Footloose Scot (9 page)

He dismissed the group of teachers, and they left. He then turned to me and said, "If you go down the street on the right side, in front of the bank building, you will see the guardian. He has a fire there. You can sleep next to the fire, in your sleeping bag. Tell him I sent you." And that is how it turned out. I slept on the ground next to the fire outside the town bank. Thinking back on the incident, the sergeant reminded me of "Dickson on Dock Green," a long-running British TV show about a police sergeant who embodies the virtues of wisdom, judgment and calmness. The sergeant in the Mbala police station was a Zambian Sergeant Dickson.

MALAWI

I was heading for Malawi, and did not want to proceed further into Zambia, given the state of the economy and the obvious paranoia about people with white skin. I caught a bus the next day to the town of Mwenzo close on the Zambia/Tanzania border, and then paid a taxi to drive me to the Malawi frontier. Glad to be out of Zambia despite the expense of the taxi, I walked up to the Malawi immigration building. Inside, a cheerful immigration officer, smiling broadly, said "Mister, welcome to Malawi. What do you have to declare?" "Two guns and some hand grenades," I said, sensing he would go along with the joke. He did. Shaking his head, and chortling at the wit, he replied: "Well, you are nevertheless welcome, enjoy your stay in Malawi," and stamped my passport with a loud thud.

Easygoing Malawi, where white tourists were welcome, was a pleasant contrast to Zambia. I sat in a bus heading for Livingstonia, the settlement named after the Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingston, who lived here during his years of preaching in Africa. Livingston was an early voice in opposing the slave trade in Africa and revered by the local people. When he died, his body was carried for days across country, and then shipped to London where he is buried in Westminster Abbey.

The bus was packed, and I was jammed in a seat towards the back next to a large local woman with a young girl on her lap. The perky little girl, who had braided hair and a clean dress, obviously had never seen a white person before. She kept rubbing her hand along my arm, and saying something in wonderment to her mother. The mother looked temporarily embarrassed but when she saw that I didn't mind she smiled easily at her daughter's curiosity.

Coming back down from Livingstonia, which is located 1,500 feet above Lake Malawi, I started looking for a campsite. I found a quiet spot, a few hundred years from the road, under a tree and right next to the beach. I could hear some voices in the distance, but I reckoned I was far enough away from the road to remain hidden. Not so. This is Africa, and a sort of bush telegraph operates when outsiders arrive.

I had no sooner put up my tent than a group of twelve youngsters, aged around ten years old, appeared from behind some bushes, staring at me with excitement. They seemed curious and harmless rather than threatening or potential thieves. So I waved to them to come over, and showed them my tent. An older boy spoke some English and he said they lived in a village nearby.

Soon we had a nice relationship going. I kicked around an old football they carried with them in an impromptu soccer game. Then I showed them my stove, and indicated I was going to make some tea. Some of them went off, and came back with some wood for a fire and a fishing pole. Shortly after, they presented me with a fish they had caught in the lake. This was my supper. I took a picture of these boisterous, uninhibited kids displaying the fish. The older one told me they had to go back to their village; he had heard his mother calling them to supper. He wished me good night rather formally. I felt completely safe about camping on the beach, and slept soundly.

The next day I boarded the venerable lake steamer MV Ilala proceeding south on Lake Malawi. This 360-passenger ship was built in Scotland in 1949 and transported in pieces via Mozambique to Malawi where it was launched two years later. I sat on the deck with other backpackers enjoying the sun, chatting and reading. Below decks local Malawi families slept, sang songs and cooked meals on little stoves.

At Monkey Bay I disembarked and sought out the Heart Motel, recommended by a passenger. This turned out to be a thatched roof building with cabins to one side. A sign on the building read "Motel Heart Vacation Village: where quality never needs to shout, an elegant way of relaxing." Inside was the owner, Mr. Richard, who previously had been a chef in the capital Lilongwe and had returned to his place of birth to start this backpacker hostel.

With no electricity, and cooking on an open wood fire, Mr. Richard served hot dishes to the backpackers who sat at a table in the garden patiently drinking beer. An order of eggs or pancakes would periodically emerge with a flourish from the main hut carried by Mr. Richard himself, wearing a blue sweater above his apron and a big grin. The setting was conducive to reminiscing about travels completed, and plans for the future. This was budget travel at its best, a tolerant host and visitors adapting well to local conditions.

