Safari

by Geoffrey Kent

  Here I’ll visit the governor of Nyasaland, Sir Robert Armitage, a friend of my parents’. As I pull up to the residence, Lady Armitage is gardening on the lawn. “Geoffrey Kent, I presume?”

  “Hello, Lady Armitage!”

  “Where have you been? Your mother’s letter arrived ages ago; you’re five weeks late! We’ve been terribly worried. Whatever happened?”

  I hesitate to tell her the truth: I’ve taken the scenic route.

  That night at dinner, the Armitages applaud my effort to make the trip to Cape Town, but for the sake of my welfare they urge me to turn back and head home. Sir Robert explains that he’s preparing to lock up Dr. Hastings Banda, the self-titled president for life of Nyasaland. He describes the progress of the freedom movement in southern Africa. “At any moment things could erupt in bloodshed, Geoff. This is a serious risk you’re taking.”

  Lady Armitage adds her plea. “It’s particularly dangerous in the districts you intend to travel through. I know you and your father had a row, Geoffrey, but this could mean life or death.”

  When they see how adamant I am about persevering, the Armitages finally resolve to help me conquer the route. “That face of yours was the color of mahogany when you pulled up today, young man,” Lady Armitage lectures me with a softness to her voice. “Please do stay here at Government House for a week. You’ll have a lovely time, and our doctor will give you an ointment that will do wonders for those blisters.”

  Indeed I stay, and the Armitages work with their staff to arrange several trips for me. First is a coffee estate, whose operations interest me, considering the month I spent with the Kniebs in Arusha. They also take me to tour some of the capital’s public buildings, but my favorite trips are the outdoor excursions to Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi), which is one of the Great Lakes of Africa. I ride down through the mountains toward Lake Nyasa—so clear I can see to the bottom—and I pull my mask and snorkel out of my travel bag for a swim. Under the water, I watch in wonder: Lake Nyasa is the only home in the world to several hundred species of colorful freshwater fish known as cichlids, which I’ve always wanted to see up close. Here their metallic colors flash before my eyes, a magical moving prism.

  A haze of fog hovers above the patches of wildflowers and palm trees that cover the Mulanje Plateau, which famously houses the tea plantations that produce the tea that some of Mummie’s friends from England insist is better than anything they’ve ever tasted from China and India. As I tour a plantation, I think longingly of Mummie, who hosts a proper tea every afternoon: how she’d enjoy learning that the tea grows slower but sweeter up here on the mountains, how she’d love watching the workers pluck the bushes by hand, careful only to take the top leaves and the bud—these have the most flavor. Following the dirt path that winds down through the tea garden, the pluckers work away with wicker baskets on their backs, creating a beautiful rustle as they toss the fresh leaves for keeping.

  The night before I leave Nyasaland, Sir Robert invites me into his study, where he lays out several maps and helps me chart a route to avoid the areas of political turmoil. He also gives me a letter of introduction to Mr. Costas Perfitas, the owner of the Ambassador Hotel in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare in Zimbabwe). “The Ambassador is one of the grandest hotels in Africa,” he explains. “Eighteen massive stories high and the mecca for travellers who like to be as comfortable as money can make them.”

  {Jennifer Leska}

  The harbor in Cape Town, once one of the world’s busiest trading routes, with Table Mountain visible in the background.

  From Zomba I enter Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique). Here the roads are horrific, which is not surprising since this is one of Africa’s poorest countries. As usual I barter some of my elephant bracelets for supplies of gasoline, for more dried meat and raisins, and for accommodation in village rest houses. If it’s not raining, I sleep outside under the endless sky—though this becomes increasingly rare as I reach the height of the rainy season.

  I make steady progress, optimistic by the time I approach the Zambezi River. My map suggests that the village of Tete must be near, and there I’ll find a bridge to get my motorbike across the river. When I reach Tete, however, the river is nothing like I’d imagined. It’s ochre-colored and so swollen that with another day’s rain it could flood. I find a huddle of villagers and ask them where I can find the bridge. “The bridge?” they say with a laugh, speaking to me in their local language with a few Swahili words which I can understand. “A storm washed our bridge away long ago!”

