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AFRICA DAYS 16: Benin, Togo, and the Pleasures of Life in Miles Motuka
AFRICA DAYS 15: Nigeria’s Cultural Treasures
Note: Africa Days is a series of posts based on journals and letters from my years living in Kinshasa and traveling across Africa, beginning in 1974. You can read previous and following posts below.
We had understood that West Africa couldn’t hold a candle to what the eastern and southern parts of the continent offered in terms of hiking, scenery or game. Its forte, we knew, was cultural riches. And, boy, did Nigeria deliver.
10 August 1976: “Hooray for Kano! This morning we rented two clunky bicycles and peddled into this ancient walled city — and the scenes before us made us feel we’d arrived in the Old Testament. Just inside the gate that we entered are indigo dye pits, amazingly deep — some down to 10 feet. Here, men in flowing white robes were dying fabric tied together in preparation for tie and die by a woman in a little house nearby. Also nearby was a hut where a man with a huge mahogany mallet was beating the dried fabric to soften and ‘press’ it.
“We cycled on under the huge mosque and past the 900-year-old emir’s palace to find a small but interesting museum highlighted by ornate coats of mail decorated with ostrich feathers.
“But best of all was the Kurmi market — the most extensive, bustling, smelly, exciting and varied one we’ve seen. It was full of beautiful materials, leather, tin and beadwork, not to mention the thousands of other items sold there by Muslim merchants. We sat inside the mud-walled stalls to eat a fried meat pie and some fresh coconut as the men all began their prayers.
“Tonight we are going to the home of a Nigerian businessman whom we met yesterday. He has promised us some specialties such as pepper chicken, melon-seed soup and bean cakes.”
Next came the town of Zaria. “One marvelous thing about this area is the horsemen. Here in Nigeria, we’ve noticed what a mark of pride it is to have a horse. The men in their flowing robes are greatly outshone by the splendor of their mounts, with their colorful saddle blankets, and dyed leather reins with all manner of baubles hanging off them.
“Now in Jos, we have spent the afternoon at a fine museum. I had been ignorant of the beautiful artwork of the peoples of Benin and of the Nok empire: extraordinarily fine brass and pottery heads. It was interesting, too, to sit in the courtyard of the museum and watch the museum-goers — crowds of fine-looking Nigerians, all dressed in Sunday finery.
“We spent an interesting day yesterday in Bida, a small city swarming with artisans: The metal workers pounding brass plates out of flat oblong sticks, etching designs on them with their Number 1, Number 2 and Number 3 nails, rubbing the brass with lime juice and putting it over the fire.
“Then the bead makers, circling a roaring flame pumped through hard bellows by a young apprentice. Each artist with his glob of melted glass on a stick like a torch in the fire. In front of me was a man whose glob consisted of a former Star Beer bottle, backed by a smaller clot that was once a Mentholatum jar. He circled the large glob with the small one in order to stripe the brown with green, then smoothed it all with a spatula-like tool and dropped it orange-hot into his basket. We saw, as well, women weaving cloth strips, brightly colored, and men carving Koranic writing slates and small wooden stools.
“In a nearby village we saw pottery makers and basket weavers, whose homes we reached by winding among one small compound after another, and entered through woven reed doors. We saw that the Nupe women have a sizable wall stacked high with pots — a must before they are marriageable.
We had seen too the men with their horizontal foot-operated looms, (the women use smaller vertical looms), a blacksmith beating out a tool, leatherworkers and calabash carvers.
“What a wonderland of craftsmanship and artistry Nigeria is. It makes you yearn to go and create something fine.”
From Jebba, we drove all day to Oshogbo. There we saw the shrine to Oshun, the River Goddess, more wonderful craftsmen at work and a funny little old museum, then drove to Ife to see an exciting and brightly designed university.
Sunday, 22 August, 100 kms from the border with Benin: “This is the final night of our two weeks in this huge, bustling, progressive, education-loving, artistic, hassle-filled country. Here we reached the two-year mark of our time in Africa, in the same nation where we first touched down on this mind-bogglingly multi-faceted continent.”
One way the continent was multi-faceted was its wide variation in road conditions. My first journal entry about Nigeria noted that someone had called it “the country where all the roads are paved.” But, I added, “Unfortunately, it is often true that only HALF the road is paved — one strip. That is, you get two wheels on the pavement when you meet a car. Nerve-wracking system, at best, now that the traffic is substantial.”
Two weeks later, the last entry from Nigeria returned to this topic — with greater vehemence. After carrying on about how much we’d enjoyed the country, I added: “But a very real detraction is the grisly nature of traveling Nigeria’s highways. At every curve, every summit, are wrecks from all decades. Every bridge gapes where the side rails have been busted through by the hulks lying below. Huge trucks lie bashed down and overturned along the road: At one corner, we saw three altogether. Yet these prolific reminders of the dangers of highway travel are no deterrent to Nigerian drivers, who pass across solid lines, before curves and hills, and right alongside wrecks. We saw a horrible accident two days ago involving three vehicles, one of which had passed us minutes before. We will feel lucky as hell to cross the border alive and with Miles in good shape. The roads here are paved, it is true, but I’d rather be in a mud hole than an accident.”
Happily, we did cross the border in good shape — and spent the night on a palmy beach in Benin, enjoying a lovely breeze off the ocean.
AFRICA DAYS 14: West Africa Beckons
Note: Africa Days is a series of posts based on journals and letters from my years living in Kinshasa and traveling across Africa, beginning in 1974. You can read previous and following posts on this site.
Three weeks after leaving Zaire, we’d made it to our first new country in this long drive out of Africa — the Central African Republic. About its capital, my journal reports that “Bangui is more ‘civilized’ than Kinshasa. The shops are full of goods. There’s a nice small museum. We’ve been able to take care of lots of errands, including getting our tires fixed. We had scotch and soda with a Frenchman this afternoon as his staff wrote up our third-party insurance policy. We met a South African refugee, Collin, who is hitchhiking to Liberia to study. We’ll take him along to Cameroon.
“The next night we camped by a waterfall and shared a beer with a 71-year-old Yugoslav engineer. He told us, ‘You’re doing what you must do.’”
We liked Cameroon immediately, finding it “a bright and pretty place, extinct volcanoes scattered around, hills covered with grass, yellow flowers on fat bushes. Gigantic rock formations in the mountain country.”
