged the customs duty such that only British cars had a chance of getting on the market, but the roads in East Africa at that time were such that they just couldn’t take the beating. So it must have been pretty galling for some of those old Britishers to have to depend upon German and French engineering.
When we got to Nairobi, I stayed with the liquor salesman and his pet chimpanzee. That’s where that charming photo of the chimp checking my hair for lice came from. This is the chimp’s way of signifying that he’s greeting me as a friend.
While I was in Kenya, the news from Canada was all about choosing the new flag. Parliament was at a standstill for months while they argued about the different designs, colors and symbols. Kenya had gone through the process some years before when it became independent, so in that regard they were ahead of Canada. In Kenya the colors they chose, and the symbolism were significant: “Green for the land”, “Red for the blood”, “Black for the people”, and a narrow stripe of “White for the few”……
Nairobi was just another city so I hitched up to the highlands around Mt. Kenya.
It was there that the photo of my pack beside the ‘Equator’ sign was taken. First time I had crossed the equator! I‘d crossed the Arctic Circle in Norway the year before, so this was another notable crossing, having covered all the distance in between by surface travel. But the really notable aspect of this crossing of the equator was that it was the first time I’d been cold for long time. We normally think of the equator as being hot, but this was at an altitude of about 7000ft, and rainy, so it was going to be a cold night out. Then someone from a nearby mission station saw me waiting for a ride and offered for me to stay in the mission for the night.
Next, I hitched through the Great Rift Valley (spectacular!) to Uganda (this was long before the troubled time of Idi Amin), intending to come back through Kenya and see some more of it then. At that time this was a common immigration area, so there was no immigration checkpoint at the border; it was only necessary to go to the immigration office in Kampala, the capital city, within a few days to get a stamp in the passport (this may seem like a trivial fact, but it had a big effect on my travels, as we shall see later on).
Uganda
I arrived in Kampala on a Saturday, so the immigration office was closed, and I didn’t feel like just staying in the city for the weekend, so hitched out of town, headed for some game parks. Then I got a lift with a Belgian delivering a new Volvo to Rwanda. Now, Rwanda is really getting up into a remote part of central Africa, where I wouldn’t have planned to go, but since he offered a lift all the way I could hardly refuse the chance.
The road was just a dirt track, and due to heavy rains almost impassable – we were frequently being pushed through the boggy bits by whole teams of Africans from nearby villages. They all had to be paid of course, but the Belgian was prepared, and had a whole bag of local ‘Shillings’ to spread around.
It was a long, slow trip but we finally made it to the border with Rwanda, and that’s when the adventure really began……
The Ugandan immigration officer had a look at my passport and said there was “a big problem” – I hadn’t been officially stamped into the country yet so he couldn’t stamp me out; I’d have to go all the way back to Kampala to get stamped in before he would let me out! That was clearly out of the question after all the difficulty to get here, and he knew it. After long discussion he offered to get around the problem by stamping me into the country as if I’d just come in there, then immediately stamp me out again – but he wanted £15 cash in the hand before he’d do it – corruption in action. I was pretty naive at that time about the opportunity that such corruption presented and refused to pay him. We argued on and on ‘til he reached in his drawer and pulled out a stamp and finally stamped my passport with an angry flourish and told me to get out of there. I thought I’d won until I saw the stamp – it had a big X across it which meant ‘Refused Entry’, and he said, “Now you’ll never get back into the country again, not even for £200, go to Rwanda and don’t come back!” So now I was farther up a one-way track with no way to go back….
Right then I didn’t realize how this one little confrontation was going to complicate my life in the weeks to come; many a time I’d wish that I’d paid that £15 and had the freedom to go back that way, because things were about to get a whole lot more difficult and adventurous than I’d planned………… But then, if I had gone back I wouldn’t have had the even greater adventures that were to come….
Rwanda
Scene in the public market in Kigali, main city in Rwanda.
I soon found that it wasn’t going to be easy to get out of Rwanda. Rwanda is only a tiny country, but has borders with three other countries besides Uganda, where I’d just come from and couldn’t go back. There’s a bush track around Lake Victoria to Tanganyika but it was now flooded by all the rain. Rwanda and Burundi were having a war of sorts and the border was closed to all traffic. That left only the Congo to the west, and it was having lots of troubles of its own, namely a revolution that hadn’t finished yet, so no real government in power. I guess I could have flown out, but that didn’t even get a consideration in my mind in those days; I’d got all the way from Alberta to here by surface transport so must be able to go on. I tried to get a visa for the Congo, but there was no Congolese embassy because no Congolese government….. The east of the country, where I needed to go, was still held by the rebels. Then I met a Catholic missionary who’d been there for a long time, and he suggested that I go to the border and try to cross through anyhow.
So away I went. Didn’t seem to be any vehicles on the road, so I walked pretty much all the way.
