TRANS-AFRICA TRAVELS

by Arne Schaefer

We can only follow the scanty archaeological evidence of man’s travels across our continent, as well as the genetic trails left in our DNA. Current theories have it that we originated in East Africa and spread in all directions from there. However, this is not the subject of this essay. Suffice it to say that primeval man has crossed the continent in waves during countless millennia, so there is nothing really new in the concept.

The main objective is to look at two travel books describing modern journeys – but let us have a look at the explorers who tackled the epic from the mid-19^th century onwards. First to complete the trek was David Livingstone, a man burning with missionary zeal, who slogged his solitary way across the continent with his devoted (and some not so devoted) little band of followers. He was underequipped, and underfunded, he suffered deprivation – no, even starvation – but his ill-defined quest spurred him on to spend years in the wilderness. His work, Missionary Travels and Researches in Southern Africa (John Murray, 1857) brought him great acclaim and set him off on a career as an explorer for the rest of his life, and while his own missionary endeavours waned, he did kindle a spirit of service in others as well as publicising the horrors of slavery. Henry Morton Stanley, of whom more later, met up with him on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in 1871 and this meeting set up the journalist for his further stellar career as an explorer.

Next in line to do the whole crossing was Verney Lovett-Cameron, a young man sent out to East Africa in 1873 to come to the aid of Livingstone, who was believed to be in dire straits, at Ujiji. He proved to be too late as he met Livingstone’s servants bearing the great man’s body shortly after leaving the coast. The young man persisted on his journey, and did some valuable exploratory work round the southern end of Lake Tanganyika, before striking out along the western outlet of the lake until he reached the Lualaba River, which he rightly believed to be the source of the Congo. Although he tried to follow its course, he was unsuccessful in obtaining transport as he was averse to colluding with slavers, so he set off by land in a south-westerly direction, exploring the Congo/Zambezi watershed as far as Bihe, from where he reached the Atlantic in 1875. His experiences were published under the title Across Africa. 2 vols (Daldy, Isbister & Co, 1877).

  My most unfavourite explorer, Stanley, flushed with success and fame from his first foray and the book that grandly claimed: “How I Found Livingstone”, had the good fortune to be financed by two newspapers to explore the course of the mighty Congo River. He set off with a gigantic expedition from the east coast in 1874, portering his boats in sections. Of the 356 people in his retinue, a mere 114 survived the 999 day trek – Stanley being the only face of a paler hue to see the Atlantic – not to mention the tally of local corpses littered along the route, as Stanley was reported to be notoriously quick on the trigger. To give him his due, he did travel the considerable length of the Congo, even though the great river was divided into a number of sections by impassable falls and rapids, which he had to bypass on land, boats and all. His harrowing travels were described in the book Through the Dark Continent. 2 vols (Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, London, 1878).

The last of the quartet was Major Alexandre de Serpa Pinto, who was sent out by his king to explore the hinterland of Angola and the headwaters of the Zambezi . He departed from Benguela in 1877 in the company of two other officers. They later turned off northwards while he persisted past Bihe and pushed his way through to Lealui in Barotseland. He was struck down by severe malaria, but had the good fortune to meet up with the missionary François Coillard, who nursed him back to health and assisted him in his further explorations of the Zambezi, which he then charted down to the Victoria Falls. From there he made his way to Pretoria, which he reached in 1879. His efforts are described in the work How I Crossed Africa. 2 vols (Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1881). He later explored the lower reaches of the Zambezi and was appointed governor of Mozambique.

I am almost certain that some hardy souls must have crossed the continent using motorised transport of sorts between 1880 and 1958, but the two books that are under scrutiny both claim to have been first via the waterways – if we overlook a few hundred kilometers of mountains, several thousand meters in altitude, and bush that they inevitably had to traverse. Mirabel Rogers describes the ‘Story of the First Trans-African Waterway Expedition’ in her book When Rivers Meet (Hutchinson, 1960). An ambitious project, in that the leader had a hazy and fairly impractical idea of pioneering a route which could become an immense waterway, a commercial route for the carriage of people and goods across Central Africa.

The little band of nine intrepid pioneers set out in a truck, a jeep and three fibreglass launches with outboard motors from Chinde up the Zambesi. Most of the time the boats spent on the trailers, but one or two were afloat whenever possible to prove the point of their journey. In no time at all the travellers found they all had different priorities; from collecting ethnographic artifacts, butterflies, live animals and fish, to big-game hunting film-making and sending home riveting copy to their newspaper employers, which made co-existence hard work. The expedition started shedding members before they reached Lake Nyassa (Malawi). The author and her one female companion were both journalists, out to write up exciting adventures for their respective newspapers in Johannesburg and Honolulu, and one gets the sense that it was with some difficulty that they managed to find enough sensational occurrences along the way. A lot of borrowings from history and local anecdote abound, with an inevitable smattering of journalistic license, not to mention some strange spellings of Latin zoological names and place names.

The rapids or falls on the Shire, which had already proved a bar to navigation to Livingstone on his later expeditions, should have been a clear message to the expedition that their project was impracticable, but they persisted. Most of the book is devoted to the Malawian part of the journey, up the river and this iconic Great Lake. However even here they found out that all would not be plain sailing, as the dreaded south-east wind rose and transformed the placid lake into a welter of four-metre high waves and whitecaps which the boats were unable to handle. They reached shallow water in the nick of time, but both boats sank there and had to be dragged out by hordes of villagers. In addition, the vessels were almost entirely wrecked by the pounding they had received in the choppy waters, and it was with great difficulty that they were repaired sufficiently to limp along the shores to the north end of the lake.

Here the intrepid Mirabel set off on a walk taking several days (alone in the wilds of Africa?) along some sixty miles of the Songwe River, through bush that teemed with game, including leopards and lions. The description does leave one wondering where and how she slept along the way; where and what she ate – but no matter, she reached Tunduma after hitching a ride on a passing truck. Meanwhile, the boats had clawed their way through the fishtraps on the river until they could go no further, when the vehicles had to take over for the long road trip to the bottom end of Lake Tanganyika. Along the way they had to cross some serious mountains, naturally, but again the two thousand-odd metre heights did not put them off their mission to find a navigable route for boats in this remote region. Half of the expedition, with their last really seaworthy boat went up the western shore of Lake Tanganyika towards Albertville and the established water-route to the Atlantic via the Lukuga and Luapula/Congo Rivers. The other half’s next stop was Lake Rukwa, where they parked their boats on the shore when they arrived in the evening, only to find that one had mysteriously disappeared next morning, lifted by a wind-driven ‘tide’ in that (at that time) shallow puddle, and deposited some miles distant in a swamp.

The relatively short stretch between this lake and Kigoma on Tanganyika proved to be extremely trying. The truck broke, the trailer came apart, the remaining members of the expedition suffered from illness and thirst. Their finances were exhausted and their tempers frayed. When they finally made it to Kigoma, the leader of the expedition raced back from Stanleyville to where the western party had progressed.. The expedition was basically bankrupt; so boats were sold to raise some meagre funds, and most of the expedition members left to go back to Johannesburg in the truck. The indomitable author decided to carry on with the trip on her own – with ₤2 in her pocket until she could reach her next point of contact with a town of any size. She detoured round the top of the lake, into Ruanda, and from there onwards over the mountains into the Congo basin; hitchhiking, walking and being helped along by other travellers and the locals, black and white alike. Obviously her story becomes a minor part of the tale, and she resumes the account of the other three men as they relayed it to her after she had returned to South Africa.

With nothing left to prove, except possibly passing the impassable (to navigation) rapids and waterfalls that mark the length of the Congo River, the sorry remnants leap-frogged their way downriver, alternately by boat and by jeep. Their menagerie had grown somewhat by this time, and they had to contend with a European wolf (!), a python and two cheetahs among their passengers! From Matadi two more of the expedition members flew home, while the leader and the photographer completed the traverse to Banana Point. The entire trip had taken three months. They finally got rid of the last boat and turned home southwards across the continent once more, heading for Lusaka, which they reached without too many disasters along the way.

In conclusion the author does rather leave the question of scientific and exploratory achievement open to the reader’s assessment. What she does state is that the expedition ‘proved’ that some 87% of the 5600 kilometres traversed are already navigable by water. One feels they might just have asked the locals about that before setting off. A book quite interesting in parts, full of unrelated anecdotes and snippets of information, but lacking any central theme and purpose.

I have read several of the Ricciardi’s books before, most with enjoyment, so I decided to tackle a hitherto unknown book, African Rainbow – Across Africa by Boat (Ebury Press, 1989) to add to the contents of this article. Both Lorenzo and his wife of some thirty years, Mirella, are romantics, dreamers and travellers of note. He has had a colourful life as a scion of a noble Italian family, which he filled with voyages, journalism, sailing and acting (the role of Christ in the film Ben Hur – no less) among other diversions. Mirella was raised in the Kenyan wilds as a child of nature, but is equally at home in the salons of London and Milan as a fashion photographer of note. Two of her previous books have been hailed as classics, i.e. Vanishing Africa, a pictorial delight, and African Saga, a biographical eye-opener.