We were struck by the remarkable costumes, including “men who look like a cross between an Oxford don and a beefeater, with gorgeously colored flowing robes and huge-crowned hats.” We liked the “neat villages with peaked thatched roofs with dried grasses flowing down from them.”
In one village, we got a fine tour from a chief we had encountered. “We walked all over, asking questions as we went, about how this society is organized. We found that the gatherings of men, which we saw earlier today, are court sessions, with a scribe sent out from town and the chief and his representatives acting as judges. We saw the chief’s ‘concession’ — this is what the enclosures are called — and toured the concession of the chief’s brother. He has a building for each of his two wives, a building for the children, a separate kitchen, and a building for two mother goats and their five little kids along with many chickens. (The brother tried to give us a chicken, but we squirmed out of it as graciously as possible.) There was also a hut for storage and a building for his horse. We saw various crops — tobacco, peanuts, corn and cotton — and we heard about SODECOTON, the society which gives out cotton seeds and buys back cotton. Land ownership is forbidden here; the chief assigns you a plot to use for farming. Evidently the soil is very rich, and once you can afford two cows and a plow, you’ve got it made. They rotate the crops and let the land rest as well. Teachers are sent out by the state, and they live in the chief’s concession. Most men have two wives. A chief may have as many as 20. Once a man gets to three wives, he must take another, because wives come in two’s.
“We are impressed with how organized things are. Consider the rain-barrier system: Large trucks are not permitted to pass through the barrier until 12 hours after a rain. Rain-barrier chiefs are paid by the state to manage the system. It is effective, and truck drivers go along with it. Big contrast with Zaire!
“Now for a bit about daily life in Miles. A typical evening so far involves finding a fairly secluded spot on firm ground off the road (though in Zaire we had to stay on the road, asking permission from village chiefs and playing Barnum & Bailey for the crowd for an hour or so). We have perfected a mosquito-net setup which covers the open roof and sliding door and provides headroom, as it is suspended across cords strung between the roof racks. It covers the rear door as well, which swings up, and we thereby have a lot of ventilation.
“We have a lantern as well as a radio, which is most entertaining and exotic, and a small cassette player. Both of these operate off an electric outlet connected to a second battery, in a system installed by a friend. He also wired a burglar alarm which goes off when the front doors are opened. We have folding chairs for outdoor evenings.
“As for laundry, we have a big blue bucket in which we do a wash by loading clothes, soap and water and permitting it to bounce throughout the morning as we travel, followed by two separate rinse bounces in the afternoon. The following day, Miles Motuka becomes quite an effective dryer, as the clothes hang from a bungee cord strung across the open roof.
“Our sink is fine for washing dishes, as well as for sponge baths. We shower by using a plastic siphon complete with pump and shower attached. We have a big plastic tub as well. We generally keep one 25-liter can of drinking water (boiled) and another for washing in addition to the 20-liter jug above the sink. We have good food supplies, thanks to the U.S. commissary in Kinshasa, supplemented by fresh local produce.
“We usually stop by 4:30 or so in order to have time for radio news and for reading. One evening, still in Zaire, we listened to the Democratic National Convention, and heard Jimmy Carter for the first time. He was informative and sounded good to me.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about the U.S. lately. It’s remarkable, listening regularly to Carter’s singsong tones on Voice of America, way over here in Africa.”
Our next destination was Chad: A terrible bust. We dipped in, hoping to be able to drive up the river to Lake Chad. No such luck: They said it would take two weeks to get a permit. Meanwhile, in the space of four blocks, our car was stopped and searched four times. The last time, they literally ransacked the place, throwing all our stuff around and ripping our closet door off, then stopping in the middle of it the moment their chief told them it was noon.
“We’ll be glad to be back in Cameroon tomorrow — and on to Nigeria, a country we are eager to explore.”
AFRICA DAYS 13: Leaving Zaire
Note: Africa Days is a series of posts based on journals and letters from my years living in Kinshasa and traveling across Africa, beginning in 1974. You can read previous and following posts on this site.
In the spring of 1976, as our final year teaching at The American School of Kinshasa drew to a close, we found (at last!) a used VW bus for sale. We determined to turn it into not only our transportation but also our home for the coming year, as we made our way up out of Africa and then across Europe.
We named the bus Miles Motuka (motuka is Lingala for motorcar), though every now and then we called him Miles from Nowhere. I say “him,” because this vehicle became a beloved figure in our lives. We certainly didn’t know it at the time, but we’d be traveling and living (full or part-time) in Miles for the next three years, joined during the last one by a little Paris-born girl named Laura Grace.
But back to Kinshasa. We spent $2,600 for the bus itself and almost that much outfitting it and buying what we needed for the trip — from spare parts to interior fittings to food and supplies and the cost of visas for 15 countries. We drew up a design for the interior and hired a wonderful craftsman/carpenter, Kidiela, to build it out. (Mostly of mahogany, if you please.) A friend installed a second battery off of which we could run our interior lights and radio and cassette player. I sewed curtains and cushion/mattress covers. Mike became a self-trained mechanic. We had bought backups for almost every part — from the clutch to two spare wheels — many of which we would indeed deploy. (Mike once had to drop the engine, guided mostly by a detailed manual.) We had sand ladders and a shovel, cables and towlines and many jerry cans for fuel and others for water.
We had a sink and a jug with a faucet braced above it, a stove and a siphon for a shower, and mosquito netting so we could sleep in the heat with the roof and windows and doors open. Our sofa made into a comfy double bed. Our desk/dining table folded down. Our closet had a sliding door. Our bookcase had a French dictionary, an atlas, an almanac and books on philosophy, history, art, poetry, memoirs, a songbook, essays and novels. Our cabinet held the food we’d stocked up on at the commissary, from coffee to canned meats to sugar to dried milk to pasta to raisins and crackers, which we’d supplement with vegetables and fruits along the route.
Given the abysmal state of Zairian roads, we would need to put Miles on a boat on the Congo River to get him out of Zaire (and later, as it turned out, on a train from Mali to Dakar and then on another boat to get him to Casablanca until, finally, Miles joined us on a ferry across the Mediterannean to Sicily).
