But Africa is Broken

“Do you have any Amms?”
“Amms! Sorry I don’t understand” I reply.
“Amms, Amms”
“Oh arms” I realize what the customs guy is getting at. “No, I don’t have a gun” A say with a smile. He’s lets me pass and I bump down the dirt track and through the barrier.

Crossing into Tanzania, I am surprised by the amount of people about. I’d thought the North-West of Tanzania really would be middle of nowhere. People shout ‘Jambo, Jambo’ (Hello) and its weird to be back somewhere at least slightly familiar. The road is in a bad way - its dirt and potholed but is following a ridge along the mountains
which slopes gently down hill. I bump on and on through villages and past thousands of banana trees. Looking out to the west I can see the lake Tanganyika and the mountains of the Gombe Stream National Park. The national park made famous for its chimpanzees by Jane Goodall. It’s a stunning sight, the forest covered mountains dropping straight down to the lakeshore.

I bounce on and on, down and down. The tracks made from rough, loose stones so I’m descending only slightly quicker than walking pace. It’s slow going but easy as the road follows along the ridge. My stuffy head from yesterday’s cold has all but gone away and I’m enjoying the clear blue sky and dark red road. More ‘Jambo’ ‘Mambo’ and ‘H-Bari’s’. I’ve re-entered the Swahili world again and try to remember to drop my Bonjours.

It takes all day on the dirt track to reach Kigoma, but I’m pleased at how easy it was. My strength isn’t so good and any steep climbs on such a bad road would have killed me. I arrive in town in the late afternoon, find a cheap place to stay and take a much-needed shower. I walk into town that night. For a big dot on the map Kigoma is a small place. There’s very very little about. I find what appears to the only restaurant and venture in. The menus good and a welcome change from a daily diet of brochettes. I order a fish coconut curry, and whilst its not quite up to the standard of any Thai street stall it’s the best thing I’ve eaten in ages. There’s a Muzungu in the restaurant and I go over and ask if he knows anything about the ferry to Zambia. Tom’s a nice guy, and arranges to meet me in the morning to show me where to buy my ticket.

We meet up at 9am and we walk down the dirt paths to the ferry office. I can see why he said I’d never find it on my own. As I’m walking along I’m constantly thinking, ‘It can’t possibly be down here’. I buy my fifty-five dollar first class ticket and then pay another thirty dollars for Harvey, which seems a bit ridiculous. Tom tells me that there’ll be a girl joining us. He’s never met her but heard from a friend of a friend and he thinks she’s a South African missionary. Holy shit! The last thing I want is a missionary telling me I’ll go to hell or even worse them going on about how good South Africa used to be. We arrange to meet at 3pm in the restaurant and then to walk down to catch the ferry. I turn up at three and the South African missionary is sitting with Tom.
‘I got in wrong. This is Alice and she’s not a South African missionary’.
‘Thank Christ for that’. I reply.
‘No I’m an American Med student, I just happen to know the South African missionaries’
“So...do you fancy getting pissed on the boat then?’
Alice gives an encouraging nod.
‘You’re my type of girl’. I go off to buy some Conyani, Tanzania’s finest gin.

The LV Liemba is quite a boat and a real marvel of German engineering. Built by the Germans in 1913 the LV Liemba was sunk in 1916 when the Germans feared the allied forces may capture it during the WW1. The boat remained underwater for eight years till it was raised by the British in 1924 and is still in use today. Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn married on it in the movie The African Queen. They don’t make them like they use to, really couldn’t be truer.

I’m down at the port looking for a porter. Normally you have to fight them off; here I can’t even find one. I man walks over and collects my bags while I put Harvey on my shoulder and walk across the gangplank onto the boat. I just about manage to climb the steep ladder up to the boardwalk, which circles the boat and tie Harvey to the railings.
We find our cabins and are absolutely amazed at what we find. The cabin has two bunk beds, a sink, at which water actually comes out of the taps, a mirror and a light which works. Were given clean white sheets for the beds, and stand wide eyes not believing our luck. I head to the bar to buy some drinks. The beers actually cold and the bar has a restaurant attached serving decent food. This is not what any of us expected at all. We were all expecting a horrendous third world, over packed, disgustingly dirty and dam right dangerous ferry experience. Instead we have nice rooms, cold beers and decent food to eat. Better than all of that is the company, Tom and Alice really are decent people. We meet an Israeli backpacker, Avi, and he’s cool to - the company is heaven.

We sit around a table in the restaurant constantly talking about how nice the boat is and how grateful we are for some company. All of us have been pretty lonely before meeting each other on the boat and we share our stories. Tom refuses to travel with the lonely planet, thinking it restricts your traveling. He has a point but I point out its quiet handy in finding out which day the once a week ferry leaves. He’d spent a week in a small dusty town on his own waiting for a train to Kigoma, only to get to Kigoma, to wait a week for the ferry. Two weeks of mopping around dusty Tanzanian towns alone had got to him.
Alice has been hanging out with nuns for the last two weeks and as much as she’s enjoyed their company and the experience she’s eager for some normality. I tell my bollock story and everyone laughs. I tell everyone about my last two months of solitude and they appear to understand. We drink more, laugh more and I talk, talk, talk. I feel like I’m making up for almost two months of relative solitude. With every story, every joke and every laugh I feel release - a release of words, emotions and seclusion. Tom, Alice and Avi are great as they don’t mind my sick and disturbed sense of humour.


