MARK

Leg 2  started with the typical African bang.  Just outside of Cape Town the cops stopped us.  Our vehicle, we were told, had been ticketed several months ago for document failure.   Although all  docs are now in order, a trip to the closest police station/magistrate’s office is required so that the “OK” can be entered in the country’s computer system and we can avoid further stops along the route.  A mere two hours later and the problem is fixed.   No one is bribed, everyone is pleasant and alert,  the computers work and the office is air- conditioned. 

We’re not in West Africa anymore!

The roads are well-paved with painted, bright- white divider lines.   There are gas stations with gas, and surprise!  convenience stores with lots of food and clean bathrooms that flush.  As we travel along South Africa’s western coast the wind is hot, the temperature even hotter, above 105 degrees, and the landscape is barren desert, reminiscent of the Sinai Peninsula.   We are parched, soaking wet from perspiration and tired from near-dehydration.  There is no water tank on this truck but we can buy ice cold drinks (YES!  ice cold drinks!)  at every pit stop.   We drink as if we have been wandering in the Sahara for days. 

But the biggest surprise so far, this Leg, was the appearance of Mark from Connecticut.   The Leg 1 group talked quite a bit about him.   With a severely deformed and useless left hand and right foot, Mark had been part of the Leg 1 group that had started in January in Doula, Cameroon.   He never made it though to Accra, Ghana, where I  joined.   Apparently he had been stalking Alice, a fellow passenger, for quite some time.  According to the group, Alice first tried ignoring, and then strenuously rejecting his advances.   When that didn’t work the group leaders gave Mark several lectures, then stern warnings, but he persisted to an intolerable point.  With the blessing of the main office in the UK, he was summarily dismissed from the trip and left somewhere in Togo to make his own way home …… or wherever.   He had been variously described by the West Africa group as “weird, ” or by the more generous among them as, “nice, but weird.”  He slept in the truck, not in a tent, kept mostly to himself, didn/'t  share, and failed to help, even when he could, with the considerable amount of work that was required – food shopping, preparing, cleaning, lifting, etc., to summarize just a few of the descriptions I heard.

The new, Leg 2 group met at 6pm sharp in Cape Town for a pre-departure briefing.   There were only 11 of us:   Mark, the Constable from the UK;  John, the  Continental pilot from Missouri, now living in Guam;  3 Norwegian girls, newlyweds from Sydney; and Margaret, also from the UK.   The 11^th person arrived late, halfway through the meeting. 

I knew it was him as soon as he entered the room.    His left arm and right foot were cruelly palsied and he was a little “off.”     But how could the company, I thought, banish him from one trip, only to allow him to rebook a new trip, in a new country, with a new group, just 7 weeks later?   Where had he been for the past 2 months?   How had he survived Africa, with his significant handicap?   Did the new group leader know his history?

I would have to wait to know the answers.

Meanwhile, as we made our way north, crossing the border from South Africa into Namibia was not uneventful. 

Namibia, which means, "vast dry plain," and  previously “owned” by South Africa, became independent only in the 1990’s, and, particularly in the south, benefited from the white Afrikaan and German settlers that had previously ruled and continue to live here.

The border crossing was surprisingly neat and organized.   The post was large, clean, paved and air-conditioned.  Order, not chaos, reigned.

 Could this be Africa, I wondered?

Just as we were approaching Immigration, we suddenly realized that Yosy may have a problem entering the country and stopped short in our tracks.

When Yosy tried to use his American passport to check-in for his flight out of JFK, he was told that he wouldn’t be allowed to board for 2 reasons:  (1)  The American Express credit card used for purchasing the ticket did not match the American Express credit card he presented at check-in, and, as if that wasn’t enough, (2) his passport had only 1 blank page remaining, not the internationally required 3 blank pages for posting entry visa stamps.  I explained (via cell phone) to the ticketing agent that the credit card did not match because the one used for the purchase had since expired.  Problem 1 eliminated immediately.  Thankfully, Yosy had his Israeli passport with him, with all its beautiful empty pages, and used that to  exit the US and then enter South Africa    

Now that we were entering Namibia a similiar problem arose.   If Yosy used his American passport, the preferred identity because Americans do not need a visa, he risked being denied entry because it lacked the 3 blank pages.  If he presented himself as an Israeli, a visa, which he did not have, was required.  Either way there was a very high risk that he would not be allowed to cross the border and would have to leave the trip and return to Cape Town, only three days into the 22-day journey.   And, that meant that I too, would have to forget about Namibia, which like Mali, was the main reason for coming here.

What to do?

Back in Cape Town, and immediately after our orientation meeting, I asked to speak privately to our trip leader, “MJ,” a Kenyan with 9 years of leading groups for the company.   “Yes,” he said.    The company had phoned him only the night before to advise  that Mark had been dismissed from the West Africa trip, but he was not told why.   I filled him in as best I could, and we both agreed that everyone is entitled to a second chance; that I would not tell the other travelers; and that we would keep a close eye on his interaction with the 3 young Norwegian girls.