  In its place, they’ve contrived an alarming sort of ferry—a flat craft pulled across the river by ropes attached to either bank. To board the ferry, a motorist has to drive up two planks, one for his passenger’s side wheel, and the other for his driver’s side wheel. The ferry, meanwhile, zigzags in the river between the ropes, the planks swerving this way and that while the vehicle tries to drive up them. Even in a car it would be a challenge, but I have to make it along just one swaying plank!

  The only strategy is to get enough speed to obtain some balance, roar up the plank, slam on the brakes, and hope I can stop before I land in the Zambezi. I rev up, get a running start—and I make it. Only when I reach the other side of the river do I realize that I must negotiate another plank to get my bike and me onto dry land.

  “Go!” shout the locals from the side I’ve just conquered. “Go hard!”

  With no chance to work up speed to launch my bike down the plank, I give it my best go . . . but halfway down the slippery, narrow plank I wobble—and the next minute, I’m in the raging current of the Zambezi. Around me are crocodiles and more crocodiles and six-foot monitor lizards suddenly woken from their sprawling naps on the riverbank. It takes fifteen frantic villagers to haul me and my bike out of the water. They take me to their village and feed me a dinner of bananas and fish. “If you get hungry,” one of them tells me, “the catfish makes a good dinner—easy to catch because they swim so slowly. It cooks quickly over a small fire, as well.”

  I stay there for days working on my bike; my carburetor needs cleaning, my oil is low, and the bike’s chain has turned to pure rust. Then one day, a military vehicle pulls up alongside me. A white soldier leans out through the front window. “Hey, man!” he calls. “What are you doing here? This is a war zone! Get in with us!”

  He and his brother officer jump out to load my bike into the bed of their truck. They drive me all the way to Southern Rhodesia, where I find a shop just inside the border. “Have you got any oil?” I ask the salesman. He reaches behind himself and hands me sardine oil. I shake my head. “Never mind.” I clench my teeth and head back to the military truck.

  “Any luck?” one of the soldiers calls through the window.

  I shake my head.

  “Well you’ll never get all the way to Salisbury with your engine in that condition. Get in. We’ll take you there.”

  “I can’t ask you to take me all the way to Salisbury.”

  “Well, we can’t let you try to make it on your own.”

  I’m embarrassed at the whole thing, but I can think only of going on. When I finally reach the city, I locate a garage to take a look at the bike. One of the shop’s workers gives me walking directions to the Ambassador Hotel. A few blocks before I find it, the heavens open up and nearly drown me in a rain shower. After I climb the hotel’s grand front steps, the doorman declines to let me in.

  I can hardly blame him. I’m a grisly sight, an apparition—a scraggly beard, greasy hair, and unkempt, mud-stained clothes. I dig out my letter from Sir Robert Armitage to Mr. Perfitas, and instantly the effect is dramatic.

  The doorman accompanies me to the reception desk, where the manager greets me with great deference. “Mr. Kent, I’m afraid Mr. Perfitas is not here today, but he’s given us instructions for your arrival. We’ll set you up in your room and he’ll meet you tomorrow, will that do?”

  “Certainly it will.”

  The elegantly dressed guests sit
ting in the lobby stare at me incredulously, and I note a large sign that reads: All gentlemen will please wear long trousers and jackets while in the lounge. The manager directs a bellman to accompany me in the elevator, followed by a porter carrying my dripping-wet baggage.

  “You’ve got one of the best suites in the hotel,” says the friendly bellman, and he unlocks my room and gestures me inside. The place is adorned with velvet and brass, a giant bed in the middle and a bathroom with floor-to-ceiling marble. It’s pure opulence, the kind of place my mother would love. As soon as the bellman and porter leave the room, I have a bath and order an excellent meal. Then, joyously, I crawl into my bed and bask between the smooth sheets.

  This is the first time I’ve ever stayed in a hotel, and I’ve started at the top. This is really the life, I muse. Riding my bike across Africa by day, sleeping in the Ambassador Hotel by night. Unpaved roads by day, fresh sheets and a spring mattress at night. Adventure by day, security and luxury at night. I could live this way forever.

