Long Way Down

by Ewan McGregor

  In the afternoon older children come to the centres; not to play but to receive psychological support. When there are so many children affected it’s easy to collectivise them emotionally and forget that each one is an individual and that their loss is as acute as yours or mine would be. They’re encouraged to create ‘memory books’, a brilliant idea; it helps them come to terms with the loss of their parents and allows them to grieve properly. It also seems to give them the confidence to face a future without a parent supporting them.

  CHARLEY: The young kids were amazing, racing around like any other children, laughing, shouting, playing. We received a fantastic welcome; songs and dancing, lots of colour and hand clapping. We had lunch of maize, beans and cabbage. The children were so happy to be around us, full of mischief and laughter. It always staggers me how positive even the youngest of them are.

  After lunch we sat down with some of the older kids. Fausita, a thirteen-year-old girl, lost her parents when she was six. Since then she has lived across the road from the centre with her aunt. Fausita told us she loved coming to the centre because she had a lot of support from the people there, both the helpers and the other kids. She wanted to be a doctor when she grew up. The only problem is that secondary education in Malawi costs money and she has no parents to fund her. Fausita is a good student, though, her favourite subject is maths and she works very hard. UNICEF told us that because of that she has a good chance at secondary education and there are bursaries available with only a small contribution necessary from the child.

  Malawi is such a small country, and it’s all too easy for it to be forgotten. There’s only one doctor for every 100,000 people and UNICEF, along with other non-government agencies, is doing all it can. Because the spread of HIV is so rife, extended families take on thousands of orphaned children. Fausita’s aunt, for example, has seven to care for in all.

  Often it’s the grandmother, and we met a lady called Haviloina who couldn’t tell us how old she was, she only knew her husband had been born in 1938. She thought she was around seventy, maybe, and had seen three of her six children die from what she called coughs and swelling. We weren’t sure whether she said that because she didn’t know they had AIDS, or just because of the stigma. She had four grandchildren that she was now effectively mother to, and two of them were under five years old. It was such a lot for an older woman to take on, and yet she accepted her situation with grace and courage.

  This was our final UNICEF visit and we said our goodbyes, thanking everyone for their hospitality, and thanking UNICEF for the care they continue to bring to these remote and potentially forgotten corners of the world. It’s a privilege and a responsibility to make sure we keep their profile high because the people that read our books and watch the TV shows have been superb in supporting our charities financially. It’s not just UNICEF, but CHAS of course and Riders for Health. While we were in Kenya, the Day of Champions auction was held at the British Moto GP at Donington Park. Every year the proceeds go to Riders for Health and, as we were watching elephants at a waterhole, we took a phone call and were told that two guys had paid a combined total of £22,000 to fly out and ride with us into Cape Town. It was an amazing gesture and, given that we found out while we were watching some incredibe African wildlife, I think it really brought the trip home for both of us. We were approaching the southern tip of Africa and I realised that it wasn’t just Ewan and I travelling; we had every fan, every reader, every biker who followed our trail, all on the back of the bikes with us.

  25

  Out in the Cuds with the Girls

  EWAN: Eve rode with us for seven days and her riding got better and better. The time passed far too quickly though, each morning I’d wake with her beside me and think about the day ahead of us and then in no time it seemed to be evening again.

  In Zambia the roads were actually much easier than we’d thought and she was hammering along at seventy, avoiding the potholes like a veteran.

  Stopping for a break, she got talking to a lovely woman in her fifties called Festina who lived in a collection of huts just off the road. There was a maize store and a vegetable patch where a couple of pigs were snuffling. It had been built in the shade of a mango tree that was in flower but wouldn’t bear fruit until November.

  Festina introduced Eve to her grandchildren and told her they came to her for Bible teaching in the evenings, along with their friends. They would sit outside and she would read to them and explain the importance of school, though she had only had primary education herself.