We sent friends and family what we called “a tentative itinerary. It can be at best only approximate due to roads being washed out, mechanical issues, unforeseen political developments that might close borders, and our own whims.” We sent addresses for U.S. embassies where we would check for mail (“hold for arrival”). We noted that we’d make a decision in Bamako, Mali, as to whether to attempt a Sahara crossing. We’d done a lot of preparation in the hopes of making that happen, but our big investment in the future was in Miles, and we dreaded the idea of having to abandon him in the Sahara. (Most vehicles making the crossing were four-wheel drive.)
We sent 17 boxes of books and two barrels of personal effects to Mike’s parents in Minneapolis, noting that it might take six months for the barrels to arrive. Finally, when school ended, we collaborated with another couple to run a summer school for a month. We netted $3,500 to add to what we’d saved in our two years of teaching.
On July 7, our trip began at last.
Letter home: “Our dream is coming true. We are on the Colonel Ebeya, a 3-tiered riverboat pushing two barges loaded with hundreds of people and a third loaded with merchandise, including a beautiful (to us) blue-and-white VW combi whose interior is a house fit for kings, not to mention a motor-parts store. We have labored painstakingly on this trip for a year and dreamed of it for three. The past few weeks have held little but the final assembling of all the tiny pieces. Yesterday, as the boat’s engines roared to a beginning, we found that the assembled product works.“
The boat trip took a week, a very pleasant one: watching life on the Congo River roll by, reading books, enjoying days without an alarm clock (we’d tossed into the drink the one that had so rudely interrupted our very early mornings in Kinshasa).
When the crane lifted Miles off the boat in Bumba and placed him on dry ground, we heaved a sigh of relief.
We should have held our breath instead. There was all-too-little dry ground over the miles to come before we reached the Central African Republic. The Belgians’ total lack of investment in infrastructure was a gift that just kept on giving. I lose track, reading my journals, of how many mud holes we got stuck in — fearing each time that we might not make it through.
We once ended up jacking up both wheels, putting “everything under the sun under them — sand ladders, cables, palm fronds “ — and hiring two men to help me push us out. We crossed our fingers and powered through huge pools (burning out a clutch in the act). We changed flats, pumped up tires, patched tubes. And, against the odds, we trucked on.
At night we’d camp along the roadside, for lack of any alternative. Oddity that we were, we became a traveling roadshow for the populace. We once counted 50 people assembled to view our morning ablutions. At one village, someone drummed ahead a message to the next about our impending arrival. When we got there, a crowd had assembled on the road to greet us.
There were 12 days of this.
At last we reached the Ubangi River, where I boarded a little motorboat that took me across to the Central African Republic. (The border crossing was — unusually enough — uneventful. A friend from our embassy in Kinshasa had cabled ahead about us.) There I cashed some travelers’ checks and sought out the ferry chief. Within a couple of hours, I was standing in the middle of the otherwise empty ferry, crossing the river toward Zaire, shouting above the motor, “I am the captain of the Queen’s nav-ee” and looking at Miles and Mike in the distance, in Zaire.
We drove Miles onto the ferry. It had been three weeks since we’d left Kinshasa. Our two years in Zaire were over. From now on, there’d be challenges aplenty. But at least the roads would be better.
AFRICA DAYS 12: Ruwenzori Summit and Ituri Rainforest
Note: Africa Days is a series of posts based on journals and letters from my years living in Kinshasa and traveling across Africa, beginning in 1974. You can read previous posts below.
It was December of 1975, and we were close to realizing a dream we’d had for a year: To climb as high in the Ruwenzori Mountains as non-technical climbers could go, and see the snowy massif known as Ptolemy’s Mountains of the Moon. The third and highest cabin sat on a slight rise (at an elevation of 13,779 feet). It was built of stone, while the others had been wooden, and it was a bit simpler and rougher. We’d been pleasantly surprised by the cabins, expecting the ruder sorts we had encountered on Kilimanjaro, with wooden plank beds and lots of cracks for bitter whistling winds to enter. These were solid and equipped not only with mattresses but blankets, sheets, a stove for those who wished to bring diesel fuel, lanterns, and many cooking and eating utensils.
The plan for the top hut was to wait until 5 p.m. or so, when the weather often began to clear, and then start out on the walk to the look-out point — the 14,639-foot Wasuwameso, with its panoramic view of the taller peaks arrayed before it. (The Ruwenzori range encompasses the third, fourth and fifth highest peaks in Africa, topping off at 16,762 feet. Those require technical climbing.) Since it was about 3 p.m. when we arrived, we began settling in and making tea. Suddenly Kisenge rushed in: The skies had cleared. We hurried out — and caught our breath at the portion of the massif now visible.
We began our climb. Not long afterward, Kisenge pointed to a huge rock jutting out of the top of the peak we were scaling: This would be our viewpoint. When we came at last to the bottom of the rock, that primal expectancy you feel when a view is about to break open before you seized me. I pulled myself up onto the summit, and I felt something very close to pain: There it was, the whole glorious expanse.
We stayed at the summit for about an hour, comparing our guidebook’s charts with the shifting portions of the massif coming in and out of view (only when we first arrived was the view completely clear). One by one, the dancing clouds singled out the delights: silvery glaciers, jagged peaks above, lakes below, snowfields and icy slopes everywhere — until, gradually, the clouds had covered them all.
As we embarked on our descent, snow began to fall.
We were cold that night and felt the claustrophobic pressure of the altitude. (I found myself, both there and at Kilimanjaro, taking desperately quick and deep breaths in a frantic effort to make up for the lack of satisfaction in the oxygen-poor air.) We woke with headaches and were glad to start down. (The mountains were not visible to tempt us in the other direction.) It was a long way down that fourth day, skipping hut number two. The enchanted forest was muddier than it had been and we told each other at least four times that we had finally begun that last horrible descent to the creek which would mean we were close to the bottom hut.
We finally DID begin it, in reality, and we enjoyed our last pork dinner back in hut number one.
We never saw the peaks again.
As soon as we passed Kisenge’s lodge, which meant to him that we were “off the mountain,” he told us that the spot where we had made tributes to the mountain spirit is administered by an old man who lives in Mutsora (a town we’d passed through on our way to the base). He makes annual pilgrimages up the steep trail to ensure the continued upkeep of the little huts. Kisenge added that the many people who have died climbing in the Ruwenzoris had failed to make any offering.
These were not awful spirits, he said. You just needed to treat them right.
