DANTE'S INFERNO

Bobo Dioulasso and Ouagadougou, (pronounced “Waga – doogoo), and known locally as “Bobo” and “Ouaga” respectively, are to Burkina Faso what Minneapolis-St. Paul are to Minnesota.   Well, almost.

According to the United Nations, Burkina, its shortened term, is the 3^rd poorest country in the world.     Ouaga , the capital, is about 85 km  north of Bobo,  the country’s second largest city.   "Burkina Faso" in the  local tribal  langugage means dignity-nobility-integrity and homeland, and is translated as “Land of the Honorable.”   The Rough Guide travel book writes that  “few countries are as unlucky as Burkina. . . . It is desperately and famously poor, with an almost total lack of  raw materials or natural resources.”    To add to its misery, it is also landlocked.  

It has mostly lived up to its reputation.

The tree-lined streets and colonial buildings (in varying states of extreme disrepair), afro-beat nightclubs and fresh-baked pastries from its many patisseries, make central Bobo a magnet for travelers and ex-pats.   But the veneer, in my opinion, is marred by the reality I experienced.   Life for the locals seems incredibly desperate and sadder than in many African cities I’ve visited thus far.

Young boys wandered the streets carrying old, empty, rusted tin cans of coffee, begging for money.   We later learned that the schools require them to spend a portion of their day accosting locals and tourists alike for donations to pay for their education.  Without the requisite quota, education is denied.

Hawkers followed us everywhere waving trinkets in our faces, pleading with us to buy their hand-made dolls, bead-necklaces and small bags of water.   One woman tried desperately to sell the 3 strawberries in her hand. 

But it was the Old Quarter that made my heart break.

Only viewable by paying a guide a negotiated $2, our 13-year old fearless leader, clearly a member of the local mafia who controlled this section of town, did his best to present the place in the best light possible.   But even he could not disguise what my eyes and ears were telling me.

Imagine a shantytown of lean-to’s made of mud brick, hot as hell with nary a tree or blade of grass in sight, no place to shelter one’s head from the blazing sun.    No sidewalks, no roads, only bone-dry hardened dirt and mud between the crowded houses.   No running water, electricity, or sewers, trash littered the streets. There was only one small, locked classroom in the Quarter’s school, code-named  “Paradise,” by officials in a miserable attempt to fool the locals.  Beggars, both old and young, wandered about, some obviously insane, talking to whomever would listen – as well as those who would not.  We’ve seen quite a lot of young children with hernias in Burkina.   These hernia are recognizable as large, long, pointed growths protruding outward several inches from near the belly button.    We were told that the hernia are created by incorrectly tying or cutting the umbilical cords at birth.    As long as the hernia did not rupture, the child would merely be deformed.   But if it did rupture, death would surely result.  Women, with babies on their backs, and babies on their hips, were pounding the cassava (manioc) into maize, while making millet beer on stoves that increased the intensity of the already oppressive heat to temperatures that can only be known in hell.  Unemployed men sat on corners with nothing to do and no hope of ever finding work.  But perhaps the most depressing sight was the “Sacred Fish River.”  Polluted with sewage, plastic bags, rotted fruits and vegetables and the trash of life, gold fish in the river were fed chickens by the residents in honor of their religion and were the size of small dogs.  While the women attempted to clean the family’s clothes in this filth, children washed and splashed about.

Residents tried their best to survive in this misery.  The hardened dirt ground in front of each hut is meticulously swept clean on a daily basis.   I saw two girls sitting on a 2 x 4  in front of a makeshift blackboard,  learning math from a third girl, not much older than themselves. While residents do their best to keep their homes and bodies clean  and  teach basic math and reading to their young, only the government can rid the public areas of massive mounds of trash, install water and sewer lines, traffic lights and walkways, and provide for the old, infirme, insane and lonely.  This government, as in most of Africa, is nowhere in sight.

I am not a good-enough writer to adequately describe the wretchedness of Bobo’s Old Quarter, but suffice it to say that I am still, three days later, haunted by it.  It was a trip to hell.

Ouaga, though, in my opinion, (which happens to be contrary to that of most other travelers), is Bobo’s better- half.   A typical African capital, there are lots of old cars and motorcycles spewing polluted fumes, streets lined with vendors and (relatively) many Europeans and other westerners working in Embassies and businesses throughout the city.   The vibe here is much more upbeat.  There are street lights at some intersections (“Pedestrian Beware” at others), several large modern buildings and sewer-lined walkways covered with blocks of cements placed in such a way that if one is not careful a foot can get caught in the spaces between the blocks.  But hey, at least there are sewers.  There is the requisite Grand Mosque and a large, modern supermarket.  We had dinner last night in a quiet, hidden garden restaurant run by nuns who also serve the food, and who, at exactly 9:30 pm, sing the “Ave Maria.”

Most of West Africa is French-speaking, so I am managing quite well here.

