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.

From my journal: “Thursday, 21 September 1976, God-knows-where, Mali: Yesterday afternoon, we suddenly found ourselves without a horn — and without a battery. Absolutely dead. We pulled over. Got out the books, checked the fan belt and the electrical system connections. Our hydrometer, bought in South Africa. had busted in Kinshasa — no way to check the battery. Our battery head cleaner brush, also bought in South Africa, had been lost, and we have searched in vain the last several cities for baking powder to clean the battery. We had noticed that our supplementary battery has been dying, so we had unhooked it yesterday morning, and we found water under it.

“Now we figure it must have something to do with the generator failing to charge either one. We’ve been reading all we can but we can’t determine whether it would hurt a faulty generator if we just push start and try to drive to Bamako (150 kms at least). We’ve cleaned the battery as well as we can — difficult because it’s too large for its location, since it’s oversized — none of the right size having been available. So here we are, it’s hot as hell and there are tsetse flies all over. We’re both badly bitten from yesterday. And we’re so isolated that I don’t know how we would find anyone to help push start us.”

This was just one of a long string of mechanical difficulties that would dog us as we drove toward Bamako. We’d patch one thing — and another thing would go bust, often at some desolate spot with no help available.

Finally, one evening, we decided to take stock. We sat down and made a chart: Dakar vs. The Desert. Alas, The Desert lost. All those months of preparation, all those sandladders and jerry cans for fuel and water, everything stored just so in our bus designed for this, everything hauled all these miles. We knew we would survive a Sahara crossing; the rules of the road (or, in this case, track) meant someone would pick us up and haul us north. But there would be no hauling Miles. Leaving him in the dunes would mean losing not just our transport but also our room and board for the weeks to come in North Africa and then the months we planned to spend in Europe.

The decision was heartbreaking, but it was clear: We must put the bus (and us) on a freight train from Bamako to Dakar, and then onto a French packet boat to Casablanca.

In Bamako, we rushed from post office to bank, tourist office, a security firm and shops of all kinds, gathering information and supplies. We sold off the jerry cans. We were ready to head west.

But first, we had one more dream to fulfill here in Mali. As we ran all those errands, a mechanic had gotten Miles running smoothly again (at least for now). Now we would visit the mysterious Dogon civilization. In a letter to my brother, I wrote: “We had a great adventure today here in this godforsaken, dried-out, bug-infested country. We drove across 100 kms. of miserable road — sometimes piles of stones marked the route across boulders just like a mountain trail — to the town of Songha. From there, we set off to see the Dogon cliff-dwellers — an area that feels like Mesa Verde come alive. We walked about 9 miles in far-west-looking country of red rocks and scruffy plants with mesas in the distance. We descended a great escarpment, scooting on all fours down boulders and teetering scarily along large notched tree branches serving as staircases. As the valley below appeared, we saw our first village: Ireli, looking like a baked-mud fairyland, with straw roofs whose peaks reached high above little square granaries, and with rock walls making separate family and closures.

“Some of the houses are built into the lower cliffs, and among these were a few whose outer edges were supported by great forked branches. All up in the cliffs — really in every nook and cranny — are the dwellings left hundreds of years ago by pygmies who preceded the Dogon people, who now use many of the ancient buildings as granaries. There they store the millet that seems to be growing everywhere out of dry sand and must be practically the only thing these people eat. The village was large (we figured maybe 500 people) and it was noisy in its echoes against the huge cliff wall, though we saw very few people outside. Our guide said most were indoors, which is unusual for Africa, but here they don’t have much in the way of yards.

“We did see old men sitting in ‘palaver’ huts in Ireli and in the four other villages we passed through. These huts are open-air and roofed by at least 6 feet of millet stalks stacked in alternating layers to provide cool and shade, and they have big snakes carved over the one mud support wall. Once, as we sat resting, we saw children playing on one of the big boulders, sliding quickly down the smooth tilted surface. We got a view from above of the last of the villages, as we rested by a small waterfall in the shade of kingly baobab trees with their funny fruits hanging heavily on long stems.”

This would be the last of our many grand adventures in sub-Saharan Africa. It had been a hundred days since we left Kinshasa, following our two years living there. It would be more than a week before we’d get ourselves aboard the boat in Dakar. But there‘d be nothing about that period that we‘d recall with pleasure. Complexities and disappointments and discomforts and unpredictabilities had accompanied all our travels in Africa, but never had the bad outweighed the good.

Until that week.

After a couple of days of “you can/you can’t,” “get this permit from that office/that office is closed until tomorrow,” “there is no certainty about departure times,” etc., we at last got us all onto the train. Which meant three days of rocking and rolling in Miles on a flatcar and sitting for hours, often without moving, in the worst heat we’d ever felt, with no protection from biting bugs or blazing sun. Finally we made it to Dakar — and two more days of “can/can’t/come back tomorrow/go to this-no-that agency” — simply to get Miles off the train. Followed by two more days with the auto-loading people and the insurance people and the diplomatic officials, until finally we boarded the ship. Whose stabilizing bar wasn’t performing properly. The foul results of that, I will spare you.

HOWEVER — we got to stroll around lovely Las Palmas during a brief Canary Islands stop. Casablanca would soon come into view. All of North Africa’s pleasures awaited us.

The delight was about to return.

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.

Cotonou, Benin, 25 August 1976: “There’s a wonderful breeze off the ocean and consequently no mosquitoes. A blessing. The Atlantic at Cotonou is pretty: greenish water, fine sand, palmy beaches.