From the Ruwenzoris, we headed west to explore the Ituri Rainforest, home to the people known as Pygmies and to the rare okapi, the giraffe’s only relative. This trip was not the success that most of our adventures had been.
January 1, 1976: Epulu Station: “We’ve been sitting in this two-okapi town, as Mike called it (there are two okapis in a pen here) for hours. I’m balancing on three legs of a wooden chair on an uneven earth floor. The springs of a detached car seat are on my left. Mike is asleep on a flat bench. Above us is a leaf roof. (Pygmy influence — they build huts out of leaves, two of which we saw nearby). Three children sit by me, elbowing each other to get a peek at my writing. They have flowers in their hair. Is that because it’s New Year’s Day?”
We had finally made it to the Ituri headquarters late the evening before, after a long ride atop a Mercedes truck. A guard had come rushing out, telling us to set up our tent by his fire (in the midst of huge ants, most of whom bit me).
“He lured us to stay here today with tales of a foray into the jungle led by Pygmies, to see okapis, duikers and chimpanzees. We fell for it — and spent the early morning aimlessly wandering with some fool who finally admitted he didn’t know what he was doing.
“Now the various people who’ve been sitting under the shade with us have gone into their houses to get out of the heat and to rest. And here we sit, waiting to find a truck to take us toward Kisangani.”
January 3, 1976, Kisangani airport: “We have made it and are checked through for the plane. We got a truck from Epulu Station, a comfortable ride atop another Mercedes (this one carrying empty beer cases), with three inevitable breakdowns. We arrived in Bafwasende toward 9 p.m., got someone to lead us on foot to the Catholic mission and then received permission to camp in the vicar’s yard.
“Next morning, we were back in town by 6 a.m., eating a pineapple and waiting for the trucks. We got a ride about 10, all the way to Kisangani. It was a good one. We saw gorillas running across the road, guinea hens flying above us, a huge green lizard starting slowly across the road and, hearing or seeing us coming, curving his head way around and turning back. Mike saw a 6- to 10- foot fluorescent green and black snake. In the end, the only okapis we saw were those two penned up in Epulu, and we caught only a quick glimpse of a couple of Pygmies. Both these lovely beasts and these oft-maligned people are secretive and cherish the rainforest’s seclusion. Hard to blame them.
“Pulling into Kisangani brought the keenest bush-to-city feeling I’ve had. Seeing the lights and traffic, the big buildings and just the number of people struck me powerfully after these many days deep in the interior and short on comfort. When we arrived at the driver’s destination, we set out on foot for downtown. After a couple of kilometers a Belgian picked us up in his camionette and delivered us to our hotel, a shabby Holiday Inn-ish place. But it had hot water and a sort of double bed made of two twin bed mattresses. For dinner, we walked to the Stanley Hotel for steaks-frites and cold beers. Then to bed. We will be home by early afternoon. What an adventure.”
Back in Kinshasa, we would from now on aim our sights (and every free moment) on buying and equipping our vehicle and on all the attendant planning and purchasing required for the big trip out of Africa that we hoped to launch when school ended. That one would bring half a year and at least 15 countries worth of adventure. A lot of pieces would have to fit together to make it happen.
AFRICA DAYS 11: Ptolemy’s Mountains of the Moon
Note: Africa Days is a series of posts based on journals and letters from my years living in Kinshasa and traveling across Africa, beginning in 1974. You can read previous posts below.
We began our climb of the Ruwenzori massif on Christmas Day 1975, in the company of a Ugandan guide, two Zairois porters, and a small, noisy pig. Our yen for this adventure had arisen the previous spring when, one exceptionally clear evening in Zaire’s Virunga National Park, we caught sight of a flash of silver in the sky to the north of Lake Idi Amin. It was Ptolemy’s fabled Mountains of the Moon, said by the ancients to be the source of the Nile: the Ruwenzoris. We later learned that Stanley had had a similar experience from this very spot. He wrote in 1888 that his eyes were directed by a porter “to a mountain said to be covered with salt, and I saw a cloud of a most beautiful silver color, which assumed the proportions and appearance of a vast mountain covered with snow.”
It was a two-day hitchhike from the closest airport to the base. In all that time we never caught sight of the peaks, which top out at 16,763 feet. Indeed, even as we enjoyed local popcorn and cold beer in the parlor of the gracious park conservator at the base, we had only his word that, in clear weather, his windows framed a breathtaking view.
We had arranged to meet our guide, and his porter and ours, the next morning at 7 a.m. outside our small room at the base camp. We woke early, splashed cold water from our washbowl on our faces, and rushed outside: Had the conservator’s prediction of early morning clearing come true? And there they were: a jagged series of majestic snow-covered peaks glistening in the sunlight — which, within minutes, gave way to clouds.
We set off from the base camp through a strung-out village, making several stops for provisions. We had sent some money ahead the day before, and one villager had prepared a great bowl of foufou — the beaten manioc dish that takes bread’s place in the Zairian diet. At her home, chairs were brought out. We met her family, admired the homemade coffee-grinding machines and ran our fingers through the dry lakes of coffee beans in various stages of sun-roasting in the clearing around their hut.
At another stop we gathered some mangos, then picked up some dried fish and later bottled some palm oil. Finally, two or three hours into the walk, we agreed to buy the pig in honor of Christmas dinner and to provide fresh meat for us and our crew throughout the trip. I was doubly glad of the pig’s company, since he turned out to be a slow climber, given to burrowing into the cool thick grasses beside the path. It made my own slow going less exceptional.
Before noon, we reached the handsome stone lodge where our guide Kisenge lived. Here we met his family, paid the park fee and signed the register. The register was a small book dating back to 1947 with the signature “Lowell Thomas, writer” not too many names above ours. Apparently few people had visited during Congo’s turbulent pre-and post-independence days.
It was at the lodge, too, that we slaughtered the poor pig.
After lunch, we climbed through thick tropical forest, with the trees becoming ever shorter. We had intermittent views of the spreading countryside, more and more distant below. As for the peaks, we never saw them again that day. We arrived at the first hut mid-afternoon to find a Belgian hiker. Altitude distresss had forced her to leave her party on the way up. She had with her a sweet pineapple, which we cooked with our pork to produce a worthy holiday feast for us all.
We turned in early.