The odyssey in question was inspired by Stanley’s disastrous and epic trek, so we are told by Lorenzo. It was to be the ‘first known crossing of Africa by boat’ (see Rogers above!), but the Ricciardis set about it in style, as they managed to get ample sponsorships of equipment and money (even the National Geographic Society evinced interest), which meant they could assemble a fleet of eight inflatable boats, with two engines apiece – either 25 hp for cruising, or 6 hp (?) possibly for puttering along; two speedboats, half a dozen vehicles and a crew of nine modish young metropolitans, mostly of the comely, nubile maidens (picked mostly by Lorenzo – who had a fine eye for expeditionary qualifications), to help them lug the gear over rocks and rapids.

Unlike the previous expedition, and unlike the ill-fated Stanley, the Rainbow crowd departed up the Rufiji River, and made relatively good time by boat until they reached the Shuguli falls, where their road convoy enters the scene once more. Shimmering days in the midsummer heat wilts the intrepid band, but the evenings are pure magic and the local people add to that unspoilt Africa that both authors revel in, and which Mirella describes with lyrical prose. After many exciting adventures, they proceed up the Kilombero until they reach the Mbanga Mission, from where it is but a short truck ride to the nearest station and they take the train to Mbeya where they are met by their road transport once more and can proceed to Lake Rukwa. In this mysterious lake they decide to aid the locals by cutting down the resident exploding crocodile population by at least two individuals, and, well satisfied with their efforts, they return to Mbeya. In the meantime a number of their beauteous, expeditionary damsels have had enough of the ride, and the team has shrunk to a more manageable five souls all told. At this point the seasons overtook the expedition, and they decided to return to their city lives in Milan and London until the rainy season had abated somewhat, some three months later. During the interval, Lorenzo barely recovered from cerebral malaria, so there were certainly some dangers inherent in what was otherwise a fairly enjoyable jaunt.

The expedition was reconvened in April with a new crew, consisting of only one girl and a number of husky young men, both European and African, who were chosen by Mirella this time (!) and the journey recommenced up the longest of the great lakes, Tanganyika, after spending a little time on a southwards detour into the top end of Lake Malawi – possibly just to say ‘they had been there’. Some quality time was spent with the chimpanzees of Ngombe, and then they transferred to Lake Kivu, at the top end of which they managed to visit their other relations, the mountain gorillas of the Virunga volcanoes, as well as camping out within frying distance of a minor volcanic cataclysm that was splitting the African continent apart at the time. All good, entertaining and healthy stuff, it must be said.

They had run out of waterway by this time, so there was nothing for it but to take to the air and transfer the entire phalanx to Shabunda in Zaire, but as they had left their Bedford truck and three Fiat Pandas behind, they were forced to hire local transport. Finally they managed to get afloat once more on a tributary of the Lualaba, which they utilised to further the aims of the expedition a little further until they reached Ubundu, where the deadly rapids of the great river, now the Zaire/Congo foiled them and they were forced once more to take a train to Kisangani.  The last part of the epic was once again curtailed by seasonal rains, and the party dispersed homewards after storing their gear.

Three months later a completely new group, except for the authors, assembled once more and prepared to tackle the awesome might of the rapids and falls that remained between them and the Atlantic. They found out soon enough that all the white-water experience of one of their new members was not going to see them through the turbulent waters of the Wagenia falls, where they almost lost a canoe full of locals who had latched onto their inflatable. This could have had dire results for the entire expedition, but luckily the tribesmen escaped with their lives and the Europeans avoided a possible lengthy stretch in the local gaol.

The remainder of the journey became more of a sight-seeing tour of the strange linear ‘fluviopolis’ that this immense waterway presented, with rafts of vessels filled with humanity, produce and animals, moving up or down the mainstream, attached like sucklings to a mother-ship which dipped into ports, harbours and bordering settlements – all interspersed with the mouldering ruins of the Belgian colonial era, overshadowed by the sombre memories of the atrocities that followed the European exodus. The Ricciardi’s numerous high-placed contacts assured them of a warm, civilised welcome at many of their stops, where they could refuel, refresh and enjoy the odd French champagne, camembert and clean linen – not to mention helicopter flights and conducted tours; but here and there they did touch the lives of simple folk – hunters, farmers and villagers, who in the main received them with warmth and hospitality.

Their whole narrative is interwoven with quotes from H M Stanley’s book, as well as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, which so starkly tells of the horrors that beset this part of the continent during the European colonial period and its liberation, until it landed once more under the stranglehold of a tyrant in the form of Mobutu. The ravages on the environment and its animal and human occupants are certainly highlighted by Mirella’s narrative in a touching manner, which rescues the book from being the record of a completely pointless, self-indulgent, twenty months’  joy-ride, by a bunch of well-heeled thrill-seekers with unlimited resources, which ended by emptying the obligatory gourd full of Indian Ocean water into the Atlantic at Banana Point. Lorenzo’s interjections in the text introduce a somewhat jarring effect in the continuity of the text, more in keeping with his swashbuckling personality.

One could expect that Mirella’s photography would offer a feast for the eyes – but even in this the book fails for some mysterious reason, since a large number of photos are pure holiday snapshots, while other double-page spreads are of such poor, grainy quality, that one could suspect them to be frames from a cinematic film that had been enlarged to fill the pages – not to mention reproductions from other books and some of Mirella’s photos from other parts of Africa, that have absolutely no relevance to the journey. The a couple of really beautiful images scattered throughout the three hundred-odd pages are not sufficient to rescue the book. I realize that I may be writing myself ‘out of a sale’ of a book that I have in stock, but then, we all make mistakes occasionally – though it’s not half as expensive as the mistakes made by the ‘expedition’s’ sponsors.

The ‘Other’ Slavery - Votes & Views #23

The ‘Other’ Slavery

   There are many uncomfortable subjects that I read about. Wars and their attendant atrocities, politics and power-play, the realities of economics and exploitation, the infliction of cruelties and the suffering borne by the victims – all of the above are, of course, part and parcel of the age-old custom of slavery. Where and when it started can only be conjectured; the powerful have probably always exploited the weak. Our South African heritage also carries a dark stain of institutionalised slavery which the Dutch practised for economic, political and domestic reasons from the earliest years of the establishment of the settlement at the Cape. These unfortunates were imported from West Africa, South East Africa, Madagascar and the Dutch colonies in the East. It may be argued that our homegrown version was more humane than the horrors that were perpetrated in the Americas, but this is not a point I would care to debate in this article.

  

  The Atlantic slave trade lasted only a few hundred years – during which time the labour extracted from the victims enriched the Europeans and their American colonies greatly. Both Atlantic and South African slavery have been extensively researched and written about for a very simple reason – one slave represented one unit of labour. That was his or her sole value, and because of some meticulous bookkeeping that has passed down to us, numbers, sex, age, price and often how they were employed was documented. Those who perished in the holding cells waiting to be shipped, the toll taken by diseases, the numbers that died en route to their destinations, as well as slaves who died under the harsh regimes of field work and maltreatment meted out to them – not to forget those who were put to death for one or other contravention of their masters’ laws – most of these were recorded in the ledgers and accounts of the day because they represented a financial loss.

  We can only extrapolate the collateral damage that was done to obtain these units of labour in a productive process which denied their essential humanity. The current reckoning can account for about twelve million people that were forcefully taken from their homes and spread around the world, if they did not die in the process. Many researchers have made estimates of the larger demographic results over the source regions from where these people were extracted, but these vary greatly from six million to as much as another twelve million souls that perished in the tribal wars, slaving raids, ensuing famines and epidemics. The perpetrators were Africans, Arabs and Europeans. The former raided their neighbours, or enemies and took prisoners, originally for their own use, but later to be traded for other goods. The Arabs had a long history of trade and exploitation, into which we’ll go in more detail below, while the Europeans set up a profitable triangular network in which they traded manufactured goods for slaves, whom they used in turn to grow crops that were desirable in Europe.

  This foul practice lasted from the start of the 16th century until well past the middle of the 19th – as far as the Atlantic trade went. Let it be acknowledged that in those dark days there were many Europeans who abhorred slavery, people like William Wilberforce and the Quakers, who started campaigns for the abolition by the late 18th century which gained much public support, though there were pockets of stubborn resistance by the owners of colonial properties. By 1833 most of the European powers had capitulated, though remnants of the illegal trade survived in the Americas for another forty-odd years before being stamped out.

  I have long been puzzled by the coyness of historians to investigate the role of the Arab nations, no, let’s call the spade a shovel – the role of Islam – in this infamous business. From peripheral remarks in a number of books I have read by and about the explorers, missionaries and administrators of East, North and West Africa, I have frequently come across mentions of slave caravans, Arab slavers and the wars waged against them and the effects on the local populations. Quite apart from David Livingstone’s descriptions of the heartrending conditions he found among survivors of slaving raids in several of his works, I recently read the work Mlozi of Central Africa – Trader, Slaver and self-styled Sultan, by David Stuart-Mogg (Central Africana, 2010) which opened my eyes to the epic depopulation that so-called Arab slavers achieved in Central and East Africa. Recently I obtained a book which gripped my imagination even before I began to read it. This was Ronald Segal’s work Islam’s Black Slaves – a History of Africa’s Other Black Diaspora (Atlantic Books, 2001). The author had already written a previous work on the Atlantic slave trade, The Black Diaspora, which I have not read, but his researches led him to question the paucity of material on Islam’s role – which he then pursues with admirable doggedness.