Later I hiked in Mulanje Mountain Forest Reserve, an immense block of dark igneous rock rising sharply from the surrounding plain. This is not just a mountain but a massif of some twenty peaks ranging up to almost 10,000 feet, covering an area of 208 square miles. At the lower elevations it comprises rolling grasslands and forested ravines. Outside the ranger station at the entrance to the park I hired a young man with a deformed leg to show me the way to the first mountain hut. I reckoned I didn't need a guide, particularly a crippled guide, since I had a map and the trail system looked well established. But I liked the sharp look in his eye, and reckoned he knew his own capability. It turned out fine; he was wiry and tough, and hobbled along ahead of me for four hours. Then, on arrival at the mountain hut, he said goodbye, left me and went back down to the ranger station.

The next day I climbed Sapitwa Peak in two hours by an easy trail which included occasional scrambling around boulders but nothing more strenuous. I met no one going up or coming down and wondered briefly about the absence of hikers. From the summit I gazed out over southern Africa, noticing dark green plantations on the lower slopes and enjoying the soft warm breeze which blew up from the plains. I seemed to have arrived during a dry, balmy spell on a mountain known for its damp and misty spells. For once I felt lonely and sad that I had no one to share with on this mountain setting. I seemed to be the only person on the mountain.

In Blantyre, Malawi's commercial capital, I camped in the grounds of the country club which still bore signs from colonial days. Notices informed members that afternoon tea was served on the veranda each afternoon from 4 p.m. and that members were required to dress in jacket and tie for dinner. I put up my tent next to a cricket pitch, and washed in the clubhouse men's room.

My next destination was Zimbabwe, and to get there I had to cross through Mozambique, then embroiled in a civil war. However, Malawi was an important supply point for landlocked Zimbabwe and supply convoys left daily, escorted by military vehicles, for the 80-mile trip through Mozambique up to the Zimbabwe frontier. The trucking companies have no trouble letting hitchhikers ride in the convoy, and I easily arranged to get a ride with a specific driver the next morning.

I duly turned up at 6 a.m. and climbed into the cab of a large truck carrying canned goods. The driver told me not to be worried; there had not been any attacks on the convoy for four weeks. But he warned me against leaning out of the window and drawing attention to myself. Our convoy of eleven trucks escorted by six armored cars from the Zimbabwe army left Blantyre promptly at 8 a.m.

MOZAMBIQUE

Two hours later we arrived at the Malawi/Mozambique border, and here we ran into a problem. The truck I was in broke down. The convoy, cleared by immigration, was ready to continue. None of the other truck drivers wanted to take me, since their boss had not authorized it. I was left, on the Mozambique side of the border, hoping to get a ride on the next day's convoy.

I was looking for some food to buy, and hoping to find a spot where I could put up my tent when a white woman started talking to me in Portuguese. We switched to English, which she spoke a little, and I explained my problem. "You must come and stay in my house," she said, "You can sleep on the couch. It is not safe for you to camp out here at the border."

She took me to her house, and gave me a plate of chicken and rice to eat. She explained that she was Portuguese and had lived many years in Mozambique. She was trying to sell her house and return to Portugal, but the war situation made it difficult. She made no mention of a husband. She loved the country, and had spent all her adult life there, but her hope of spending the rest of her life in Mozambique ended when the country attained independence (in 1975, twelve years previously) and she was resigned to returning to Portugal, which she had not seen since she had left as a young girl. She was facing a similar situation faced by expatriates around the world since World War II, when they discovered that the country they considered their home had changed ownership and they could no longer count on the same conditions and comforts as before. I felt she was lonely and enjoyed having someone to talk to, as well as being of use to a traveler in need. I certainly was happy not to be sleeping outside in a dangerous border region, as I told her, with many thanks, when I left the next morning.

The next morning, I pleaded with a driver in the morning convoy and explained how my truck from yesterday, still immobile, had broken down and I was stranded. He said okay, and to climb into his cab. Ten hours later we rolled into the outskirts of Harare, Zimbabwe after a trip without incident.

