August 13th: Khartoum

On August 13th 1980 I was in Khartoum.  I was waiting for a flight south to start teaching, but had been marooned in the El Sharque Hotel for the three weeks since my previous entry. 

The River Nile:  My picture

It was the middle of the Eid festival marking the end of Ramadan and Khartoum was even more closed down than ever.  This day however I was able to get outside the city.   Two teacher friends were invited out for a picnic and I and three others went as well.  We drove out of the city to the riverside, through the suburbs into the country through citrus and mango orchards, said to be run as a prison farm.  It was a popular picnic spot with quite a number of people around, about 20kms upstream on the Blue Nile.  Nearby were brickworks and an enormous pump system and the African huts where the aragi (hootch) makers lived.  It was mainly a family affair, the family of one of the groups who came to pick us up; the women were beautiful and sat on a carpet in a corner but enjoyed the whole thing as well.  We drank beer and whisky.  I found space for a walk in the bush just to feel I was really in Africa and to look at any wildlife.  Later on the women began to sing and the whole thing really came together, at least for me, with clapping and dancing (it reminded me of Afghan dancing).  I talked with a group from Kadugli, one of whom was a waiter at one of the large hotels I visited.  We left at the height of the event, a good time to go, with copious farewells and an exhilarating return on the back of a Mazda pickup.

Tuti Island, 2009:  Picture by Petr Adam Dohnalek, CC

Tuti Island, lying in the Nile between the various parts of the wider city, was a good place to get away from the frustrations of the city and was best in the late afternoon.  It was really a village or a set of villages in the middle of the city.  On my first visit when I stepped off the little chain driven ferry, a man stopped me:  "How do you like Sudan?" he asked.  He spread his arms and continued, "it's the most undeveloped country in the world, just look."  I liked Tuti, the lemon orchards and little irrigated fields, and dark people living in little shacks.  As I walked back to the ferry another time, walking from the quiet edge of the river on the far side, I passed a number of nightjars flying along with their mouths open.  On the ferry there was a big delay with someone banging something in the engine room.  The boat got more and more crowded, and the women segregated themselves and made me move to sit on the baskets carrying lemons to the city.  There must have been several hundred people on board, as well as a few donkeys.  After an hour or so we left but in midstream there was an almighty crash, and the water level rose alarmingly close to the deck at the front; I think no one got swept away, but one or two were severely soaked.  We broke away from the chains and the men started jumping up and down and shouting while the women set up a huge wail and we began to drift down the river in the direction of Cairo.  Finally we pulled up near the bank somewhere close to the Hilton and scrambled across a piece of piping to reach the shore. 

As the Eid had approached the city had become a little more lively as preparations were made for the feast.  In the arcades in the centre of town they were selling sheep and happy purchasers were leading them away or putting them in their pickups.  At the hotel they were cutting up a lot of meat and giving the cats a field day with scraps.  The Eid, however, was not good news for the cats, of which there must have been fifty living at the hotel; they wanted to clean the place up and set up a restaurant in the courtyard and to this end they shot every cat with an airgun and then laid out the tables.  The obnoxious young Syrian manager made an effort to get rid of the teachers, but he was outwitted because some of our number had been entertained at the Syrian Club by one of the brothers who owned the hotel.

One day I went to the railway station to see off some teachers who were going to Kadugli in Southern Kordofan.  In my boredom I wished I could have got on the train with them; at any rate here there was a bit of the excitement of a railway station as the train pulled away, probably the only train on that day.   The main reason to be in Khartoum was to wait for a flight, but I was now working out the practicalities of taking the train to Wau or the Kosti steamer.  Most of the teachers departed, leaving only the ones going to the South.  Some latecomers arrived from London, got their postings and left, leaving the same people waiting in Khartoum.

After another two weeks of being stranded the word came that there was a flight to Wau in the morning.  I might finally be going to Rumbek.  I went out before it was light and came back with two taxis in five minutes.  Four of us teachers headed south and some well wishers all piled in with our luggage.  There was a long delay at the airport and then the flight was called and we got on the plane.  Looking down on the expanse of green before landing at Malakal, I realised it was all worthwhile.  And as I walked around Wau towards evening and sat in the Dinka souk with the blacksmiths, having chai, with cows behind against a background of green, I felt that six weeks of waiting in Khartoum might have been worthwhile.  

The Nile:  My picture

July 24th: Khartoum

On July 24th 1980 I was in Khartoum.  I was waiting to travel south to teach English in a secondary school.

A week before, I had lugged my massive amount of luggage to Denmark Hill Station in South London and from there to Victoria and on to Heathrow.  The check-in was a little piece of Africa.  You went past all the normal check-ins which had booths and orderly queues.  Sudan Airways, yes Sir, keep on through that door.  In an area cordoned off, there was chaos.  A large man in a robes stood in the middle with a sheaf of tickets in one hand and printed list in the other, while the customers milled around like a rugby scrum to see if he had their names.  There weren't any tickets for the teachers and it seemed the flight was overbooked.  Some returning teachers were even on standby, but Kevin from the Sudanese Cultural Centre turned up and everything fell into place. 

I had applied to be a teacher with the Sudanese Government and had been interviewed at the beginning of June.  I heard that I was going at the beginning of July and went for a couple of days training at Farnham Castle.  The training was divided between firstly tips on how to live in Sudan and how to stay healthy, and secondly some ideas on teaching from ELT experts.  There were some teachers from the previous year there to assist, but nothing was really relevant for Southern Sudan.  I got a letter a few days later with some leaving dates and luckily decided to take the earliest flight.