  Segal has admirable credentials as a political activist, academic and writer, and in the book I have read, he strives to differentiate between the hideous, dehumanizing form of slavery as practised by Christianity, and the relatively benign form in most Islamic societies where it is to be found, due to the institution being influenced by the letter and spirit of the Koran, which meant that slaves were regarded as people – not simply possessions. Indeed the Koran lays down guidelines for the just and compassionate treatment of slaves, as well as recommending the act of emancipation as a way of acquiring merit. Slave children were not to be separated from their mothers before the age of seven, and those offspring born of the union of masters and their female slaves, could not be the slaves of their own fathers. In pursuit of its essentially humanistic form, Islam also decreed that Moslems should not enslave other Moslems, but it encouraged conversion to the faith. There is a wealth of information in the book on the historical processes at work in the Islamic world during the period of the rise of Islam until the present – fascinating stuff, through which the author has woven the thread of slavery.

  What also emerges, is that the slaves imported (mostly from Africa, but also from Europe and Asia) were female, in a ratio of two to every one male. This is the direct opposite to the Atlantic trade, where men were needed for the backbreaking labour in the fields under tropical conditions and thus the ratio was about two males for every one female. The reason for this is that the Islamic countries had very little need for field labour as they already had large peasant populations. Segal cites some early experiments which actually ended in slave revolts, such as those in present-day Iraq between the 7th and 9th centuries, and these may have acted as warnings to their masters. Slaves were mainly used in urban environments, in factories, transport and mining, as well as craft workshops, but mostly, slaves were acquired as concubines, domestics, personal retainers, soldiers and a host of other tasks which had no real commercial value. The number of slaves a man owned displayed his status in the community; he who could boast with a thousand slaves had his own army of servitors – or even of soldiers and the size of his harem spoke volumes about the lavishness of his household. Slaves, then, were items of conspicuous consumption in a society where religion inhibited the development of Western-style capitalism, which was primarily set on amassing riches. Under Islam those who fostered scholarship, the promotion of the faith and contributions to philanthropy enjoyed greater prestige than those who pursued capital accumulation which was being put to industrial purposes that would in turn transform whole economies. Still, slaves had the opportunity to rise meteorically from their positions of bondage. If concubines bore their masters children, it would be highly unlikely that they would be divorced, which was not the case with wives. They could be married by their masters, or to other Moslems. Those who had special gifts, such as singing or entertaining, very much like Japanese geishas, were valued and occupied respected positions in society. The Koran encouraged the mukataba, a process by which slaves could buy their freedom from their master in instalments, with money that they earned by their own efforts. Male slaves often rose to positions of managerial and great administrative power in civil society – some even became rulers.

  So Islam inhibited the system of depersonalization of slave labour and in the process opposed the emergence of institutionalised racism. The manumission of slaves was a frequent and ongoing process and the slaves, who had not been subject to any special discrimination on account of their skin colour, were easily assimilated into Islamic society once freed. This did not mean they automatically escaped the lower scale of society, or poverty, but they were equal under law and religion to their erstwhile masters. A relatively benign bondage then, one would think, though obviously there must have been cases where gross abuse took place and certainly there was no element of choice in entering the state of slavery. However, this status of being a symbol of domestic affluence came with a price for many of the enslaved.

  Ancient Arabia had no eunuchs, it would seem; the practice was roundly condemned by early Moslems as mutilation was expressly forbidden by Islamic law – enforced by a hadith of the Prophet himself. However, the early conquests of Islam brought in wealth and captives, so precepts were bent to the needs of the day. A slave owner could not have an establishment full of available women, as well as a horde of testosterone-charged males under one roof. So males had to be castrated. Without going into the grisly details, this was a widespread practice and the mortality rate from shock, loss of blood and infection was probably in the region of half of the unfortunates that underwent it. Soon there was a flourishing trade in eunuchs from as far afield as Europe, Asia, black Africa as well as nominally Moslem countries. The prices these people fetched were in some cases sevenfold that of uncastrated slaves – which reflects their scarcity due to the high fatality rate.

  A possible side-effect of the high number of non-breeding male slaves was the low rate of births among slave women. Certainly it meant that ever-increasing numbers of new stock had to be found to replace unsustainable numbers in bondage, as well as replacing the manumitted, who joined Islamic society – often as an underclass. As the West became less of a source for white slaves, and as the Atlantic trade slowly petered out, the quest for black slaves became almost insatiable, involving violence and brutality on a gigantic scale. By that time many of the slavers roaming North, East and Central Africa we Afro-Arab blacks themselves. The 19th century became a terrible period for Africa. The Ottoman Empire reigned over the Middle East. Egypt and Lybia had a voracious appetite for slaves. The Fulani empire rose to conquer and convert a broad band of countries that straddled the whole continent from Senegal in the West to the Sudan in the East. What had started as a jihad, swiftly became a gigantic slave-raid, as bordering tribes were looted of their population or converted to Islam – which did not always guarantee them immunity. Puppet rulers were taxed by their overlords – in slaves, when they had no more produce or treasure to pay with. The expanding armies needed slave soldiers, weapons, as well as horses (another status symbol of the times), and a flourishing growth industry arose as arms were traded for slaves, and horses could fetch as much as twenty souls in exchange. Credit was given by traders in these commodities, which meant that powerful leaders could send out expeditions with the express intention of capturing ‘currency’. Once their target areas had been denuded of population, the rapacious rulers had no scruples in preying on fellow Moslems and even their own populations. Increasingly minor infringements of the law could lead to imprisonment and subsequent slavedom.

  The Sahara was criss-crossed with routes taken by slave caravans, and salt, gold and spices were the main items traded. In East Africa things were no better. Whole districts were depopulated in Malawi, Tanganyika, Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia, as noted by European explorers. In simplistic terms, ivory and slaves were the drawcards; the former found ready markets in Europe, and could be carried to the coast by the latter, who were then sold off on the Lybian, Egyptian, Arabian and Turkish slave markets.

  The British waged the battle on the high seas against the transporters of the human cargoes, as well as making land forays in the Sudan. It took decades to make an impression on the trade, and at first it seemed that even more people were being carried by slavers to make up for the losses incurred. The French also entered the fray in their West African colonies, and slowly the life was being squeezed out of the institution, though it was still possible to buy slaves in any number of countries well into the 20th century. The problem that now arose was what the liberating powers should do with the emancipated slaves, on which whole economies had come to depend, since both West and East African states had started using slaves as field workers. Various schemes of apprenticeships, and indentured labour were tried, through which freed slaves were to be converted to free peasantry over a number of years. Of course, this made the colonial power themselves complicit with a continuation of the practice – but what were the alternatives? A number of different solutions were found all over the continent, but what they had in common was the creation of an underclass, usually squatting in poverty and resented by their former owners, with whom they would compete for land, resources and opportunities. The slaves in North Africa, the Middle East and Far East, were assimilated or died out.

  Or did they? Segal records a number of countries, such as the Saudis, where slaves were being doled out as gifts in the mid 1950s; slaves being sold in the Red Sea ports and in the UAE states in the 1970s, and a Lebanese in Sierra Leone who was supplying his compatriots in Beirut with slaves. The 1980s saw cases reported where pilgrims on Haj were tricked and sold into slavery, and Saudi Arabia probably remained the principal importer of slaves. As the millennium drew to a close, even the most fundamentalist Islamic states bowed to the inevitable and slavery was repudiated – with two exceptions – Mauretania and the Sudan.

  In the former state a third of the population, the upper class, consisted of people of Arab-Berber descent; another third of the population were descendants of these and black slaves, who were culturally and politically tied to their former masters, but the remaining segment is composed of blacks from various ethnic groups, which includes an untold number of slaves. Though slavery has been abolished repeatedly in 1961 and 1980 by the government, an Anti-Slavery report from 1993 reports a continued slave-holding numbering in the hundreds of thousands. The laws seem to leave plenty of room for evasion, it would seem. Indeed, a leading imam is cited as being on record, stating that the abolition of slavery was illegal as it was contrary to the texts of the Koran, since an Islamic state had no ‘right to seize a man’s house, wife or slave’.

  In the Sudan, the long-lasting civil war between the Islamic north and the animist or Christian south inevitably furthered the continuation of slavery. Incredibly the mid 1990s saw hundreds of street children kidnapped and taken to camps far north of Omdurman. Almost 300 Dinka civilians, adults and children were captured for subsequent sale, and in another auction held at Manyeil, 150 children were sold. A Swiss-based aid organization commenced a repurchase program of slaves in 1995 which resulted in the freeing of some twenty thousand souls at an average price of some $50 each by the year 2000. The evidence cited by Segal is damning. Slavery is alive and well in Darkest Africa, even into the 21st century.

