The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  His temples frowned with absolute disbelief, before continuing with the same dignity and respect, “Are you going back to l”autre coté, the other side?”

  I explained that we would indeed have to return there for a while.

  “When will you come back from the other side?” asked the old woman.

  “As soon as we can,” I replied.

  The woman whispered close to her husband in Lingala. Her words were strung together like a rope of pearls, formed from the back of her mouth. When she had left, the man asked Marcus something in Lingala. As usual, he craned his neck back and put a hand behind it. The man nodded in agreement and his wife returned. She was clutching a baby, just a few months old.

  Zak and Oswaldo went over and began to play with it. They were, in a flash, very paternally orientated.

  The guardian of the estate took me aside from the baby and its admirers. As before, he addressed me in French:

  “Monsieur, we are poor,” he said. “Our youngest child, who lies there, is destined to have a simple life like ours. We want him to be educated and see wondrous things. Monsieur... will you take him to the other side and see that he is educated?”

  I asked him to repeat his words three times to make sure that I understood the question. Each time he spoke, asking the favour, it hurt him more. It was as if I were torturing him, making him admit a mistake, a foul deed.

  We stood together: he waited for my reply. I gazed out through the long panes of glass to lake Kivu, which sprawled away from the bottom of the once-landscaped gardens. Such beauty enveloped the place that it seemed enchanted, as if by a spell. I thought back to the pollution of the West, the problems of its societies, and the misdeeds of educated men.

  The guardian looked expectantly, his eyebrows knotted together and I addressed him.

  “Where we come from there are bad men. They He, they steal, they are discourteous; these are the values which they teach each other: even the educated, on the Other Side. Monsieur... we have come to Zaire to increase our own education. We shall return soon to our own countries, but we must return alone.”

  We collected our belongings and walked into the hallway. Oswaldo first, then Zak, me, and lastly Marcus and his chicken. The old man and his wife embraced each of us in turn and seemed genuinely miserable about our leaving. Their teenage daughter appeared, with a clump of pink and white flowers. She handed them to Zak and he blushed. Oswaldo and I grunted disapprovingly and we moved out into the daylight.

  It felt more as though we were leaving after a weekend with friends, perhaps in Sussex, than exiting a Belgian chateau somewhere in Zaire’s jungle, on the banks of lake Kivu. Oswaldo turned to the old couple and told them in French that they were to Uve in the chateau from now on and not in the stables. Then he gave them his malaria tablets. The old concierge’s black eyes twinkled with a childish delight; he thanked us all.

  Zak looked sternly at Marcus and prodded him in the back. Marcus stepped forward, his arms outstretched towards the Zairean. His palms cupped his pet chicken with a string dangling from one ankle. The old man took the bird and thanked Marcus with feeling. We all knew that there was a severe lack of protein in the Kivu region and that the bird was destined for the pot. Marcus stuffed his right hand into one pocket and dug out a handful of wild seeds. He placed them in the guardian’s palm and we began to walk up the steep bank to the road and let our more usual adventures begin once again.

  * * *

  Zak wanted to see gorillas. He carried on at length about how he was preparing to relinquish soon his long and tedious pursuit for the Mokele-Mbembe, and take up a more important and arduous quest. For the hex of the pygmies was impeding his progress. Zak intended to head for the Tarra river in Venezuela to stalk the Ameranthropoides loysii: the “missing link”. The creature was named, so Zak recounted, after Francois de Loys, who — in 1920 — tracked then killed the only example known to exist. Zak wanted to begin his study with mountain gorillas which themselves had been thought to be fictitious until 1901. He said that it would be of great importance to gain an understanding into how Loys’ man lived. Only when armed with such knowledge would his new quest be successful.

  He took Oswaldo aside and got him fervid with the prospect of hacking through a jungle in search of primates. Then Oswaldo and he ambled over to convert me to the idea. They worked together like a pair of collies trying to trap a stray sheep. Finally I agreed that we would all go in search of gorillas. Where were they easiest to find? Zak, who knew all the answers, cleared his throat, swept the mop of yellow hair away from his eyes, and then began:

  “National Volcano Park in Rwanda is where Dian Fossey studied groups of gorillas in their natural rain forest. There are seven extinct volcanoes in a line.”