Khartoum:  My picture

By this stage in Khartoum, I had successfully negotiated to get to the South and knew that I would be going to Rumbek.  The main hassle now was to get the financial side sorted out.  This day I tried to take a  more positive stance against the bureaucracy.  At 8.30 we Southerners assembled at the Unity Bank, which operated in South Sudan, for a morning of opening bank accounts and dealing with ECR1s (the forms needed to convert Sudanese money into foreign currency).   I got more involved in these petty negotiations than I often did, maybe because I had the determination of innocence.  However something was achieved between the Ministry and the Unity Bank and the Bank of Sudan, and I think my presence was felt.  I felt positive about things.  I had virtually everything in place to be able to leave for the South.  Some teachers going to places close to Khartoum had actually left.  I had been given some spending money and I could see an ending to this period of waiting. 

They had put us up centrally in the El Sharque Hotel, The Shark, which was basically a cheap hotel: we shared rooms with running water and there were fans and a sort of rudimentary air-conditioning.  There were also massive cockroaches and the simple rooms were crowded with all our baggage for a year in Africa.  I had moved quickly to one of the rooms at the back which opened on to a courtyard and were quite quiet.

Omdurman:  My picture

Khartoum was hot, over 40° C each day, and dusty and occasionally humid.  It was Ramadan which made it harder to get food in the middle of the day; it also meant that smaller restaurants only opened briefly, or intermittently or not at all in the evening.  So the days tended to pass as follows:  mornings fighting the bureaucracy, lunchtime back at the hotel with fruit for lunch and then siesta during the hottest part of the day; in the evenings I often had a meal in one of the big hotels as I was trying to keep my weight up, sensing that I might have leaner times in the future; then it would be socialising, in the Athenée, an open air juice bar and cafe in a central square or drinking beer of one sort or another in one of the hotels.  There were occasional outings to Omdurman and I discovered Tuti Island in the middle of the Blue Nile which gave a feeling that you were actually in the country.  Occasionally it was pleasant to sit on the steps by the Blue Nile in the evening air and enjoy the spectacle of the huge flocks of queleas roosting near the Presidential Palace.  Basically there was nothing to do.  The nights were hot and sweaty and sleep was always difficult.

I made a point of getting to know my fellow teachers, who were a very mixed bunch.  Few of them had travelled much, one had never been out of Yorkshire, but people had very mixed reasons for being there.  I enjoyed hearing their stories and I tried to help and encourage some of the less experienced ones.  One unlucky young woman got polio very quickly and had to be shipped home in an iron lung.  Others got sick but nothing so serious.  One of my cohort lost all his money and belongings on the first day.  Some of the teachers already knew Africa, some had little idea what they were letting themselves in for.  I never understood the recruitment process, but I was glad to be there, with the prospect of living for the best part of a year in Southern Sudan.

There is a photo of the El Sharque, taken the year before I think, here.

 

Khartoum:  My picture

May 13th: Nairobi

On May 13th 1980 I was in Nairobi.

My last day in Nairobi, my last day on this journey.  I'd stayed previously in the Iqbal, the travellers' stand-by, but I wanted more privacy this time.  I chose the New Kenya Lodge, almost as cheap but with better rooms.  I could hear cars moving through the wet streets outside, there was music playing on many sides, and a lot of mera chewing going on in the lobby.  This was my fourth stint in Nairobi and I was finding it useful rather than inspiring.  I had things to do of course.  I checked out the education ministry to be sure I could arrive and apply for a teaching job; not before the end of the summer they said.  I could eat in decent restaurants, whether posher or not.  I went to the museum.  I went to an American film (Kramer v Kramer which was current) to help me prepare for my return to Europe.  I went to the National  Museum and enjoyed that.  I read the newspapers.  I had coffee in the Thorn Tree.  For my last day I was unusually nervous before my flight remembering the anxieties of passing through Addis on the way down.

As always my favourite bit of Nairobi was around River Road, which felt like an African area but with some amount of prosperity; it had Indian food shops and traders as well, but it didn't feel colonial or like a slum.  The music was good.  

Record Shop in River Road:  My picture taken in 1984

Nairobi Market with Matatu:  My picture taken in 1984

May 9th: Lokichar in Northern Kenya

On May 9th 1980 I was in Lokichar in north-western Kenya.  I had been to Lake Turkana and was trying to get back to Nairobi.

The day before I'd managed to get from Kalakol on Lake Turkana to Lodwar by early afternoon and with no prospect of a ride south that day, checked back into the squalor of the Mombasa Hotel and had lunch.  Then I walked past the Turkwell River and went out for a walk into the scrub desert around the town, realising that this might be my last chance to be on my own in the wild of Africa.  It was very hot and there wasn't much to see, but wild plants were flowering in the wetter areas after the recent rain. 

I wrote up the next two days of travel when I reached Nairobi.