  I have only touched on some of the aspects that Segal has written about in great depth. He continues with a chapter focusing on the rise of Black Islamist movements in America, which raise some interesting questions as to why their adherents see Islam as their doctrine of choice – not that Christianity is more deserving of their devotions. The author presents a huge body of evidence about some thirteen centuries of Islam’s practice of slavery, and the numbers cited are certainly equal to, if not vastly in excess of the Atlantic slave trade. Yet African Moslem leaders seem to have conveniently forgotten a part of their countries’ histories; the United Nations’ authority is being blatantly disregarded, and Islam itself is challenged by this blot that survives in these two states who profess to act under its principles.

Of Nkungu and Bwatu - Impressions of Malawi

Africana Votes & Views #22

Chileka Airport could be anywhere in tropical Africa. The overwhelming impression is sticky heat, a maelstrom of perspiring humanity and shabby buildings. The immigration and customs people are courteous, and entry is painless; my host’s air-conditioned car awaits. We wend our way through haphazard, undesignated roads – some seriously damaged by a recent downpour and looking more like riverbeds than streets. Where the jumble of business premises and market stalls don’t line the roads, there are brick walls or high fences – except the few that have been undercut by the floods and have tumbled down.

The house is halfway up a lofty hill, which from afar shows the scars of human cultivation, as well as the havoc of erosion, with a few patches of primeval forest between. At first we drive on a public road – the Old Zomba Road – which still sports the odd patch of tar between boulders and gullies; bordered by sprouting fields of mealies and pumpkins. I am told each Malawian gets a free allocation of fertilizer and seed – they find their own spaces where they can plant their subsistence crops. Then the private driveway, of exaggerated rounded profile to shed the water, and to capture the washed-out sand and gravel – it snakes through natural forest with manicured lawns beneath. A mountain stream roars down a contained, granite-lined ravine, rolling large boulders in the spate; or trickling musically between pools when it doesn’t rain. The house is impossibly large, lofty, intricate – consisting of many afterthoughts and alterations. There is a bamboo forest at the rear, an attempt at a vegetable garden stepping up the slope, and a bougainvillea which has destroyed the pergola in front of the house, and which is now growing in and out of the cool, dark verandah, with a muscular stranglehold on a pillar within the structure.

Three large dogs and one smaller one roam the grounds. They sleep in a miniature stable out at the back of the kitchen. Occasionally during the day or night, one hears the baying of the pack in the woods. In the not too distant past it was hyaenas and leopards that made their occasional appearance. Now it might be a jackal, or even a stray bitch on heat. The deadliest animals around could be the snakes, of which there are plenty in the thick undergrowth and trees – but actually they are eclipsed by the mosquitoes. Despite smoke coils, insect repellents, mosquito nets and industrial-sized fans to blow the pestering hordes out of the windows, the question would seem not to be if one gets malaria – but rather, when?

On a cooler and cloudy day we take a drive to Mount Mulanje. This part of the country seems to consist of a gently convex, fertile, green valley, stretching as far as the eye can see, interrupted by scenic humps and spires of inselbergs interspersed between the tea and coffee plantations and maize fields. Mulanje is a brooding, majestic eminence grise, with its very own patch of climate draped over the peaks, slopes and tables – whimsically dumping a shower here and there to feed the foaming cataracts that streak the grey and green cliffs. Three times the height of Table Mountain and reputed to have a fiendishly difficult climbing-face of over a kilometer and a half in height. In winter frost is not uncommon on the higher plateaus, and snow has been seen.

The countryside bordering the road (and indeed all of Malawi that I travelled through) is suffering from a peculiar mania. There are brick kilns everywhere. Like Mayan temples and pyramids, each little brick building has its own pile of bricks, or an unfinished or a burnt-out stack next to it. Millions upon millions of bricks made with the rich red clay and the lush forests of hardwood, of which there are only odd trees remaining in the watercourses. It should be called “Bricklandia”. Not that the houses are that grand. The impression is of more half-built and ruined edifices than completed ones. The style is simple in the extreme – mostly single brick construction, with the odd flying buttress to support an unsteady architecture. Cement is expensive and often unobtainable, I am told, so this industry must have been one of the misplaced skills passed on by the early missionaries after Livingstone – and taken to extremes by the locals.

There are goats everywhere; often tethered in pairs, with a long thong between them – to slow them down if the urge took them to run into the road, perhaps? Strangely enough there are no cows to be seen in the south and I am told that there are still sporadic outbreaks of the bovine disease spread by the tsetse fly – nagana – as well as human sleeping sickness in some spots. Dogs also are largely absent and by the end of the day I have yet to see more than half a dozen skeletal pi-dogs.

Wherever there are no fields of sprouting maize interspersed with houses, there are villages. Under a huge fig tree in the main road, a horde of bicycles is parked .On the roads there is much two-wheeled traffic; anything from bikes piled high with elongated bags of charcoal, to a three metre length of rolled-up roofing sheet seeking a catastrophic conclusion with a passing motor vehicle. But most often these conveyances have a passenger or two – or three aboard. Housewives with children strapped to back, hip or front; bags of fresh produce or groceries dangling on either side and holding the occasional parasol providing a little oasis of shade. These are taxis. The luggage carriers are often tailor-made by the local smiths – but not for comfort, since they are spartan in the extreme, with a thin, plastic-covered foam padding providing some relief during the excruciating ride. The odd taxi even has a number or name at the back - or would that be the name of the perspiring pedaller?

A wild kaleidoscope of colour by the roadside – a clothes-market – known locally by the charming name of ‘Bendown’. Because the wares are mostly spread out across the ground, on sheets of cloth or grass mats: to shop, you have to ‘bend down’. These markets are not only useful to the locals, but even the well-off Europeans find the odd cast-off treasure from the noted fashion houses of Paris, London and Milan there, since the wares are donated in bulk by foreign charities, and have spawned a whole industry in Central Africa. Obviously China is also making inroads into this marketplace with their lookalike Nikes and Rheeboks, as well as synthetic tops shrieking American catch-phrases and brand names.

We buy a full rattan lounge suite from a young man by the side of the road. Two double-seaters, and two singles; well-crafted on a hardwood frame, in the style already popular in Victorian times. I am told through an interpreter that these have taken him about four to six weeks to make – he’s not too sure, as one day is very much like another. The asking price – about R800 ($113) for the lot. Maybe they grow the raw material themselves, but it still seems an awfully meagre reward for so much work.

Back at the house the thunder rolls over the hills and short, sharp showers fall. The dance of the fireflies commences at dusk, and I am transported back to the Transvaal Lowveld in the 1950s – the last time I can recall seeing this magical display in numbers. One static light signals frantically, suspended in mid-air, caught up in a spider’s web. Then as if by prearrangement, all is darkness out there and only the clicking of tree-frogs punctuates the murmuring of the brook.
Some days later our heavily laden caravan departs north, towards Chinteche. The lush landscape changes subtly, from the city’s urban sprawl to the almost ubiquitous scattered settlements that seem to line all main roads. The traffic, mostly pedestrian, manpowered and animal, is staggering. All of the nation appears to be on the move. The roads are quite good, but heavy rains inevitably erode the verges, and sunken bare ‘bays’ appear, ready to wreck the unwary travellers’ suspension. Best to be wide awake and ready for evasive manoeuvres.

Along the road thousands of strange bundles are stacked, tall plastic sacks, with a basketry bonnet to extend the capacity, filled with charcoal, each probably representing a sizeable chunk of hardwood tree – the National Energy Commission of the poor. There are unthreatening police roadblocks every now and then. They ask where one is going to, and where one hails from, but have no real interest in your answers. It is their task to control the movement of charcoal into the cities, I hear. A wise move; since complete deforestation of the rural regions is the likely alternative.

The landscape changes from scattered forest, to canefields, to cultivated lands dotted with innumerable Baobab trees. We cross streams, rivers, broad wetlands and eroded gorges with a trickle of water at the bottom. I am told that more than two hundred streams enter the lake, loaded with silt and nutrients from the highlands that loom not far from the lacustrine borders. This is an unexpectedly mountainous country, gashed by the southern end of the Rift Valley, which descends to more than two hundred metres below sea-level at the bottom of the lake, while the plateaus tower over two thousand metres high. We get our first glimpses of the lake. On the horizon the light cloud in the sky blends with the water. Low gallery forest sweeps down the slopes of Kuwirbi mountain, right down to the lakeshore. Sweeping white beaches, a few rocks looming like prehistoric monsters from the waves.

Seven long hours and over five hundred kilometers later – Chinteche town. We enter along the main road – and if you close your eyes as you sneeze, you've missed it. Yet if you turn off, there is a typical small African village; a bustling street, with 'fresh produce' markets, a warren of rickety stalls and steep alleyways; carpenters and tinsmiths working on their projects and further on the street is lined with shabby shopfronts. The preponderant impression is overcrowding; too many bodies jostling each other; too many products competing for display space. One emporium is truly noteworthy. One could call it a hardware store, yet clothes compete with toiletries, car spares are not uncommon and sit cheek by jowl with plumbing gear. Only two customers at a time though – there's no space for more – but you could stand on the veranda while the tailor shortens your trousers, or another repairman fiddles with your appliances or bicycle. We buy some eggs, a few more potatoes, some paraffin (kerosene). Then on to the house on the beach.