Tomorrow we begin our 4-day ride to the Mali border.

  

THE STRANGEST THINGS

African ingenuity in creating the semblance of a modern life amid physical hardship, scarcity of resources, and extreme poverty; in making do with next to nothing; in building buildings and roads, feeding hungry families, fending off or tending to animals and earning a measly, but difficult to obtain, $600 per year, penny by penny, so that simple necessities, such as medicine or school books, can be bought, proves that necessity is the mother of invention and that the Africans are world-class inventors.

Almost everything here is either made by hand from nature or has been modified from  used or defective items cast-off by the western world. 

Some examples of African resourcefulness and the oddest things I’ve seen so far: 

1. WATER:   Municipal water supply systems are non-existent outside of, and are extremely limited, in large cities.  Those campgrounds or hotels we’ve stayed in must therefore gerryrig their own systems with the use of a generator that huffs and puffs, wheezes and growls when operating (and then just for a few hours, which hours are never announced in advance).  Moreover, faucets do not extend far enough into the sink from their perch on the sink’s ledge.  Perhaps the undersized spout is European, while the sink is American oversized for the hardware chosen.   In any event, half the water from the spout empties into the drain, while the other half splays all over the sink edge onto the floor and feet.  When the toilet is flushed, the shower may inexplicably turn on.   When the shower is turned on, the faucet may leak.  Hot water, if available, only runs in the tiniest of trickles. A cold glass of water is only a dream.

2. CARS:  Just about all cars are old – really old.   Thirty to 40 years old and recycled from the junk piles of America or Japan.  They have been refurbished, rebuilt, and gerry-rigged decade after decade, owner by owner.  Taxi passengers are squeezed into vans stripped bare and modified with wooden bench seats arranged in a rectangle along the interior walls.   There may be no doors on the vehicle, missing floorboards, and/ or holes in the roof.  The vans may slow down along the route, but they never stop, as passengers jump on and off at will.   They are squeezed into these death traps like sardines with no room to even turn one’s head.  Only the most nimble can ride in them.  “Private” taxis, converted cars with no sign that they are meant for pubic transport, (only the cruising driver, asking if we need a ride, is evidence of its public nature) are rusted and dented;   upholstery, when it exists, is ripped to shreds, the radio slot is an empty hole, as is much of the dashboard.  The windshield is often cracked and the manual window handles are either broken or missing.   One night we were 7 plus the driver in a taxi meant for no more than 4, when we were stopped at one of the ubiquitous “traffic controls” along every roadway.  Although we were overcrowded and the vehicle was extremely low to the ground, the policeman was only interested in knowing whether the blinker worked.  Never mind the almost floorless interior and lack of seatbelts..   Although it passed the blinker inspection, a  $2 bribe got us back on the road.

3. BORDER CROSSINGS:  All frontiers crossed thus far are indicated by nothing more than a wooden or mudbrick lean-to, aslant in the middle of nowhere, with a horizontal red & white striped metal rail extending across the road, anchored on either side by two vertical poles extending up from inside large metal oil drums, also painted in red and white stripe.   Once the coveted entry stamp is made by the lone immigration officer, another sleepy African official gets up from his nest below the nearest tree, walks over to the rail and manually lifts it so that the vehicle can pass. When we crossed into The Gambia yesterday, great fanfare was made at the lonesome post.  An obviously well-fed border policeman in full regalia – starched blue uniform, rifle and bullet-proof vest - boarded the truck, inspected the vehicle’s documents and read every passport, before he gave his ok to continue.   We were sure it was his only official act in days.   Our crossing from Mali into Senegal was the definition of bedlam amid anarchy.    A convoy of large trucks carrying goods into Mali was backed up for at least a mile.  The trucks were using both lanes of the 2-lane highway to go east.   Those of us traveling west into Senegal could not get through.  It was the Romans facing Attila the Hun on the battlefield, colliding as the armies charged toward eachother creating utter chaos in the hand-to-hand combat upon meeting.   Some passengers abandoned their cars, leaving their drivers to man the steering wheels and walked the kilometer or more to reach the border patrol for the entry stamp, returning to their vehicles only to find that they had advanced forward imperceptibly.  Each vehicle was battling the next for forward motion.   The Senegal River swirled below as the mass of metal and tires convoluted itself into a twisted, intertwined mishmash of confusion made the worse by the oppressive heat from which there was no escape.  I walked over to the border patrol police and asked him to please direct the traffic so that we could get through.   Quite to my surprise, he made some hand motions and extracted us from the mess.   We were on the other side!

