Category Archives: Travelling in Africa

Fantasy and Travel

Adventures, drc, Travelling in Africa, Why,

Reading a passage in a fantasy novel this evening, I was transported back to Christmas Day 2011 in the rain forests of the Eastern Congo. It was a weird kind of day and in retrospect so exotic as to be life-changing. I don’t think it felt that way at the time but at this distance, it’s hard to tell. We’d gone hunting with the local people. We’d been there a day or two and taken a couple of walks across the bridge over the river which dominated the whole area. I remember being a little terrified by the ant-hills sixty feet or so up on giant tree branches. It was a little like being in a National Geographic special without the comforting best-British-voice commentary.

We joined the hunters around their fire. I remember reading before the trip that they used marijuana in their hunt preparations but we weren’t out to get high. The idea of being intoxicated in those forests, where one wrong step could lose you forever, is not appealing. It was that thick and intimidating. As we walked, the group I was with got a little behind the rest and within moments couldn’t see the others and were scrambling to find the hidden-in-the-undergrowth path.

After a while, we reached the point where they left us behind with one or two of their people; strung up their nets and faded into the forest. I’m sure they knew it would be a bad hunt because we were too noisy – strange, large people moving around when we should have been quiet.

The sounds drifted back to us through the forests. Thick, dense, suffocating forests. You could hardly see any patch of sky when you looked up. It was hot and humid and around us were giant, unfamiliar plants. I remember standing there – time seemed distorted and somehow irrelevant – and following the trunk and branches of a giant tree. Somewhere the sounds echoed. The echoes were hard to follow in that dense, overgrown clearing. The sounds were eerie. Terry Pratchett talked in one of his books about words being manipulated and used up and sent out to earn a living on the streets. I don’t think I really ever had a reference for the word “eerie” until I heard the unworldly sounds of the “pygmy” hunters driving pray towards their nets on that strange afternoon.

When I started travelling in Africa, a dear friend encouraged me to start keeping a record of each day of the travels. The discipline of writing is so valuable in capturing the moments that would otherwise be forgotten, an emotional and personal record of the things that happen. Perhaps the most specific moment of realising how important it is to record things was the moment I remember writing down in my travel journal that I’d seen a black and white monkey on the trip between Kampala and Fort Portal, seen from the window of the bus, and feeling a little like a scientist recording the sighting of a rare animal. I wouldn’t necessarily have forgotten it, but writing it down cemented the moment in my memory and made it possible to refer back to notes when I doubted, as time fades the memories, what I’d seen.

In retrospect, in hind-sight, so far and so long away, I’m struck by how different the immersive experience of being in the DRC was from the organised, planned tourism experience of Korea. On that day, so long ago, I wrote so little about the hunt. It seems so simple compared to what I am now able to understand as the impact.

Someone asked me recently if I think that travel really broadens your horizons and makes you a better person. I don’t know about the better person bit but I do know that travel changes some of your perspectives – travel means that when I read in a fantasy novel about exploring native woodlands on a faraway version of the planet, the first thing I think of is hunting with pygmies on that strange, faraway Christmas Day. My sense is that that isn’t the norm. My response to the question was to try – I fear rather inarticulately – to explain that travel stretches the borders of the possible perspectives one can hold. For me, travel means that I compare things to that strange afternoon and consider ants and bugs in terms of a range including the rainforests of Congo, instead of the standard spectrum of the country I happen to have grown up in. And my sense, humble though it is, is that the same is probably true in terms of the kind of big conversations about politics and economics and freedom.

A town called Livingstone

Adventures, Travelling in Africa, ,

We arrive on a hazy winter afternoon, a day early, as it turns out. The flight from Joburg, across Botswana, Zimbabwe, finally into Zambia. I love looking down on this part of the world – the dry, winter wonderland of arid southern Africa. In the distance, puddles of water sparkle and reflect – dams or perhaps lakes. We come in to land. As the plane turns, I catch a glimpse of the spray from the falls for which this part of the world famous.

This is technically a work trip. I know – who organizes workshops there? Accidentally arriving a day early gives us plenty of time to explore. We work late on the day we arrived (the workshop will only happen later but still plenty of work to do). My colleague sleeps in the next morning, providing me the perfect opportunity to go to town.