We are greeted by white-clad servants; the major-domo, Mr Chirwa, his apprentice son, Noel, and the gardener Hannock. While they unpack, I wander through the huge lounge and straight onto the beach and into the water thirty metres away from the verandah. My hostess, a friend and I walk along the long, curved beach; straight into the setting sun. Dugouts lie scattered on the sands like blackened, overripe bananas; the tang of spicy hardwood fires pervades the air, occasionally interrupted by the gagging stench of fermenting cassava drying on a flat rock. Fine seine-nets are laid out neatly to dry under thatched shelters; these are legal, with mesh of about an inch. From the size of the whitebait on sale at the markets, one knows that nets with a mesh that mosquitoes would have trouble getting through are also used.

Speaking of the latter, they are ubiquitous, voracious and seemingly on duty 24/7. My hosts use industrial-size fans which sound like Cessnas about to take off to 'blast the little bastards back onto the lake'. The theory sounds good, but I see no diminution in the numbers of hungry beasts circling us as we sit having our sundowners by the light of evil-smelling hurricane lamps. The much-praised repellents, coils and both spray and sticky gunge stick, seem to be greeted with roars of approval by the hungry hordes. Two fireflies greet us with joyous gyrations and the fat geckoes scurry over the white walls, snatching a rich harvest from the patches of light. Out of the dark penumbra of the hurricane lights, three indistinct spectres shuffle closer, each holding a lethal-looking machete. The security squad – average age about 75 at a guess. They pay their respects to the ‘bwana’ and ‘dona’ and deploy their forces over the property. These old men are minor chiefs, whose efficacy lies in the respect in which they are held by the locals, not their physical attributes or their lethal weapons. A novel idea, or maybe just an ancient convention from a kinder age.

Morning – and the first sight that greets me is a bloated raider, sitting on the inside of the mosquito net. I take revenge with the can of insect spray after donning my reading glasses. The battle lasts ten minutes and I harvest twenty fallen as evidence – but there may be more dead under the bed. You are always thirsty; only nine degrees south of the equator and at six a.m. the sun is already blindingly high and it feels like high noon as you sit, drinking your first cup of coffee on the veranda. Kids, barely into their teens, paddle past, perched precariously astride their distorted dugouts – the hollowed-out section of the tree-trunk far too narrow to accommodate their bodies. A group of shrieking naked black waterbabies tumble in the minuscule waves. This morning, out of a placid, unruffled lake, long rollers appear. In no time at all the roar of the surf is too alluring – I go body-surfing in four-foot breakers – lovely. The water is warm and you need to wade out a hundred metres to immerse yourself up to your chin. Lenses of cooler water pass over you as the swells pass. Distinctly soothing, but in the back of one's mind lurks the memory of a sixteen-foot croc patrolling the beach some years back, as does the image of a hippo rearing out of the depths behind an unwitting bather. You relegate those dark thoughts as you dive through the crystal-clear waters.

It is easy to morph into a lotus eater. Wake, drink coffee, watch the sun rise over the lake and the hint of blue hills on the Mozambique side of the water, watch the villagers fishing. Read a book or two, have lunch under the trees in front of the cottage next door, nap a little, go for a walk, cool off in the clear waters, make a slight contribution to cooking supper, do some serious damage to a bottle or two of wine and drop off again to the muted roar of the wavelets on the beach outside your window, listen to the patter of rain and the rumble of the thunderstorms as they pass. Twice a day sleek herds of picturesque Nguni cattle are driven past to and from pasture. If the weather is favourable, a crowd of villagers row out a seine net and pull it in for a few fish. If they are lucky, they come to offer us bunches of chambo for sale, as the local tilapia delicacy is called. The tropical evenings are spent on the veranda, overlooking the dark lake, bejewelled with coronets of moving, winking lights that the fleet of fishermen use to bring the fish to the surface. That is the pattern of the day.

We rouse ourselves to go on an excursion to the ‘capital of the north’, Mzuzu. The road northwards to Nkata Bay is a pretty, sun-dappled drive through rubber forests; tall, slim, trees, each with its oblique tattoo of cuts and collecting cup attached to the trunk. Children offer balls of raw rubber to the passing traffic – but who needs to break a toe on one of these? And yes – I saw a bunch of barefooted kids playing soccer with one of these toe-crushers in a village along the road. We drive up into the mountains. The vegetation is jungly; the slopes steeper, but everywhere the rich brown fields of cassava and maize are bandaged round them - until the next heavy rain washes away the terraces and the chocolate brew lands in the lake, leaving another furrowed hillside to erode further with each rainy season.

Mzuzu is reminiscent of what the Indian hill-stations must have looked like. It is cloudy and cooler. The streets are chaotic but a number of newer businesses are springing up between the myriad government agencies, Indian emporiums and all the tatterdemalion micro-industry that belongs to an African town – pardon, that should be ‘city’. We meet a friend of a friend at an establishment known as the Zoo - as in Mzuzuzoo – an establishment where voyagers meet, sleep, live, eat and especially, drink – while nights are probably blue with the smoke of chamba-weed. 

The place is run by a skeletal, barefooted, grey-locked man in a tatty, faded kikoi; he has many miles on the clock and his eyes stare vacantly through you .Or maybe the boss could be his slightly more corpulent sidekick who keeps on rushing in and out for better reception on his cellphone, to hold loud conversations. Then there's the man staggering unco-ordinatedly about, half a pair of glasses held on to his head with a rubber band - or even the Rasta type with the only lively, wide grin in the place. The staff and clientele are indistinguishable to the casual observer – all seem to be doing duty behind the bar and in the kitchen as well as drinking and eating. The food's not too bad and has the added attraction of being cheap. ‘Sorry dudes, no mince today, the butcher's bust his mincer’. A lanky black familiar, the cat, occupies the last vacant chair at our table. Since we don't dish up anything in front of him, he sneaks onto our laps and plays interested spectator to the action on the plate. He is rewarded with a few short ends of generic sausage; after the meal he laps up leftover mash and crunches chips. Times are tough.

The walls are painted in gaudy, often discernibly mixed patches of leftover paint. Graffiti in many languages, pop art images, the odd photo of favoured passers-through. The furniture has graced many different habitations before. The toilet's plastered with flyers of places to go to – with inevitable comments added, ranging from ‘supercool’ to ‘bummer’. The sleeping accommodation varies from camping in the long grass out back, to an elderly caravan, a bed in a dormitory or the full luxury of a room. The friend's friend we met arrived ten years back from Burundi in a clapped-out 2CV Citroën, which made it as far as the corner of the yard. He and his girl lived in it for a month before scratching together some funds for better accommodation. Now just the faded red wreck remains hidden by man-high weeds, sinking lower into the red clay at every rain.

On the way back we buy some mushrooms from the kids at the roadside; the size of small dinner plates, R8 (just over a dollar) for five. They also have bowls of red bulbous ones, up to the size of a fist, but they don't look quite as appetising as ours. Just afterwards in the middle of nowhere we pass a long, low building proclaiming itself to be the Eassy by Day Grocery on one end, while the other half sez it is the Eassy by Night Bar. Stores and businesses in rural Africa have endearingly naïve and sometimes unconsciously humorous appellations.

We return tired out by the day's drive; my host has a moment's inattention to the track less than a hundred metres from home, and the truck slithers off the soft, sandy, raised road into the ditch. The 4x4 solution just doesn’t make the grade, and the vehicle digs itself deeper into the soft sand.Even some herculean efforts of roadmaking, pushing and a last-ditch attempt as night falls doesn't do the trick. The vehicle has to be left teetering on two wheels for the night, guarded by an ancient watchman, nodding the hours of darkness away, since it doubles as a cashbox for our finances. Next morning some innovative thinking by Mr Chirwa sees the truck back on the road.

We make another trip to Nkhata where rumour has it that a Honey Producers Co-operative is operating. With much difficulty, we locate a man who takes us there - a clearing in the jungle, right next to where a square kilometre of raw, red earth, and gargantuan piles of primeval forest logs are stacked to make way for a hospital. A bright young man greets us and explains his business to us. We stand in a room literally buzzing with activity – hundreds of bees trying to lick up each last trace of their stolen supplies. There are hundreds of litres of honey; most of it comes from the flowering of the ubiquitous mango tree, with a dash of jungle produce during the off-season – but this latter source of nectar is now threatened by the clearing and probable further development. We get our containers filled, and during this process, two bees do the Kamikaze thing by diving straight into the descending stream entering the bottle. Like a fly in amber they float entombed in their precious food.

We return, and for the first time I encounter roadkill; a dead dog. We nearly contribute another when a young goat makes tracks for our radiator – but is saved at the last millisecond by a smart about turn. I am told that road deaths for the country are higher than in South Africa – that’s some record to beat! Though villages and roadside settlements often have a faded 50 km/h sign posted, as well as having pedestrian crossings with stop signs – no one takes a blind bit of notice. Cars charge through at speed, children, animals, pedestrians and cyclists scatter in the dance of death. On the open road the speed limit is 80, but only the overloaded, elderly, smoke-belching matatus (minibus taxis) observe that; most others seem to travel one and a half times that speed. This on roads that follow the contours of a hilly terrain, much like an irrigation furrow; often with a colonial-era tarmac surface, which has crumbled under fifty years of tropical sun, not to speak of innumerable potholes and subsidences. Repair work is certainly in progress - large squares of surface have been excavated, ready for filling in – but when? Each completed patch has a number painted in white next to it – I am told this is to make tendering for the work easier, and it obviates false claims for work done.