4. FOOD:  Shopping for food was extremely traumatic at first but I have since become accustomed to scouring the markets of small villages teeming with people and the smelly, open stalls of rotting and still breathing fish, slabs of meat awaiting chopping in the hot sun,  wrinkled peppers the size of large cashews, and rotten bananas – and this is a description of the plentiful markets.   Most markets are very limited and may contain only tomatoes and cassava, or tomatoes and bananas (tomatoes, it seems, are quite plentiful).    One day the meat which was destined to become my cook group’s Bolognese, spoiled in the truck’s broken refrigerator.  The search for that night’s dinner was no easy task.  The sole market we passed that day contained only the smallest of  tomatoes and nothing else that was edible.    We opened cans of tuna from the truck’s emergency supply and made a salad using what little we had.  I am at this moment sitting in the restaurant of the Senegalese National Animal Preserve hungry for lunch.   The only thing on the menu is an omelet and French fries.  Bananas are the only desert.   As soon as I order I am told that it is ‘fini, Madame.”  A large group had just passed through and there is no more food.   Whenever we ask "What do you have to drink, or eat?" we get a long list of available items, "Coke, Fanta, Sprite, Beer, Juice," etc., "   "Ok," we say, I'll have a coke."   "Sorry," they inevitably respond.  "No coke."   As we go through the list, we discover that perhaps, only Sprite, or juice is available.   why did they simply not tell us that at the beginning?

5.  HEAT:    At round 11 a.m., the sun suddenly, in a seeming flash, becomes white hot, blinding, relentless, oppressive, and sears the brain.  All thinking and movement comes to a standstill in the 110+ heat.  There is nothing to do but seek shelter.   But there is no air conditioning;  no mall, no restaurant within which to find refuge, not even a single cloud.    The shadow of a lonely tree is often already filled with animals and people.   The never-ending search for shade takes on epic importance and I can only dream of an ice cold drink.   The female custom of carrying items on the head creates shade for the face and makes trips to the well and market only slightly more bearable in the blazing heat.  We do have a cooler on board for drinks which is filled with blocks of ice only on the rare occasion when it is available – usually from the local morgue.   We are reduced to grabbing a chip off the ice block to rub onto our sun bleached, red hot necks and chests – a/c the old-fashioned way – by earning it!

6.   ANIMALS:    We’ve seen a donkey being transported on a motorcycle, some goats on the top of a long-haul truck, apparent dinner, and today, as we crossed the Gambia River, we saw one of the strangest sights yet.  We were making the 3 minute crossing by ferry at a point where the river is not very wide – perhaps only 2,000 feet.  Someone needed to get his cow from one side of the river to the other and didn’t want to pay the ferry fee.   He put a rope around his cow’s neck and had it swim adjacent to his dug-out canoe.    He used the rope to keep the poor cow’s head above water so that it wouldn’t drown, while his friend paddled.  We stood on the far bank rooting for the cow and cheering her on.   Much to our surprise, the cow bounded out of the water as if it had been through no trauma at all, happy to have cooled off a bit.   She had evidently done this crossing before.

7.  ROADS:  African governments’ tradition of doing absolutely nothing for its people renders roads in West Africa less than ideal, barely passable really, more like foot paths of packed dirt and mud.  Like car commercials on television, the driver must slalom to and fro to navigate the large potholes, various road kill, cows, goats and the occasional rolled- over tractor-trailer.  A 150 mile trip took us 8 hours several days ago.  We saw scores of men digging a miles-long trench by hand, with only rudimentary tools, working like a chain gang, when one small bulldozer could have accomplished the same task in 1/10 the time.  One road was so narrow that we had to choose between closing the windows in the oppressive heat, or leaving them open and risk getting whacked in the face by tree branches and their leaves.  The roads are also notable for the arbitrary positioning of the frequent police checkpoints along the main road (and I use the singular here, because there is always just one main road per country).   The police stop vehicles at random and pretend to peruse vehicle and passenger document information.  Any small technicality is sometimes used to extract a “fine” from the driver.   Since the truck we are riding in is from the UK, the steering wheel is on the right.   The passenger reclining in the left front seat is often mistaken for a driver asleep at the wheel and the police board the truck to try and locate the steering wheel!  In The Gambia, the police board simply to welcome us and to chat – to find out where we are all from and to ask for a cold glass of water (which we don’t have).

8. THE SOCCER BALL:  Above our seats on the truck, in netted catch-alls, are storage bins for small items.  One passenger brought two blow-up soccer balls from home, both of which have lost most of their air to small holes.  Whenever we stop for gas or a market, children flock to the truck and talk to those sitting at the windows.  After only a minute or two, they inevitably spot the balls overhead, and beg for it.  One mother pleaded, “Please, give me the ball for my boy.”  They seem to want the ball more than they want food or money.  “The Rule” (see post entitled “Wahib and John”), prohibits us from giving it to them.   Which child among the scores outside the windows would get it?  If we simply tossed a ball outside, would they fight over it, with the strongest getting the prize?  We have yet to decide how to get the balls off the truck and into the hands of the kids, but we are determined to leave the balls in Africa.  

