Round the World

One of the great things I love about travel is the odd coincidences, chance meetings and occasional strokes of sheer dumb luck that liter the path. The sort that you can never rely on, but you kind of know will periodically happen and memorably enliven events for a few days, even if they are not always ideally timed or enlivening in ways you would hope for. Which is pretty much how i came to be sitting on the terrace of a very swanky lakeside (Lake Tanganyika) villa on the outskirts of Bujumbura – the capital of Burundi – looking across at DR Congo in the distance, whilst watching the sun go down and the full moon rising over the mountains. The fact that i was being offered obscene amounts of superb - and free - food and booze (of which, sadly, i partook in very little. Bl**dy Hamish), meeting several luminaries and being greeting incredulously and joyfully by a handful of former colleagues and acquaintances whom i had not seen in donkeys years, couldn't help but enhance the experience.

I hadn't really intended to come to Burundi, or certainly not at this point. Whilst i have heard many good things about the country and have long been curious to visit, i figured that sadly I just would not have time to have a proper look (before my next violation at Nairobi hospital) on this trip, and it didn't make any sense to just go for a couple of days as i wouldn't get the chance to see anything. And then I met the Belgian.

Many years ago (yes, ok, in a previous life: these ramblings are rapidly descending into a historical tale of my misspent youth, which is not a good thing) whilst working on a small project, I met a Belgian guy. Pretty much, it was the sort of project that any normal student can relate to – We were doing something we probably shouldn't have been, somewhere that we almost certainly should not have been, for reasons that have since been lost to time and at those hours of the day that normal folk would get paid an 'unsociable hours' bonus for. It was crazy, unpredictable, frustrating, occasionally a little hairy but always a heck of allot of fun. The Belgian introduced himself to me as Jean, but I have actively heard him introduce himself as Wim, Phillipe, Marc, Tom and at least half dozen other names, including, once, memorably, as Marie-Anne. What his real name is, i doubt i will ever know. I generally call him simply, 'the Belgian'.

He is the kind of person that disappears for weeks or months at a time, and then randomly appears in the sort of place that you just don't expect: a random bar in Arjeplog – and believe me, in that part of the world, they are all pretty random – being a personal favourite of mine, though baring the occasional email we have had no direct contact in years. He is a few years older than me and had a Rwandan wife, hence his relevance to this irrelevant piece of garbage. Thus it was that when it occurred to me that perhaps i might be going to Rwanda in the next couple of days, i sent off an email on the off chance he could give me some pointers there. Seventeen minutes later, my phone rang.

A couple of days later when i got to Kigali, I had rung him up and we had met for a quick coffee in town. He apologized that he would be extremely busy for the next day and so could not show me around or offer me the dinner that he had long promised (amongst much else, he is a gourmet chef) in return for a small favour I had once done, but if i had no other plans he was heading to Burundi a couple of days later to a party and was sure he could get me an invite. Besides, he said, there will be a few other people there who i knew who would doubtless be delighted to see me as well. I pondered briefly, but really, what could i do? When the Belgian invites you to a party, you don't say no. It's just not done.

It's really not.

And that is ignoring the fact that Bujumbura – even now, despite the horrific civil war that has been fought until relatively recently - has long had a reputation for being both one of the gastronomic and party capitals of Africa.

Thus as i sat gazing out of the tinted car window at the moon glistening on the lake, on my way back to my central Bujumbura hotel at some time vaguely around 4am (the hotel closed its doors at 23:00, i had said earlier when i excused myself to leave. 'No problem', came the reply, we can deal with that. And is there still a curfew on movement at night in Bujumbura, and don't we have to go through some checkpoints, I had also naively asked? 'No problem', came the reply, we can deal with that. So I had stayed a while. And there was, indeed, no problem anywhere), I reflected on what a great evening it had been. On just how brilliant the food had been, what a great party it was (i was amongst the first to leave, so the party very definitely still 'was'), how superb the hospitality had been - especially considering i was an entirely unknown, disheveled looking, mostly non-French speaking random backpacker to the hosts – and what an interesting and enlightening evening it had been (so *THAT'S* how they solved it. I'll be damned!), most of all i reflected on just how lucky I had been that everything had fallen into place so perfectly and out of the blue. And I finally started to remember just why I love traveling.

Yes, I know that this whole entry doesn't say anything except how lucky I was, and is entirely self-serving. But come on: i've pretty much spent the last 3months sat on toilets, squatting over toilets, sitting in hospital waiting rooms or with tubes being shoved up my arse - and sometimes all of the above at once – (and i'm on my way back to restart that same joy) , so figure i'm due a small stroke of luck and bit of joy, and thus had to share it with you. If you don't agree with me, tough!