Livingstone is a small town 10km from the Zambian side of the Victoria Falls or Mosi-oa-Tunya as they are more correctly (although less commonly) called. Many people who go to see the falls go to the town of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. I’m glad I get to see it from the Zambia side. Zambia does own, as the Zambians kept reminding us, the majority of the falls. 1.2km of the massive 1.7km wide falls are within the Zambian border. Plus I get to see Livingstone.

As mentioned, Livingstone is quite a small town. I noticed when we drove into town from the airport, that much of the architecture seemed familiar. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me – the town shares a settler heritage with so many I have known and loved. I notice it again as I wander along Mosi-oa-Tunya road towards the business area. On the sides of the roads, grew tall, tropical trees, but beyond them stand houses similar to those in any small town in South Africa. Wide stoep, sloping roof, set back, beyond a front lawn from streets wide enough to turn an ox-wagon. Closer to town, the civic centre is a brick building with black clock-face. I’ve seen one like it recently. Perhaps Somerset West? The museum building, too, feels like home.

It’s not only the architecture that feels familiar. The retail sector in Zambia seems to be dominated by South African firms – PEP stores, Spar, MTN. Everything about it could be a small South African town. Up a side-road, the entrance to a general dealers/farmers’ coop store. Across the road, I pass the David Livingstone Memorial Presbyterian Church, a member of the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa – the same church in Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa.

I stop at the museum. I like museums. Many people don’t. And many of those who do like museums prefer their museums modern and excellent. I quite like even the museums that are not objectively fantastic. Museums like these, in small towns in young countries, don’t only (or even necessarily) teach you about the history of a place; they provide a fantastic insight into how the people of the place think about their history.

I like the settler history too. It’s terribly un-PC to care about settler history in this post-colonial, post-apartheid era but I do. Settler history defines the character of so many of the small towns where I grew up. The same settlers who created this little town. This museum is a fascinating combination of settler and  post- and anti-colonial history. The first room – or perhaps just the first I walk into – tells the story of David Livingstone, missionary, medic and explorer of Africa. Livingstone is famous for many things, one being, reportedly, being the first European to look on “the smoke that thunders” on an exploratory trip down the Zambezi river in the mid-1800s. Maps in the museum trace Livingstone’s journeys. Glass cabinets trace his family tree, complete with photographs of the house where he was born and the story of his wife. I trip from case to case. Here, Livingstone’s letters. There, Livingstone’s hat and coat. There is something old about the room. Slanting sunlight filters through the high windows and lights up specs of dust. It feels as though this display is awkward. I suppose the history is a little awkward – how does a town named after a foreign explorer celebrate its history and maintain proud, Zambian post-colonial “street-cred”? So the Livingstone section of the museum remains, probably, as it has been for 20 years. A fascinating little time-capsule of a history that remains important even when people might prefer to forget.

The rest of the museum is fairly predictable, with a few interesting bits and pieces on slavery and stories of early modern Zambia. I’m glad I visited but wish it was more specific. So many museums in southern Africa tell the same broad, generic story instead of delving deeper in the peculiarities of the specific town.

Back to the hotel and time to change before the next bit of exploring. On the way back, I notice the train station set back from the road. A cursory internet search earlier in the day suggested that few trains still run through Livingstone but the night before we could hear them shunting and setting off. It’s a comforting sort of noise. I wonder, idly, as I wander by, about taking a train to Livingstone one day.

After a quick lunch, the hotel calls us a cab and we head off to the falls. The magic of water. 550,000 cubic litres of water travel over these falls every minute in the wet season. The volume of water is too huge to imagine. We’re visiting in winter when only about a tenth of the peak-season water flows. Still, it is spectacular. From the top of the falls we look out, across flat water sliding smoothly around rocks, trees and tiny islands and disappearing. We escape the determined curio-sellers and head down to the “rain forest”. Beyond the falls and the river, in all directions, is dry winter veld. Yet, here is a tiny forest sustained by the spray from the falls. Green grass, tall trees, trailing creepers, pretty little purple flowers.

