Their summering grounds in South Africa have flowed and ebbed, perhaps with climates, perhaps with changing human land-use. From strongholds in the tropical eastern Cape they spread westwards, and may now be in retreat again. Ringing data suggested that the best place to find a bird that came from near my home in South Wales, in the west of western Europe, would be in the far south-west of the Cape.
While the route was vague, the birds’ speed intimidating and the reputations of some of the countries to be crossed either obscure or outright ominous, one or two aspects of swallow behaviour gave me hope. They fly at low level, feeding as they go: between a foot above the ground and 60 feet up is typical. So if there were any around, I ought to be able to spot them. And no less than the height of flight, the habitats they favour are dictated by the whereabouts of their prey: blow-flies, hover-flies, beetles, aphids, moths, caterpillars and water bugs, among other insects. Watercourses, rivers and lakes would always be good places to look for them. They favour reed beds for roosting on migration, so swamps might prove fruitful. When temperatures are high they tend to hunt and fly at lower levels and further away from vegetation, nearer to it and higher up when the weather is cooler.
Swallows prefer to fly into or across the wind, which allows them enough lift to hunt as they go, feeding with no fear of stalling on whatever crosses their path. When they have to make time, crossing the Sahara, for instance, they may go high up and ride a tail wind. When they find somewhere conducive to rest and feeding they may pause for days at a time.
On 26 January 2008 I woke an hour before the light and lay still. For weeks I had marvelled at nothing much: at the turning of a tap that brought warm water, at the blissful plunge into a clean towel, at the smell and softness of everything, at the opulence and ease of life: at piles of food, at PIN numbers, at films on desire and all the rest.
Today was the end of all that. My belongings were in storage, my savings were liquidised: I had bet everything on today and thrown everything at it. In two bags I had everything I could possibly need. Still I knew I was not ready, not prepared enough, not well-read enough, not pared down enough, but now it was almost time.
I lay still and breathed through fears. Knifed in South Africa, infected in Zambia, cursed in Congo, battered in Cameroon, murdered in Nigeria, kidnapped in the Sahel, slaughtered like a sheep in Algeria and probably posted on the internet. Money gone, passport gone, phone gone, no way out . . .
Then the morning came, and lunch with my brother, and then afternoon. Just before leaving the house I sat on my rucksack and shoulder bag, in the hall. This is a Russian tradition: you sit quietly on your bags before you begin a journey. You still yourself, despite your haste, and when you are ready, you go. So I sat on my bags, half-thinking that I would at least remember anything I had overlooked. I had forgotten nothing. I was comprehensively, almost laughably, well equipped.
In my back pocket was a UK passport, number 108949308, in the name of David Horatio Clare, British Citizen, born 05 09 1973, London. Inside the passport was one of travel’s great paragraphs, the very definition of British self-image, which starts so grandly and becomes a hopeful sort of mutter:
Her Britannic Majesty’s
Secretary of State
requests and requires in the
name of her Majesty
all those whom it may concern to allow
the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance,
and to afford the bearer such assistance
and protection as may be necessary.
The passport contained a silicon chip, on a loop of what looked like copper wire, which as I understand it is a transmitter and receiver, holding unknown personal data. Between the chip and the request from Her Majesty’s Secretary of State were the visas.
South Africa’s would be granted on entry; Zambia’s cost £30 and was valid for three months. There was a man asleep on his arms at the desk behind the receptionist in the Embassy of Cameroon. Cameroon cost a processing fee, a few days, many phone calls and a reservation confirmation fax from the Hilton, Douala. Congo-Brazzaville required endless phone calls (the lines are jammed during the day, apparently oil companies are responsible for much of the traffic) and cost US $150 sent via Western Union to the manager of the Hotel du Centre, Brazzaville, for the necessary fax confirming reservation, and a processing fee. Once it has established that you are not mistakenly seeking a visa for the Democratic Republic of Congo a man’s voice gives painstaking directions to the consulate of the Republic of Congo, a broom cupboard in the corner of the offices of a commercial visa service in South London.