  The following day I meet Mr. Perfitas, who is affability itself. After three glorious days as his guest while the chain on my bike is replaced, I set out almost due south. Travelling through the Union of South Africa—a dominion of the British government that unified four British colonies—I make excellent time along the tarmac roads, across the veldt, through Pietersburg, and across the Springbok Flats. I reach Pretoria in two days.

  There I find a telephone box and ring up an old friend—several times—but there’s no answer, and therefore no chance I’ll have any place to sleep tonight. I look around, lost and clueless in this big, strange city. “You look lonely, young fellow.” A stranger speaking Afrikaans—to me. “Come join me for a drink.” I muster my best Afrikaans and gratefully accept. Over Castle Lagers I tell him about my journey. Impressed, he offers to put me up for the night.

  The next day, I push on to Johannesburg, but it’s still only morning when my exhaust pipe falls off. I ride on making the noise of a jet plane until I discover a friendly little town. A group of locals surrounds me, and a few of the men crouch down to help me work on the bike.

  Beyond Johannesburg the weather turns filthy with fog, but the tarmac roads keep me moving at a decent pace. When the haze lifts slightly, the countryside through the Drakensberg Mountains bears the enchantment of a storybook.

  Finally nearing the suburbs of Durban, I’m haunted again by the fact that I have very little money. Just as I roll out my sleeping bag on the lawn of a tiny park, a policeman rides along on his bike. “You can’t sleep there,” he says.

  “Sir, I’ve just arrived in Durban and have nowhere else to sleep.”

  “Either you move off,” he says, “or you’ll spend the night in jail.”

  I gather my things and push off into the night.

  As dusk sets in, I come to Forest Hills—one of the most stylish suburbs. I drive slowly, considering my options, when I pass a large and handsome house standing back on well-kept grounds: 35 Valley Drive.

  An idea.

  I take out a pencil and a greasy piece of paper from my pocket, and write, Llewellyn, 35 Valley Drive.

  I smudge the writing, crumple the paper, and put it in my pocket. Then I approach the main gate, taking a deep breath before I ring the bell. A compact man—clearly the butler—answers.

  “May I see the Llewellyns, please?” I ask him.

  “Sorry, the Llewellyns?”

  “Yes sir, they are friends of my parents, who live in Nairobi.”

  “You are mistaken, sir. This is the Butchers’ residence.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought this is where the Llewellyns lived—see? This is the address my parents gave me.” I fish out the grimy paper and hand it to him. “I’ve come a long way,” I explain, “and I think I must be terribly lost.” Nodding toward the spacious lawns that stretch to the main house, I ask him, “Your garden looks quite safe—do you think I could stay there with my sleeping bag?”

  “Ehm . . .” He looks me over. “Would you wait for a moment, please?”

  “Of course.”

  He retires into the house. When he returns, he says, “Please come with me, sir. The lady of the house would like to have a word with you.”

  With my heart pounding in my ears, I follow him into the lounge. A woman rises from her sofa: she’s exquisite, just like the room around her. “Mrs. Butcher, our guest,” says the butler.

  The minute he exits into the corridor, I confess. “Mrs. Butcher, please accept my apology. I’m travelling from Nairobi to Cape Town on my motorbike, the son of Colonel John Kent and Valerie,” I tell her. Knowing these names must mean nothing to her, I rattle on. “I was desperate to find a place where I could sleep without being hauled to jail.”

  She examines my face, and then bursts out giggling. “I’m sorry, it’s not that I find your troubles amusing,” she says. “Listen, why don’t you dine with us, and you’re welcome to spend the night. Let me call to the butler to show you to your room, and then you can have a bath before dinner. Though you may have to sing for your supper,” she says. “My husband and son may be grown men, but they’re like children when it comes to stories of a good adventure.”

  “Adventure.” It strikes me that there’s something authoritative about the word, something grown-up and extremely alive. Over dinner, the family chuckle at my accounts and take warmly to me, and at one point I note a silent exchange between Mr. and Mrs. Butcher. “Geoff, my wife and I want you to know that you’re welcome to stay for as long as you like,” Mr. Butcher says. “You’ve spent time in villages and valleys, but no traveller should come to Durban and not spend some time at the coast.”