We cross the bridge connecting the headland and the mainland. As we do, we begin to see the rainbow. This area opposite the falls is constantly doused in spray. Before long we’re soaked. As a result of this spray, a permanent rainbow curves around the rockface. I turn back from the other side of the bridge and look back at a full double rainbow from the rock to the water.

We wander the falls for two hours and still haven’t seen enough. We stop at each look-out point and each place is different. We take a hundred pictures. Along a path, we come upon a German couple watching the strangest parrot-like birds that laugh a dirty laugh as they fly off from tree to tree.  We stand for a while opposite the bridge between Zambia and Zimbabwe, waiting to see if a bungee jumper will jump off while we are there.

It’s just a few minutes before the taxi returns to collect us but we quickly head off along another path labelled “best photographic path” – too good to resist. From there, we can see fantastic views of the falls from a little further away. We’re on the look-out, of course, for animals – this is a game reserve. Instead of the elephants and antelope we’ve been warned about, our path is blocked by a family of baboons. We edge closer, looking for a  way around them but the babies are playing in the trees and the adults are preening and there is no way we can pass by without risking falling down the high cliffs.

We return to the hotel past the river turned burnt orange by the sunset. It is so beautiful. Picture-postcard Africa. The next few days pass in a blur of meetings and discussions and work. On the last night, we spend two hours taking a sunset cruise on the river. Again, it is magical. We spot elephants and hippos and watch water-bird fishing as the setting sun sets the river on fire.

As I sit squashed into a plane full of tourists on the way home, with the old couple next to me bickering about the service they received at their apparently over-priced lodge, I watch Livingstone fall away. I’m thinking about travel and change and identity. All the placed I have travelled to have their own magic and I have loved almost all of them; some just to visit, some perhaps one day to live. But traveling in countries that share some of the same history of migration, colonialism and liberation is always particularly special. It’s less about exploring, less about discovering and more about reflecting. It’s a kind of travel that always leaves me richer as I return home, south, across the winter-dry veld.

A year ago

Travel, Travelling in Africa, Why,

I woke up this morning thinking about Fort Portal. Uganda and the DRC have been on my mind a lot lately. I can’t believe it’s been a year. Not that Fort Portal was exactly a year ago. Exactly a year would have been, let’s see, I think Kampala? Wow, early morning Kampala, trudging through the still-sleeping streets with too much luggage to catch the Post Bus.

But Fort Portal, perhaps more than any other place I can remember, represents the edge of adventure. That night, the first night in Fort Portal, when we all gathered around a little table, over a beer, and had The Conversation about medical conditions and next of kin and emergency insurance information. On the edge of venturing into the unknown of the eastern DRC. That tension, than intensity. A plan finally coming together. The introspection. No-one really mentioning the emotions just below the surface, but all the senses heightened. The incredible awareness of anticipation.

The moments, the images of Fort Portal are particularly clear to me. Perhaps because it was a place I truly fell in love with. Perhaps precisely because of that anticipation. The brightly coloured selection of fruit at the little market. The honey shop. The cranes by the river. The goats on what looked like a sports field. The men with their bicycles selling huge bunches of green bananas. The aid-agency land-cruisers – a different selection to Gulu or Bunia. The bank, looking just like a small-town, farming-centre South African bank. The crazy statue of Sir Gerald Portal. The round building on the hill, the purpose of which was never discovered. The food – some of the best in Uganda. The cold beer. The cool evening.

The Rwenzoris in the distance a path not taken. Early in the trip planning, we had been considering hiking in the Rwenzoris. I’m glad we didn’t because the path we chose was incredible, but the road not take always remains. One day I would like to go back and explore the “mountains of the moon”. One day.

It’s been a year since an incredible trip with incredible people into the heart of a place so often maligned, ignored and misunderstood. SADC has agreed to send troops into the DRC to enforce whatever peace is agreed upon. Rumours continue to surface of Rwandan and Ugandan involvement. Perhaps one day it will all be over and the eastern DRC will claim its position as a truly magical place to visit.

Perhaps I’ll go back. Perhaps I’ll go somewhere else. Waking up in the early hours of this morning, I could taste, again, the cool, just-rained air, the hotel sheets, the mosquito net, the excitement of that morning in Fort Portal. The edge of adventure. The anticipation of wonder.