‘Shall I bring my yellow fever certificate?’
‘Well you can bring it but frankly I won’t have time to look at it,’ said the French accent on the phone.
‘How long does it take to issue the visa?’
‘I will issue it in about sixteen minutes,’ he said.
Congo-Brazzaville’s diplomatic mission to the United Kingdom consists of one man, Louis Muzzu, a thin, dark-haired Frenchman who would not look out of place in a photograph of de Gaulle’s France, which, as a young man he served, staying on to work for post-independence regimes.
‘It’s a beautiful country,’ he said, not exactly sighing, having stamped the passport with an attractive circular design incorporating the head of a Congolese woman and the motto ‘Unity, Work, Progress’. It was valid for two weeks.
‘Is it safe?’
‘Oh yes, quite safe now.’
Obtaining a Niger visa meant faxes, calls and a processing fee, plus a trip to Paris, where the consulate was technically shut but where a kind woman issued the visa anyway, in return for my promise not to go to the north of the country.
‘Too dangerous,’ she said. ‘Truly, much too dangerous.’
The Nigerian Consulate near Trafalgar Square contained a hundred people, with different colour tickets, some slumped, in demeanour apathetic, others in unhappy, restless lines: occasionally someone would make a despairing rush at the service windows, only to be repelled. Fortunately the rules had recently changed, there was no time to process my application and so I was spared trial by queuing system. I would try again in Africa.
Algeria required a reservation confirmation from a hotel in Algiers, which was wonderfully easy. But lying to, or rather being vague with, the consular authorities was not possible. If you are an independent tourist, you need an itinerary and a profession.
‘Author.’
‘Author?’ said the visa man. ‘Writer?’
It was a strangely warm and rainy January day in London. I was cold-sweating.
‘Yes! – a writer of books.’
‘Writer of what books? About what? Osama bin Laden?’ (He grinned.)
‘NO! My first was the story of . . .’
‘You must make a list,’ he said, with a half-smile. The clock was racing. Two minutes to get the form accepted, or the office would shut and my passport would miss visa day. The Algerian Consulate in London stamps visas on the 21st of the month. Miss visa day, miss visa, miss country.
‘Do you have a piece of paper?’ I cried, desperately, scrabbling for a pen.
In the end, with a grin, I was granted a visa valid for eight days.
‘You can go anywhere!’ cried the man. ‘But you must not miss the exit date.’ (Algeria is the tenth largest country in the world.)
In my front left pocket was a wallet, containing a credit card for ‘emergencies’, an expired National Union of Journalists’ press card, a UK driving licence, UK National Insurance card and a debit card.
In the rucksack was a document folder containing vaccination certificates for Hepatitis A, Hep. B, Hep. C, Yellow Fever, Typhoid, Tetanus, Polio, Cholera, Meningitis, all ‘boosted’ as necessary, and Rabies – recording a course of three injections. I also had a ‘fake’ (i.e unstamped) Yellow Fever certificate, picked up at the travel clinic for use as a decoy.
‘Are you going to be around dogs, buses, public transport, will
you be travelling away from cities, will you be eating . . . uncooked food?’ asked the nurse.
‘Yes, yes – yes.’
‘Right. Better have everything.’
There was a Comprehensive Travel Insurance certificate, promising immediate evacuation from anywhere, regardless of limitless cost, and my birth certificate, showing that it had taken my mother some months to get around to registering my birth in Hammersmith. Divided up and hidden in various places throughout the rucksack, was cash: US $1,000 and €1000.
I had a mosquito net and three kinds of spray – the vicious chemical stuff, some herbal stuff and something else. I had a treated net and sufficient tablets to get me through the malarial zone, roughly calculated to start somewhere in Namibia and finish somewhere in the Sahel. I had my hat (Indiana Jones style, naturally, purchased in St James’s, London, as was his) and a new pair of binoculars. I had a ‘Blackberry’, allowing expensive and occasional access to email and web, also calls, text messages and GPS, which did not often work but could be thrilling, giving latitude and longitude and the degree of accuracy to which it calculated its position: normally about 8 metres.