Those sandals from India, with much patching with wire, lasted all the way through Africa, but the back portion was so worn away that I was walking with my heel on the ground. I was REALLY frugal in those days…. I still have one of those sandals as a memento, and this is how it looks now…
These are a few scenes along the way…
Stopped a couple of nights along the way at Catholic mission stations run by the ‘White Fathers’ from French Canada. I have little respect for most of the ‘holier-than-thou’, ‘bible-thumping’ missionaries I’ve come across, but these fellows are really different. They’re teaching practical skills and helping the people make a go of it rather than just trying to ‘save souls’. They go out there for 17 years at a time, and I met one who was very excited because soon he was going back to Canada for the second visit in 34 years – now that’s real dedication…. They always had plenty of cold beer in the fridge and enjoyed sharing it and swapping stories. Rwanda is renowned for its beer, and the brewery was probably the biggest industry there. They have a German brew-meister and use Canadian barley, trucked in bags over those bad roads. As a matter of fact, it was one of those White Fathers who gave me a couple of those litre-size bottles of beer to take with me to the Congolese border to help lubricate the proceedings.
Congo
When I walked up to the border crossing there were no proper immigration officials, only young soldiers manning it. They didn’t really know what to do, and the one who examined my passport obviously couldn’t read much at all. Then I brought out the beer and the whole atmosphere changed. We sat down and drank the first bottle, and while we were on the second one someone came in with a chicken and killed it and started to make a stew. Some more locally brewed ‘bush’ beer arrived and we were soon having a great time, even tho I could only speak a few words of French and less Kiswahili – we made gestures and laughed and giggled at most anything (they particularly loved my imitation of a monkey scratching fleas) mostly we just laughed till we fell off our chairs, and then laughed even more about falling off the chairs…...
And so it went until a car came to the border from the Congolese side, to drop off someone who was going across to Rwanda. The car was going back into the Congo and was driven by a couple of French-Canadian teachers based there. So, they gave me a lift back to their place in Goma, just a few miles inside the Congo. They were still able to work there because they could scoot across the border quickly if the troubles got out of hand again. I stayed with them a couple of days. One of them had just arrived from Quebec, and had brought a big supply of maple syrup. Maple syrup is very important to French Canadians, and they demonstrated that by doing a traditional treat for them – eggs poached in maple syrup, as a desert after the meal!! Actually, it was quite good, but a strange desert….
As it was, the rebels had pretty much finished with this part of the country; and no fighting going on nearby, but lots of bullet holes in the walls of public buildings. The teachers were pretty much up on the situation and knew an influential man of some sort who they took me to see. They explained that I was an overseas reporter, who had to get through to Burundi, and if I couldn’t get there then I would be writing bad things about the Congo. I don’t think he really had any power at that stage, but he wrote up a very official-looking letter with a big official seal on it, and it worked wonders wherever I went after that – much better than any visa.
Goma is, or was, a totally different town than you would expect for such a remote place. It was once a thriving European resort town, more like Switzerland than Africa. It’s situated on a beautiful, deep clear lake, with green, lush hills all round. It has that high-altitude tropical climate that’s cool and fresh all year round – really invigorating. So, it became the holiday playground for all the Belgian officials in the Congo, as well as the European workers at the big copper mines in the south of the country. They had fine holiday mansions and guest houses overlooking the lake, with sailing and water-skiing, and European coffee shops, restaurants, and shopping in the town. But the revolution put an end to all that, and the economy had collapsed. Now everything from ivory carvings to uncut diamonds were for sale a just about any price, because there were no buyers around at all. One of the White Fathers was doing quite a smuggling trade in diamonds, because they had sort of a diplomatic immunity – no one would dare to body search one of them - and those flowing robes could hide lots of loot. Supposedly he wasn’t keeping it for himself; he was using the trade to support his mission, and I suppose helping out the ‘poor’ Catholic Church whenever he could.
There were some government officials visiting Goma, and these Watutsis were protesting their cause in the form of a warlike dance.
Goma is at the north end of beautiful Lake Kivu. I was able to hire a magnificent old speed boat, with mahogany woodwork, such as you’d find at a Mediterranean resort, to get to Bukavu, at the south end of lake. From there I got a ride in a slow old tanker truck along a pretty much deserted road, being stopped eight times by men with uniforms and guns (probably weren’t really soldiers at all, just an opportunity for some extortion). The truck driver had to pay each time, and they sometimes dug through my gear looking for something to steal. By that time about all I had left was my old sleeping bag, and they didn’t want that in such a hot country. My little camera was in my pocket, but it didn’t seem to interest them, and my traveler’s cheques were in my underpants. I told them that other soldiers had taken all my money and they seemed to believe that, and of course I didn’t look very prosperous, with only old shorts and a shirt and well-worn sandals.
I now realize that if I had disappeared in those parts, no one would know where to start looking. I suppose that the last time I had written would have been from Nairobi, and at that time I had planned to stay just in Kenya and Uganda, no idea that I would be way out here. No organized police force to try to contact next of kin….
When we got to the trucking depot at Usumbura in Burundi, the first question the boss had for the driver was, “How much did it cost this time?” I guess it’s just another form of local government taxes, very ‘local’ in fact.
Much of the road was under water from the flood…
Burundi
So now I was in Burundi, at the northernmost end of Lake Tanganyika. From here I got on a boat, actually it was two boats towing three barges. I was travelling fourth class, so was down in the hold, but comfortable, and was in the night so no scenery missed. Travelled down the lake to Kigoma, in Tanganyika, where I planned to get on the train that goes east to the coast at Dar Es Salaam.