Mark, in the meantime, didn’t even try to pitch his tent the first night out – it was clearly too difficult for him – but he refused all offers of help.    He asked MJ if he could sleep on the truck, as he had in West Africa.  While he was showering, and without his consent,  Yosy and I set up his tent.   Without acknowledging what we had done, he happily went to bed in his tent, and slept, he said, “like a lamb.”

Meanwhile, back at the Namib border, we decided to tell the truth – sort of.

We first gave Immigration the Israeli passport.    They noticed immediately that there was no visa and explained that none could be obtained there, at the border.   Yosy would have to return to Cape Town and request, and then wait for a Namibian entry visa from there.  We then whipped out the American passport, with its measly one blank page.   Miracle of miracles!   Without a bribe, within the blink of an eye, the passport was stamped and Yosy was in.  

Mark knows that I know about his booting in West Africa.   We've learned not to offer him help.   We just do whatever needs doing.   He pretends that he doesn’t notice us helping, and we pretend that we are not.   We’ve been taking turns pitching his tent and he has slept in it since leaving Cape Town almost a week ago.  So far, he’s been “nice but weird” and is keeping his distance from the Norwegians.

He told me that when he left the first group in Togo, he met up with some other travelers, and actually made his way to the Mali Meccas of Timbouctu, Djenne and the Dogon country, despite the warnings of tourist kidnappings and murder.  He seems to have fared far better than I, disabilities and all.  Unlike me, he completed his Leg 1, as he had planned, alone and relatively unscathed and in one piece.

No one else (except Yosy) knows about his personal debacle and humiliation in West Africa.   We’ll keep it a secret and hope for the best.

      

 

THE END.........and the beginning

Dakar, our last stop, is perfectly situated on a beautiful, rocky stretch of the Atlantic coast, and in fact, contains the westernmost point of Africa – that part of the continent closest to the U.S.  It’s a typically noisy, hectic, crowded, dirty African city, but it’s a city that is obviously on the move.   New construction, gorgeous high-rises, 5-star hotels and waterfront condos and villas were everywhere to be seen.  While police were expertly conducting traffic along the narrow streets, Muslim crowds kneeled en masse, by the hundreds,  outside the Grand Mosque, taking over the streets and walkways of the central city to chant their Friday afternoon prayers.  Pickpockets too, were out in force, trying to pick the pockets of no less than 8 of the members of our group.   (They were not successful.)  

We took a clean, efficient, leak-free ferry to Ile de Goree, an island 20 minutes offshore, where captured Africans were held before being shipped off to slavery in the Americas - a fitting way to end the trip in much the same way we had begun it nearly 7  weeks ago in Ghana.   The guide at the prison explained that perhaps one reason that there are so many talented black athletes in America is because only the tallest, strongest, fastest, healthiest slaves were purchased at the slave auctions of Africa and survived the journey across the sea.   The Island was gorgeous, peaceful, and a relaxing, smog-free escape from the commotion of the city.

Dakar is also the capital of Afro beat music and those of us who have not yet left the city for home or further journeys spent the night at one of the well-known open-air clubs.  The music was fantastic, but I was way too tired to dance.   I left at midnight to pack and get a few hours sleep.   I was leaving at 4 am for my flight to Cape Town, the restorative interlude between Legs 1 & 2 of this African voyage.

BEAUTIFUL ST. LOUIS

St. Louis – the next to last stop on the trip – was the first French settlement in all of Africa and sits on Senegal’s Barbary Coast.   Like its counterpart in Paris, the city is an island situated in the middle of the Senegal River just before it empties into the Atlantic.  A bridge that connects the island to the mainland was designed by none other than Eiffel and, rather than open like a US draw bridge to permit boat passage, the center portion swivels out.  A second bridge, on the far side of the island, connects to a long peninsula, more like a sandbar really, that extends to the Mauritania border, only a few miles north.   Life on this stretch of barren land looks like a scene from The Pirates of Penzance.  The face of every man – and woman – in Africa, from Saharan Tuaregs and Muslim nomads to Nigerian traders, roam the streets while brightly colored ships, crowd  the shoreline.  Given its location at the edge of the Sahel, the streets are nothing but sand.

We took a 20-minute boat ride to the Island from our campsite.   Little did we know that 5 minutes into the ride we would need to use the three previously prepared and neatly hidden buckets (plastic containers with their tops cut-off) to bale out the water that was already soaking our shoes.  Of course, this being Africa, one of the makeshift pails also had a hole, so we needed to stick a finger in the bottom as we worked to keep the boat afloat.

Although run down and shabby, St. Louis is a beautiful colonial town, with lots of colorful, but fading, grand buildings.  We walked from the northern to southern ends of the Island in less than 15 minutes and from east to west in under 5. 

We had our last formal dinner as a group back at the campsite, at the edge of a deserted stretch of the Atlantic, under darkness of night and a sky full of stars.   The heat has broken and its much cooler now – both day and night. 