I had books: Angela Turner, The Barn Swallow; The Lonely Planet Guide to Namibia and South Africa; and a collection of the prose of Seamus Heaney: Finders Keepers.
In a sponge bag were rehydration sachets, Savlon, TCP and an emergency dental kit (numbing clove oil, wadding, a mirror and a sort of soft-tipped probe); elsewhere in the rucksack were a First Aid kit, a compass, a beautiful head torch, enough maps of varying scale and relevance to get me arrested as a spy virtually anywhere between Windhoek and London, a journal with a reward offered in the front for its return (US $50), pens, pencils, lightweight clothes, boots and a rainproof jacket. I had visions of walking miles through tropical rain in the forests of the Congo. I was not worried about the downpours, but feared that the weight of the rucksack would have me floundering in the mud.
After a few moments of sitting I stood up, and went, discovering later that the sitting had popped open a tube of sunscreen in my wash-bag. (The Russians also say that life is not a walk across an open field.)
I took a taxi to Paddington Station. As we climbed up onto the Westway a cold sun was setting behind us in a sky streaked with pewter and hard blue. The towers of London looked stark and hard against a flinty dusk. As it sank the sun threw an orange flood of light out of the west. There, over 100 miles behind us, was the journey’s end. It was 12,000 miles by the way I was going. From Heathrow I called three friends to say goodbye. From one, Samrine, a blessing came: Bismillah al rahman al rahem.
‘Say it as you get on the plane,’ she says. ‘You’ll be fine darlin’, you know you will.’
You can see why the Greeks made sacrifices before setting out on a journey. The decision to travel any significant distance is a decision to put yourself in harm’s way, to place your fate in the hands of the gods of winds, waves and the road. In Erice, near the port of Trapani in Sicily, sailors used to visit the temple of Aphrodite (in Punic times the temple of Astarte) and there make offerings to her, in the belief that the goddess controlled storms. The tradition has survived in that the Madonna of Trapani is recognised by the Vatican as the patron saint of sailors. Because I am fond of the place and the story, I say a quick prayer to her. I will go like a sailor; the roads will be my ships and the countries will be seas. My religious convictions – suspicions would be more accurate – are non-aligned. In need, distress or exultation I will worship God in any language. The major faiths condense the multiple spirits and deities the ancients perceived into single figures.
‘Bismallah al rahman al rahem,’ I mutter. In the name of Allah the almighty the all merciful . . .
I fall into a doze as we cross into Algerian airspace. Just before I drop off I see fires down there, rosy blooms of flame in the dark desert: oil wells. Two hours later we are still over Algeria. My head swims with muzzy forebodings: this is mad, it cannot be done, the swallows are just too quick, it is just too far, the plan is a joke . . .
I think of my father, somewhere in Cape Town and looking forward to tomorrow, to showing me around for a few days before he sees me off. He is there for a couple of weeks, researching his book about South African history, traced through its literature. Strange that the swallows should take me straight to the part of the beginning of my own story which is a mystery to me. South Africa, my father’s story; somehow our family’s story, which I have heard about but never seen.
‘As you see,’ my father says, ‘South Africa is white!’ Black waiters zig-zag between packed tables, frowning at the effort of carrying and distributing so much, much food. The tables are packed, and every customer is white.
I laugh a little, ‘Je-sus . . .’
‘It is a pretty spot though, isn’t it?’