Lake Tanganyika
Now Lake Tanganyika is no small pond, being about 450 miles long from north to south and you can just barely see across it to the west when standing on high ground, so it would take an awful lot of rain to make much difference to its level. But all this rain in the area had raised it so much that when we got to Kigoma the docks were under water. So that I walked down the gang plank and into the water to go ‘ashore’. I sloshed along the jetty and into the immigration office, where an African was sitting at his desk with rubber boots on. He stamped my passport, then I sloshed along to the Customs office and did the same. Finally, I waded ashore and up onto higher ground – strange feeling.
It didn’t take long to find out that of course the railway was under water as well, and no trains would be going through for a couple of months! The airport was still open but damned if I was going to fly…. And of course, I couldn’t go back the way I’d come, to Uganda due to that No-Entry stamp in my passport. So, the only other way to get out of here was to stay on the lake and follow it all the way to the south end, in Northern Rhodesia. That boat wouldn’t leave for several days, so I had a restful time staying at a friendly mission station at Ujiji and sitting under the very tree where Stanley found Livingstone. While sitting under that tree I was thinking about that meeting, and Stanley’s words at the time, “Doctor Livingstone I presume.”, which has been laughed at as being a bit formal for the occasion. But what else could he say? In those days Americans wouldn’t say Hiya Doc. And neither of them were Aussies, so he wouldn’t say G’Day, Doc, how’re ya goin’. Anyhow it’s a great old tree, and it was a fine place to spend a few days.
The good ship, ‘SS Liemba’ that plies the lake has a real history of its own. It was built in Germany in 1913, in sections which were then shipped to Dar es Salaam and then by rail to the lake. This was when Tanganyika was a German colony, and during WW1 it had a big gun mounted on it. At the end of the war they scuttled it to keep it from falling into British hands, but later it was raised by the British and still runs a regular service on the lake. It’s a grand old ship, with old mahogany timber trim and heavy brass fittings – of course none of the fancy old ornate taps have running water any more, and you flush the toilet with a bucket dipped from over the side, and then the contents of the toilet dump out of an open pipe in the ship’s side right back into the lake again – that’s recycling I guess…. But the ship hasn’t lost its character and charm. It now has old diesel engines that thump slowly along and belch lots of smoke as she slowly glides along the calm lake.
The journey took a couple of days, with several stops at isolated villages. These are villages with no road access, so pretty isolated people. The ship brought essentials, such as maize corn and Coca Cola, and loaded the produce from the villages – mostly burlap bags of tiny dried fish which were stacked on deck. Now dried fish has a pretty strong odor, so you either have to get used to it or hold your breath for a couple of days. I had a little cabin to myself and really enjoyed the peaceful, slow trip.
N. Rhodesia - May 1964
As we pulled up to the jetty at Mpulungu, in Northern Rhodesia (still a British colony in those days), I could see the white British immigration officer in his white shirt, knee-length socks, and shiny shoes, and thought how good it was to be back in ‘civilization’, away from all that corruption – little did I realize………
He examined my passport then said, “Do you have the £150 which you must deposit before you can enter the country?” In those days all travelers had to deposit the money on entry to the country, and it would be refunded when you left. It was in case you became destitute and they could then use the funds to deport you…. Well I didn’t have the money, at least not with me, it was still in the bank in Nairobi. I had had it sent there for this very purpose before I arrived in Kenya, and had intended to withdraw it when I went back through there after Uganda – but of course I never did get back there, all because I wouldn’t pay that £15 bribe way back there. I explained all this to the officer, but he was humorless, heartless and probably incorruptible – that’s when I learned how useful corruption can be – farther back it would have just been a matter of negotiating how much to pay and anything would have been possible – now he was insisting on sending me back up the lake on the same ship even tho I explained that this was the only exit for me from the situation. Right then was one of those times that I wish I had paid that £15 without complaining.
Finally the officer seized my passport and gave me one week to have the money wired from Nairobi, and if no money by then he’d put me back on the ship next time it went north – all so ridiculous because I still had £90 with me, and that was enough in those days for me travel easily to South Africa where there was lots of work. Compared to him, those soldiers in the Congo were civilized gentlemen…...
Next day when I went into Abercorn town to send the telegram I realized just how isolated this place was. The telegraph office consisted of one young African with one of those old clicky-clack telegraph keys, and a single wire snaking out through the bush to somewhere. The ‘bank’ was just the local store acting as an agent. I sure had my doubts that the manager of Barclays main bank in Nairobi was going to release some money on such unofficial instructions, having never dealt with me at all before. So, a couple of days later, after no reply, I sent another telegram, this time with an urgent plea for action, still with no great expectations……
In the meantime, I helped a missionary work on the enormous church he had started, and would probably take the rest of his life. The rest of the missionaries in his church spent their time studying the bible, reading ‘Pilgrims Progress’ and praying – not much of what they were doing seemed to help the natives – it was all just ‘brownie points’ for themselves to get to heaven. They were hospitable to me, but so humorless and stern with themselves that it was painful to watch. Compared to the jolly, vigorous White Fathers they were a total waste of space, and about the only benefit they gave to the locals was buying timber from the bush sawmills to build that church. I helped by hauling sawn timber from bush sawmill to the church.