The next morning, we embarked before 8 on a significantly rougher path heading steeply uphill. We encountered piles of fresh buffalo dung and heard the shrieks of colobus monkeys. Suddenly we took a very sharp downhill into a creek. The ascent of the other bank was even steeper and involved hoisting ourselves up over great slippery boulders and bulging roots, with a sheer drop-off to our right. This seemed to go on for hours, providing plenty of time for my customary internal tirade about why I keep taking on such challenges.
Finally we broke into a lovely bamboo forest thick with elephant grass and pretty flowered vines, wild bananas and white orchids.
By noon we were struggling again on a particularly steep section when we heard the voices of our guide and porters on a level above us. When we caught up, we saw they were resting amid strange surroundings: On the left-hand side of the path was a row of five tiny huts made of bamboo. In each hut were piles of beans, rice and barley. This pattern was duplicated on the right side of the trail, except that the final hut there was about three times the size of the others and included a pile of money along with the food. Our guides had already made their offerings, and they advised us to offer something as well, saying firmly that the mountain would not be happy with us otherwise. Climbing huge mountains is hard enough without making them unhappy with you. I made my offering.
Kisenge said he would tell us all about the mountain spirit and the offerings — AFTER we got safely off the mountain.
We spent much of the rest of the day, as we hiked along, having wide-ranging talks with Kisenge. His familiarity with the wider world was intriguingly spotty. He spoke of figures such as Edward Jenner and Francis Drake but seemed to know of only three continents — Europe, Africa and “America.” He wanted to know “what color” are George Foreman and Muhammad Ali (he thought Ali was English) and what languages did the black people in America speak. These conversations made our laborious approach to the second cabin pass more easily.
The cabin was in a clearing on a small knoll rising like an island out of the muddy morass into which the trail had dipped before reaching it. We spread out our bags so they’d be ready for that evening, brewed up a pot of tea and sat down to read for a bit during a late afternoon rainstorm. The minute it cleared, we hobbled over to the windows to see the peaks for the first time since before we began the hike. They were so obviously closer and so brilliant against the uncommonly clear sky that we put on our boots and sloshed out into the mud for a better view. We watched in awe for the half hour they were visible. Then we had a tasty meal of pork and beans and snuggled into bed.
The next day’s rewards were many. We spent several hours in an enchanted forest of mosses and ferns covering everything in sight, draped over one another, carpeting the forest floor and its walls and its sky. The mosses were all shades of green, yellow, brown and orange. There were huge tussocks of sedge higher than our waist. When we put a hand down to steady our footing on the cushiony path, it sank deep into whatever it touched.
As if this weren’t enough of a fairytale come true, it was succeeded by something equally fabulous when it ended abruptly at a tiny creek. We bent down for a cold drink of water and, looking up, saw that the hill above us was populated with plants that only Dr. Seuss could’ve dreamed up.
This fantastic world of giant groundsels and lobelias continued until we came to the top of the rise where we could see, stretching before us, the path climbing gently along the ridge to the final cabin. And then, just beyond, we spied the peak from whose summit we might have, at last, a closeup view of the entire Ruwenzori massif.
We could only hope that the weather (or the mountain?) would permit us to see it.
AFRICA DAYS 10: Rainy Season, Bush Travel and Prep for the Drive Out
MAR 19, 2025
Note: Africa Days is a series of posts based on journals and letters from my years living in Kinshasa and traveling across Africa, beginning in 1974. You can read previous and following posts on Substack and below.
As the rainy season approached once again, I thought back to The Fight the previous year, and how astonishing it was that the torrent had held off until moments after Ali’s victory. Had it started before the fight (as feared) it would have been disastrous, for a rainstorm in Zaire is like nothing you’ve ever seen. In a letter home, I seem bent on rhapsodizing about it:
“In Zaire, everything loves a rainstorm. Things that elsewhere would go under cover, here come out. Color, for example. Rainstorms are usually gray. Not in Zaire. Just before they come, in late afternoon toward evening, the sky turns a vivid yellow, so that everything is shot through with it. The usual lush green is charged with yellow. As soon as the rain comes, the yellow clears. The sun sets pink in one part of the city, a pink that spreads wider than any dry sunset. And then the sky turns silver. A luminous silver behind shining dark-wet green trees.
“The lightning, too, is brighter than any I’ve seen — even against the silver sky — and it flashes a blinding white. The white flashes in complete silence, broken eight or 10 seconds later by awesome gurgles and groans, turning into jagged boulders of sound, rolling from one horizon to another, reverberating like a base speaker that can’t handle the volume.
“Everything moves and sways. The trees — so heavy and hot in the blanketing heat — are released into movement. For the big old mango trees, this means slow swaying of heavy limbs, each branch softly muting the next on its swing back and forth. For the bamboo, which grows so high that its normal position is diagonal, the winds bring low balletic dips and slow, smooth lifting, then a low dip to the other side. Their papery leaves — in tiny millions — seem to stretch and stroke the breeze.
“It’s the palms, though, that seem made for these storms. Each frond meets the wind and rides it in its own way — ostrich plumes blown by invisible fans, lifting and curling, dropping and flinging straight — until the wind is finished playing and comes on powerfully strong. Then the palm is like a little girl whose long hair is blown straight sideways, baring her tiny head. The birds, too, love the rain in Zaire. They sing loudly in their trees as it begins. They’re followed by bats, who swoop dark, high and low against the silver sky.
“As the storm exhausts itself, the sky turns a bruised lavender gray like an old film. The lightning now looks gold against the darkening sky, and it’s hard to tell bats from the wind-borne bamboo leaves.”
That Thanksgiving of 1975, we took a wonderful multi-day trip into “the bush” to the east of Kinshasa with friends with Land Rovers. We drove through stately forests wreathed in vines and lush with butterflies. We crossed rivers and streams on rusty old ferries and makeshift bridges, and plowed through mud and waterholes on the roads in between.
We stayed in Catholic missions and with Peace Corps volunteers. We saw arts and crafts being made throughout the region — masks, tapis, dolls representing Pende dancers. And we saw a beautiful waterfall that, were it in the United States, would have been a major attraction. Here, it seemed to go utterly unnoticed.