  She was very aware of the risks of HIV and made sure the children understood the dangers. She told them that as far as she was concerned the only real protection was abstinence. One of her neighbours – a young woman – had chosen to go to the traditional doctors rather than attend a clinic and had tragically died just three weeks previously. It was a reminder to us of the kinds of dilemmas people out here faced; not just the medical ones but what to do when you are sick. Villagers live in much the same way they always have, and the traditions and beliefs go back hundreds of years.

  We said goodbye and shook hands, Festina bowing slightly. I noticed that most of the people did that: everyone was so polite, full of smiles and handshakes. Again we’d heard the horror stories, how you couldn’t camp because it wasn’t safe, but as usual the rumours had proved unfounded.

  I watched Eve ahead of me, her confidence had grown immeasurably and I was hoping this would be the first of many motorcycle trips together. Back when she started learning, Eve had been adamant that this would be her only trip, and she wouldn’t go on riding once we were back in London. Maybe she’d change her mind. We’d wait and see.

  A few miles later we were rattling along with Charley leading, Eve in the middle and me bringing up the rear. A dog ran out from nowhere, suddenly there on our left. I’d not seen any animal move so quickly in all the time I’d been in Africa. It came charging out of the trees and straight across the road. Eve must only have seen a flash of something dark, with no time to do anything about it, before it clattered into her foot.

  It was one of those moments that happen so fast and all you see is disaster. Eve saved it, though I don’t know how. The dog bounced off her foot and rolled away. I saw it get up a little groggily and lope off as if it had decided the road wasn’t worth crossing after all.

  We rode on a little further before we stopped. I came alongside and shouted across to Eve. ‘Lucky it wasn’t a couple of seconds earlier, the dog would’ve got caught up in your front wheel.’

  Nice one, Ewan: that’ll be good for her confidence.

  She was a little shaken up but took it in her stride and we rode on. Stopping for lunch I took the opportunity to get the trousers of my rally suit mended. For the past few weeks I’d had a hole, and embarrassingly it was right in the groin. While we were grabbing a bite to eat, I noticed a guy sitting outside in a woollen hat with a pedal-powered sewing machine in front of him. Fetching a towel from my bike I wandered over and asked him if he could fix the trousers.

  Certainly, he said, so I whipped them off and stood there in the towel while he got to work. Problem solved.

  CHARLEY: What an image. It wasn’t just the towel; it was the baggy socks – a lurid blend of multi-coloured hoops.

  I was tired, I mean really knackered, and for the last couple of days I’d been feeling fluey. I’d missed the odd malaria tablet and was beginning to wonder. On the bike I was lethargic, only popping the odd wheelie, and my hands were aching much more than they had been. On the longer stretches I’d find myself taking my right hand off the throttle and working it with my left as I’d done before. I hoped I wasn’t getting sick, not this late in the trip.

  Looking for somewhere to camp, we caught a glimpse of a village not far from the road and thought we might rock up and ask the elders if we could stay with them. There were a few children wandering around, and lots of chickens and goats. Getting off the bikes, this smallish man in a black and white T-shirt greeted us.


  We shook hands and he bowed. I bowed too and asked him if he was the chief. He said no, the chief was a man called Mpancha. This chap’s name was Sanfajo and I asked him if it was possible to camp. He took a moment to think about it and then said it would be fine so long as we didn’t steal their wives or eat their goats. No, I’m joking. Happily he showed us a clearing close to their huts. The huts were a little different from what we’d seen earlier: the roofs were thatched and the walls covered with animal dung as before, but the poles that formed the structure were interlocked horizontally, like a sheep hurdle only long and circular.

  Sanfajo had a contagious smile and he seemed really pleased that we would be his guests for the night. As we unpacked the bikes he was joined by his wife, then a few of his friends came over and watched us put the tents up. We chatted about where we’d come from, and they told us that in the town where Ewan got his trousers fixed there was a guy called Nkanda who only wore a hat – nothing else. He’d strut around all day with his hat on and as far as he was concerned that meant he was dressed. He’d stop and talk to people, carry on with life as normal but as soon as he took his hat off he was naked and no one could look at him. Unfortunately we didn’t get to meet him.