Back at the house the new area chief comes to introduce himself. An unassuming, slight man, who takes off his sandals before joining us on the terrace – a hangover from the colonial era, still practiced. He sits down with us and is offered a Coke. A stilted conversation ensues, a trial for both parties, as we desperately search for common topics. The health, marital condition, number of children, previous career (greenkeeper at the bowling club in Blantyre) are explored; next the status of common acquaintances, a regrettable number of whom have 'passed', some due to old age, but many because of malaria, complicated by the high incidence of AIDS. As soon as decently possible, the ill at ease chief departs with mutual expressions of esteem.

Ominous mini-tornadoes of nKungu (minute lake flies) erupt from the lake after the passage of a light thunderstorm. Trillions of them form dark clouds, visible over the lake at a distance of several kilometers, which swirl, peak, subside and then reform, all the time preyed on by squadrons of swallows and martens. The chief had told us they would come ashore after new moon, but none of us knew exactly when that was. Another plague of insects looms. When I return to my room one night, my wet swimming shorts I had hung to dry outside the window are covered with what looks like pink sand. It is a mess of tiny flies. The nkungu have arrived. During the ensuing days, women and children run through the lakeshore woods, holding shallow baskets, which are swung in wild swipes to capture a caking of the tiny, nutritious prey. These are prepared and preserved in different ways. When asked whether nkungu are a blessing or a curse, Mr Chirwa said 'they are blest'. Another way in which the lake feeds the people on its shores.

We visit a carpentry shop in Chinteche. Massive panelled doors everywhere; window-frames, cabinets; quite well-made considering the basic tools that are used – all hand-tools, it seems. There are small anomalies and imperfections, of course; some joints though well crafted are not a snug fit, nor is the right angle unduly revered. The variety of local timber makes an old lumberman's mouth water. There is a wealth of tropical hardwood as well as softwood like rubber, casuarina and the odd cedar. Shades are from almost dead white through yellow and green-brown and reds to the darkest mahogany. My hands would itch to get stuck into some furniture creation again if I lived here. One drawback – none of the wood has been seasoned properly; your door might still have been growing a month ago, so some warping and the occasional split is inevitable. The speed with which these unsophisticates can work out a relatively complicated design's price, is breathtaking. The item is reduced to the requisite number of standard-sized planks required (of which they know the price off by heart) a ridiculously small amount is added for labour, and you have your quote in minutes. You agree to it. No written contract, order or signature – just a nay or yea, and if the work is not too large, you are told it won't be finished today – but you can come to collect it a day later. We take the main man along to the house to give us an in situ quote for some kitchen cupboards, window frames and a gargantuan outside diner. Our man quotes quite laughable prices and a seemingly impossibly short delivery time. When asked about this, he admits readily that a number of his competitors/co-operators are going to help – it will be a village effort.

Our afternoon swim is a bore – the lake is dead calm and warm though there are storms all about. Later a soft rain starts which cools things down and for the first night at the lake I need a sheet over me. The morning is cloudy and dead calm. Over breakfast I pluck up enough courage to get Mr Chirwa to ask the gardener, Hannock (who has some connection with the little fishing settlement a few hundred metres down the lakeshore – and thus usufruct of a bwatu, as the dugouts are known hereabouts) to give me an hour of his time as well as assistance should the inevitable capsize occur.

In no time at all the matter is arranged with the explicit promise of a payment of R8 (a little more than $1) to the boat's owner, and the implied carrot of a 'prizie', as a tip or bonus is known hereabouts, for Hannock. A few minutes later the (thankfully) largest dugout appears with the diminutive gardener at the business end. I gird my loins for action and prepare for several dunkings. He invites me to step INTO the bwatu, and to my surprise it doesn't immediately turn turtle; more credit to Hannock's seamanship. We head out and though, inevitably, I make the boat wobble, the water is so dead calm, that after a few strokes I boldly call for the paddle. No problem; I sit astride the leviathan and paddle away lustily. We zig-zag, we do a clockwise circle, then an anti-clockwise one for good measure. 'Concentrate', I say to myself; I alter my steering technique to wide sweeps with the paddle; the circling stops and we are off towards a small archipelago of rocky outcrops a few hundred metres away.

Every now and then the Titanic gets a whim to veer wildly, but I'm getting the hang of it and steer the beast through the perilous waters with only a minor bump and scrape over the submerged reef that has probably claimed dozens of lives. We return in triumph. Just prior to landing I hop overboard – just to see how difficult it is to get back again. No problem. Hannock gives me the reassuring news that capsized bwatus do not float. Malawian fishermen do not swim as a rule, yet on this Friday morning, the lake is full of naked squirts in dugouts, who should be on school benches – and the wind is rising. With such diversions it's no wonder that playing hookey is a national pastime.

Nightfall brings a heavy thunderstorm, the power cuts out repeatedly following lightning strikes on the electricity grid and the nkungu, while not in choking masses, are round us, omnipresent, in swirling swarms that make us flail, snort, spit and scratch. On the walls the geckoes rush about, tails lashing with excitement, bats and martins swoop round the lights and a lonely leaf frog vocalises his pleasure from the depths of a large potplant. Our table is littered with tiny corpses; it is best to overlook the contents of your wineglass as you drink – and to pretend your food has had a generous grind of black pepper. The alternative could be to get angry, go mad or hungry. You creep into bed by the light of a tiny headlamp, which you extinguish pronto and ignoring the somewhat gritty feel of the sheets, you determinedly go to sleep under your entirely useless mosquito net. In the morning the air is thick with the smoke from the ineffective mosquito coils and the fact that all windows have been shut for the past day; your mouth tastes like a rubbish pit in Bophal and you can hardly get your eyelids up. There has to be a serpent or two in every paradise. We saw several real ones, but it was more a case of insects in the ointment that proved to be trying.

A holiday has to end. We leave on cool and cloudy Sunday; the lake was just another grey expanse blended into the sky. Farewells over, largesse distributed, we hit the road, already crowded with worshippers returning home from the hundreds of churches belonging to dozens of denominations, including a few home-grown varieties, it seems. Revellers, either leftovers from Saturday night or the early Sunday barflies, staggered dangerously along the ragged edges of the tar road. Trade seemed brisk in most villages, but there were few tillers in the fields.

After a few hours I took over the wheel and my host could rest while I concentrated on my task. While the human traffic behaved sensibly in the main, some of the goats, cows and chickens displayed suicidal tendencies, seemingly hell-bent on ending up as Sunday dinner. Barely through the town of Salima, I saw what looked like a bundle of black and grey rags lying in the middle of the road. I moved over so as to straddle the obstruction, which the high-clearance 4x4 could easily clear. To my horror it suddenly morphed into an awakening goat, raising its head. A bump followed by several more; I slowed instinctively and looked in the rearview mirror to see the corpse rolling across the road. 'Don't stop – drive on', came the advice from my co-pilot, 'you only stop if you hit a person, in which case, contrary to urban legend, the locals won't kill you.' He related an incident in which he had killed a goat during an official trip while accompanied by a local politician. As he was unsure of what protocol to follow, he stopped the car and turned to his companion in a panic to ask how they would find the owner. That worthy told him to open the boot of his car, slung in the carcass and remarked blandly that 'it looked like a ministerial goat to him, now.' End of problem. An animal fatality, from chicken to cow, is best left to the locals to convert into fast food – the alternative could mean endless delays and inordinate claims for compensation.

A few more days on the steamy hillside above the city, then I am on my way ‘back south’ and the ‘warm heart of Africa’ is just a warm memory in this southerner’s heart.

(The above are personal impressions, with an odd explanatory note, nothing more. I saw a little of the lovely country, met a few people and much friendliness. I looked at a third-world country from the perspective of another, slightly more developed third-world country, which had very similar conditions a mere half century ago, and which I experienced then. It was a journey back in time.)

Wheels Across the Desert

Africana Votes & Views #21

There are not many experiences that can compare with taking in a sunset over a vast arid landscape which dwarfs mountains and dunes; or lying down under a bejewelled black canopy that is only separated from one’s face by the thinnest sheet of an icy breeze; watching the fiery streak of meteorites – which once or twice in a lifetime you may actually hear arrive – in an explosion and a brilliant flash of light. Think of it as being a near neighbour to a cosmic catastrophe!

The other side of the coin is being squarely on the anvil of the sun-god, Ra, on a summer noon; no spot of shade except in, or under your broken-down or bogged motor vehicle; a little tingle of apprehension in the pit of your stomach; an extra measure of perspiration cooling your brow. Or while you wrap your face in stifling layers of cloth as you peer out at the ochre world of the sandstorm with slitted eyes poorly sheltered behind dark glasses. You love or loathe deserts; many people do both – just depending on the circumstance they find themselves in.