Near the sawmill was Kalambo Falls, 772 ft in a single fall
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The day before my time was up, the immigration officer called round to tell me that next day he would be going out to a remote road crossing into Tanganyika, and would dump me there, so I would be out of his responsibility. I guess it was better than being sent back up the lake, but this was a really remote track with very little traffic, so it was going to be a long trip to Nairobi (about 1200km) just to get at that money. But even if I got to the Kenya border, it’s in the same immigration authority as Uganda, and I still that that bad stamp in my passport…..
About an hour before the officer was due to collect me, the telegraph operator came running up with the news that the telegram transferring the money from Nairobi had just arrived! Thank you, thank you, manager of the Nairobi bank, for understanding my plight and responding to this strange request! I just had time to dash to the ‘bank’, so that when the officer arrived, I handed him the money (I think he looked distinctly disappointed that he couldn’t cause me any more misery). Anyhow, it was a very close call – just imagine what would have happened if the money had arrived after I’d left, so that I’d go all the way to Nairobi only find that it wasn’t there any more……….
I grabbed my passport and hit the road immediately. There was scarce traffic in and out of that place, but my stars must have been just right that day, because I got a lift straight away with a doctor who had been in to do his rounds and was headed all the way out again. Boy was I glad to leave that place!
As I’ve said before, there were many times that I wished I’d paid that £15 way back in Uganda, but if I did, then I would have just followed the usual traveler’s main road, and wouldn’t have had all those memorable, if not necessarily comfortable, adventures in between.
Northern Rhodesia didn’t become Zambia until later that year so all was still very organized. I don’t remember much more of Northern and Southern Rhodesia, except that the roads were good, and the rides were long, and they readily refunded the £150 when I was leaving NR. Then Southern Rhodesia took it back again for their deposit, and refunded it just before I crossed into South Africa.
S. Africa
And what a difference was entering South Africa! They welcomed me in and informed me that if I stayed more than a year they’d give me 160 Rand reward! This was because they were paying the fares for migrants from Europe at that time, but since I’d made my own way they’d refund the equivalent fare! So, I stayed a year and a half, and thoroughly enjoyed it.
First I hitched to Cape Town by way of Johannesburg, Durban, and Port Elizabeth, then back up to Jo’burg through the middle, just getting a look at the country.
One night I was stranded out in the Upper Karoo. That area is known to be either very hot or very cold, cause it’s very dry, and 4000ft altitude. It was now the southern hemisphere winter, so very cold. I still didn’t have a good sleeping bag, and I’d lost my ground sheet, so couldn’t use it to protect from the cold draft that was blowing. That was the coldest night ever in my life, of hundreds of nights of sleeping rough…. The only firewood was twigs from shrubs, and they all covered in thorns, so only had a little fire to cook my mealy-meal porridge. In the wee small hours before dawn I was really worried that I couldn’t make it through ‘til sunup…. I was so cold and exhausted from shivering, that I still shiver with dread when I remember it now….
Speaking of mealie-meal, that’s the stable diet of southern Africa, and it also became my stable meal. It’s a course maize meal, and makes a really sustaining food, and was very no cost, so I always carried a bag of it. Mixed with powdered milk and sugar it cooks it into a really good porridge, even better than oatmeal. For the dinner meal I cooked it thicker without milk (then it’s called mealie-pap), sort of like mashed potatoes, and tipped a can of sardines in tomato sauce over the top and mixed them together for a really sustaining and healthy meal. I never tired of it every day, and it was such a welcome food that when I left South Africa I really missed it.
There’s some magnificent geography in South Africa, and lots of size – I liked it a lot. I like the geography and climate so well that I’d choose to live there, probably of anywhere, if the politics and racial situation were different. It’s a lot the same climate as Australia, but much more varied geography, with more rugged mountains and high deserts, and of course spectacular big game animals. It was a rich country when I was there, with excellent facilities at low cost, at least for the whites. The racial situation at that time was calm (maybe repressed would be a better word), but anyone could see that it couldn’t last forever. I’m really surprised and relieved that the transition has gone as peacefully as it has to date – it looked like a complete blood bath was coming, what with the harsh and brutal, white power elite and the restless black majority. But they handled the transition as gracefully as could be hoped for…..