Near The Norwegian Road Camp:  My picture

The day began early, sitting waiting under the tree with the Turkana outside the Mombasa Hotel, and there wasn't a lot of activity.  I was afraid that I might get a truck which only would go into the mountains after dark.  The first truck to enter Lodwar coming from the north was going to Lohori but could take me to Lokichar, and I jumped at the idea, thinking that a Land-Rover lift was more likely out of Lokichar.  The driver was a bit of a smart Alec in check trousers, the truck a new Bedford 4WD, donated by the Free Kenya of Hunger Campaign or some such.  The truck spent an hour and a half going round various spots in Lodwar doing errands, speaking to people, and I was frustrated and full of resentment.  The ride was crowded and uncomfortable with a light awkward load in the middle.  About two kilometres before Lokichar the bolt on the steering arm sheered and we veered sharply off the road and were lucky not to topple over, I can still feel the bruise on my left thigh.  I jumped off and could see the truck at a crazy angle.  We sat around in the hot midday sun a bit, then began to walk to Lokichar which was closer than I had feared.  I made straight for the truck shop enjoying the feeling of walking in the desert, and of being alive.  I had a beer, beans and chapatti in the Lozenges restaurant which had been closed on my way up north.  Then along came John and Jill in a Land-Rover and they took me to Nairobi.  In convoy with two Spaniards once we had caught up with them, they headed for the Norwegian Road Camp (near the beginning of the mountains) where we spent the night, in cold Norwegian surroundings, cooking a meal and having quite a good time.  The next day we continued on to Kapenguria, rather than risk the Baringo side road, probably wisely, and I meekly accepted a free ride to Nairobi,  The road hrough the Marich pass was wet and treacherous but the climb up the mountains was just as exhilarating as I'd remembered and drier than I'd feared.

Jill had been teaching in Southern Sudan and John Ryle had been researching a book in Rumbek.  I was gaining a determination to see if I could get to Southern Sudan as a teacher for September. 

View Kitale in a larger map

May 7th: Kalakol in Northern Kenya

On May 7th 1980 I was in Kalakol on the shores of Lake Turkana.

Kalokol wasn't much of a place.  I think it had come into existence as a result of the fish processing plant built as a development project.  It was scruffy, it was littered with aid compounds and it had no natural centre.  It did have a hotel, however, it had access to Lake Turkana itself, even if the lake was not exactly attractive, and it did have camped around it Turkana families who had come to find work.

Turkana Huts:  My picture

I found there an Italian traveller and we explored together.  In the morning Rose took us for a tour of the town which became quite interesting, learning a bit about various organisations at work - Fisherman's co-operative, Ministry of Fisheries, building project for cooperation, primary school, technology training, mission and hospital and of course the life of the Turkana.   Then we met a Scotsman who managed or owned a tourist lodge along the shore.  He took us there on his powerboat and sold us extremely cold beer and very decent fish and chips.  Then we were able to have a swim in the lake which was not really possible at Kalakol.  There were good views over the lake, crocodiles, hippos and all the lake birds.  In the afternoon we walked back along the shore amongst the fishermen, through the Turkana encampments admiring the greenness of the water and the flamingoes.  In the evening we walked back out with a town Turkana in the starlight to watch some Turkana dancing which was interesting if not spectacular.  Most of the dancing was up and down and looked easy, but try as we might we could not get it right.  Walking home in the moonlight at 2 in the morning the world looked well.  

Patrimonium Mundi has panoramas of Lake Turkana here, though not of places I visited.

Kalakol:  My picture

Turkana Children:  My picture

View Kitale in a larger map

May 4th: Lodwar in Northern Kenya

On May 4th 1980 I was in Lodwar in Northern Kenya.  For my final excursion on this 3 month journey in East Africa, I was making my way to Lake Turkana.  Lodwar was the hub for northwest Kenya, though still a small town.

A few days before I had had breakfast on coffee and croissants at the Thorn Tree in Nairobi; then I changed money and lugged my bag to the Uhuru Highway.  Hitching presented no problems, with the proviso that if the ride that came needed to be paid for you paid for it: that was the African way.  The first ride was from an English teacher of agricultural economics at the University and took me just out of town.  The next ride was longer and took longer to come, from a grey-haired German with scarred hands driving a Land-Rover not too well, going with a Sikh to rescue a broken-down truck in Gilgil.  The final ride to Nakuru was from an English couple with their daughter in a little Daihatsu 4WD.  In Nakuru, one hundred miles from Nairobi,  I was unsure what to do next; there was rain around and I thought about staying.  I had coffee and looked for hotels in the market area, but they were scruffy bars or expensive so I wandered to the west, met an American teacher my age hitching on the way out and he offered to put me up in Elburgon, which turned out OK, nicely spontaneous.  We got a bus through attractive country, very fertile compared to the drier parts of the Rift Valley I'd seen before.  We ate viazi (a potato dish) in a little cafe, and walked to his house through a wooden shanty-town where he said he'd seen a body one day.  He gave me the address of the Education Ministry in Nairobi where he'd got his job and this gave me a second possibility for teaching in Africa.

Next morning I set off quite easily from Elburgon without stopping for food.  Rides were slow at first.  A British settler took me a little way to a place called Tari just past his farm in his ancient Land-Rover.  The countryside was pleasant and heavily forested, hilly.  I began walking and eventually got a matatu to Molo where I waited around in the matatu park for a ride on to "The Junction" outside town.  At the junction I began hitching again after a breakfast on two eggs and a Sprite.  First a Dutchman, working seven years as a technical school advisor, took me to the Kericho turning and then a Land-Cruiser on to Kitale.  I was sitting in the back and so saw the Mau escarpment from the back through intermittent rain, OK but uncomfortable, as the driver went very fast.  At Eldoret we went out into some sort of suburban farm, and later after a market town we went fast on back roads which was pretty but still uncomfortable.  Eventually at Kitale I got some food, mboga (vegetables) with meat and bread and started looking for a hotel.  I was still wandering unimpressed when a young Sikh, doing his A Levels, took me to the Sikh temple which was fine.  I rested and set out rather late for a walk outside of town.  Coming back, I looked for maharagwe (bean stew) with no success and settled for mandazi (the universal African doughnut) and a very early night, being asleep by 8.30.