Back in 1967 I became the happiest man alive when my foreman woke me up after a long, cold night-shift on the drill, to ask me if I wanted to take on a job in the Namib. I spent the next three and a half years there, in the valley of the Khan River, being alternately fried and frozen, parched inland, or dripping in the coastal fog as we went on weekend fishing expeditions. I explored the mountains, the canyons, the dunefields and the saltflats. I drove my little Japanese station-wagon into improbable places – and mostly out again, though I had to walk once or twice, or wait an entire night for help on a deserted road. Then I was given a works Landrover, and I could choose even more difficult places to get stuck in. Finally I had had enough of the adventure and I came back to the Transvaal. Since then I have returned a dozen times or more to the Namib as well as the Kalahari, Namaqualand and Bushmanland. In addition I have read and collected dozens of books on desert travel, mainly through the Sahara and Sahel, the Northern Frontier District of Kenya and the Sudan, the Namib, Kalahari and Namaqualand, as well as the Australian and American deserts, the Gobi and Taklamakan in Asia and Arabia Deserta. So let’s have a look at some of what Africa has to offer by way of motorised travel.

In 1923 M et Mme Andre Citroën graced the departure of an extraordinary little mechanised column, consisting of five 10 hp ‘autochenilles’ or half-tracks from Touggourt in Algeria on a twenty-day epic first crossing of the Sahara to Timbuctoo in present-day Niger. At approximately the same time Prince Kamel el Din Hussein fitted out six ‘Box Fords’ and three of the Citroëns to explore the Egyptian hinterland and to establish a route to the oases at Dakhla and Kharga. They had less good fortune that the French to the westward – out of nine vehicles, only four made it back from the relatively short journey, as described by the British Transport OC, Major C S Jarvis in Three Deserts (John Murray, 1936), yet by the early 1930s a Hungarian nobleman, László Almásy, accompanied by three Britons was sent out by the Prince, and he had more success. He used an aeroplane as well as cars in his quest to find the legendary oasis of Zerzura, but instead discovered major prehistoric rock art sites, including the Cave of Swimmers in Jebel Uweinat, the highest mountain of the Eastern Sahara, and at Gilf Kebir. An English translation of his work was published under the title of The Unknown Sahara (1934), but I have only read a later German version. The film The English Patient is loosely based on some of Almásy’s wartime exploits.

Back to the Citroëns in Algeria. Once the possibility of this momentous north-south crossing had been confirmed, further plans were laid and another, larger and more ambitious expedition of eight of these tank-like little vehicles was dispatched in 1925. This time their target was to cross the Sahara and then the entire continent from West to East Africa. The two authors, Haardt and Audouin-Dubreuil, were each in ‘command’ of one of their fleet, and the book The Black Journey (G Bles, 1928) will give you disjointed chapter and verse, dreadfully ill-translated from flowery French, with numerous errors zoological and botanical (despite the presence of a naturalist and a geographer in the party). Of the great erg and hamada (sand & stone) desert they crossed, very little is described – due mainly to the inordinate respect the voyageurs had for the heat of the sun; they charged across the landscape mainly in the hours of darkness and spent the days huddled in a laager made with their vehicles and canvas for shade. On this trip they turned West at Gao and headed towards Lake Chad along the northern Nigerian boundary. The expedition’s subsequent adventures are described luridly as they progress toward the Indian Ocean in daylight, sparing the reader none of the indescribable hardships, dangers from cannibals and ferocious beasts. On the other hand one has to take into account that the administration of the Belgian Congo utilised some forty thousand of the locals ‘for a few months’ to chop a 700km open trail through the forests to facilitate the lads’ progress on their patch – for which much appreciation is expressed. Re-supply depots had been established by road, water and air during the previous two years, so the intrepids did not go without all home-comforts for too long. In Uganda they split up into four groups, who made their way down towards the coast at Mombasa, Dar-es-Salaam, Mozambique and even Cape Town, before they embarked to finish the journey triumphantly at Antananarivo. Altogether an ode to colonialism, mainly of the French variety, yet an important, but tedious little work to read.

As the authors mention, people were almost queuing up to repeat the experience. In no time at all a regular freight and mail service was instituted linking the Mediterranean and the French African colonies. The French geographer Emile Gautier commented in his classic work, Sahara, the Great Desert (Columbia University Press, 1935, rev ed) that the Western route was for people in a hurry to get to the Niger Bend, and he commented on the absurdity of camel trains being needed to establish caches of petrol in the early motoring years. Barely a year after the Citroën adventure, a 1,5 litre Bugatti four-wheeler made the trip. Sahara travel became all the rage; and as early as 1930, titles such as By Way of the Sahara: The African Odyssey of Three Men and a Grocer’s Van (Duckworth, 1930) by Owen Tweedy appeared, which heralded people assailing the desert with unlikely modes of transport and little hope of success – but the mere existence of the title does assure one of their survival of the experience. The charming book by Gordon West and his wife Joy, entitled By Bus to the Sahara (Travel Club, ca 1940) is in fact a misnomer, since they hardly got out of the Atlas mountains to Ouarzazate and Rissani – but it does prove that even public transport was to be had at the time. The allure of Tamanrasset and Timbuctoo, the splendid Ahaggar, Aïr and Tibesti Mountains, as well as great dunes, oases and achingly beautiful, empty plains brought the adventurous in droves. Once the minefields had been cleared or marked after WWII, a new wave of travellers hit the piste, and the fifties saw a number of quite entertaining titles appear in print.

One of these was W Macarthur, who whet his travelling appetite with a Cairo to Salisbury epic, as described in Auto Nomad Through Africa (Cassell, 1951) and an even more gripping book, describing a backbreaking slog he made with his wife in an elderly saloon car, entitled The Desert Watches (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954). Not all of these motorists were the stern martyrs of geography; an adventurous lady traveller, Barbara Toy, spent seven months puttering round the Lybian desert in her Landie, often with only the odd local as a companion. She visited battlefields, graves, avoided minefields and had the happy knack of being able to get along with the people she met despite a limited knowledge of the language. Her travels are well-described in A Fool in the Desert (John Murray, 1956). Another pair, the Marriotts, bought an ancient banger, an eighteen year-old taxicab with the best part of a million miles on the clock and attempted to coax the ailing beast from Algiers to Nigeria. As chronicled in their book, Desert Taxi (Travel Book Club, 1955), they almost made it, but the oomph went out of the car at Kano, and they had to leave it rusting in the savannah while they hitched a ride to the coast and salvation. A similar trip was embarked on by two friends in a little Wolseley 6/80 saloon – trying to break some sort of record, I seem to remember, which you can read about in Savage Sahara (A Wingate, 1956). Then there was a leavening of dotty sophisticates banding together with the likes of two Churchills, a scientist and six soldiers, who set out from Benghazi on The Great Saharan Mouse-Hunt (Hutchinson, 1962), taking in the Oasis at Khufra, Jebel Uweinat and the Tibesti in an extended U-turn. These travellers enjoyed getting lost, they didn’t mind getting bogged down in fech-fech and getting dirty – as long as the whisky, champagne and foie de gras was available at the end of the day – while for other travellers there was only a dwindling supply of water.

A classic of exploration of a different sort is Henri Lhote’s The Search for the Tassili Frescoes (Hutchinson, 1960). The author led a sixteen-month expedition to confirm a vague report of a soldier’s discovery of rock art in the Tassili n’Ajer. While he discovered a veritable gallery of Neolithic rock engravings, much of his work has been discredited, partly due to dubious recording methods, or due to the ‘alien influence’ theories he shared with his mentor, the Abbé Henri Breuil. The sensationalist publicity the art sites received was greatly to blame for the partial destruction by locals and souvenir-hunting tourists in subsequent years.

An enjoyable read is Jon Stevens’ book, The Sahara is yours (Constable, 1969). He describes a two-month ‘circumnavigation’ of this mother of deserts, accompanied by his wife and another couple in a second vehicle. Both cars were brand new four-wheel drives; the travellers chose their equipment with great care, though weight became one of their main concerns. Several chapters of the book are devoted to good, well-founded advice on travel conditions, advisable practices and precautions which would be useful to any would-be desert rat. In the preface he states:
‘Getting stuck in soft sand is no longer a nightmare – it is just an irritant. Carrying enough petrol no longer depends on monstrous tanks or heavy steel cans. By cutting down on the weight to be carried, the problems of long-distance desert driving have been halved, and you can travel in comfort and safety.’ 

That about sums it up – your comfort and safety depend your own planning, preparation, mechanical gear and the size of your wallet. One quality shared in almost every one of the above books is the insane urge to travel a certain number of miles/kilometers a day. Very few of the intrepid motorists seem to have stopped to sniff the desert roses, in a manner of speaking. Since the 1970s I seem to detect an almost nostalgic return to the modes of travel employed in the pre-mechanical era. There is a whole generation of books dealing with Saharan journeys by camel or even on foot; often in the company of Targui people with whom the traveller has no common language, retracing the almost forgotten caravan routes. Plenty of opportunity to get to grips with the sands of Sahara.