It was like I was in another country. Ok, so i was in another country, but in this part of Africa, you kind of expect certain things which are pretty much constant regardless of where you actually are. Wandering around Kigali that first afternoon (admittedly after I had slogged up a huge hill in obscene heat in search of a hotel that wasn't there) was a huge revelation.

Such curiosities as well tended green verges, freshly painted road markings, an absence of car horns, traffic lights that people actually pay attention to (!!), buses with timetables which are actually adhered to and are not a complete pack of lies and, perhaps most astonishingly, helmets. Boda-Bodas (yes, the thing that i came flying off in Kampala) are a part of life in most towns and cities in Africa, and Kigali is no different. Except that, amazingly, every rider was wearing a helmet. Even more amazingly, they all carried extra helmets for passengers they pick up. Thus it was routine to see more people on a single motorcycle (two) wearing helmets than the total number of helmets that I had seen being worn in Kampala, a city with ten times the number motorcycles. True, i am sure that it is a legal requirement to wear a helmet in Rwanda, but in much of Africa such things mean absolutely nothing at all.

Take, for example, plastic bags. They are banned in Rwanda, and consequently any shopping is presented to you in brown paper bags or, if you have them, reusable shopping bags. The only polythene bags I have seen in the entire country are ones that I brought in with me. In Uganda, they are also banned. But every store - without exception - still uses them freely. The law is there and people are happy about it, but nobody would actually consider obeying it. That would just be silly.

After years of people complaining that i didn't put up entries often enough, now people are complaining that i'm putting up too many. I just can't win. But in my defence, i've had a lot of free time on my hands in recent weeks and so have used some of it keep you all bored. When i resume my normal lethargic attempts at keeping up to date (eg: i don't), you can assume i am either healthy again and don't have the time, or that Hamish has won.

I spent 10nights in Kampala, but even now i'm not really sure why. Apart from the inevitable chores and recovery I didn't really seem to do anything. And as for achievement...? Erm... nope. Don't be silly. Though i wandered around town quite a bit, I didn't even make it to the Kasubi tombs, probably the biggest tourist 'attraction' in the city. Why? Erm... Again, I don't know. In fact my biggest impression of Kampala as a city is the fact that every 3rd person seemed to be wearing a security uniform of some description, and carrying a large gun.

Life pretty much revolved around the hostel, and certain patterns developed. I would have breakfast in the restaurant, sitting at the same small table where the same chicken would invariably come and join me in the chair opposite. After making a fair racket for the next while, it would lay an egg on the cushion, and then quietly wander off to amazed looks by recent arrivals. I would also engage in discussions about the obscene size of one of the hostel dogs, and the curious state of the goat who was very obviously pregnant despite the lack of, well, any other goats, leading to the slightly worrying conclusion that one backpacker who passed through was either extremely drunk or extremely desperate. Or both.

The old matatu park in Kampala. the new one is even bigger and messier (though without a nice place to look out over it and marvel at how anybody has the faintest idea of what is going on)

As it is now coming into tourist season – lots of students are suddenly filling up East Africa, bringing with them rising prices and swine flu amongst much else - I would also wonder at the constant stream of overland trucks coming through: Only one night was without any, whilst 2 or 3 a day were not uncommon and 5 arrived on one crazy day. It just seemed very strange that there were so many in Uganda, almost all fairly full, and especially as most of them are so cunningly designed that it's pretty much impossible to see anything out of them at all! And I also wondered at the sheer moronic-ness, ignorance and down right rudeness of the hoards of 18/19year olds who passed through at weekends. One night was so bad that – quite honestly – if i had had instant access to a machete or shotgun at around 4am, I would now be doing some serious time as a notorious mass-murderer. Why are these people let out, is what I want to know, let alone how are some these allegedly intelligent human beings (the horrific group in question were young American law students interning at the Rwanda War Crimes and genocide tribunal in Tanzania, for crying out loud).

I was curious as to exactly what changes at 6pm, but didn't stick around to find out

I had entertained vague plans of a few day trips as well, but the only one i undertook was to Entebbe, 35km away on Lake Victoria, home to Uganda's main airport and the former capital city. It was certainly pleasant enough, though it was a slightly odd place: there didn't seem to be anything even vaguely resembling a centre. We wandered for a couple of hours around it's main attraction, the Botanical gardens (where, local legend has it, some of the original Tarzan films were made, though it seems unlikely) which were certainly very pleasant and a relaxed way to spend a day, but it was more in the way of a grassy park with trees or even an arboretum than a garden. Of flowers, which I would have thought would be an integral part of any botanical garden, there were none. There were some monkeys and plenty of birds though, which seems a pretty decent trade off to me.