Pokotland:  My picture

In the morning I found a truck going to Lokichar and it worked out fine.  The early journey was exhilarating and the people in the truck good, like the old Turkana man who got on at Kapenguria.  After that there was the great descent into the Rift Valley through pines and tropical trees, really beautiful, and past Pokot villages.  Lunch at Ortum was only chapattis and then we carried on along the Turkwell River where I was told people panned for gold.  Eventually we came out of the hills into the scrub desert with fewer and fewer trees, the people now Turkana rather than Pokot.  In the scrub were gerenuk gazelle and flights of Namaqua doves.  The long wait in Lokichar was OK, friendly and interesting Turkana walking through.   Finally there was another truck under the stars to Lodwar with a load of steel bars and a drinking crew. 

At the cross-roads was the Hotel Mombasa, a pure bit of modern Africa, a few rooms behind the bar, cramped, hot, smelly, buggy, noisy and the bar girls had dubious morals.  I spent much of the next day outside trying to get a lift to the lake.  In a quiet period I wrote in my notebook:

It's hardly a tidy sort of town, and not the wild west I've heard described.  But it does have a character of its own.  Sandy roads strewn with pebbles and bottle-tops, the edges marked out with larger stones. The houses and shops are spread out, concrete blocks and tin.  One street has a sort of boulevard laid out with new trees in the middle and  larger ones further down.

Lodwar:  My picture

But it's the people that make it - The Turkana, sitting round in little groups, eternally waiting, often in little circles, walking round and looking into shops, talking.  The men with their stool and stick and sheet draped over one shoulder.  The women with heaps of beaded collars, maybe a key chain suspended, sometimes a sheet or blanket draped across the chest, sometimes a piece of cloth, bangles especially on the upper arm.  But there's no set pattern and many wear partial western dress.  Some still look strange to me, women with the head shaved except for a strip which is braided, men with a circular haircut, some young ones, maybe moran, braid it too.  Some men with lower lip plugs, small circular ones in metal or wood.  Some women wear lots of earrings or a large shell-type thing in the necklace.  They show only a little interest in me, mainly when I have the camera out.  Other people around are often Somalis, few Africans from the south, occasional mzungu.  Women with skirts made of skin, lip plugs, sticks, cross pendants.  It's free-form decoration.  People look different from the Maasai, darker, poorer, not so proud.  The Turkana, whether male or female, are champion spitters.  Some old men have become beggars, asking "paise", or trying to sell circular bangle knives or other artefacts.

Outside Lodwar:  My picture

Near Kapenguria:  My picture

View Kitale in a larger map

April 20th: Lamu

On April 20th 1980 I was in Lamu.

From my room:  My picture

I would take a breakfast in the cold drinks shop with the sectarian literature on the main street or in another cafe I called the yoghurt place.  I would walk the pretty up and down inland route to the beach past the shambas, liking the colours, but noticing the barbed wire so common in Kenya.  I would take a swim in the beautiful water with a strong current.  I would sunbathe.  I would shelter under the palms or in the woodland nearby and read.  Once I watched a stone-curlew on its nest only a few feet from me.  I would take a beer at Peponi's, the hotel by the beach.  In the evening I'd take supper, at Ghai's perhaps where the seafood was good, if I felt well-off or if friends were going.  Then I'd go to Petley's for evening drinks and see who was there - and heated conversation would inevitably follow.  It was a perfect place for a holiday.

After a week or so I fell in with a group of British VSO volunteers teaching  English in Kenya, along with two who had been teaching in South Sudan, and this turned my plans for the future into a new direction.  I went with them on local dhows to other spots along the coast and a nearby island.  I moved to a room in a private house in one of the old buildings high up in the old town.  We put a party on one night in another house.

Lamu was hot and quiet.  There were no active motor vehicles allowed on the island.  The Swahili culture seemed strong. The people were Muslim, the influence was middle-eastern.  Dhows still operated between Lamu and the Persian Gulf and you could see them occasionally tied up in the harbour, magnificent, traditionally built and single-sailed.  When one arrived, the next day the little shops were selling dates from the Gulf.  The old houses, such as the one I stayed in, used coral stone in the building and this gave them a quite special feeling.

There is a piece about Swahili architecture here. 

Patrimonium Mundi:  Panoramas of Lamu, including one of the lanes in the Centre.

Lamu:  My picture

Lamu:  My picture

Ocean-going Dhow in Lamu:  My picture

April 4th: Lake Naivasha in Kenya

On April 4th 1980 I was at Lake Naivasha in Kenya.

Hell's Gate:  My picture

Hell's Gate was a small valley formed out of some dried up prehistoric Rift Valley river.  It lay just over the hill behind the SULMAC flower farm, which has always been controversial internationally, but attracted workers from all over Kenya and gave its name to the village on the west side of the lake.  I had been to the mouth of the valley a couple of days before with a larger party and a Pokot guard from the flower farm.