Now, south of the equator, we have the Karoo/Kalahari/Namib as our local equivalents of our great northern cousin. Perhaps not quite as daunting geographically; nor inhabited by fearsome tribes and lacking the sheer size of the Sahara. Nonetheless, a goodly number of travellers, both in earlier times and during the motorised era, have encountered similar travails. That great soldier, politician and adventurer, Deneys Reitz, tried his luck at entering the Kaokoveld by car round about 1930, after he had had a foretaste of desert driving in the company of one Carl Weidner of Goodhouse through South West Africa, Kalahari and Gordonia. By the time he reached Otyitambi, he had crumpled up his lengths of wire-mesh that were supposed to aid him through the heavy sand, and his vehicle was firmly bogged up to the axles. He had the good fortune to espy the smoke from the campfire of a Thirstland trekker nearby, and the latter helped him to make the rest of the trip more enjoyable by means of donkeys and light cart. The automobile was parked under a tree for a couple of months awaiting his return.

One has but to read the saga of the grounding of the Dunedin Star on the Skeleton Coast in 1942. A three-pronged rescue attempt, by air, sea and land was launched. The ships ran into trouble and couldn’t get near the beach in the rough waters; the Ventura bomber managed to drop much-needed supplies, but then made a forced landing on the beach and after some repairs got airborne only to crash into the waves, leaving the aviators no choice but to swim for it. Meanwhile a motorised column had been mobilised from Windhoek, and this little cavalcade of standard trucks, loaded to the gunwales with petrol and water, rode off into the sunset across a virtually unknown, trackless Kaokoveld. Amid much jubilation all hands and passengers were rescued and brought back to civilisation almost a month after the disaster. John Marsh wrote his ever popular book Skeleton Coast (Hodder & Stoughton, 1944) describing the whole episode. It has become part of the Skeleton Coast saga, and numerous reprints and enlarged versions are still readily available. In my schooldays, I happened to be great friends with the son of the radio officer on the ship, and you can be sure that I didn’t let that chance go begging to get a more personal reminiscence from Kilpatrick senior.

The ever-popular Lawrence Green took part in several desert odysseys, which he described in a number of his books. One was the University of Cape Town’s Kalahari Expedition of 1936, mainly dedicated to studying Bushman ethnography, during which Green drove one of their vehicles – when he wasn’t helping to dig them out of the sand! Much of the trip is covered in his book Strange Africa (Timmins, 1974 repr) Another scientific expedition, this time through Namib and Kaokoveld, is described in his book Lords of the Last Frontier (Timmins, 1952) – one of his most popular books on the then South West Africa. The leader was Bernard Carp, an adventurous businessman who loved the desert in all its guises, and he too wrote a book about this and several other excursions, I chose Africa (Timmins, 1961). There is a dearth of books about motor travel in the Namib proper – mainly, I suspect, because for almost a century the mixed blessing of the presence of diamonds made it illegal to set foot on most of the southern coastal desert, then there was a patch of Game Reserve No 3 between the Swakop and Kuiseb Rivers (nowadays known as the Namib-Naukluft Park) and north of Cape Cross you were back in another Sperrgebiet, where the powers that be didn’t want you to get loose in either; the southern part of Angola is only now becoming popular as a fishing spot. In the latter few years restrictions have eased somewhat, and numerous convoys of well-heeled and wheeled city folk head for the sandy wastes. I suspect we shall be reading about these good people’s adventures when they grow a little older, if books haven’t totally gone out of print by then.

The great Karoo has some truly desolate stretches, but one is never more than fifty-odd kilometers from a small village or town. In addition, the whole region, as well as the almost featureless plains of Bushmanland and the more rugged terrain of Namaqualand, have been broken up into farms. The ubiquitous windmill raises its signature head above the horizons – so it is unlikely the unwary explorer will perish of thirst, even if his trusty vehicle should desert him in his hour of need. An entertaining book on this whole region is Carel Birkby’s Thirstland Treks (Faber & Faber, 1936) in which the young journalist tackles numerous dusty trails in his faithful ‘three-year old baby’ (Austin 7), which at times lacked the horsepower to tackle hills front-on, and had to be reversed up the inclines instead. Another charming little book I read many years ago was by a Miss I A Loadsman, entitled Little Roads of Africa (Afrikaanse Pers Boekhandel, 1950) in which she describes her travels in company with another lady, using a similarly unsuitable vehicle as Birkby’s, as they explored Gordonia and the faint tracks along the Molopo – if I remember correctly.

The Kalahari is an unforgiving desert in parts, with vivid red dunes, which start even south of the great river in parts of Bushmanland, and extend up as far as almost into the Congo. But the arid plains are broken by linear oases; large rivers like the Gariep, the Okavango and its inland delta, and the Zambezi, to name but a few. In the rainy season you might never guess that you are in a desert. All about is verdant and vast herds of springbok and wildebeest graze the knee-high grasses. Six months later a stony or sandy parched and shimmering waste is all that remains. As far as I can establish, the first motorised breach in this desert’s defences came during WWI. As part of the three-pronged attack by General Botha on the Germans in South West Africa, Col. C A L Berrange set out with his ‘desert column’, made up of the 5th South African Rifles, the Kalahari Horse, Cullman’s Horse and the Bechuanaland Rifles from Kuruman. While his men marched and rode, and supplies went mainly by ox-wagon, he had an advance force of motor-vehicles, which were used to ferry water-supplies across some hundreds of miles between the widely separated wells. The traverse to Rietfontein took some weeks, and on crossing the SWA border, they immediately engaged and routed the Germans. After that little affair they presumably used the trains, and the trucks faded into obscurity.

The eminent geologist and geographer E H L Schwarz postulated a theory that proposed flooding a part of the central Botswana depression and creating large lakes, which would change the entire climate of the region and make the desert bloom, in his book The Kalahari or Thirstland Redemption (Maskew Miller, 1920). It involved damming part of the Zambezi system and digging a canal across a slight ridge that natural forces had raised to create a waterway. The South African government was forced by public pressure to take his theory seriously enough to send out an expedition in 1925 under the aegis of the Irrigation Department, to investigate the possibility. While much of their equipment’s transport depended on animal-drawn vehicles, they did have a Dodge ‘screen-van with balloon tyres’ that did some sterling work. Although much useful cartographical work was done during the expedition, Schwarz’s theory was scuppered when it was found that his levels were faulty and that water would not flow uphill, and that creating another ‘Dead Sea’ in the centre of the Makarikari region wouldn’t necessarily turn the region into a land of milk and honey. Some of the work is described in Deneys Reitz’s No Outspan (Faber & Faber, 1943) as the author was involved in the aerial surveys in his capacity of Minister of Irrigation.

The year 1928 saw the Cameron-Cadle Kalahari Expedition, setting out, fitted out with two specially equipped Diamond T (Model 302) trucks. These two American gentlemen seemed intent on performing a battery of medical tests on the Bushmen they would encounter, but their way led them from Mafeking to Serowe, and from thence onwards to Francistown in a matter of two weeks. It is doubtful that they made much contact with any of the nomadic tribespeople, as they seemed to spend most of their time digging their vehicles out of the thick sand. During the same period W J Makin’s book, Across the Kalahari Desert (Arrowsmith, 1929) chronicled a trip made from Mahalapye to Ghanzi and from there up to Kazangulo. They employed Morris six-wheelers with success, and as far as I can recall, their main intention was to gather information on the Bushmen. In early 1930 a well-equipped museum expedition, named Vernay-Lang after its two leaders from the Natural History Museum in the UK and Field Museum in the US, explored a large chunk of inhospitable central Botswana and brought back thousands of biological specimen which were described in a number of Transvaal Museum Annals. Money was no object and the well-found project had a number of specially modified one and a half-ton Dodge trucks (which seemed to have been early desert favourites) as well as a Victory 6 Tourer, for the more luxurious conveyance of hunting parties in search of the large game of the region. None of the above can be called travel literature except in the broadest sense; they all had serious scientific or bellicose aspirations.

Two of the few books I have read dating back to the 1950s are the accounts by Frank Debenham, Kalahari Sand (G Bell & Sons, 1953) an American hydrologist who made two journeys into the depths of the central Kalahari to investigate water resources, and the wildly popularised The Lost World of the Kalahari (Hogarth Press, 1958) by that veteran spinner of tales, Laurens van der Post. The latter accompanied the former as guide and expedition leader, if my memory serves me right, although I seem to recall that our great explorer only had one previous experience of the Kalahari during a reconnaissance in 1950, and he had to rely heavily on local guides and translations across at least three languages. Debenham was utterly smitten by the desert, and his book echoes his enthusiasm. Van der Post uses the trip and its successors as a basis for a whole iconic mythology of the Bushmen, their culture, oral literature and dwindling status as a forgotten prehistoric people, as well as a number of novels on the theme. While there is a certain dreamy, poetic quality to his writing, I could never be completely reconciled to his books as being a factual account of anything – but the reader must make up his or her own mind about this ‘Bard of the Beyond’.

No doubt there are many more titles describing the passage of wheels in the deserts of Africa, so this is only a small selection of books that have impressed me in one way or another. If you need to broaden your horizons, there is a wide choice of reading matter available. The alternative is to find a few kindred spirits with four-wheel drives and the required wherewithal – and hit the sand rolling!