What consumed most of our free time during this second school was planning for the big trip we intended to take once the term ended. As I wrote in a letter to friends:
“We had intended (and still hope) to buy some kind of van (such as a VW combi) and outfit it here with the help of school carpenters and friends. Then we would head north to the Central African Republic (we would probably have to put our vehicle on a riverboat to get out of Zaire, given road conditions), then throughout West Africa and (if possible) across the Sahara. Then we’d travel throughout North Africa and continue on to Europe, where we’d spend several more months traveling and living out of our van. We‘d’ then return to the States in late spring of 1977. (As it turned out, we moved to Paris for a couple of years instead. But that’s another story).
“We began attempting to implement this plan in early September upon our return from our summer adventures and found — to our great dismay — that no new vehicles are coming into the country. Zaire is in the midst of an economic crisis. It has little or no foreign reserves and, consequently, is defaulting on its loans and not paying its bills. In an attempt to straighten out this mess, the government is not permitting the importation of any vehicles. The used-car market is almost non-existent, and the few who are selling are getting astronomical prices for their cars.
“So we have been having a helluva time finding anything. We have recently come upon a used Peugeot van for sale. It is quite roomy and so would surpass the VW in livability. But it is lower to the ground, and whether or not it can be sufficiently raised by new wheels, larger tires, spring adjustment or whatever, we are now in the process of determining. If it cannot, we may consider going by boat to Bangui, driving to Dakar and then shipping it to Casablanca, as crossing the desert would not be feasible.”
Then, in a February letter, this development: “We’ve decided on a used ’72 VW bus, which we found for sale for $2,500. We’ll have to pay duty, as well, and buy new tires and all the spare parts. The way things go around here, who knows what we’ll really end up having to pay?
“We’ve also decided to collaborate with a couple of fellow teachers to run a month-long summer school, which should net us at least $1,000 per person. Since the VW won’t be available to us until 1 July anyway, the timing will be perfect.”
On our spring break we flew to Johannesburg to buy backup car parts and tools, material to build sand ladders, English-language books and other necessities unavailable in Kinshasa.
But there would be one last grand adventure in Zaire before that. Over Christmas break, we hiked up to the snowy 10-mile massif of the Ruwenzori Mountains and hitched rides through the Ituri Rainforest, home to the nomadic hunter-gatherers called Pygmies and to the rare and lovely okapi, the only living relative of the giraffe.
AFRICA DAYS 9: Poling in the Okavango Swamp, Whiplash in South Africa
Note: Africa Days is a series of posts based on journals and letters from my years living in Kinshasa and traveling across Africa, beginning in 1974. You can read previous and following posts (for free) on this site or at https://genevaoverholser.com/
“We had read in our ‘Traveler’s Africa’ guide that, deep in the Okavango swamp of Botswana, it was possible to hire canoes for a sort of water safari during which you would encounter hippos and crocodiles. This expedition turned out to be completely different from what we had anticipated — and absolutely magical. With little information (as usual) we made our way by train from Bulawayo, Rhodesia, to Francistown, Botswana, then found a ride (with great difficulty) in a mail truck making the 310-mile trip from Francistown to Maun, over a desolate stretch of the Kalahari Desert.
“In Maun, with information still at a premium, we finally determined that it would be necessary to pay a private pilot to fly us deep into the swamp. (This remarkable place is formed mysteriously by the Okavango River, Africa’s seventh largest, which pours into a desert rather than into a body of water, thus forming a swamp in its last gasp.) There we would find the Txatxaba camp, run by a man whose father trapped crocodiles in the area decades ago. This cost us a pretty penny, but we weren’t about to turn back now. We took the flight, swooped low over the tiny island airstrip to clear away the grazing impala, landed, emerged to the tune of buzzing tsetse flies, and were picked up by men in makoras, or dugouts.
“They poled us through the tall grasses of the swamp to the camp. We had a good lunch with the manager and his wife, who outfitted us with our own makora and our guide Kitsola, told us to keep our eyes open all the time and said they’d see us in a week or so.
“What a week it was. Mike and I rode along in the canoe as Kit poled us through a wonderland of wildlife. We camped on islands with many different kinds of antelope in sight. Kit would play his thumb piano by firelight. By the third day, we were in deep enough to encounter the predators, so we camped on the tiniest islands in order to hear any creature who might approach us through the water.
“And hear the creatures we did, the mysterious whoop of the hyena starting low and ending high, which made me question the term ‘laughing hyena’ until the second night when it added a weird cackling of 5 to 8 notes starting high, jumping around the scale. And then we heard the most chilling sound: the throaty groan of lions. Kit kept the fire going and his rifle by his side.
“During the day we would take walking safaris on the islands. In this manner, we saw many interesting signs of animals, in addition to the animals themselves: trees stripped by elephants to incredible heights, their footprints left in the mud forming pools you could have sat in. We noticed that there was one pile of dung in particular that Kit would always give wide berth to, rather than step over, as he usually did. It turned out to be hyena scat. A hyena had come to his village and attacked his daughter, he told us, and it would repeat the act unless he respected its leavings.
“Two particularly striking things deserve mention. On one of our walks, we noticed Kit paying special attention to a tiny bird, who would hop from tree to tree until finally, following it, Kit located a bees’ nest. He smoked out the bees and axed out the comb, and we ate the most delicious honey I’ve ever had, taking the rest of it with us for our oatmeal the next morning. We had been led to the hive by the honey guide, a bird which has developed this relationship with men and other animals. The Bushmen say that if the honey isn’t shared with the guide, he’ll lead you next time into a lion’s den or the pit of the deadly black mamba.
(The next encounter was gruesome to witness and is even more horrifying now to recall. Poaching of elephants has fallen in recent years, but rhinoceros have been killed in fast-growing numbers of late.)
“The second striking occurrence was an encounter with poachers. We came upon their camp midway through the trip. The tusks of elephants were soaking in the water, and meat and skins were drying everywhere: hyenas with their large ears turned inside out; impalas and elephants pieced on the ground like a pattern. The elephant ears alone were taller than I am. The feet and lower legs sat on the ground like high boots whose tops had fallen over. Some of the inner organs, blown full of air while soft, were hanging in translucent balls to dry, to serve as containers for the fats. One man was working on shaving some of the extra wood off his makora. The hunt had been so successful, the prizes so weighty, that the men needed more space.
“Our final destination was South Africa, where we embarked on a three-week whiplash of experiences, some sublime, many disturbing. We landed in Johannesburg, a mini-New York that felt astonishing to find on this continent. We visited Soweto — the part tourists are allowed into.