9. Some things we couldn’t help but notice:

1. Pubs with no beer;
2. Dartboards with no darts;
3. Waterholes with no water;
4. Markets with no food;
5. Bakeries with no bread;
6. Morgues with no ice;
7. World maps with no New Zealand;
8. Schools with no students;
9. National Parks with no animals;
10. WiFi with no internet;
11. Restaurants with no food;
12. Showers with no water;
13. Sockets with no light bulbs;
14. 3G with no access;
15. Cars with no seatbelts or doors;
16. ATM’s with no money;
17. Sun with no shade;
18. Sea view restaurants, with no sea view;
19. Sewers with no covers;
20. Police with no morals;
21. Merchants with no change;
22. Life with no hope.

THE OKAVANGA DELTA

Imagine that a continent’s major river, call it The Congo, starts at your shoulder (Angola).   As it descends your arm (“The Panhandle’) and spreads into your palm, its name changes to Kavanga (in Namibia) and finally Okavanga (in Botswana).   With no outlet to the sea, the river is swallowed by the sands of the Kalahari Desert as it branches out into your fingers, consumed by the thirsty air, and losing itself in a maze of lagoons, channels and islands.  That, in a non-pictorial nutshell, is the Okavanga Delta, the pride of landlocked Botswana, a nationally protected and uninhabited preserve and  major tourist Mecca for animal lovers, hunters, explorers, researchers and the otherwise just plain curious.

Roughly the size of Texas, Botswana is almost totally covered with scrub bush and savanna grasslands, which together facilitate vast migrations of wildlife rarely seen elsewhere on the continent. 

Botswana is also a political and economic success story, despite its notoriety as having the highest percentage (38%) of HIV infected population.  Shortly after gaining independence from colonial rule in 1966, one of the world’s three richest diamond-bearing formations was found here.   With the exception of South Africa, Botswana is the most economically and politically stable country in sub-Saharan Africa with high standards of education and health care.   But a frantic fight for alternative revenue is in high gear.   The mines are thought to contain only 35 years of diamond-supply. There is scant alternative mineral wealth and foreign investment is mostly limited to diamond mining.  Observers are worried about the country’s future.

Despite its standing as one of the best managed countries in Africa, it’s championship title compares it to a continent of misfits, madmen, kleptocrats and massive dysfunction.

Lest we forget, this is still Africa.

We headed west along the border where 4 countries – Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana meet and reached the river crossing that would take us to the tip of the Okavanga Delta’s Panhandle, to begin our descent into its heart.  It was the typical African ferry crossing.  Only one “ferry,” more like a cargo raft, makes the 5-minute crossing and is large enough for a single small bus and a jeep.   Passengers hung on to the ferry’s chains, the only barrier protecting them from the croc-infested water.  We landed with a clunk. The truck was either too high or the ferry too low.  The front fender and underbody slammed into the mound of dirt operating as an off-ramp.  No problem.  The Africans are ready for every eventuality that may happen on a regular basis.   The truck reversds onto the ferry, and two metal strips, purposely bent to imitate a dip, are placed by the passengers (one of whom burned his hand touching the metal which had been sitting in the sun for God-knows how long) in front of the truck, creating the height needed to exit the ferry.   We were on our way.

An hour later we reached our destination which was at the end of a sandy road in the middle of nowhere.  Waiting for us were our “Polers,” natives trained to steer the “mokoro”, a flat-bottomed dug-out that floats in as little as one foot of water.  We carried our considerable amount of stuff:  sleeping bags, cooking equipment, food, eating utensils, water jerrycans, etc., etc., etc., through the brush and sand, cow dung and cows, straining under the weight of our “essentials,” until we reached the water’s edge, where the mokoros were waiting – one for every two people.  Only one Poler and his long pole, a simple wood stick, pushed us along.  We were sitting low to the water.   There was only a thin sheet of wood that separated our bottoms from the water’s surface.  The 1 ½ hour boat voyage to our campsite was through a veritable wonderland of flora and fauna, void of the sound of human voice and punctuated intermittently by the  palpable grunt of hippos and singing birds. 

Despite its narrow and low –to- the- water construction, the mokoro was extremely stable, comfortable and dry.  Its pointy bow split the tall grasses before us effortlessly and silently, dividing reed and papyrus right down the middle as Moses parted the Red Sea, allowing us to gracefully glide forward.

Our campsite was a deserted island in the heart of the Delta.   Unfenced, at water’s edge, I was petrified to leave my tent to pee during the night.   Hippos, which have no sweat glands, remain in the water all day long, coming up for air every 5-7 minutes to breathe.  They graze on the river’s banks under cover of night.  If one gets between a hippo and the water he’s done for it.  Hippos are extremely aggressive in such situations and can charge with such ferocity and force that death to the interloper is almost certain.   I heard the hippos grunting all night.   Adding to the drama was the threat of hyenas lurking behind a bush and who knows what else.    I peed immediately behind our tent.