One day I was riding along with one of that white power elite, a genuine ‘boer’ (the word actually means farmer in their language, but ‘red-neck’ would be a closer match in our ours), when an adventure occurred that I remember vividly in slow motion to this day. He was a genuine Afrikaans farmer, big and burly, big beard, rock-solid opinions. I’d had the usual tirade about how good apartheid was, and how useless the blacks were, etc, etc, and he even had a go at me for not being able to speak the Afrikaans language (derived from old Dutch), but eased up a bit when I told him I’d only been in the country two weeks. But he didn’t ease up on the accelerator – we were in a big American Ford V8 going 110 miles per hour (175km/hr) the last time I looked, and I would guess we were still going over a hundred when we left the road! We left the road because, as we came over a hill there was a small pickup truck trying to pass a big truck, and completely blocking the road. I can still see the astonished look on the driver in the pickup as we flashed, and do mean flashed, by on the dirt shoulder of the road. Luckily the old boer had a good sense of how to handle such a situation, and he didn’t try to steer back onto the road, or we would have skidded and rolled and flipped and been scattered in bits all over the place (no seat belts to keep you in in those days). I thought I was a bit prepared for such an event, having ridden with plenty of idiots before, and having then made plans to dive under the dash in a crash position if need be. But this time I just sat there fascinated and watched it all go by, as we flew across the broad shallow ditch and bottomed hard on the other side, ripping the mufflers off, but he managed to keep it straight. On the rebound we went through the barbed wire fence like it was a bit of ribbon. The next worry was a power pole right in line, but the crafty old boer gently edged the car over just barely enough to miss the pole without going into a skid and hitting it broadside, as most drivers would have done. I don’t think we’d lost any speed at all by that stage, since it was downhill, and he wisely hadn’t touched the brakes. From there it was all open pasture, but downhill so we bounced and skidded for ages before he could make a turn and go blasting back up the hill, broken exhausts bellowing from that big V8, to settle accounts with that driver who chose to overtake in such a bad spot. When we got back up to the road the fellow was sitting in his little Japanese pickup, white with shock and trembling, unable to speak coherently. The boer just took a look at him and said, “Bah, he’s learned his lesson.”, and away we blasted again, pretty much same speed as before but so noisy we couldn’t talk, and that was probably just as well…….
I had decided that I wanted to stay in the country for a while, and wanted my own transport, so in Jo’burg I bought a 1958 500cc single-cylinder Matchless motorcycle.
Hitchhiking can’t get off the beaten track, but now I had just the machine to do that. Over into Swaziland, through Zululand, up into Basutoland, and wherever. A solo motorcycle gives a great feeling of freedom for travel like that – not much luggage, not much fuel cost, no passenger to consider – just go wherever, especially in a wide-open country with a warm dry climate.
I carried minimum camping gear as usual, just sleeping bag, groundsheet, billy can and army mess tin. With the mobility of the motorbike I could easily get way off the road somewhere to camp for the night in peace and quiet.
But it wasn’t as quiet as I would have liked one night in Swaziland. I was way back in the bush, far from the road and the dangers of people, so I felt pretty secure, with my good little fire. But woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of snorts and grunts not far away. I didn’t know if there were still lions in these parts or not, but they sure sounded like the lions that I’d seen in the zoo – none of that great MGM roaring for hunting lions – it’d only scare the game away – these sounded like hungry loins! The fire was just about out when I woke up, so I quickly tried to gather some more firewood and get a blaze going. But that’s not so easy in Africa; nearly all the bushes have thorns, some of them big thorns.
So, I got pretty torn up just trying to find dry branches in the dark and break them up for the fire. Got the fire going but the sounds didn’t go away, just kept circling around downwind……… So, didn’t sleep any more that night, just kept tending the fire and watching behind me.…….. ‘Til it finally got light enough to see, and then I found it was a couple of curious cattle! So of course, there weren’t any lions around if cattle were roaming free, but boy, your imagination sure can play tricks on you in the dark of the night…………
So, I was tired and not in the best of moods when I tried to start the bike next morning. It was a big old 500cc single cylinder machine, that had always been hard to start, and that morning was just as cranky as I was. I stomped and stomped and stomped on that mongrel thing, and it was way too heavy to push-start on that soft dirt. And if you got the technique wrong it could kick back and break your leg. The cattle just stood round and watched, and heard some language they probably hadn’t heard before. I really thought it was never going to start, and that I was going to have to walk all the way back out to the road, which didn’t have much chance of traffic anyhow, and was thinking that next time I might camp a bit closer to civilization, and maybe on a hill where I could push start if necessary, when it suddenly did start, and then ran as sweet as could be, as if nothing had been wrong at all – never did trust that machine after that. Never did like British motorcycles, tho the Matchless was supposed to be better than average. That Matchless was a cumbersome brute of a machine, but at least it could cruise all day on the open highway in the heat. The other British bikes were forever cracking up due to the heat, and vibrating the sense out of the riders while they did run.
At a country store in Swaziland.
In Basutoland I came across this Save the Children Fund truck distributing food aid from the USA.