“We hitchhiked to Durban, then down the coast (with a jaunt north to Oudtshoorn for an ostrich ride) to Cape Town, surely one of the world’s loveliest cities. There, we consumed much good wine, cheese, fresh fruits, and seafood. Finally, we took the famed blue train back to Johannesburg, the finest train I’ve yet to ride. Luxury on wheels.
“I find it hard to put on paper the many conflicting feelings about our time in this lovely, complex, deeply troubling country — a topic we want to discuss with you all on our return. I want to share here a tiny instance of how South Africa’s mores affected us personally. One hot evening we happened to be dropped off, after a day of hitchhiking, next to an appealing-looking bar a ways out of the town where we’d be spending the night. A beer sounded like just the thing to refresh us for the final leg. We walked eagerly into the cool, welcoming dark. The response was lightning-quick: The bartender looked at Mike (he never looked at me) and said, ‘She is not allowed here. There’s a ladies’ bar in town.’ Obviously, this was but a grain of salt before the vast and deadly mountain of apartheid, which affects every moment and shapes the lives of every South African. But I won’t forget that slap of exclusion; that presumption that I deserved neither to be looked upon nor spoken to directly.
“With our 77-day vacation over, we boarded a jet in Johannesburg bound for Kinshasa. The airline agent asked why we were going to Zaire. ‘We live there,’ we said. ‘Ah, I’m sorry to hear it,’ she replied. ‘I used to live there myself.’”
Going back to work did come hard after this idyll. But we had much to look forward to. During Christmas break, we hoped to hike the Ruwenzori Mountains — the most beautiful trek of them all, as it turned out. And throughout the school year, we’d be laying plans to realize the big dream that had lured us here: to drive all the way up out of Africa to Europe, when our teaching stint in Kinshasa ended.
AFRICA DAYS 8: Ancient ruins, pristine beaches— and Victoria Falls
Note: Africa Days is a series of posts based on journals and letters from my years living in Kinshasa and traveling across Africa, beginning in 1974. All posts are here, in reverse order below
“When we came down from Kilimanjaro (in the summer of 1975), we needed a rest. As soon as we got back to Nairobi, we boarded a plane and headed to the coast. Our next big adventure would be four days in Lamu, a tiny island just off the Kenyan coast, barely separated from the mainland by a lovely blue-green swath of Indian Ocean — just wide enough to have kept all wheeled vehicles off the island and genuine Swahili civilization still on. It was a charming stay (at $1 a night!), exploring narrow streets of the old town and walking along the 10 miles of wild beach, all of it deserted and backed by mile after mile of undulating white sand flecked with grasses. It was hard to leave, but the next step was Malindi, down the coast a bit, where we engaged for the first time in snorkeling, and found it immensely to our liking. I never realized how breathtaking the colors of the life in the coral leaf can be. Out of Malindi, we visited old Swahili ruins dating back to the 15th century at Gedi. Mombasa, further south, was also interesting historically.
“Zanzibar, the fabulous land of Zinj, was the perfect spice island. It is undergoing considerable socialist change now, and the government keeps a steady eye on all visitors: We were ushered about and given a driver for the only possible tour. We stayed in one of only three hotels on the island. But it was worth all the surveillance. The old slave caves where the overland drives ended and the wait for the ships began, the market where slaves were sold, the buildings where Livingstone, Speke, Burton and Stanley prepared for or rested up after their African explorations: all these were fascinating. But the best part to me was the agriculture. We took a tour through the countryside which made my nose swoon. We peeled the bark off cinnamon trees, crushed budding cloves, gaped at the cocoa, coconuts, coffee, nutmeg, lychee nuts, cashew trees, orange groves, lime groves, and trees of fruit whose like we’ve never seen. Zanzibar was as fertile and lovely a place as I’ve seen, had a sense of antiquity rare in Africa and smelled heavenly. Livingstone, when he was there in the mid-1800’s, wrote that the island was full of objectionable odors and should be referred to as Stinkibar. If that was true, it couldn’t have changed more.
“Dar es Salaam was next. We were there for Tanzania’s independence anniversary celebration and attended an interesting trade fair where the North Korean pavilion was the most prominent. We enjoyed the museum, which houses much of Leakey’s work. Then we made our way to Malawi, landing in Blantyre and hitchhiking to Zomba, a lovely old British university town at the base of a plateau on which we spent two days hiking. The serene forest trails felt almost like being in a U.S. state park, except for the very different mushrooms and butterflies. We camped all alone in a pretty spot within walking distance of a fine old hotel built atop the plateau in the old days when the Britishers would vacation there. This inn carried on the noble tradition of Malawi’s being the only country outside Denmark where they brew Carlsberg beer. It was a happy stay, and gave way to still another: several days on the shore of Lake Malawi, whose clear waters shelter tropical fish found nowhere else in the world. We were lucky enough to be camped next to a man who was fully outfitted for snorkeling and diving, and whose equipment we borrowed, along with his boat.
“Malawi was the friendliest place we’ve been. Our travels there were made nicer and more interesting by our frequent encounters with Malawians, who gave us rides, sang to us on buses and invited us into their homes for tea. Plus: the country has campgrounds — an common thing on this continent — and good cheap rest houses in the cities.
“Next we went to the land of ‘right of admission reserved,’ taking the plane from Blantyre to Salisbury and a very different world. Rhodesia felt like the U.S. of the 1950’s. But it offered two very compelling sights: the awesome and mysterious ruins of Zimbabwe, and Victoria Falls, whose native name, aptly enough, means “the smoke that thunders.’ At the falls, we had an intriguing walk several miles along the river, just Mike and me and the warthogs, monkeys and hippos.
“Victoria Falls is difficult to fully appreciate because of its magnitude and the fact that you can’t see much of it at once, since it drops into a deep gorge. My favorite view of it was the westernmost section on a moonlit evening, with the spray hitting our faces. We also had an interesting river cruise, and visited the most educational and fascinating crocodile farm.
“The Zambezi riverwalk was a foretaste of the greatest adventure of them all: our week in the Okavango swamp of Botswana.”