This time I went to see what birds we could record with one of my friends and a more experienced Danish birdwatcher - (in 2 days around Naivasha we recorded 125 species.)  After passing the flower farm, we found a way to walk over the hillside and through a little pass.  Here we disturbed an eland which tried to come down a steep path the way we were going up.  It was exciting to be so close to such a large antelope, and no doubt dangerous as well.  We sat up on the cliffs for much of the middle of the day looking down on the valley which forms the gate.  At this height we were level with the lammergeyers when they were settling or taking off on their long sorties for prey.  Sometimes animals like giraffe and zebra would come by.  More typical and more interesting were the small antelope and hyrax which lived around the rocks.  To be out on foot in what was to all intents and purposes wild Africa was wonderful; we saw no other humans during those hours, but the wildlife was all around us.

The next day we went out again, this time by the lakeside down by the Safariland Hotel where there was a good range of water and garden birds.  This was a much more humanised environment.  As I came out of the hotel grounds I got swept away by the excitement of the Safari Rally which was passing at that time.  I took a matatu back to the Sulmac village and we were overtaken by a couple of the faster cars which seemed exciting.

I returned to Hell's Gate at the end of 1984 and it had become a National Park. You could still walk about but there were already more people around.  Maasai were driving their cattle through the valley and the lammergeyers were not to be seen.

Safari Rally at Naivasha:  My picture

Sulmac Village at Naivasha:  My picture

Garden of Safariland Hotel.  My picture from 1984

Hell's Gate in 1984:  My picture

View Naivasha in a larger map

March 24th: Kampala

On March 24th 1980 I was in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, travelling with Audrey my American friend.  It was nearly a year after the overthrow of Idi Amin, but Tanzanian soldiers were still in the country, making people uneasy, and the government seemed weak.  Things were scarcely getting back to normal.

We were trying to stay in a downtown hotel, but finding everything a hassle.  In the evening we went for a meal at the colonial Speke Hotel.  Afterwards we were walking back to our own hotel as the time was approaching the ten o'clock curfew deadline and the air was pleasantly fresh and cool.  There was already gunfire in the streets around and we were stopped by a friendly policeman who was anxious that we might not get where we were going on time.  The gunfire kept up most of the night, interspersed with louder noises whizzing across the sky above and exploding when landing.

Although banks and larger offices were largely operating, the main street was lined with boarded up or empty shops, right along to the area where a few Asians were still trying to do business.  We had to leave our room during the day because it had been reserved for government officials who never materialised; and so we took a tour with a friendly taxi driver out through the hills and suburbs to the Kasubi tombs of the Kabakas, the traditional rulers of Buganda, and to the Catholic Cathedral on another hill which had murals of the first missionaries and the embalmed body of the first African archbishop.  It was good to get some historical perspective on the country amid the depressing current situation. 

We had made a fleeting visit to the city ten days earlier to transact some business when we first arrived in the country.  We stayed that time in a small Asian hotel a mile or two from the centre.  This is what I recorded in my journal:

We took the bus journey to Kampala from Kabale, which was long and slow; we were on the bus at 11 but didn't leave until 2.30 or so and it stopped frequently in the densely populated country of Kigezi.  After that the country became more hilly savannah, Ankole cattle land.  Mbarara was battle-worn, the barracks and police area destroyed, the centre of the town empty and looted, only the bus station functioning.  Our neighbour on the bus was going to visit his daughter, aged 20, previously at Makarere University, now in hospital, blinded by gas in the war.  In the early morning Kampala was empty and calm, yet busier than anywhere else I had seen so far in Africa.  Bomb and looting damage, some piles of rubble, yet banks and hotels functioning, and some men involved in construction.  Night-time seems to be the problem, but we heard nothing except a storm after curfew yesterday.  We went at night to see the Israeli film of Raid on Entebbe and the audience hooted with laughter at the appearance of the actor playing Idi Amin (now that he had gone).

Mbarara had been notorious during the Amin years for the killings that were carried out in the police barracks and headquarters.  I had been particularly interested to see what the state of the city would be, and found the sight numbing rather than shocking.

I remember that the bus took a back road as we approached Kampala in the evening.  We parked up for the night in a quiet place, sheltered, with houses near but not right outside the bus.  We were asked to stay quietly on the bus and then we drove into Kampala in the morning once curfew was over, all this handled very calmly in a matter-of-fact way. 

Kasubi Tomb in Kampala:  Picture by Eve Gray, CC

Patrimonium Mundi: Panorama of Kasubi Tomb.

March 22nd: Chobe in Northern Uganda

On March 22nd 1980 I was in Chobe in northern Uganda.  This was a lodge in what is now called the Murchison Falls National Park.  I was with my American friend Audrey. 

The wildlife parks in Uganda were struggling after the Idi Amin years.  Animals had been poached or shot by soldiers throughout that period, and the Tanzanian army had been no better since their arrival.  There was no fuel for trips and there were almost no tourists.  A handful of cheap tourists like me were at Chobe, but there was not a lot to see in the way of wildlife although the Nile was very beautiful at that spot. 

The Nile in Murchison Falls Park, 2010:  Picture by Daryona, CC

However I enjoyed this day.  The roar of the river was constant as it passed by the lodge and the many islands, but I could always hear the grunting and splashing of hippos in the water.  The earth was red and the trees mainly small and thorny with many sausage-trees (Kigelia, a characteristic tree in much of Africa.)  With two others I went out in the morning for a walk, under the leadership of a guide with a rifle.  This was the only way to get out in the park unless you actually had fuel to put in the tank of one of the park vehicles.  Walking was a good way to do things and was atmospheric even if the guide did not know which antelope was which.   We saw crocodiles by the river which I had not seen before in Uganda.  Best was a huge herd of elephants, maybe one hundred in total, spread out along the ridge amongst trees perhaps seventy yards away.  There were led by a huge male and were not especially pleased with our presence.  I kept close to a tree but held my ground and was able to watch them for a long time while the guard kept his rifle at the ready.  I knew enough to know that such a large herd of elephants was a bad sign rather than a good one, as elephants only gather in such numbers when they are under threat.  This was probably all the elephants within a wide area.