One day while riding along through the Transkei (a Bantu ‘homeland’ (reserve) within South Africa) a sheep jumped out onto the road in front of me. No way to avoid it so - bang – and down we both went. Sheep with a broken back, bike a bit bent, bunch of skin off my knee and tattered clothes from sliding along the gravel road, but luckily I can still get up. And I have to get up right away, because there’s another problem here. There’s a scam that goes on in these homelands, whereby a sheep is chased onto the road, and when it’s hit by a car the natives gather round and aggressively demand payment, much more than the sheep is actually worth. I don’t think they actually chased this one onto the road, it was just the shepherd being slack, but I could see them running up from the village to collect the payment anyhow. I got the bike stood up and straightened the handlebars enough to go, and started stomping on that damned starting lever again. The natives could see that I was trying to get away so they were hurrying up the hill; I could see them coming so I was kicking hard; luckily the knee didn’t hurt too much, yet. But finally, the bike did start and then shuddered away because the gear lever was jammed in top gear. So, I rode off up the road, with the handlebars all askew, and got away just in time. When I’d got far enough away to be safe I stopped and straightened out the bike a bit more and checked out my injuries. I had the sense to wear good gloves and a heavy jacket and jeans, but one knee of the jeans had been eaten away over the last couple of weeks by acid from the battery that had been boiling over due to the crappy British Lucas electrical system. So, that bare knee had dragged along the gravel and worn off all the skin down to the kneecap. When I got to the next town I cleaned it up as best I could and put a dressing on it – should have gone to a doctor and got it treated properly, ‘cause of course it would be infected, after dragging along a dirt road in Africa - lucky I didn’t get tetanus or something, but it sure did get painful in days to come. Weeks later when it still hadn’t healed and I was nursing it in a hostel, a veterinarian saw it and expressed alarm and gave me some antibiotic marked, “For stock use only”, and that eventually healed it up.
Finally traded that old brute of a bike in Cape Town, for a perky little Vespa scooter – what a contrast. The Vespa was smooth and nifty, and handy around town, but I sure wouldn’t want to have hit that sheep with it. But of course, I did ride it out in the country and off road, and down to Cape Augulus which is the very southernmost tip of Africa. Then sat and thought about the time I rode another motorcycle across the Arctic Circle in Norway, and all the roads I’d travelled in between….
At Cape Augulus, southernmost point of Africa.
While in Cape Town all overland travelers stayed at a fine Youth Hostel in the woods at the foot of Table Mountain. The hostel was in the saddle between the two peaks.
There wasn’t all that many travelers in those days, so we all got to know each other, and spent many a jolly evening at the pub swapping stories of adventures along the way. If we overindulged and were hung over in the morning, then a race to climb Table Mountain soon cleared the head
Table Mountain with the ‘tablecloth’ spread.
To get to the pub we had to walk quite a way down a dark road, where there was rumours of muggings by so-called black ‘scullies’ in the past. We never had any problems, but it was talked about quite a lot, and new-comers were warned. One night a couple of us were headed down to the pub when we heard a school group coming up the hill. It was a bunch of teenage girls and their teacher, staying at the hostel, and we could hear them nervously giggling and talking about the ‘scullies’. So, we foolishly decided to play a trick on them, and hid in the bush beside the track. As they went by we made some ‘scully’ noises, and you should have heard the screams! Teenage girls are really good at screaming; I guess it’s probably their best defensive weapon, and when you have a group like that it’s really loud. But not half as loud as the blast of a pistol fired in your direction at close range! Turned out the teacher had a pistol in her handbag and kept blasting away in our direction ‘til it was empty. I don’t know how close those shots came, but I could see the flashes from the muzzle, and it sure was the most frightening time I can remember, as I flattened out on the ground. Next morning the ‘scully’ scare was all the talk at the hostel, but we didn’t dare own up to it or she might have shot us good and proper.
There was segregation everywhere.
Front seats in buses reserved for whites,
blacks in the back.
Even park benches were segregated…..
Marine Diamonds
One morning when I was hitch-hiking in South Africa, I got a ride with a fellow who suggested if I was looking for work maybe I should try Marine Diamonds. It seemed that it was a company that dredged diamonds from the seabed off the coast of South West Africa (now called Namibia). I’d never heard of that company and certainly never would have found a job there if it hadn’t been for this ride. That job was the first that I ever had that was really adventurous and exciting, and I thrived on it, and it led to all those other great jobs in the oil and mineral exploration business. I often wonder how different my life would have gone if I’d been in the bush having a crap when that car went by! It was pure luck to make that contact. There must be a lesson in there somewhere. The only one I can find is “give luck a chance” i.e. – get out there and expose yourself to all sorts of different people and situations and see what comes – those sorts of opportunities don’t usually come and find you while sitting at home with the same old circle of friends.
It turned out that Marine Diamonds was a small ‘wildcat’ sort of company run by a ‘wildcat’ Texan entrepreneur, Sammy Collins. The giant De Beers Company had a monopoly on all the diamond mining properties in South Africa, and one of their active mines was in the sand dunes of the Namib Desert right along the beach. Sammy reasoned that if there were diamonds above the water line then there might well be under the water as well. Others obviously had the same thoughts but couldn’t visualise how to get them out, because this was no ordinary bit of ocean. For a start it was off a very remote desert, known as the Skeleton Coast from the number of skeletons found there from wrecked sailors washed up there. Many ships had come to grief there due to the high winds, strong currents and heavy seas. But, typical of Texan oilmen, Sammy wasn’t afraid of tackling anything.
The Southern Atlantic Ocean on a rare calm day….
An early barge that had come to grief.
So, he got a lease on the seabed area and had a big barge anchored out just beyond the enormous breakers that pound that beach constantly.
On the barge were huge air compressors pumping air down to suck up gravel from the bottom and process it on board. In the gravel were diamonds, and it was a successful, but difficult and dangerous operation. Two barges had already been washed up on the beach before I got there.