The next morning the mokoros took us further afield during a sunrise that lit the hundreds of white and lavendar lily pads and tall grasses with a glow of yellow and orange.  Suddenly I heard the telltale hippo grunt again – this time directly under the mokoro!    My heart stopped beating for a split second.   Will the nasty creature overturn our boat?  We were in only a very few feet of water.   I held on to my camera for dear life. Immediately we entered into an open lake-like area of the Delta where the hippos were cavorting.  The grunts I heard had traveled under water which had magnified the sound.  

We arrived at another island for a “nature walk.”  Our first sighting was an elephant.   Good thing our tracker/poler sighted him first.   He was agitated and not in a good mood. (the elephant, not our poler)  We backed off and crouched behind a bush until the elephant took off in the other direction.    The island was awash in zebra, monkey, oryx, warthog and other wildlife.   All of which we were able to observe fairly closely in full living color.

The trip back to “civilization,” in reverse, from isolated camp site to “big city,” was long – load our gear and ourselves off the island campsite and into the mokoros, and pole back to  middle of nowhere on the mainland, hike through the scrub and bush, loaded with stuff,  finally reaching the truck which was waiting for us in the same spot – under the shade of a lonely baobab tree. 

But the trip on the main road would prove to be even longer.

As we attempted to drive around a tree in the middle of the dirt road, we got bogged down in sand up to the middle of the back wheel.   The guys dug almost to the other side of the world to no avail.  Villagers appeared out of nowhere to watch the spectacle, as did some guy strolling down the road with a rifle laid horizontally across his shoulders, striding as if he owned the highway.   We flagged down a passing truck, and although it had no chain, it volunteered to wait as a villager ran back to get one.   He appeared, huffing and puffying some 15 minutes later with a rope – a rope!  A simple fiber cord. What was he thinking????  Another villager soon thereafter came to the rescue with a real, but flimsy metal chain.   After hooking the chain to the pulling truck, a passing army truck took its place in the back to push.   The cows were shooed away from the area, and with one giant heave - ho, a perfectly synchronized push from the back and pull from the front, the chain snapped.  Yosy took out his lucky thick nylon rope that he never leaves home without  - 5-star Paris hotel or an afternoon of cross-country skiing in the backyard - and, wrapping it around the broken chain and flimsy village cord, we tried again.   As the pushing truck and the pulling truck took their places, we counted down – 3-2-1.  One more heave-ho and we were out of the hole and on our way!  

Tomorrow we leave for Chobe, the second of Botswana’s major tourist havens, another animal preserve and home to a thousand elephants and other wildlife.   It will be the last 2 nights of camping before we finish the trip in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe and begin making our way back to New York.

I hope you’ll look at the photos which probably tell this story better than this entry.

TRAPPED IN THE GAMBIA!

Before I left the US, I obtained all the entry visas I knew I would need – Ghana, Mali and Burkina Faso.    Senegal does not require visas for US citizens and The Gambia was not on my radar.   It was added to the itinerary at the very last minute to compensate for the strong possibility that a large portion of Mali – the most important part of the trip – would be eliminated due to terrorism and kidnapping concerns.   I had no time to apply for the Gambia visa but knew that visas are routinely issued at border entries.   Everyone on the trip, I told myself, would need to get the visa in country.   We would all sink or swim together.  

I should have known better.   This is Africa.

The Gambia – and it is officially known as The Gambia, not the Gambia, or even Gambia, (and not to be confused with the Gambia River, which flows through it)- is the most bizarrely shaped country in Africa – perhaps in the world,   It  has peculiar road management policies and while its entry standards are quite relaxed, it is a stickler for the technically perfect exit, a conundrum for the traveler without a clue and a giant problem for someone in the undesirable position of having been unknowingly granted unauthorized entry who wants to get out.

Imagine a country as thin as a finger, beginning at Africa’s Atlantic coast and extending eastward, 2/3 through the center of another country – Senegal.   To get from northern to southern Senegal one must drive around the eastern edge of The Gambia, which slices Senegal almost in half.   The Gambia itself, only 25 miles wide, north to south, is composed mostly of the Gambia River, which dissects the narrow country in two, flowing eastward from the Atlantic.

I learned quickly enough that although Americans are required to have a visa to enter The Gambia, all of my travel companions, who hail from the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Holland, are exempt.   Only I would have to pray to the gods that the sentry on duty at the Gambia-Senegal border would grant me entry.  If he did not, I would have to leave the group and find a way to meet them at our final destination in Senegal. But where would I get a taxi?   The border is in the middle of nowhere with not even a donkey cart in sight. 

We arrived at the border just before closing – close to 5pm – a good time, we thought, to get waved through as the border guards surely were ready to close up shop and head home.  I nervously waited to know my fate.  After only a few minutes I got my entry stamp – good for 28 days.  We were in!   Because of its last minute addition to the itinerary, The Gambia was a new destination for the two group leaders.  They were as ignorant as we regarding its peculiarities.