Then in the evening I went out again down to the creek by the Nile, enjoying being quiet and being on my own with just the birds around.  I sat near the weed-covered areas where the jacanas and the moorhens live, and then there was a splendid sunset going down behind an acacia tree as I sat and watched it get darker and darker until the bats came out.  Being out in the wild was more important than seeing the more spectacular animals.

We had stayed a week or so earlier at Mweya in Queen Elizabeth National Park in the west of the country by Lake Edward.  It was a beautiful place but the road in was littered with the dead bodies of hippos killed by soldiers.  I could see the ridge of the Ruwenzori mountains to the west but not the snow peaks.  Again there had been no fuel for vehicles but we were able to go out on a launch on the lake which was good for the water birds.  One evening I left my meal in the hotel to go back to my room in the hostel to get something and had to cross a courtyard to get back.  I heard an animal make an almighty roar as I started to cross, but I did not hesitate for long as I was hungry.  The staff told me that they had been troubled by a lion at night recently.

Brian Schwartz saw no elephants at Chobe and was there at a similar time to me, perhaps a week or two later, as recounted in his book Travels Through The Third World.  He writes of meeting Iain Douglas-Hamilton who was doing an aerial survey of elephants in Uganda - Audrey and I also met him at Mweya.

View Fort Portal in a larger map

March 18th: Kagadi in North-west Uganda

On March 18th 1980 I was in Kagadi in north-western Uganda.  Together with my American friend Audrey, I was trying to get from the Ruwenzori area around Fort Portal to the Nile area in the north and east of the country.  There was no public transport in the area.

Fort Portal:  My picture

Out walking in the last evening in Fort Portal we were invited home by an old gentleman cycling home.  He told us interesting things about life in the later Amin days, such as "we could not sleep in our houses" and  "one night they came to the door with their guns."  He had been in the third class at Makerere University in 1931 and was now 72.  He had been a teacher and had worked as a chief after the war, but now lived on the milk of his herd of 50 cattle.  Walking back, I was impressed by the agricultural richness and variety of that area of Uganda, every house with its avocado tree.

Next day we tried to get going to Hoima, but only found a pickup going to Kagadi.  The journey was pretty up through tea estates to Kyenjojo, and when I looked back the Ruwenzori ridge was clear with a good amount of snow on top.  After we left the Kampala road the way became rougher with passages of uncut jungle and very sparse population mainly growing matoke (bananas).  While we were trying to find an onward lift, Audrey made several friends who spoke quite good English and everyone was delighted that we were there.  We waited in a small "hotel" (which means cafe or restaurant in these parts) and I wrote in my notebook:

A little town in semi highlands.  Lovely empty country, the backbone of Africa, not so crowded, with fine views over green hills and the red road winding through jungle and matoke and little townships even smaller than this. 

A strip of little houses with thick walls often of concrete between wood supports, wooden doors and windows, shutters painted mostly blue, tin roofs with long shallow eaves.  A radio across the wide road plays "Red River Rock."  A hot dusty wind blows through the trees and across the tin roofs.

When we came to town we sat in the shade of a tree in the town centre and were surrounded by half the school as they waited for the afternoon class to be called.  Even now the kids stare at us through the door and windows.  A friendly young man working for the Ministry of Health at the hospital, the main feature of this town, told us about the local tribe, the Banyoro, and persuaded the people in this place to make a pot of tea even without sugar and milk (it turns out to be a coffee/tea mixture) which will make our stay here a little more pleasant while we wait for the lift out.

The restaurant has a couple of Formica covered tables of different sizes and five chairs, a counter which is empty with a chair behind on which the boy of the place sits, a set of shelves with two and a half bottles of Tree-Top and a menu which says:

Matooke Nenkoko 35/-

Matooke Nanyama 30/-

Enyama Yonka 20/-

Enkoke Yonka 25/-

Chai 5/-

Amahuli (2) 20/-

Also in here there's a contraption like a baby's high chair with a water can (empty) and a cooking fat tin for water, maybe for washing.  There is  a licence for the establishment; it cost 300 shillings, and it is suspended between here and the door on a string along with a couple of light blue curtains to shade off the eating area.

Eventually we decided to stay for 40/- in a simple room at the only lodge.  We went out for a walk to the forest station, which was partly cleared and partly planted with eucalyptus.  We saw a group of four hunters with spears and nets who said they were looking for "dibrat", perhaps dik-dik.  The local people seemed very poorly clothed, growing little other than bananas and coffee but even then some spoke English, including women only wearing skirts.  Coming back we sat by some eucalyptus and watched a beautiful sunset, and on the road up the hill to the little town a group of mongoose ran across the road, ten in all from large to very small.  We had meat and matoke with hot orange for supper, followed by an evening of conversation with the local Bata shoe man and another trader, both young, both a little depressed at the slow recovery after the troubles, saying that putting up with British Sahibs would be better than some of the Africans they got. 