  “Vocannows!” screamed Oswaldo, enchanted at the idea of scaling another peak or two.

  Zak continued, “We can go to Bukavu, get visas and then cross into Rwanda. But it means we should go straight past Goma and on southwards. I know it’s a hassle going right down to Bukavu, but it’s the only place to get a Rwandan visa around here.”

  It was agreed. Shortly afterwards we caught a lift in a blue and white pick-up truck that was heading all the way to Bukavu, a town situated almost squarely on the three borders of Zaire, Rwanda and Burundi. Getting the ride had been a considerable bonus. As we rattled along I mused that it must be fate’s hand at work.

  Eight enormous straw baskets filled with tilapia, a fish not unlike perch, were placed precariously upon our laps. A group of women with bright headscarves cackled in surprise at our discomfort. In Africa there is a total acceptance of circumstance. Comfort, and the very concept of it, is only appreciated when it has been experienced.

  Marcus was sulking and pining deeply for his beloved chicken. The two had been inseparable. Visions of the bird being lowered head first into a cauldron — with a little water and seasoning — haunted us. I wondered for a moment if the little family realized that the chicken had climbed the Nyiragongo.

  The haul of tilapia had been caught on lake Kivu and was now being taken southwards towards Burundi. The driver had heard that there was a shortage of food on the Zaire-Burundi border. Trouble with the engine of the pick-up had caused delay, and had led the fish to rot. For three days the tilapia had lain covered in the baskets whilst a mechanic tinkered under the bonnet of the vehicle. The stench of decomposing fish was nauseating. But the women, who chattered away in Lingala, seemed not to notice the pungent odour. Instead, they stopped gossiping every now and then to stare at us and cackle with toothless laughter.

  It rained for much of the afternoon and the drops of water blinded us as the driver accelerated. By the time we reached Bukavu night had fallen. And the fish — which had been washed clean if not fresh by the rain — were ready to be sold. We stumbled away to find the cheapest part of town.

  Zaire can be extremely expensive for foreigners. All the hotels were completely full; all, that is, except for the Hotel Joli Logi. As soon as I stepped inside the door I realized why it had been the last to attract guests.

  Oswaldo and I shared one room, Marcus and Zak took another. Our room had no windows. Having signed the register, we were each handed a bucket for our natural functions.

  Oswaldo and I would blink for a second and the wallpaper would appear to move. It was Mumbai wallpaper all over again, or claustrophobia. The patterns slithered into each other and would occasionally, I could swear, spring up and flit about the bare light bulb. Forcing Oswaldo out of bed, we went out to explore.

  Across from Hotel Joli Logi a single drum was beating. It managed to grasp a harmony of notes and complement a voice: the shrill voice of a male child who sang in perfect pitch.

  Oswaldo had taken the stiletto from his boot, expecting trouble. Yet when we heard the voice he murmured that its purity would protect us. We stumbled over to the bar with its inevitable red light, from where the sounds radiated. Oswaldo pulled back a shawl at the entrance and we went in.

 
; Bottles of Primus, with the large white insignium of Zaire painted across them, were held by all. Everyone was happy; women constantly burst out laughing and rocked about clutching at the brown bottles. Three tall men were dancing alone in the middle of the floor. They shook about with great dexterity in time with the drumbeats. Oswaldo and I fell back together, in surprise: for the three men were dancing on crutches. They had not a leg between them.

  A woman the size of a walrus sidled across waiting to dance, her hands clenched around a bottle of Primus. Pulling me tightly to her chest, she jerked me about the room until, that is, she spotted Oswaldo. He was evidently more her type. Her eyes crossed with glee as she bounded over to pilot the Patagonian around the floor.

  For the first time in Zaire I had seen people truly happy. There was still hope, still sincerity, amongst the people. The core was intact, only the government was rotten.