The trip is winding down – only one more day to go.  

I’m not quite sure how I will remember it.  Physically demanding and exhausting or blissfully simple and free from the shackles of modern life?  Maddeningly slow and bureaucratic, or a quaint throw-back to uncomplicated times?  An enjoyable overland journey or a tedious road trip?  Whatever patina time will paint, the shades of excess and deprivation, human resiliency, and the fragility of life sandwiched between  the Sahara and the equator will surely be part of the palette.

THE GROUP

While I’ve written fairly extensively about  life on the road – the lack of water, working toilets, food, shade from the sun -  I’ve said nothing about the group of which I am a part, a group that self selected to randomly coalesce for 35 days, while living and breathing as one, 24/7, in a land of little else but comraderie.

Without exception, my travel companions are hard-core explorers, not tourists, having stacked up an impressive list of countries visited and adventures survived.     I know this because one way we pass the time on days of many miles is to compete with our personal travel list. 

 According to the United Nations, there are 194 countries in the world.  Phil, from Australia, downloaded the list of recognized nations before he left home months and months ago, and each person has gone through the list checking off those countries visited (honor system strictly enforced!).  Airport layovers don’t count – both feet and all ten toes must have touched ground outside a terminal, and customs cleared.   Derek, a dairy farmer from New Zealand, is in the lead with 120 countries visited, but he is 62 years old.   Dave, a Scot, at only 29, has 35 countries on his list   I argued fiercely and successfully that Syria and Lebanon be included in my list since the Golan Heights, which straddles both countries, is merely occupied by Israel, not annexed, bringing my total to 69.  As the truck crosses each border there is always someone celebrating his entry into Country #50, or #75, and a big “WhooHoo!”  rings out from the truck. 

In addition to the 2 English group leaders, there are 16 others - an even number of UK and Australians, a pair of Scots, a Dutch girl, the New Zealand farmer, an American from Chicago and his male lover, a Brazilian, both now living in Sao Paulo.  .  There are two 70-year-olds, a few 50+ ‘s, with the rest between 35 and 40.  Sarah (age: 32, UK) is a UN employee who has been working in both the Sudan and Sri Lanka.   Paul (about 40; Australia) is a travel insurance exec.  Sebastian, about the same age (UK), is an HSBC banker.   There are a couple of   IT experts, and an international playboy (the gay guy from Brazil), nicknamed “Rambo” by his city’s newspapers.  About half the group started in January in Douala, Cameroon, traveling to Togo, Benin, and  Nigeria before meeting up with the rest of us in Accra.   Some are flying from Dakar, at the end of our trip, to Istanbul to travel across the former Soviet Union and Asia.   Some are staying in Senegal to do volunteer work.  Another will be traveling from Nairobi to Zambia.   I, of course, will be flying to Cape Town and continuing north to Zimbabwe.

Dave, the Scot, cut his hand in Ouagadougou, (Burkina Faso) and was taken to the hospital for 3 stitches, which were later removed in Bamako (Mali). His hand got even more scratched when, after a night of drinking, he couldn’t find his way back to the hotel at 4 am, and climbed fences and bushes, only to discover the hotel was only two blocks from whence he had started the evening.   Margaret from the UK,  (but living in Canada) had her camera stolen in Douala.   The Dutch girl was almost arrested in Bobo for photographing a mosque without a permit (cost:  $2), and Stephanie (Australia) found a centipede in her tent.   Steve and Sebastian (both from the UK) were very  sick for 2-3 days, and the lens on my camera shattered on some stairs I was climbing back in Burkina.  There’s the very proper, quintessential Englishman (Ian; 73 countries visited), who is, I am convinced, ADD, and makes me laugh with his silly comments in the Queen’s most high-brow, proper English.   His father was known throughout the UK as THE most famous cricket announcer in radio history .  Derek, the New Zealand farmer, has been on 37 overland trips with this company.   Lucy (UK, age 32) lost her boyfriend just last year when he died beside her in bed, from “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.”  Simone (40) is an Australian phys ed teacher who started a twice annual volunteer program for her students building, maintaining and teaching at a school in Guatemala she visited 5 years ago while on vacation. Debbie, an Aussie, teaches English in Hong Kong and Phil, after cashing in his options at his investment company, is determined to visit as many countries as he can before he rests – he only has about 100 to go. 

Margaret, the only other vegetarian, (age 70;  63 countries), was removed from her food group for excessive nagging, and was made “Hygiene Queen,” a job she enforces with zeal.  She won’t let anyone on the truck without first spraying his hands with disinfectant, regularly inspects the frig for leakage, and harasses us about cleanliness and decontamination, a necessary evil.

As I write this, the two gay guys from Brazil, and my personal favorites, have just announced that tomorrow, with about 10 days of the trip left to go, they will be leaving the group to return home.   They can’t take it anymore.   Too much self denial and hardship.   They’ve had it.   They will be taking a private car to Dakar and then flying back to Sao Paulo, together with all the masks, carvings and other African knick-knacks that they bought.