Country near Kagadi:  My picture

We got our truck lift in the morning, a long hard slog for the 56 miles to Hoima, 4 or 5 hours, but sitting in the cramped cab of an old Bedford, using three gears and not much in the way of brakes.  The country was more of the same as the day before, but not so high in altitude, and the truck made it difficult to enjoy the view.  In Hoima the truck people found us an onward pickup going to Marindi, again in the cab, through more developed country.  Marindi was smaller than I expected, just 3 or 4 blocks, a market, a restaurant or two where we found much needed tea and chapattis, an administrative district with rugby pitch and hospital.  Very few people spoke English here and the did not try to help us.  We bought mangoes and a pineapple at the market and sat in the welcome shade to eat them.  We went to the transport area and found a pickup to Kigumba through dry red earth country, more open than before, with thatched villages and men with holes in their ears.  Kigumba was a transport centre, where we found the Good Night Lodge in the back of a very African and dirty compound, but quite atmospheric.  I had a beer, a tub and jerry can bath, a chicken and chapatti supper, then orange and waragi and retired to bed. 

It took longer than expected to get a ride to Karuma.  In the end it was a Tata truck at 11am, about 60 passengers in the back and 45 Tanzanian soldiers, one or two rather rowdy, not enjoyable really and you couldn't see much of the dry bush country, but the road was fast over little hills.  The falls on the river were impressive, and there we got off the truck to try to find "means" into the park.  "Means" means transport.  

View Fort Portal in a larger map

March 9th: Kibuye in Rwanda

On March 9th 1980 I was in Kibuye by Lake Kivu in Rwanda, travelling with Audrey, my American friend.  We spent this Sunday walking in the area.

We had been staying in Gisenye in the trailer of some Swedish missionaries while we failed to get into Zaire.  We took the boat from Gisenye along Lake Kivu but could not see much of the coast line because of the sun glare - nothing like the volcanoes of Zaire spreading north which we'd seen from the land the day before.  In Kibuye we stayed at the Home St Jean, the mission, in a dormitory on a promontory, and went to town - more like a village - for lunch on meat, beans, cabbage and sweet potatoes, followed by pineapple.  Later I found a trail off the road through a banana patch  past some fish hatcheries and up a pretty hill for a wonderful view of the lake and surrounding mountains and a hello from the lady of the hill. 

This day we walked again and found the old man of the hill opposite the church who led us to the top and eventually brought us back down again, so agile with his stick and wrapped cloth and bare feet with splayed old toes lacking nails.  Later I wrote this in my notebook sitting on the promontory.

The most sunny day yet in Rwanda, there has been a breeze blowing all the day and the clouds have kept away.  This is also the prettiest spot, the Home St Jean or Catholic Mission on a peninsula on the deep inlet of Lake Kivu that they may call Lake Kibuye.  Eucalyptus and juniper trees blow in the wind, below the lake is dull blue-green in colour, almost grey lapping onto and away from the land in contented but usually round contours.  The hills rise generally steep here up to a few hundred feet, so that not all the land is cultivated, cows graze on the pale green grass of the rest, sometimes with biggish white egrets in attendance.  Opposite a couple of goats: I can hear their bleats sometimes in the wind.  A pirogue moves across the water beneath me, two men paddling, their bare black backs glisten in the late afternoon sun.  Occasionally a hawk, or an egret, or a crane, or a crow crosses the water but otherwise the scene is one of stillness and tranquillity; only the ripples on the water, the grass and the trees wavy in front of me, the cattle change position on the banks.  To my right is the hill we walked this morning, shown the way by the old man, the crown of eucalyptus where we sat in the midday sun, steep hills and a few houses, fields of sorghum and beans and coffee, some conifers on the steep slope we walked down.

I remember the peace especially but also the singing from the churches so tuneful and evocative - this was a Sunday.  The people here seemed to live in hills rather than villages, the houses spread out along the slopes.  The bright green of the hills, the blue of the sky and the greyer blue-green of the lake, the colours of birds like red bishops flitting across my vision, the sound of the singing from the churches.

It is impossible to think back on times in Rwanda without thinking of the massacres of 1994.  It is terrifying that this spot which I found so peaceful and the mission where I stayed would be the actual site of death in such a horrific way.  Massacre details here.

Kibuye in 2006:  Picture by John and Mel Kotsopoulos, CC

Massacre Memorial 2005:  Picture by The Advocacy Project, CC

February 27th: Rusumo in Southern Rwanda

On February 27th 1980 I was at Rusumo, where a river forms the border between Tanzania and Rwanda.  I had been informed I could get a Rwandan visa at the border, but no such luck.  I wrote this up there:

I'm actually in Rwanda even if they won't let me go beyond the village here.  The immigration people were quite friendly about it: their story is that the main chef d'immigration is in Kigali; normally he radios to Kigali if someone is at the border without a visa, but as he isn't here and the radio isn't here, the younger man in charge isn't prepared to lay his head on the line.  So Audrey has gone to Kigali with my passport to try to get me a visa, leaving me with a tin of corned beef.  However there's a shop selling things like biscuits and tinned mackerel, there's a cafe back on the Tanzanian side with chai and possibly other things, there's good sweet Rwanda beer for sixteen shillings for what must be a litre and a friendly Dutch couple working in Rulenge left me a loaf of Kigali sliced bread and an enormous carrot out of pity.  Besides this is a nice enough spot with the river and the waterfall and monkeys in the trees. 