  With surprise I accept their offer. “Do you think a week is enough time to see everything?”

  “Not if you want to fit in some squash-playing,” Mr. Butcher says.

  “And a young man from the highlands of Nairobi must be missing riding terribly,” Mrs. Butcher chimes in. “Here you can find some of the finest horse stables in all of Africa. Why don’t you plan to stay on for ten days?”

  The next morning I venture out to the beach, smiling at the visitors transported by rickshaws that are painted in brilliant colors and driven by men wearing suits made of monkey skins. I visit the aquarium, nothing but a plate glass window separating me from thousands of fish, turtles, stingrays, devilfish, and sharks. I take Mrs. Butcher’s advice and go out on a gorgeous gelding, riding so hard that I limp sorely home. The Butchers’ son takes me to see the Valley of 1,000 Hills, curvaceous and dimpled and blanketed with trees, as well as the Kloof itself—a massive gorge with rock walls that drop straight down. He laughs at my reaction when he takes me to see Passport to Shame, a spicy film about prostitutes in London starring Diana Dors. When the day arrives for me to depart, I almost long for something to delay me.

  I get my wish when I enter an argument with the garage that had serviced my bike. “This bill is exorbitant!” I tell them. “It needed minor tuning and some air in the tires!” By the time we settle, I’m officially ready for my exit from Durban. I set off southwest toward East London, staying close to the coast. The miles on my odometer fly by—the trip is effortless.

  In the afternoon, the sky looms gray, and all at once I’m in the middle of a hurricane that seems to blow up from nowhere. The wind shoves me relentlessly from the side and nearly takes me down. When it’s clear enough to see through the rain, I spot a pub with an inn attached and careen into its parking lot to get a room. In the morning, the hurricane is just a memory—the grass is high and wild, and the entire countryside sparkles like emeralds.

  For the next leg of my trip, I head almost due west to Port Elizabeth—the most southerly city on the Eastern Cape. There I find a phone and call my mother’s friends, who drive me to a spot on the coast where hundreds of porpoises surf the waves and skim just underneath the water’s surface. They move in pairs, faster than I thought any sea mammals could. “What do you think?” asks Mummie’s friend.

  “It
’s one of the most remarkable sights I’ve ever seen.”

  From there, they take me to the Snake Park, where the warden plays with snakes as though they’re harmless lengths of rope, coiling them around his limbs and even onto his head.

  Before I leave, I visit the General Motors factory . . . and I am sadly not impressed by their technique. They simply clip the chrome on, and if the trunk doesn’t fit on closing, they give it a blow with a sledgehammer. I decide to think twice before I ever buy one of their vehicles.

  With less than three hundred miles before I reach Cape Town, I visit the Cango Caves. The best part comes at the end of the tour when the guide asks whether anyone in our group—seventy in all—would like to go spelunking. Four of us raise our hands.

  I climb the ladders, swing on chains down cliffs, belly-crawl through tunnels, and wriggle up a chimney less than two feet wide.

  The next morning marks the last leg of my journey—just a mere few hours before I reach Cape Town. I rise early and hit the road at eight o’clock, the bike humming and speeding like a horse that knows he’s approaching the stable.

  I take the well-known Garden Route, famous for its beauty, but it’s early March and it dawns on me that the wildflowers won’t return until the South African spring arrives in August. There’s drizzle and bitter cold for the first two hundred miles, and the road is harrowingly slick.

  When I pull in for gas at Riversdale, I’m one rand short of the bill. “I’m headed from Nairobi to Cape Town,” I tell the man behind the counter. “It’s been five months and I’m nearly there . . .” It’s clear he’s not budging on the bill. I consider my options. “Will you accept a check?” I feel a tap on my shoulder, and behind me an Afrikaner smiles and offers me the final rand.

  I arrive at my destination, the attractive suburb of Rondebosch, at three o’clock in the afternoon—exactly seven hours after I started out that morning. I feel a profound sense of achievement . . . and then my thoughts turn immediately to my next challenge: How will I get home?