Cape Town’s waterfront is an orderly jumble of boats and quays, of drilling rigs, restaurants, bars and day trips, chopped at by the South Atlantic, with a wind, this lunchtime, coming from behind us, from the other side of Table Mountain, the southeaster from the Indian Ocean. The city has all the beauty of San Francisco; the luminosity of light, which sharpens colours to the peak of their intensity; the fresh sea winds which never abate; the different levels of streets and houses which seem to applaud the prospect of the ocean; the deep blue shadows and, out of the wind, the golden heat of the sun. The rich areas on the skirts of Table Mountain have an American opulence about them. Near where we are staying is a ranch with tall blue-gum trees and fine horses, ridden and groomed to a gloss. In Camp’s Bay a white woman who looks like a model queues at a supermarket checkout wearing tiny scraps of transparent white cotton. The black man who serves her does not know which way to look. There are super-cars, Ferraris and Lamborghinis, jockeying for position in the freeway traffic, which hurtles along with a kind of recklessness. There is a recklessness in the wind and an untameable ferocity in the cliffs and abysses of the mountain. There is a tension in the air, as if all who live well live on borrowed time, and the millions more who live hard are running out of patience. San Francisco is a hundred times more at ease with the San Andreas fault than is Cape Town with the human earthquake that has not yet come, which merely rumbles, daily, in the crime round-ups of the newspapers. It is as though Table Mountain is a volcano.
‘As you see,’ my father says, the next day, ‘South Africa is black!’
Now we are driving through Khayelitsha, a suburb where over a million people are living in tin shacks. We are the only whites on the road. Cape Town is cut into quadrants; it is half chessboard, half minefield. The residents speak in colour code: here live Blacks, here Whites, here Coloureds. Wealth, poverty and danger are distributed accordingly. All cities are segmented, but nowhere I have been are the lines so sharp and hard, or the penalties for crossing them so dangerous. I give up counting the ‘Warning! Twenty-four-hour Armed Response!’ signs, and the private security vehicles and personnel.
‘We used to go down there and bring up lobsters, boil them in seawater and sell them on the side of the road,’ my father smiles.
We are pausing on the way to Chapman’s Peak; I am on the lookout for sharks and whales, grinning and baffled by the sun and the wind and the Cape’s geography: while my father is entirely at home I cannot even grasp which way is north.
‘You’re a South African, Dad!’ I blurt.
He is momentarily amazed, then starts laughing. He was a schoolboy and a student here before his flight in 1963, when his friends and their friends were being shot, arrested, tortured, tried, imprisoned or banned. He was banned for over twenty years (they would not let him back even when his father was dying) but has returned several times recently, like the other ‘swallows’, as some Cape Town residents call those among their friends who reappear between November and March, for the southern summer.
We went to a poetry reading where one of Dad’s friends was performing. It was held in a bar called ‘A Touch of Madness’ in the Observatory district, which is sup
posed to be ‘mixed’. There were two black customers among all the whites. Dad’s friend read a poem about interrogations by the Security Police. The audience nodded, ruefully. An open-mike session followed: a young man read a long, chaotic, hip-hop/beatnik piece in the style of William Burroughs. The audience shifted in its seats. Then an Irishman stood and sang, plainsong, Patrick Kavanagh’s ‘On Raglan Road’. The audience stilled and listened.
On Raglan road on an autumn day I saw her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue.
I saw the danger yet I walked along the enchanted way
And I said let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.
On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge
Of a deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion’s pledge,
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay
O I loved too much and by such by such is happiness thrown away . . .
There were thirty people in the room, thinking different thoughts of different lovers, but as the song ended there was a single note in their faces, a melancholy for something lost, or something that never was: whether it was enchantment, happiness or harmony you could not tell. I thought of her, again. The dream of all romantics, the dream you should perhaps have grown out of, by now; the one, the realised mystery, your own equivalent of Kavanagh’s dark-haired girl, waiting for you, somewhere along the road of your life, with a spell of certainty attending her: the promise that the moment you see her, you know.
We went looking for the birds in a place called Zeekoevlei, ‘Sea Cow Marsh’, a little nature reserve between the Cape Flats and the sea. There was sun and wind and tall reed beds, there were hides for birdwatchers and high viewing platforms which we climbed because they were there; the wind made you hold tight to rails and posts. There were the tracks and droppings of hippos, there were ducks and stilts and all sorts of other pretty things I did not care about. There were no swallows.
A Single Swallow Page 2