.

We made our way west across the entire length of the country to Banjul, The Gambia’s capital, which sits on the Atlantic Ocean, and enjoyed two days of beach, reliable internet, plentiful (but cold) showers and good food.

Getting out was not as easy.

We needed to go north, up to Senegal, to reach our final destination, Dakar, also on the Atlantic coast and only about 75 miles north Banjul. 

But we were south of the Gambia River and the Senegalese border was on it’s other side.  There are only two places in all of The Gambia where the river can be crossed – by ferry as there are no bridges.  One of those crossing was in Banjul, not far from where we were staying.   The Lonely Planet cautions that trucks are often held up at the Banjul ferry crossing for 3 weeks.   We got there  early – about 6:30 am, a full 1 ½ hours before the ferry opened for business but we were not the first one’s there.   We were promised that we would cross on the second ferry going out.   We waited patiently in our place on line for the 9 am ferry.   As soon as it pulled into port, there was mass chaos as trucks and other vehicles jockeyed for position and in the frenzy blocked all movement.  The ferry workers wanted us to pay for our passage, but we were reluctant to give them any money without a guarantee that we would actually board.   We pulled out of line and headed east, the direction from which we had arrived,  halfway across the country inland to the only other river crossing.   The nightmare was only beginning.

There is only 1 road in The Gambia.  The Trans-Gambia Highway  which runs the east-west length of the narrow country.   Although it is 4-lanes wide, the road is completely, 100% unpaved and is a broad, red dirt boulevard of potholes the size of small craters, donkey and cow crossings, and the most inept, inefficient system of immigration, traffic and military controls I have ever witnessed.    An immigration post is stationed approximately every 20 miles, the purpose of which was never made clear to us.  Some immigration officials waved us on, but most forced us to stop in order to inspect documents.  It didn’t matter really which documents we produced – the  vehicle’s registration papers, personal drivers’ licenses, trip brochures, engine operation manuals –  the officials seemed to simply be seeking something to do; some entertainment to pass their very long days.   Most of the officers boarded the bus to chat – “where are you from?, “where are you going?, how do you like The Gambia?”   They were thrilled to report the latest UK soccer scores or inspect the interior of the strange- looking truck that we are traveling in.   Some officials though, apparently needed more distraction from their boredom.  Quite a few asked to review each and every one of the 18 passports on board.  Passengers were matched up with their pictures and visas were inspected.  When we explained at each stop that just 20 miles back we had already been through immigration control, we were told that we were now in a different jurisdiction and that these officials had responsibility for the new area we had entered.   When we asked for a document from the inspecting officials to carry to the next stop that would attest to our legal entry, we were told that that would be impossible – the inspecting official has no authority to issue such paper.

As if this wasn’t torture enough, there was a military or police stop within feet of every second immigration control post.  They too, were curious and bent on fulfilling their job descriptions with gusto.   Somewhere near the 25^th traffic control, when our driver was asked for the 24th time where he was from, he responded, as he had before that he was from the UK.  The inspecting officer did not understand his response and he asked again.   Frustrated, tired, hot and pissed-off, the driver responded, that he was from “England, you know, your former colonial master.”  Lucky for us, the official laughed.  We were put through he same inspection and Q & A routine, stop after stop, time and again, every hour, and it quickly began to wear on our nerves.  Would we reach nirvana – the other side of the narrow river, so easily swimmable; so near, yet so far, - before twilight when driving is no longer an option for safety reasons?

We reached the second ferry crossing but were turned back so that the truck could get weighed.   We got through the weighing station, and along with other trucks, buses, pick-ups, and cars, we were squeezed, shoved  and rammed onto the overcrowded raft.   It took only 5 minutes to cross to the other side, but it took 11 hours to cover the 185 mile trip to the ferry, an average of 17 miles per hour.

Once we finally hit terra firma on the north side of the river, we pulled to the side of the road and pitched our campsite, exhausted and infuriated at the waste of time and human resources.  We were only 10 miles from the border with Senegal where we could finally leave The Gambia behind.

In the morning, we were the first to show up at the border.   Yet again, Immigration (with a capital “I” this time) inspected our passports, the last stop before we would finally pass through  border control.  My entry “visa” as it turns out, which Gambian border officials had stamped into my passport 5 days previous, was not really a visa, but a "tourist stamp" and, I was told,  had been in the country illegally.  There was nothing the Immigration Chief could do.    I would have to proceed to the border and pray.   As I was walking out the door, dejected and almost in tears, he called me back.    “Wait,” he said.   I can issue a backdated entry visa which would indicate a legal entry.  The cost?   A mere $40, which he put directly into his pocket. 

“Almost there”, I thought! 

 But, no, this is Africa.

No ink in the stamp pad.

No working pen with which to sign.

I thought I would explode.   Maybe I should have waited to hand over the $40.