  * * *

  A visa more elaborate than any I had seen before was stamped into my passport. It bore out the theory that, in Africa, the smaller the country the bigger the visa. We rested for a day in Bukavu, a city that had been developed by the colonial-era Belgians and had begun to disintegrate since independence.

  The city is not an African entity. Colonial settlements developed in sub-Saharan Africa, and in those all the drawbacks of western society were encased. In African tribal communities, many such problems do not occur. Bukavu had been left with a skeleton of paper-pushing systems and a token of administrative symmetry. But other than the physical infrastructure there was very little else. Abject poverty forced the majority of the inhabitants to occupy the city’s sprawling slums.

  Zak, Oswaldo, Marcus and I gathered our belongings and walked out of Bukavu towards Rwanda. The frontier was only a few miles distant. As we walked, a thousand people seethed forward in silence beside us. What seemed to be the whole population of Bukavu was moving out of town. They had been ordered to attend a political harangue. Each face was expressionless, each person stared blankly ahead as if hypnotized by a sinister force.

  “Eets just lika Patagonia,” said Oswaldo, “lika de festeeval vee doo in weenter.”

  “You’re from Patagonia?!” cried Zak, overjoyed to have met a native of the area.

  “Yep!” replied Oswaldo.

  “Man, you ever seen a Megatherium?” said Zak.

  “Nope,” was the reply.

  “What about a Toxodont or a Glyptodon? Man, you must have seen a Glyptodon!”

  “Nope,” said Oswaldo blankly.

  “What are all those things?” I asked.

  “They”re just the most incredible animals that a few select crypto-zoologists working in seclusion have reason to believe still exist... in Patagonia!”

  “But what are they?” It seemed that I had asked this question before.

  “A Megatherium was a kinda giant sloth, that walked about on its back legs, was about fifteen feet tall and had immense hooked claws; some say it was as big as an elephant and had the tail of a komodo dragon. The skeleton of one was found in the eighteenth century near Buenos Aires. There’s no reason why it ever became extinct,” said Zak.

  “Vat’s Tooxoodoont?” murmured Oswaldo.

  “Toxodonts were like huge rhinoceroses covered in coarse hair, they — and giant armadillos called Glyptodons — have been said to still thrive in the mountains of Patagonia.”

  Oswaldo looked pleased that his homeland was famous for something of which he had not known. He turned to Zak and said, “Zake, came to Patagonia and vee goo looking dem!”

  Just before reaching Rwanda, we passed a stadium. The population of Bukavu had filled the rows of seats and were preparing for an address. A compulsory political rally was being held by one of Mobutu’s men. We slipped away and entered a valley. Spanning the two hillsides was a great rusting iron bridge which had once been covered with ornate metalwork. Crossing from one side of the valley to the other, we stared back at Zaire. Marcus shook his head in ridicule at our visa stamps; as he was indigenous to the area he could walk straight across the border with no papers.

  At the border post there was only one soldier. He had been deserted by his companions, who had left to drink beer. We chatted for a while as he toyed with the trigger of an American-made assault rifle. The trigger finger’s nail was chipped and broken, yet the others were neatly coated in a thick red nail varnish.

  A rumbling of wheels upon the bridge made us turn: a black Mercedes with diplomatic markings pulled up. The soldier saluted. We stood and watched like a line of crows on a fence. The driver said that he was going to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. Oswaldo stepped out of our line-up and asked politely if he could take our party to the capital: for a small consideration of course. The driver agreed, so long as we bought him beers along the way. His name was Ben. The soldier with the red nails waved his rifle in the air to bid us a safe trip and we began on the road to Kigali.

  Our relief at leaving Zaire was like a force that united us all. It seemed almost as if a long, sustained war had suddenly been declared over. Travelling in uncertain circumstances has a way of binding one with another, forming lifelong friendships in a short time.

  The road to Kigali was perfectly paved. There was not a single bump or pothole, and we glided along at great speed. Ben, who was an ambassador’s chauffeur, got very drunk. He requested that we stop every few miles so that he might imbibe another bottle of beer. The purpose of his trip to Kigali was to gather items on the ambassadorial shopping list. Simple things like stationery, toiletries, processed cheese and chocolate, which were hard to get in the Kivu region of Zaire.

