No Stopping for Lions (26 page)

We've a day or two to fill in before handing over the Troopy, so a detour to Swakopmund seems like a good idea. The Troopy can have one last service and the windscreen replaced at the auto service centre we used last time, and we can walk and shop in familiar surroundings while repacking drawers and bundling up unwanted clothes. We arrive late in the day under heavy skies and have trouble finding an estate agent still open, let alone one who has a rental property available. We're referred to an agent who comes up trumps with a small flat near the centre of town. It's cosy and quiet, unlike our agent, who is strung out, edgy and brittle. Over the next 48 hours we have contact with her several times and her demeanour shifts from rude to harried to nervous breakdown. Her dark personality and the coastal fog clinging to the shirt-tails of the town every day we're there creates a completely different impression of Swakop to the one we left with last year.

The grey mood follows us to Windhoek. We book into a cabin in a holiday park, right next to the runway of Windhoek's airport, and spend hours cleaning the Troopy and polishing the duco. We give boxes of clothes, first aid supplies and kitchen utensils to the staff to distribute amongst themselves. On the afternoon before the handover we drive out into the bush, a final voyage and farewell to our home and safe haven for the past eleven months. We're as taken with the Troopy now as we were the day we collected it and settling into the front seat is like nestling up to a favourite aunt for the last time. It hums over the tarmac and hugs the curves as confidently as ever, and the late desert light shines off the chrome work while those on the roadside look on with wide admiring eyes.

The handover is long as the papers are checked and contracts signed and Neil lovingly explains every quirk and attachment. Then Donald drives away and the Envy of all Africa gets smaller and smaller though it still stands out like a bright morning star.

So it's come to this. It's over, and all that is left is the journey home. Without our anchor we feel alone and directionless, the rest of the day passing in a blur of long silences. Night comes, and I lie in bed listening to Hadeda ibis calling from the runway and low African voices moving along the footpath. They remind me of other places, other nights. The cry of jackals on a moonsoft plain and the humphing of hippos across a still lagoon. I want to hear again soft voices in gentle conversation and bask in the warmth of people like Winnie. I want to sit on a stoep in Kenya, hearing stories of leopards and brave dogs, and laugh with new friends in the glow of a bush campfire. Most of all I want to be back on the road with Neil, driving through a landscape of unexpected beauty where every day reveals a secret and every corner hides a promise of things new and improbable. I miss Africa and I haven't even left yet.

I tell Neil how I feel: how I could easily do our journeying all over again, I
want
to do it all again, just find the Troopy and head north like before into the wild blue yonder. Neil turns to me and the look on his face says it all.
Oh god. I'm hooked
. I've become one of those people who have let Africa get under their skin. From now on I'll see Kilimanjaro in every mountain and the Zambezi mirrored in every sunset. In my dreams I'll journey to my favourite places and in my mind I'll hear the language of an ancient landscape where fish eagles cry at dusk and the innocent laugh under white flowering baobabs.