The barges were held in place by anchors far out in all directions, with winches so that the barges could be moved around between them. The diamonds tended to be found in pockets and bands, so it was important to know exactly where the barge was working at all times. This is where my job came in.
I would sit at a known survey location on land with a theodolite (for measuring the angle), a Tellurometer (an electronic device for measuring distance), and a two-way radio.
Every now and again the barge would call on the radio for a ‘shot’ and I would read the angle and distance back to them. This went on 24 hours a day, so we worked in 12-hour shifts. The base camp was fairly comfortable, but the actual work site was anything but comfortable. Usually just a draughty tent, flapping madly in the gale that blew just about all the time. And a freezing cold gale at that, and often with a wet fog. Don’t ever think that all of Africa is hot; the wind and current on that coast come up from the Antarctic and those nights on shift there were some of the coldest I’ve ever experienced. I can remember sitting in one of those canvas ‘captains’ chairs with a blanket up over my shoulders and a pressure lantern roaring under my bottom to try to keep warm. Then the barge would call for another shot and I’d have to go outside into that wind again – we sure earned our pay on that job.
To get to and from the sites from base camp we had Land Rovers. This was in 1964 before 4WD’s were common everywhere. It was a great experience for me to roar around the desert in those vehicles. It was very heavy sand, and we didn’t have special sand tyres in those days, so it was hard going. Got to do lots of exploring when off shift. That’s where I found all those honey-coloured agates that are in my rock collection.
We worked a schedule of two weeks on and one week off, when we were flown back to Cape Town for our time off. We had to drive about 70 miles to Oranjemund to get to the airplane. Oranjemund was the main base camp for the De Beers miners working on the beach. Because of the risk of smuggling diamonds, everyone leaving the area had to have a full body x-ray every time. They even pulled batteries out of transistor radios, and I can remember a delay one time until the guards could find someone’s cat that had climbed over the fence without being x-rayed. No vehicles or heavy equipment could ever leave the area once they had entered, because they couldn’t be x-rayed. Notably, there was a fleet of almost new Ford F150’s that the company had bought and then found that they weren’t up to the job, and just abandoned them there…..
Of course, this thought of the possibility of finding diamonds made everyone watch the ground a lot when we were walking anywhere. I can remember driving at night one time, when crossing a clay pan I could see bright sparkles in the headlights, and got really excited, that I’d discovered a way of finding diamonds! But every time I jumped out to get them, I lost the sparkle and could only find bits of gypsum. After much crawling around on hands and knees I realized that the sparkles came from the flat sides of the gypsum acting like mirrors, so it wasn’t diamonds after all…….
I heard about an old fella who had worked for DeBeers for many years, and slowly accrued a hoard of diamonds and hid them out in the desert. Then he retired and hired an aircraft to fly him in there to land on a clay pan and collect the diamonds. But the aircraft got stuck in soft ground and couldn’t take off again, so he ended up in prison for a long time, because such diamond theft is a serious crime in that country.
Speaking of diamond stories, along a gravel road somewhere in Rhodesia, I picked up a piece of quartz that looked very much like a large uncut diamond. Sometimes I used to show it in a pub, and the usual response was, “Diamonds should cut glass, so show us…” Then I’d cut a deep scratch in a beer glass, and then they really got excited! I could have sold that ‘diamond’ many times. Hardly anyone seemed to know that quartz is also harder than glass….
Namibia and Angola
When I finally left South Africa it was my intention to continue overland through Angola, Congo, etc and across the Sahara back to Europe – pretty ambitious, considering the political state of some of those places, but after my earlier experiences in the Congo and hearing other travellers’ stories, I knew that it was very often possible to get through such situations if you kept a low enough profile, and just appeared like a drifting confused hobo (which is what I was anyhow) rather than someone smart and important.
Early on this trip I had the longest wait for a lift I have ever had in hitch-hiking. It was at the bridge crossing the Orange River into South West Africa. I don’t remember how I got dropped there, but a road must have turned off there. Very, very hot – probably in the 40’s C. No shade at all. Water in a pool in the dry riverbed, but far below the bridge, so that if I went down to cool off I might miss the only car that day. Living on corn meal and sardines in tomato sauce. There was very little traffic, so it was amazing to see cars go by without even slowing down. Finally, on the third day, a big truck let me ride up on the load. What a relief to get out of there. Then the next ride was a long one in a big white air-conditioned Mercedes – what a contrast!
Finally got up the Angola border and they accepted my visa which I had got in Cape Town before starting out. It was a difficult visa to get, and included a check by Interpol (international police files) because a lot of rebel activity along that border and Portugal wanted to be sure I wasn’t involved. I didn’t see any such activity but lots of troops around. It’s a pretty isolated crossing so very little through traffic (pretty much none). A mission truck dropped me at the border, and then I started walking to the nearest town, about ten miles.
It’s very flat, low-lying country and there’d been lots of flood rains, so most of the way was under water; luckily sandy ground so no mud. But can you imagine wading knee-deep for mile after mile after mile? It’s exhausting, having to drag your feet through the water, and stumble into holes you can’t see, and almost no place to sit and rest. I found the best way was to wrap my pack in the ground sheet so it would float, and tow it behind me. The few ‘islands’ of higher ground were very welcome, but were also welcome to all sorts of other creatures including lots of snakes.