We had taken a day and night bus from Mwanza to the town of Nzara, 16 kilometres short of the border, knowing we'd have to walk the rest of the way.  The bus journey was quite fun, the ferry at Busui, little settlements of rectangular huts mainly of wood and daub and with tin or thatch roofing and not much other than maize growing.  The bus was nearly always crowded to overflowing and nearly always friendly.  Towards evening the country began to change as we moved further from Lake Victoria, with larger hills and fewer people.  We stopped at Biharamulo in the dark and had beans and tea for supper and there was a long delay while one of the conductors sorted out a problem with the police.  Eventually we stopped for the night, at Rulenge I think, and I did manage some sleep, as the bus had more or less cleared its standing passengers.  In the morning  we crossed a big escarpment and then we walked across a new bridge while the bus took the ferry, which gave me a chance to stretch my legs.  We reached Nzara about nine, but there was little to keep us except a nice stone mission, so we had tea and andazi and began walking through pleasant rolling hills, with coffee and maize and bananas and little oblong houses and friendly people.  There were good views later on when the ever-threatening clouds pulled back a little.  But we were tired, so in the end we got a ride from a police Land-Rover carrying a Burundi refugee who had been kicked out of Rwanda two weeks previously, following the visit of a Burundi leader to the US.

View Rusumo in a larger map

February 18th: Seronera in Northern Tanzania

On February 18th 1980 I was at Seronera in the middle of the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.  I travelled here with Audrey, an American woman from Utah.  I have described the journey from Arusha here. 

This was one small settlement in the middle of over 5000 square miles of the park; otherwise I believe there was only a second proper lodge at Lobo, and one or maybe two tented camps.  Seronera was the centre of the Research Institute, had an small airstrip and a petrol station, a drivers's hostel and a "Somali Hotel" which provided food for the workers.  There was also a tourist lodge built high up on a hill of boulders (kopje) which had the most wonderful views across the plains and the bluffs of the Seronera valley.  It was the season for wildebeest and at any moment you could see thousands of them spread across the plains with their attendant zebra, and hundreds of other animals.  In the end Audrey and I spent a week here, every night in a different place, negotiating deals with the manager of the lodge who rarely had many visitors and liked our trade in the bar.  We were able to go out for a wildlife drive with a group of British tourists, and made one or two other excursions.  Because Seronera was a village, you were able to walk in the immediate vicinity and this was one of the great attractions to staying there.

After a couple of days I started to look for rides out.  I wrote this in my notebook:

Sitting under an acacia on the northern road out, trying to get a ride to Musoma or Mwanza.  The hottest part of the day has already passed, and I am beginning to give up hope of a ride today, and will return to Audrey at the petrol station and the hope of a cheap hotel room tonight.  The crickets churr around me in the grass, the flies buzz around my face, a lark sings from a nearby dead tree, a starling chirps above, a flycatcher which has been here all day swoops on some insect in the road.  The breeze in the trees, a tapping which might be a woodpecker.  A distant generator, an occasional car going to the village.

View in the Serengeti:  My picture

Another day in Serengeti and I love it, I'd love to be able to spend a fortnight here with a car and money, for this country is so beautiful and hard of access.  Last night awake I saw the Southern Cross for the first time in Africa, then after dawn the light was so beautiful and the air and trees so full of birds.  Green grass plains turning yellow and occasional lines of flowers rather ordinary, flat topped acacia trees and thorn trees, one or two low hills all green, and the little kopjes of rocks and varied trees, home of lion and hyrax, from the top it seems you can see for fifty miles.  Earlier from under this shady acacia I watched a small herd of wildebeest with attendant zebra walk through the valley, buffalo and topi browsing even nearer; some giraffe ambling close, inspecting me and eating acacia tree tops, some impala peeking out of bushes; some Grant's gazelle playing; warthogs here and there including three I surprised on the road; crowned crane flying over; a big flock of sacred ibis; some lovely hawks and falcons.  You can go on and on and it's all beautiful.

Another day I was again out at the road junction and I saw what appeared to be a bus approaching.  I had heard rumours of a legendary bus which went once a week across from Arusha to Musoma on the eastern edge of Lake Victoria.  No-one knew when the bus came or would even admit to its real existence.  I rushed back to the lodge to get Audrey and my pack but when I got back the bus was already pulling away to the west having driven straight through.

Finally one evening in the bar Mr Kassam stepped out of the shadows like Peter Lorre and asked if he could be of any help to us.  He was an Ismaili trader from Mwanza delivering a shipment of meat, I think, to the lodges in his pickup.  I ended up sleeping in the pickup that night and the next day he drove us to the other lodge at Lobo in the hills towards the Kenyan border and Masai Mara.  For supper that night it was a bottle of Dodoma and a bottle of Sauternes.  But Mr Kassam got ill, perhaps malaria, and we had to wait for his driver to arrive.  We left with him lying on a mattress on the back of the pickup, and me perched on the wheel-arch in the sun for seven hours.  There was always plenty to look at as we passed, such as a lioness crouched watching a very large herd of topi, the country always beautiful, and different when we were going through the swampy black soil country which gradually gave way to the borders of Lake Victoria.   We passed by his simple home in the suburbs and visited the office which was ostensibly a stationery shop, though that was certainly not where the money came from.  His wife and daughter arranged for us to stay in the Indian-style Deluxe Hotel.  We did the local Sunday thing of visiting the zoo on an island in Lake Victoria, bizarre and sad after being a week at Seronera.  Sunday was the day of rest, Africans and Asians all out promenading, the Asian women wearing their jewels and best clothes, something I didn't see elsewhere in Africa.

Hyrax at Lobo, 2008:  Picture by bah69, CC

Picture by David d'O, 2009, CC

My picture

My picture

My picture