  Ewan was trying to get a fire going; he’d gathered sticks and the dried outer leaves from cobs of maize and he had my lighter but all he could raise was smoke.

  ‘I’ve got firelighters, Ewan,’ I told him.

  ‘Quick, get them. Get them, Charley. Eve’ll be back in a minute and she’ll get the thing lit in a heartbeat like she always does. What about petrol? Have you got any petrol?’

  Eve was talking to Sanfajo’s wife; we’d given them some bananas and oranges. She wandered over now, glanced at the flameless fire and knelt down to have a crack herself. This time, though, she didn’t fare much better and meanwhile we could hear flames crackling merrily from most of the huts. In the end Ewan took a walk down to where Sanfajo was cooking his supper on a triangular grid over a perfectly smokeless fire.

  ‘Can I borrow a log?’ Ewan indicated the blaze.

  ‘Of course.’ Sanfajo was on his feet and picking up the biggest flaming log.

  ‘No, no,’ Ewan said, ‘just a little one. Thank you, sir.’ Armed with fire, ours was soon burning and we squatted down like the desperadoes we thought we were.

  Still feeling groggy, I found my malaria testing kit and set about trying to work out what to do with it.

  ‘You need to give yourself a little prick, Charley,’ Ewan said. ‘Eve, give Charley a prick would you?’

  Getting to her feet Eve shook her head. ‘Out in the cuds with the girls,’ she muttered. ‘Come here, Charley. Let me look.’ Taking the needle contraption she pricked my thumb. I yelled, of course.

  We worked out that we had to dip the needle thing in the solution then put it in the holder and wait to see which line registered: A, B, or C. C meant I didn’t have malaria.

  EWAN: We waited ten minutes and the tester registered C. No, Charley didn’t have malaria.

  Eve poked at the fire with a stick. ‘That’s fine,’ she said, ‘great. But the next worry is, what do you have, Charley?’

  Charley grinned. ‘Road fatigue,’ he said.

  We invited Sanfajo and his mates over for something to eat: a boil-in-the-bag between them. They looked less than delighted. They had already eaten, and had used fresh food, of course, so I’m not surprised the aroma of processed chilli wasn’t so appetising. They chewed on it, however, sharing my cup and spoon; one guy in a pink baseball cap smoking a massive, flat roll-up while he ate. I don’t know if they liked it but they were very polite.

  As usual we were in bed by eight; it had become the norm when we were camping. The village was settling down, just a few fires burning and the gentle tones of muted conversation. In bed by eight and up with the sun, a burst of gold breaking through the leaves of acacia. Sunset and sunrise aren’t things you notice much in London but out here you lived by them and personally I’d never get tired of it.

  We were heading for Victoria Falls where Charley planned to throw himself off a bridge with a bit of elastic tied round his feet. Good luck, mate. I couldn’t imagine doing it. Strangely, I’m not into anything where I think I might die.

  The roads were empty, tarmac but potholed, banks of yellow grass and thick with trees. We bumped into another biker, a guy from South Africa who’d zigzagged his way through Namibia and was heading for Malawi before drifting south again through Mozambique. Like us he was loaded to the gunwales, still on road tyres with a set of knobblies strapped on the back. It was good to chat to him; we’d met plenty of cyclists en route but few bikers. He told us he worked in China and once his trip was over he was headed for Beijing and a language course in Mandarin.

  There were only a few days left now before Eve took off and I didn’t want to think about it. It was only a couple of weeks or so until I’d see her again of course but I’d really miss her. She’d been a breath of fresh air and it wasn’t just me who thought so: we were all going to miss her. I pushed it to the back of my mind and concentrated on the journey, the time we still had together. As I rode along, I just kept looking ahead and seeing her riding there in front of me, smooth as silk and dancing around the potholes.