Some trees in the Entebbe Botanical gardens, and some boys standing on a submerged rockand fishing in Lake Victoria

Eventually I headed south. I didn't have much in the way of a plan, to be sure, but south was there, i hadn't seen it and i had some days. Besides, the Northern hemisphere was boring me again. And thus I ended up in Kabale near the Rwandan and Congolese borders in an area of beautiful landscapes and terraced hills that looks in places like England, Slovakia, St.Helena and China. Pretty much anywhere, in fact, that is not African. The town wasn't much, but the surroundings pleasant, and it had obviously been of importance in previous times judging by some of the large colonial villas dotted in the hills. The standards have degenerated though, as i, a grotty looking and dodgy sounding backpacker was greeted warmly at the White Horse Inn one afternoon, whereas in years gone by VS Naipul had been banned, and Paul Theroux kicked out.

I was pretty much as south as I could be and as I was sadly unable to visit the mountain gorillas – the price of permits is horrific, whilst shared genes means that anybody who is sick is not allowed to visit anyway – i figured I may as well keep going. The Rwandan border is just down the road, and it seems silly not to cross it.

A view of some of the terraces in the hills around Kabale

I'm not entirely sure why I will start with a note from the national news, but as nobody complained last time I did it, i figured i may as well do it again. Todays snippet comes from a Tanzanian paper that might have been 'the Guardian', but then again, might not have. It was a small item announcing that Norway were opening a new Consulate on Zanzibar today. In itself, that is not particularly amazing, I grant you, but two small things jumped out at me about it: The first was that whilst the Norwegians said that really, the amount of trade and interaction between Zanzibar and Norway was too small to normally warrant such a move – perhaps understandably: After all when you think of the worlds largest or most important trade partners, they aren't two that instantly spring to mind -, 'an increasing number of Norwegians are finding they require assistance on Zanzibar, but generally only of the consular nature'. Translation: lots of Norwegians are 'losing' their passports (and almost certainly most are not accidental loses, either) and need new ones in a hurry*. The second thing that amused me was that the consular officer who has been appointed is actually Danish, after a thorough search for a qualified Norwegian familiar with the island was, apparently, 'sadly unsuccessful'.

And now I've happily wasted a paragraph.

As you might deduce from the fact i was reading a Tanzanian newspaper, i was back in Tanzania and bouncing merrily down the not yet built Arusha-Nairobi main road (although the later part, you might not have deduced. If you did, serious kudos). I was back in Tanzania for a couple of reasons, most relevantly of which was that my previous days violation had gone reasonably well and I now had almost a week free before I needed to be back in Nairobi. My love of that glorious city has already been documented in these annals, and thus (especially as I have a still valid Tanzanian visa) I had resolved to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

Bouncing down the 'hopefully-will-be-a-real-road-in-a-few-years' south of the border, the only tourist on the bus and on a gloriously sunny morning, I suddenly felt perfectly content: I was no longer in Nairobi, my rear end was coping with the bouncing with surprising ease, I was listening to some good music and gazing happily out of the window whilst my mind merrily wandered. Then, from above the layer of cloud, I saw Kilimanjaro – or at least the patchy snowy sides of the top kilometer or so of Kilimanjaro, and its summit – in the distance, and for the first time in a while i actually felt properly happy with the world and was enjoying my travels again. Great stuff.

Sure, there was a small (OK: really large) pang of regret that I wouldn't be able to climb it anytime soon (for reasons of both current issue and Italian exploits from last year....), but that just gives me an excuse to return to East Africa, and hopefully soon. More than that was the joy at realising that it actually exists: Maaret and I had traveled this way twice when we went to Arusha, without being able to see it and I had begun to wonder whether my relationship with the mountain would turn out to be similar to that of Mt. Fuji-San (for those lucky enough not to remember that tedium – or the non Kiki parts anyway – there is more detail here.

Oh great. The electricity has just died completely. So I am now sitting in the bowels of a pitch black hostel, with just the strange glow from my laptop for company. But lets move on, and see if i can finish this warble before the battery dies.

But as I mentioned above, there were a couple of reasons for coming, and here we explore the main one. Back when I was still pretty much chained to a loo in Nairobbery, I had spent some time googling and looking at ideas. After realising that independent travel to most of the East African parks is either not possible or hideously expensive, I had begun to investigate tours. Though I generally detest guided tours, i am also realistic – and poor – enough to accept that sometimes, they are the only way I will be able to visit certain places.I have long wanted to visit the Ngorongoro Crater and the nerd inside me (or, perhaps more correctly, the nerd that is me) really wants to visit Olduvai Gorge and see the area where the Louis Leakeyand family had done so much brilliant archaeological work, and found the remains of Homo Hablis (aka the Handy man) a major link in the evolution of humans. I had found a decent sounding and affordable tour from a company who had been recommended to me, and provisionally booked it on the hope that I would be well again. So far, so good, i hear you say.