AFRICA DAYS 7: Destination Kilimanjaro
“Our 77-day summer adventure began with a flight from Kinshasa to Nairobi on June 7 (1975). As soon as we stepped onto the PanAm jet, the shock of a familiar past life overcame us. There were no soldiers. The magazines were not months old. No one stared at us. The people on the plane spoke English. Even the loo felt mind-boggling, so efficient, so well-stocked, everything in its assigned place. It was almost more than we could take in.
“So was Nairobi. Situated close to a mile high, its climate is relatively cool and dry. It’s a lovely city and very modern. It had almost-current movies. It had milkshakes, milk, ice cream! To steep ourselves even more thoroughly in luxury, we took an overnight jaunt to the famed Treetops Lodge. Back in Nairobi for a few days, we enjoyed the very good museum and snake park. Then off we went in a rented car for our tour of the great game parks. We drove southwest of the city, down the escarpment of the Rift Valley and to Masai Mara, then across the border into Tanzania and the Serengeti. There we camped, frightened at first (Mike rustled up a fearsome-looking water buffalo along with the firewood), but then loving the wide-open feel of the plains, the sky fuzzy with stars, and the wild animal calls in the night.
“We crossed the Olduvai Gorge and took a trip down into Ngorongoro crater, a beautiful bowl of nature, where we came closer to the animals than anywhere I’ve been. Then Lake Manyara, where lions sleep in the trees; Amboseli, giraffes grazing under the snowy top of Kilimanjaro (hint of what was to come); Tsavo; then back to Nairobi, where we turned in the car.
“We took in one more movie and one more milkshake, then boarded a bus for Kilimanjaro and The Great Climb. We experienced several bus breakdowns, came upon a man lying in the road, spent three hours going through customs at the Tanzania border, and finally rolled into Moshi, near the base, at 7 a.m. We were able to make arrangements through the Moshi YMCA to leave that very day, because a group of three high-school guys — a Britisher, a Finn and an American — had already arranged to go up. A quick trip to Moshi’s three sparsely stocked grocery stores, and we were set. All told, there were five climbers, plus one guide (Elias, a most likable fellow), a porter for Elias and a porter for Mike and me. (We had at first poohpoohed the idea of a porter, but we were convinced by those wiser than we are in the ways of Kilimanjaro that we’d be fools to shoulder our own packs up that mountain. Thank goodness for their counsel.)
“We took a crowded bus some 30 miles out to Marangu, the starting point for the route we were to take. Then we set off. The first part of the walk is up a road through luxuriant banana-grove kind of country, with lovely, neat houses, and flowers all about. The first climber we ran into, a Scotsman, looked horrible. He said he felt worse. And he hadn’t made it. By the time we reached the gate of the park, well into the first day, we met a young couple who had succeeded. ‘It is very, very hard,’ they said. Above the Marangu Gate, we hiked through thick forest on a muddy, slippery path. The first hut was visible some distance off across a meadow. This hut was luxurious compared to later ones, with three rooms, mattresses, a fireplace. We slept quite well — for the last time before the 60 hours to come. It’s a good thing we couldn’t have predicted then how tough it was going to be — though I think we’d still have done it. We were determined. We had to be!
“The second day started out in an eerily lovely rainforest, which soon broke into a misty meadow. We reached the hut mid-afternoon. The climbing was easy — the trip is well planned that way, starting out gradually uphill to the first hut, then uphill and level to the second, then uphill and level to the third — the day that was to come.
“Anyway, at the second hut we played nursemaid to a mad German, who had been forced to come back by palpitations of the heart. And — we read all the inscriptions of failure left by our precursors.
“The third day was beautiful. We encountered strange plants of all sorts, enjoyed walking through them, and at last broke out of the clouds onto the ‘saddle’ stretching between Mawenzi Peak, (the rugged lower peak at 16,893 feet) and Kibo, the perfect volcano giant at 19,340 feet. From there, we could see the path — going straight up. That night, Mike and I slept together inside both sleeping bags in an attempt to counteract the cold that had kept us awake the night before. We almost strangled, though, from the tightness of this arrangement, and we were kept awake anyway by the verbal antics of our three companions, who were too cold to sleep. Thus it was utterly unnecessary for the guides to wake us up for the 1:30 a.m. climb to the summit.
“When the ominous hour came, Mike said he felt too sick to make the climb. We both had had headaches the day before, but he felt seriously nauseated now. The other four of us got silently (grimly?) ready. Then, at the last moment, Mike sat up, gave a great belch, then one more, and declared, ‘I think that’s it. I’m going.’
“We made mittens out of socks and plastic bags sealed with athletic tape, put on all the clothes we had and went out into the cold full moonlight. The other three had gone on up with a porter who was turned into an assistant guide for this stretch. By the time we caught up with them, one of the teenagers was too sick to go on. We watched as he turned back.
“So far I had thought the climb tough but manageable. Then it started: the most trying effort I have ever made. Straight uphill over two-foot-deep scree — volcanic gravel layered so loosely that every step is frustrating as hell. Your foot ends up sometimes several inches below where you placed it.
“Add to that the constant gain in altitude (from 16,000 to 19,000 feet that morning alone), which makes every breath a gasp and creates a tightness in the chest, and … well, soon you just feel ill. (Our toes and thumbs felt frozen too, but that seemed the least of our problems.) On part of the scree, it is necessary to go straight up; on other parts, it is wide enough to make small zigzags. While we were endlessly zigzagging up the last interminable stretch, the sun rose from behind Mawenzi. It was transporting. By this time, another of the teenagers had given up and gone back. One guide had continued up with the third climber. We were still struggling, struggling, step-by-step-by-laborious step. (I’ll never forget how encouraging was the sound of Elias saying, ‘poh-lay, poh-lay’ — Swahili for ‘slowly, slowly’ — again and again in his rich baritone.)
“And then: We made it. To Uhuru Peak, the highest point on Kibo. There we were, at last, staring down into the huge crater filled with delicate snow and ice formations, giving it the appearance of housing a fairyland town: A town topped by impressive glaciers, some forming stair-step patterns. We sat at the top, sick and sore, gaping at the almost unattainable splendor. And then we started our descent — with each step down the scree now a wonderfully long slide, on our heels.
“We rested briefly at the top hut and then spent the rest of the day going all the way down to the first in order to sleep. It was 22 miles of hiking that day, but worth it for the beer someone had left at the first hut, and for the warmth of our beds that night.
“The trip was 50 miles in all. It was incredible, all right. And we did it.”