ZIMBABWE

Zimbabwe was a happier place in those days than it is today, and a much more prosperous country than its neighbors. It finally achieved independence from Britain in 1980. The country was now black-ruled under Mugabe, although many white farmers retained their lands and acquired citizenship in the new republic. Mining, agriculture and tourism were the main industries. It was a rich country.

My truck driver took me to a campsite before going to unload, and I spent a safe if hungry night. I had run out of food and it was too late to buy any supplies. The next morning, telling the camp guardians I was coming back in the evening and leaving my tent up, I took a bus into town. First I consulted
Africa on a Shoestring,
the bible for information for backpackers.

I needed to exchange money and among listings for accommodations and restaurants the guidebook pointed me to a black market money changer: Tony the Greek's hamburger joint in downtown Harare. Changing black market money can get the tourist and the money changer both into trouble, since it's against the law. So I approached the counter in the hamburger place warily and simply asked if Tony was in. The serving girl nodded her head towards a door to one side, and said "Go in there."

I knocked and entered a small office and found a Greek-looking fellow in his thirties sitting at a desk. I reckoned this was the man and now was the time to ask directly about money changing. "Can you change me some money?" I asked him. Without missing a beat, he said yes and asked if I had US dollars, and how much I wanted to change. "Where have all you guys been?" he complained. Apparently he had not had much business recently.

Flush with my new found wealth (three times as many Zimbabwe dollars as I would have got with the official exchange rate) I tidied myself up and headed for the Meikle Hotel, Harare's best. Built in 1915, this venerable hotel had long been a favorite of the British farmers visiting the capital of what was then Rhodesia. "Meet you at Meikles" was often how a conversation ended.

Rebuilt in 1976, the hotel still retained some its colonial aura, from the imposing entrance to the haughty look the doorman gave me. Ignoring him, I headed for the dining room and the breakfast buffet table. It was piled high with platters of fruits, cold meats, various breads, jams and marmalades. I took a seat at a small table adorned with a white linen table cloth and a flower in a vase. Outside, a gardener trimmed some bushes in the lush garden. I asked the waiter for the full English cooked breakfast, as well as a pot of tea.

I was tucking into this feast and reading the local English language newspaper,
The Zimbabwe Standard,
when I heard a woman's voice exclaiming, "There's Jim Glendinning!" I looked up and saw a young white woman approaching excitedly from across the dining room. I recognized her immediately. It was Debbie, who had worked in a pizza restaurant in Oxford, England which I had owned in the 70s. "Hello, Debbie, fancy seeing you here!" I said. Actually, I was less surprised than she was. I knew she came from Zimbabwe since she talked a lot about Africa.

Debbie sat down and explained that she was working at the hotel after completing a hotel management course in England. But she was not happy. The black management and her fellow workers ostracized her and made her feel unwelcome. It was sad to listen to someone who had been born in Zimbabwe, considered it her home, who loved the country and its people, was happy they had achieved independence and yet was being shut out by her colleagues. Still, she cheered up as we drove around town in her car showing me the sights, and later we had a meal at her home, a sizeable mansion in the suburbs. Her dad was a high executive with the Rio Tinto Mining Corp.

From Harare I took a train to Victoria Falls, leaning out of the open windows and getting the earthy smell of Africa after rainfall. The old steam locomotive arrived on time at the town of Vic Falls, as the expats call it. The town of 17,000 comprises tourist accommodations and shops, close to an enormous resort hotel built in 1905, the Victoria Falls Hotel, which featured hardwood floors, high ceilings, staff in white uniforms and gloves, and gardens stretching towards the falls which thundered in the distance.

I was able to pitch my tent above the falls, right on the river bank. Still rich with my illegally exchanged money, I then signed up for a horseback ride in a nearby game reserve and a flight in a small plane over the falls. This gave me the chance to take in the overall perspective: the sluggish Zambezi river slowly approaching the falls, over a mile wide at this point then suddenly falling away, the exploding spray which framed the falls and gives it its local name ("The Smoke that Thunders"), the background roar of the water, and the confused torrent of broken water below the falls. It was this latter area I intended to experience when I paid the last of my financial gains to go on a raft trip on the lower Zambezi.