However, all Ngorongoro trips come tagged onto trips to a much larger and generally better known attraction: The Serengeti National Park, and here lies the issue. Although Ngorongoro is a famous and compact game reserve in its own right, I want to visit for the geology of the Caldera as much as anything else. And when provisionally booking this trip, it looked like it would be perfect timing to catch the wildebeest migration, and a safari in the Serengeti sounded brilliant. But, of course, I had not been to the Masai Mara.

Now, I suddenly find myself heading to arguably the most famous and well known game reserve in the world (you could probably argue Kruger, but that would be it), an area of vast grassy savanna of the sort that, I'm sure will now realise, I have been to a week ago - the much smaller Masai Mara is actually part of the Serengeti ecosystem, and separated only by the irrelevant political boundary – and ended up hating immensely.

And, apparently, the wildebeest have moving on from the area that we will be in. Yup, I have been here for the whole of the most famous animal movement in the world, an event of apparently unrivaled grandeur, and despite visiting the middle and the end, will probably miss them in both locations by a matter of days.

My timing is impeccable as ever.

I am going to try and go into it without any preconceptions and take it on its own merits and experiences. And obviously, things might work very differently in the Serengeti to the radio-linked hunting madness of the Mara, especially given it's much greater size, although I sadly doubt it. But i must admit that pretty much the last thing that I want to do at the moment is go on a Safari (I am kind of animaled out and don't currently have the “wow” factor that you should have for such trips. I have, after all, recently seen the big 5...) in grassy savanna, much less one where there will be lots of other vehicles around all driving off-road – and thus affecting the habitat – whilst hunting down sightings mercilessly.

I will of course let you know how it went when I actually know, but if I don't, and you hear reports of, say, a crazed gunman killing lots tourists in different buses near some rare animals in the Serengeti, I wouldn't try to hard to put 2 and 2 together...

• Technical note: Despite the fact that Zanzibar is part of Tanzania (it is, in fact, the central 'zan' part of it), it maintains many independent rules and regulations, including running its own immigration checks. As a result, you have to fill out immigration forms and get your passport stamped on arrival/departure from Zanzibar, even if you have come from/are going directly to the mainland. Which means that it is not quite as simple for Norwegians – or anybody else – who have lost their passports to just get a boat to Dar and replace it at the embassies there, as one might suppose

In a previous warbling, I noted just how much I was looking forward to Nairobi, and my expectations of the city. I am happy to report that Nairobi has exceeded that. After 2.5weeks of pretty much been stuck between the confines of a heavily fortified hostel toilet and a hospital, I finally felt able to risk a trip into the city. Sick or not, i had chores to attend to and medicine's to collect. The day went pretty smoothly, though I was utterly shattered by the end, the product of barely having done any exercise for some time. But I was never quite caught out on comfort break requirements, achieved pretty much everything i needed to and finally got to see some of the city. By day, at least, Nairobi is fine. To me it felt more European than African, at least in the central core, (though I couldn't explain why) and was pleasant enough.

But it was when I risked a trip to the Ethiopian embassy – more out of future curiosity and a desire to actually get some exercise for the first time in ages than any pressing need – that i started to think that perhaps the Nairobi that I have long heard of was not in fact a myth. Maybe 500m before the embassy i was walking along a suburban road, when a man comes staggering towards me. I assume he is drunk. But when he is maybe 20metres away, he just collapses in a heap on the floor with foam coming from the mouth. My first thought was a horribly cynical and paranoid one: perhaps this is just a ruse for an unsuspecting pick-pocket to go for me whilst I try and help. But I quickly get past that. The foaming is just too realistic.

I stand for maybe a second, whilst looking around and seeing that the other 15 or so pedestrians – and 3 security guards at gates, who are all closer to the man than I - within sight are all ignoring the event. I don't have a Kenyan phone to hand so I start to approach to see if I can help. Barely 2 steps later, a smartly dressed woman in her 50's grabs my arm and says strictly “No. stay well clear.” And drags me across the road. As we start to cross to the other side of the road, two men calmly walk up to the prone body, frisk him, take his wallet and shoes and walk off. Still nobody is batting an eyelid, except that one of the security guards looks strongly at me until he catches my eye, and makes a swift gesture indicating that I should just keep going and ignore the man. I can't quite believe what is going on, but with people making it obvious they don't think I should even try and help, I don't really see what I can achieve so simply carry on my way, slightly perturbed.

When I return from the embassy maybe a half hour later, the scene is the same as before – nobody stopping or paying any attention – but for one obvious change: the man now has a blanket over his body and as I approach, is lifted into the back of a van which suddenly appears. Death is not unusual in Africa and people deal with it more frequently than many Westerners, but even so, I couldn't believe the lack of anything resembling curiosity (if you collapse on a pavement in Western Europe, China or much of the rest of the world, you would at least have a crowd of people looking over you in curiosity, even if none are actively trying to help) or even vague attempt to help. I don't know if I am frustrate or saddened more. But the really horrible thing was that I was in no way surprised. Welcome to Africa.