Within moments,  ink and a pen appeared from somewhere, and I was on my way, heading over the border into Senegal.    I was never so happy to leave a country before!

 

ZIM OR ZAM?

The long overland journey has finally ended.  We made it over the border and  to our last destination – Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. 

One of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, Victoria Falls  are fed by the Zambezi River which, after falling over the largest waterfall drop in the world, eventually empties into the Indian Ocean.

Last year we visited the Falls, which straddle both Zimbabwe and Zambia.  The big debate is where the view is better – Zim or Zam?   I can say that each viewpoint has its advantages, although the spray is so strong that we were sopping wet, through to our underwear, in both countries.     I wrote last year about our departure from the Zimbabwe airport.   Robert Mugabe, one of the world’s worst despots, turned what was formerly known as Rhodesia, into one of Africa’s worst basket cases of dysfunction and poverty, and created hyperinflation that exceeded one million per cent.  He has robbed the mineral-rich country blind and has socked away BILLIONS in private foreign bank accounts.   The country recently stopped printing trillion dollar notes and switched to the US dollar as its official currency.    The difference the changeover has made in just a year is stark.  Whereas last year the airport was dismally and barely lit and had nothing – absolutely nothing – no food, no drink, nothing in the shops - this year the tiny terminal was bursting with tourists and nourishment was plentiful, as we waited patiently to check in for our flight to Johannesburg.   And, the electricity worked!


Johannesburg is enormous, sprawling over a huge geographic area.   We rented a car in this left -side driving country.   Not a great idea.  Yosy lost his license (er, "misplaced" it . . . somewhere in the world), so I had to handle the LIE-rush-hour-type traffic from the airport to the hotel with the manual drive rental.   Not only is driving on the left, so is the stick gear, as well as the blinkers and the windshield washers - all is reversed.   Yosy was screaming at me the whole way, to "shut off the window shield washers," and to stop hugging the left curb.   It wasn't fun

But back in Zim, we had high tea at the gorgeous Victoria Falls Hotel, housed in a 1904 colonial building that sits high on a hill overlooking the narrow gorge and the Falls. The Hotel was the setting for the movie The African Queen, with Bogie & Bacall.   For dinner we tried smoked crocodile appetizer and medium-rare warthog.   I can highly recommend both.

While Jozi is not as stunningly beautiful as Cape Town (in fact, its not pretty at all), there seems to be a much greater mixing of the races here.   With a thriving black middle class, blacks are patrons and not just the employees of the shops and restaurants.  This city is bustling and very alive.   It feels more cosmopolitan and sophisticated. 

We spent hours yesterday at the incredible Apartheid Museum, which I can write pages  about, but will spare you, since we are about to leave for an (escorted) bike tour through Soweto, the largest black township in the country.   No Township in the world has as much historical and politcal resonance as Soweto.  Created in 1904 to move non-whites out of the city but close enough to provide workers, it is the birthplace of the uprising against apartheid and former home of two Nobel Prize winners (Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu).   

Tomorrow we fly home.   

NORTHERN NAMIBIA

Thirteen days of travel northward in Namibia and (other than the City of Swakopmund; pop: 20,000) we’ve seen three people.   Not a village, town or even a compound has crossed our path.   Where are all the Namibians?  Does anyone live here?

 It would take another few days before we bumped into the 2 million who call this place home.

In the meantime though, the scenery is spectacular.   Hundreds of kilometres of red sand desert or rocky wilderness.  Gorgeous rust-colored granite mountains or green valleys appear mirage-like, around a corner, lit up by the diffused sunlight of a foggy morning or  shrouded in ambiguity as stormy,  lightening-filled skies loom on the horizon.  It is the joining of the western and eastern thirds of the US; Big-Sky Montana, Utah and Nevada meet New England in the vast emptiness of the moon.

Namibia is not like the rest of Africa.   Tap water is potable.  Hot water, electricity and paved roads abound.  There are clean, well-lit and well-stocked supermarkets.  And unlike West Africa, the heat and frenzy of a desperate people are absent.

We drove along Namibia’s western shore, known as the Skeleton Coast for its treacherous shoreline.  According to the guidebook, early Portuguese sailors called it “As Areias do Inferno” (The Sands of Hell), as once a ship washed ashore, the fate of the crew was sealed.

Our first stop outside of Swakopmund was Cape Cross, home to thousands of seals sunning themselves and playing in the surf.  It smelled awful but it was so much fun to view the seals up close and personal – milking from their mothers’ breasts (what are seals’ breasts called anyway?), playing in the ocean and lazing on the sand beneath the boardwalk on which we walked, meandering among them.

We bush-camped at Spitzkoppe (“Pointy Head” in Afrikaans) and saw 6,000 year-old drawings painted in caves that sheltered the descendants of the original Man, and watched as both the sunrise and sunset transformed the valley into spectacular shades of orange, red, mint green and white.  (See photos at above link).