  On our travels we had heard about an old guy from Scotland called Ian McGregor Bruce who ran a crocodile farm. He sounded like a cross between Robert Shaw’s character in Jaws and Crocodile Dundee. So we decided to drop in. They had two properties: a farm out in the sticks and another in the city. When we arrived at the farm, he was at their educational centre in Livingstone, so we were greeted by his son.

  They’d started the place twenty years ago when Ian was sixty. At eighty, he still played beach volleyball every day. His son told us he’d been a big game hunter and used to wrestle crocs. Gaining something of a reputation, he was called in by villagers to deal with problem crocs, big bastards that ate cattle and people. He started to catch them and bred them to provide skins for the leather industry. One thing led to another, and realising the tourist potential, they opened the educational centre in Livingstone. Ian’s son showed us one massive beast lying beside his pond, as fat as a horse. He must have been twelve feet long. They’d caught him after he ate a couple of cows followed by the men who owned them. When they brought him in there was one other male croc on the farm. This new guy was eighty years old already and he took on the other male, bit him in half and stole his nineteen wives.

  Later we met Ian himself and he was exactly as I imagined. He had a broad Scots accent even after spending most of his life in Africa, he wore a green cap and wandered around with a long spiked pole. In one enclosure he messed about with a hissing, albino crocodile that moved so fast it was frightening.

  ‘She’s out of her element,’ he told us, ‘vulnerable on land.’

  Vulnerable! She looked about as vulnerable as a tank.

  ‘Steve Irwin used to get the crocs to chase him at his place in Australia,’ Ian said. ‘But then he could jump the fence. Me, I’d get stuck and have my arse bitten.’

  CHARLEY: He reminded me of my dad, a slightly smaller version maybe, but just as sharp and funny. He introduced us to Maramba, another maneater who was even bigger than the cattle killer. He was lying in the mud with Peggy, so named because her right hind leg had been bitten off. Ian explained that even in the most filthy, rancid water a croc’s wound never becomes infected. He told us that at two hundred million years old this reptile was about as evolved as it got. Its stomach could digest pretty much anything, although not a life jacket apparently. A few years ago they’d caught one dangerous croc with bait, tied its jaws and unfortunately it vomited into its lungs. In the morning it was dead and cutting it open they found a perfectly good life jacket – but not the person who’d been wearing it.

  Ian introduced us to his right hand man Morgan, who went out with him in the boat when they were called out. The boat had no sides because they had to get the crocs on board and Ian sai
d that he liked to do what he called the spearing: lassoing the beast around the jaws. Once he had it caught, he handed the dangerous part of getting it on board to Morgan. He told us how they were trolling along one time about two in the morning when Ian heard a splash. Morgan, having fallen asleep, had slipped overboard. Ian said he never saw a man move so fast: like Jesus walking on water he came skating over the side.

  Morgan showed us a collection of snakes, hooded cobras and various others that spat venom into your eyes to blind you. Their aim was perfect and the only way to get rid of it was with water, immediately, and from the most easily available source, out in the bush with no waterhole nearby. Ewan said that he’d happily…no, we won’t go there.

  We also saw a black mamba, which has to be one of the scariest snakes there is. It can grow to twelve feet long and can swim. On land it moves at twenty kilometres an hour with one third of its body upright, weaving through the bush. Its skin is grey – it’s the inside of its mouth that’s black, and when it bites it injects enough venom to kill ten full-grown men. If you don’t get anti-venom immediately you’re toast.

  We had just enough time to hear some grisly stories of Ian’s hunting days, and see his collection of loaded rifles, before we had to head off. I had an appointment to keep with that length of elastic. Before we left he told us to remember when we were camping in the bush that the leopard is the most treacherous animal in Africa. If you wound one, he will play dead and wait for you. A lion will roar, but not the leopard, he’ll lie in the brush and won’t make a sound. When you get to him he’ll pounce. A leopard did that to him once, ripped his cheek with a forepaw, nearly got his jugular and only narrowly missed ripping his stomach open with its hind legs.

  Ewan was singing softly: ‘Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies, Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain…’