Next day I did get to the town, tired and sore, only to find that all the other roads from the town were also under water. The only way out was to fly, so I reluctantly booked on the next flight to higher ground, in 5 days’ time. Five days is a long time to spend in a little outpost town like that, where the language is Portuguese and entertainments none. Then, on the morning of the flight I was woken by the roar of the airplane engines as it took off – I’d missed the flight and the next would be one week away! So, with the wet season already started early, and probably more to come ahead, it seemed like a good idea to turn back while I could. So, I started to wade back to the border, and to my surprise and delight, along came a vehicle. It was a German coffee planter driving a small Land Rover, loaded up with lots of gear plus a couple of fuel drums plus a couple of native helpers. So, the poor little vehicle was grossly overloaded as we ploughed through the water, lurching through the unseen holes under the water. Turned out the starter motor didn’t work at all and that’s partly why he had the helpers, but if it had stalled in one of those holes there would be no way they could push hard enough to get started again – just as well it was a diesel, and a brave little machine to boot.
When we got into South West Africa we had to go through the Etosha Game park. He was in a hurry to get south, so he ignored the rule that said we mustn’t be on the road at night. It was just getting dark and we were siphoning some fuel from the drums when a park ranger drove up. He insisted we go back to the park headquarters for the night, due to the danger from lions, and escorted us there.
This the old Fort Namutoni, built by the Germans before WW1 when they colonized the country, then named, German South-West Africa.
Now it’s used as headquarters for Etosha National Park.
The German agreed to stay in the tourist lodge they had there, but I couldn’t afford that. The ranger was a bit annoyed but said I could stay in the high-fenced campground nearby. He drove me over there in the dark, and I noticed that the gate was wide open because this was past tourist season and no one else around. He closed the gate behind me, then I floundered around in the dark looking for nice soft ground to camp on. No sooner had I crawled into the sleeping bag when there was the roar of a lion, and a stampede of heavy hooves that fairly shook the ground. They went by so close that the dust and their smell wafted over me. Then there was a roar on the other side of me and a herd thundered by on that side. At that stage I wasn’t so much worried about the lions, but rather by being trampled by those hooves. That went on most of the night, and I was beginning to think that maybe all these animals were already in here when he closed the gate! It was another long sleepless night, but finally it got light enough to see the situation. In the dark I’d wandered right into the very corner of the fenced enclosure, so that the herds were running right along the fence just a few feet away on two sides of me, but in the dark it sounded like all round me! Turned out that hundreds of zebra lived around there, and lions regularly killed near here. Another night to remember.
A bit disappointed at having to turn back, but good move I think. Decided to go and have a look at Victoria Falls instead, and unable to get a permit to go through Bechuanaland (now Botswana), so had to hitch all the way south around Botswana and up through Johannesburg etc. That’s pretty barren and remote country, but mostly long rides, so can really cover some miles.
All the way to Victoria Falls and back again to Jo’burg.
Met up with a couple of friends from Cape Town who had a car, and headed for Kruger Game Park, so went along. A pathetic little British Hilman Imp that really struggled on those long, hot roads…. That’s a fantastic game park.
We were lucky to see this lioness kill an antelope right in front of the car; she’d been using the car for cover to get close for the kill.
This the lioness that made the kill.
Then a big male loin came over and took the kill away from her, and she had to go hunting for another….
This is the male lion that stole the kill.
Headed Home
But I’d already been away from Canada for nearly three years, and it was now coming into spring there, so time to go home.
So, hitched to Lourenco Marques in Mozambique to catch a cheap charter flight to Paris. We landed for fuel in the middle of the night at Brazzaville in tropical Africa, and when stepping out of the air-conditioned plane, the warm humid air with odours of tropical flowers and garbage was a real blast…. The dunes of the Sahara Desert were spectacular in the early morning light, and I regretted not being able to cross it on the ground, but you just can’t get everywhere.
Landed at Paris. I hadn’t liked Paris when I’d been there in November a couple of years ago, but this being ‘April in Paris’, thought I’d give it another chance…. Chose a street café and sat down to watch the passing show, and ordered a Coke. The waiter tried to charge me the equivalent of $3, which was an awful of money in 1965, when I travelled for about $2 a day total…. He had spoken English when I ordered, but when I protested he pretended not to understand, and was as rude as only a Parisian can be…. So, I went to the nearest railway station and caught a train to Germany. hitched around Germany, then across the Channel and on to Scotland.
From Glasgow got a really cheap (£58) charter flight via Iceland to New York.
Then a Greyhound bus to Niagara Falls where I crossed the border back into Canada. And then it was an easy hitch along the Trans-Canada Highway back to where I had started three years ago.
May 1965.
I’d covered a lot of ground – 37 countries – and had many great adventures!
From Europe to Ceylon 7,660 miles 93 rides
From Kenya to S. Africa 5,760 miles 92 rides
Around South Africa 16,000 miles 138 rides
Totals 29,420 miles 323 rides
Go to next Chapter 4
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