But the highlight so far was the visit with the San Bushmen including a night of camping in their village.  The San were the original inhabitants of Southern Africa.   Only 2,000 of the 30,000-member tribe remain in the bush,  hunting and gathering as they have for 300 hundred centuries – an astounding 30,000 years!.   The majority however are in transition.  This generation is the first to have moved permanently out of the bush, settling on land given to them by the government.  For them hunting is only done at the supermarket.   But the gathering of nuts, berries, medicinal plants, and beauty supplies is still practiced. 

We turned off the main road and drove along what can only be described as sand pathways which twisted and turned amongst the scrub, knee-high bushes and the occasional tree, traveling deep into their tribal past.  Arriving at last, we had our first encounter with aboriginal Namibians.

The main sources of income now for the San are government subsidies and tourism.  As we pitched our camp they changed from their “street” clothes into their bush costumes, transforming their village into a living museum, to teach us what it was like to have lived in the bush, completely dependent on hunting and gathering for survival.

 The San is a complex egalitarian society without hierarchy, and because they were never able to build up a surplus of food, full-time leaders and bureaucrats never emerged.  There were no aninals, crops or possessions; no ownership and no Chief.   While it has been noted in 17^th century literature that their lifestyle was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” recent ethnographic data has shown that “hunter-gatherers worked fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure time than members of industrial societies.” (Lonely Planet).

When the school bell clanged loudly at 7 am, children came running from all directions, darting barefoot in the sand and bush, scurrying between the donkeys and acacia trees to get to their classrooms before the bell stopped ringing.  We rose with them and spent almost 3 hours on foot learning about San traditions and their secrets of survival.   The San alphabet contains 4 different clicking sounds,  mesmerizing to hear – I could listen to them speak all day -  and extremely difficult to mimic (hopefully, the video at the above link will be audible enough to detect the clicks, clacks and snaps of their tongues and palates).    After dinner they entertained us with traditional song and dance and answered our multitude of questions with humor, patience and grace.  The night was cloudless and the southern sky was ablaze with stars; the Milky Way dazzled, undimmed by the bright lights of the faraway city.

The next day we were off to Etosha National Park, at 20,000 sq. kilometers it ranks among the world’s greatest wildlife preserves.  Its name, which means “Great White Place of Dry Water,” is taken from the greenish-white Etosha Pan, an immense, flat saline desert, and is home to a great diversity of wildlife, including lions, oryx, wildebeest, giraffes, zebras and rhinos, to name just a few of the animals we saw, some of which were crossing the dirt road we were driving on.  (No walking is allowed in the park – or even stopping to pee - way too dangerous to exit the vehicle.)

We are now in northernmost Namibia, on the banks of the Kavango river, which separates it from Angola, just a stone’s throw away.  Tomorrow we enter Botswana and the Okavango Delta, THE place to be in southern Africa, where we will canoe the delta for 2 days and nights.

Ex Africa semper aliquid novi: Out of Africa always something new (Pliny, The Elder)

My last full day in Africa turned out to be just about the best.

We spent 4 hours biking through Soweto today and felt completely comfortable and not at all threatened.   The Township, with between 4-6 million people, is vibrant and pulsates with energy and the lively beat of life.  Created in the the early 1900's to segregate blacks from the white community, it was built only 17 km from the center of Johannesburg so that cheap labor could commute to the nearby gold mines, white homes, and other businesses.  While there is extreme poverty in the “3^rd class” neighborhoods, the 1^st  &  2^nd class areas are clean, well-maintained, walkable and typical of many Saturday morning lower and middle-class suburbs all over America.

We drank homemade beer from a calabash in a shebeen (pub), had lunch in a local restaurant and visited Nelson Mandela’s house.  We walked Hector Pieterson Square, the birthplace of the anti-apartheid movement which began when Hector, age 13, was shot dead in 1976 while marching peacefully for the abolition of South Africa’s racist laws.   Desmond Tutu and Winnie Mandela, as well as many black South African musicians and other celebrities have chosen to continue to live in Soweto, rather abandon ship and move to “better” (i.e. white)  neighborhoods, a fact that is so very different from the reality of African-American stars, professionals and successful business owners,  who leave their childhood homes as soon as possible rather than stay and improve the ghettoes in which they grew up.  

We would have stayed longer and taken the night tour of the local shebeens, jazz clubs and other music venues, but its dinner at a fancy African restaurant and early to bed.   I have plans for us to drive to Pretoria, South Africa's capital, tomorrow, only 50 km away.   (Ssshhhh ...... don't tell Yosy).   We don't have to be at the airport for our flight home until 5pm.

Hector Pieterson, 1976, in arms of his friend)

Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno;

It is a photographer’s paradise, a hunter’s Valhalla, an escapist’s Utopia.

It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations.

It is the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a shiny new one.

 It is all these things but one thing – it is never dull.

                                                                                      - Beryl Markham