  Rwanda is one of the smallest countries in mainland Africa. Its geography is hilly and it is covered in lush fields and woodland. The road wound through some of the most exquisite areas of Africa that I had seen.

  Oswaldo and Marcus were thrilled to be riding in the luxury of a limousine. In Africa the concepts of comfort and travel are rarely synonymous. Travel usually implies being squashed up for hours or days on end, seeing more of the ear of the person next to you than the landscape outside.

  Old ladies drew in smoke from wooden pipes and children waved as our vehicle passed. The scenes had the gentle contentment of a paradise: I was certain that the future of Rwanda would be one of harmonious prosperity. Yet, a short time after I left the small central African state, everything changed. An age-old tribal rift between the Hutu and the Tutsi tribes flared up once again, leaving many hundreds of thousands dead. The cattle herding Tutsi have been at odds with the Hutus — an agricultural people — for centuries. Although the carnage of the early 1990s might have ended, the rift itself has not.

  * * *

  Rick and Gracie Schmetman were standing in the middle of the road. Both had designer hairstyles, solid gold wristwatches, and wore identical Vuarnet reflective sunglasses. I recognized them instantly as Californians, having spent time in their country.

  Oswaldo was in an irascible mood. Our changed circumstances were not to his taste. He had developed, remarkably quickly, delusions of grandeur at having been transported in a Mercedes limousine. Ben dropped us on the road to Ruhengeri to await a ride to the Pare National des Volcans, where gorillas are native to the rain forest.

  The couple from California saw us and waved. Unlike other Americans, West Coast folk are a breed of their own. Zak and I looked the other way, hoping that they were trying to attract a passing relative or long-lost friend. Oswaldo, however, stumbled over and introduced himself. Then the three came up to where Zak, Marcus and I were slouching.

  “Oh my lord, isn’t this wonderful? It’s just so great,” announced Gracie, massaging her hand in mine.

  Rick and she wore identical golden raincoats with transparent buttons. Oswaldo started to tell his new friends of his native land.

  Rick suddenly froze, yelling:

  “Gad, stop, stop, I must get this down!” He clicked his fingers and, in a trice, Gracie had brought out a stereo reel-to-reel recording machine. It had a microphone with
an extra long lead.

  “Testing, testing... Okay, now when I put my hand up like this you can start talking.”

  Oswaldo nodded approvingly and Rick raised his hand.

  The Patagonian had filled two long-playing tapes with such vital data as the sound of snow falling in his home village and his impersonations of a rough-riding gaucho, before a tractor and trailer appeared. It stopped, allowing us all to clamber aboard. Oswaldo’s prattle continued; the more he was encouraged, the longer he could talk of his childhood and relatives back home.

  Rick reloaded his pair of long-lens Nikons more than once with black and white film, clicking away at the new-born star.

  Then the recording machine ran out of tape. It was returned to its case and I took the opportunity to ask what all this activity was for. Rick leant back on the side of the trailer and explained, “Hey man, ya see my wife and I, that’s Gracie over there...”

  Gracie heard her name spoken and lifted her golden sleeve to wave with a clenched-face smile. “We just flew in from Los Angeles to write a travel book.”

  “Wow, that’s really interesting. What’s the central theme of the piece?” I asked.

  “Well man...,” began Rick again, sweeping his head from left to right, as if to look around for lurking plagiarists, “the book’s going to be a conceptual dialog if ya like about the world and inner empowerment. The theme will be space and its effect on society and social understanding of philosophical values as we know them.”

  I nodded, with false studious attention.

  “What makes my companion, Oswaldo, such a prized source of information?” I asked.

  Rick thought hard for a moment. Then, with great deliberation, he said:

  “You guys are special.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No,” continued the Californian, “you guys are really special.” I could tell by the simplicity of his language that something had moved him deeply.

  “Why’s that?”

  The socio-babble reasserted itself, with the effort to communicate: “Because you represent the first perceived signs of a truly multi-racial societal state in Africa at this point in time! Boy, is this gonna rock them at the Department of Hinterland Studies!”