“We spent the morning at Abomay, visiting what remains of a huge palace built, successively, by the 11 rulers of that most impressive kingdom, which thrived from the 17th until the early 20th century. The guide, quite knowledgeable, had rich anecdotes about each potentate’s various symbols, which we found in relief on the walls and in the delightful murals and on the many scepters of gold, copper, iron and brass, along with thrones, jewelry and garments from each reign. I was astonished at the richness of this history. I have felt exactly the same way in looking at the bronze and terracotta works of the Benin and Ife civilizations. Sensitive, and sensual. Lovely work. Astonishing that it’s not more widely known.”

Friday 27 August, just north of Lome, Togo: “Once again, that pleasant time of day, morning — in a gravel pit! We have become devotees of gravel pits, which generally provide us with the isolation and quiet we crave and which require no permission from anyone — and are priced exactly to our tastes!

“We pulled in around 5 last night and prepared a truly remarkable dinner of fresh shrimp pili-pili, a fresh tossed salad, crusty French bread and our favorite German white, hauled from Kinshasa for just such a seacoast meal. A good sleep, then this morning a shower, boiled eggs, toast with peach jam and coffee while listening to a program on John Kenneth Galbraith on the BBC. We spent much of our time in Lome in the USIS library, with time out for a lobster dinner, some delightful French pastries and a short visit to the ocean. Now we are headed toward volcano country for a relaxed day or so of reading, writing, cleaning and some adjustments Miles needs.”

Kpalime, Togo: “A lovely calm day yesterday. We are in hill country again, which is much to our liking. We picnicked at Kpami Falls, a pretty 100-foot chute, then drove to a little mountain town where a French lawyer in 1944 had built a small stone château atop hill overlooking Ghana’s Lake Volta. It was a pretty climb to the château and fun to hear the caretaker reminisce about the parties M. Viale held before the government forced him out six years ago. Then we spent a pleasant late afternoon and evening at the ‘campement’ nearby, reading about Ghana to come.”

That campground in the hill country and the gravel pit near Lome represented two of the many categories of “accommodations” which Mike and Miles and I had become accustomed to over the course of the trip. In cities, we’d often find a school or a museum that would allow us to park for the night and perhaps use a rec room or the like to boil water or take care of other tasks. Other times, we’d splurge and go to a “rest house” — a modest, government-supported lodging particularly common in Nigeria.

In Zaire, we had either parked on the road near a village (asking the chief’s permission), or stayed in missions. The mission experiences were varied. In Karawa, Zaire, we stayed at the Swedish Covenant mission. I wrote in my journal: “We got to know all the mission residents by nightfall. Everyone was most warm (by our standards, even intrusive). But it was lovely to be taken care of so nicely.” Our last night in Zaire was at the Mission Protestante, “a tiny tin-roofed hovel on a lovely point jutting out into the Ubangi River. There, Jack and Jeanne Dangers shared their supper with us.” In Bossenstili, Cameroon, “We spent last night at a Swedish Baptist Mission. Our hosts had us in for cakes and a delicious drink made by boiling some dried pink flowers. We heard a scripture, were prayed over by the African pastor and sang some hymns (in 3 languages). A bit awkward, but interesting, as well.”

All in all, we preferred the Catholic missions we’d enjoyed in our Zaire travels, where the good priests loved to talk of old times, always had a goodly stock of beer and wine, and didn’t seem to concern themselves with our souls.

Our life in Miles was remarkably pleasant, as I related one evening Nigeria: “We generally ‘set up camp’ in 2 or 3 minutes, closing curtains and pulling down the mosquito nets. Then we begin fixing dinner. We usually eat very well. Tonight we had a vegetable curry of cabbage, tomatoes, onions, sweet potatoes, and carrots — all from roadside vendors — with rice and coconut. For lunch we had tuna with chopped egg on whole wheat bread (the latter is a rare treat) with cucumber and tomato slices and fresh limeade. For breakfast we‘d had grapefruit, bread and jam. We buy fruits, vegetables, bread and eggs from local markets. We have canned meats, rice and noodles, dried soup and seasonings in the cabinet.

“But back to evenings: I do most of the cooking, partly because Mike is doing most of the car maintenance and more of the driving. While I cook, we listen to the BBC or VOA. Sometimes we have a shot of Scotch after dinner and play some Rook. Usually we read a good while. Sometimes we leave the dishes until morning and do them during our coffee stop, about 10 or so — another pleasant time. I’m getting into macramé, and I’m enjoying memorizing songs from our cassettes as we drive along. We have fun quizzing each other from the almanac and from a word book I particularly like. We keep our clothes clean, keep good food in stock, keep our ‘house’ clean, check Miles’ tires, batteries, oil and exhaust pipe regularly. We wash our hair frequently, standing beside the bus with one of us holding our plastic siphon hose over the other’s head. We take frequent sponge baths. So far we’ve been remarkably lucky with the weather. It’s a pleasant way of life, really. We’re keeping a budget faithfully, and our per diem expenditure for the first 39 days is about $17. It shows we can travel reasonably and make the purchases we want — at least in Africa.

 “Sitting here drinking my coffee, listening to a VOA program about crocodiles, I feel content.”

Up next was Ghana. It would give Nigeria a run for its money as a cultural rockstar: A festival in Cape Coast was a highlight of our Africa years.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”