Tom is worried about his health after a liaison with a local girl. He thinks he’s got an STD and is worried about HIV. Alice asks some proper med student type questions. From what he says it’s all in his head, but he’s only nineteen and traveling on his own and he’s scared. We all agree he’s a dam sight braver and cooler than us when we were nineteen. So Alice try’s to reassure him he’ll be fine and I just take the piss out of him, going on the basis that laugher cures all ills.

Alice tells us her travel stories and seems to refer to every place she’s ever been by the man she slept with when she was there. Myself and Tom think this is hilarious - and take the piss some more. It’s great to meet people, be incredibly open, laugh and take the piss, and do it all in good humour with people who only met a number of hours ago.

I get into a conversation with Avi about Israel. I don’t want to but it just always comes up. He asks if I passed through Israel on my way through to Africa. I say I did and he asks whether I liked it or not. I ask him if he wants the polite answer or the truth. He opts for the truth. ‘It’s the most fucked up place I’ve ever been’. I reply. He looks surprised and asks me where I went. ‘Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Bethlehem and Ramallah’. He asks why I think its so fucked up. I tell him about having to queue up to go through a turn style to cross through a twenty meter concrete walk to get into the West Bank. He looks like he’s going to say ‘Yes but that’s not Israel’, but if he does he knows I’ll say, ‘So why are the Israelis illegally occupying it then?’ The conversation gets a little more heated as we start talking about the situation. He tells me he had flown back to Israeli to fight when the war broke out. I’m thinking - Which war? Then I realize he’s referring to the invasion of Lebanon. I’m gob smacked. I hadn’t heard it referred to as a war before. We talk more and more about the situation and I ask whether he thinks that if things were more economically equal between the Israel’s and the Palestinians the situation would be different. He says he hasn’t thought of it like that. How can he not have? He is prepared to go to war for his country to fight and to kill, to no doubt lose people he loves in fighting and he hasn’t ‘thought about it like that!’ I’m amazed. I really do like the guy but our differences in opinion are massive. I ask what the war achieved? In my opinion nothing. Thirteen hundred dead Lebanese and one hundred dead Israeli’s. The two poor Israeli soldiers were never found, probably brutally executed by the Hezbullah. The majority of the victims were innocent people. In times of war it’s the civilians who pay the price with their lives rather than the military. I like Avi and I don’t want to fall out with him. My recent meetings with Israelis aren’t going well. I tell myself that I’d hate for someone to judge me by the actions of my government and am determined not to do it to others, but every time I meet an Israeli recently it always ends in a political conversation of which were not agreeing. But Avi has a good sense of humour and when we return to the table and the conversation is over we all make a toast and I say, ‘Here’s to a free and unoccupied Palestine’. He just laughs and tells me, with a smile on his face, to fuck off.

The evening goes on and on and we all end up in one of the cabins having a mini party. Avi has passed out on the top bunk, Alice is still drinking Gin and I’m blasting out the Dead Kennedy’s, which I’ve found on Alice’s ipod, and lecturing on the merits of early eighties US punk. It’s a great end to the night.

The day follows as the previous night. Me and Avi have put aside our different political views, Alice has just about stopped talking about all the men she’s slept with and Tom’s looking a lot more relaxed now we’ve hopefully convinced him he’s not going to die of AIDS. I’m still talking ten to the dozen but have calmed down a little bit. We stand on the boardwalk and watch the many small boats constantly pull up to unload passengers and freight. At one point lots of bags are being grown down into a little boat. The boats full of women with babies tied to their backs and they’re shouting back as huge sacks of pineapples are being thrown from down at them. We all watch in horror as one sack just misses a small baby. The situation goes on to coin the catchphrase for the journey. As I point out its ok for people to lie to you, to rip you off, for people to get screwed by there heavily corrupt governments, for nothing to work and everything to be broken and even to thrown a large bag of pineapples at a small child.

Back at the table and back drinking Kilimanjaro beers were all chatting away. Tom’s an interesting guy who’d just spent a couple months teaching in a high school in Kenya. He tells us all so many things I didn’t know about Kenya and east Africa in general. He says that although he’s suppose to be a teacher he’s only nineteen and the kids were eighteen anyway so he was just mates with them. He said he didn’t do any real teaching but spent his time talking to them about underground hip-hop, teaching them how to freestyle and pulling them up on there religious ideas. I like his honesty to say he’s not a Christian when he’s asked. I normally follow the line and opt for an easy life. The kids at the school tell him he’ll go to hell if he doesn’t believe in Jesus Christ. He asks them whether their ancestors went to hell? As Christianity has only been in Africa for just over a hundred years all their ancestors would of gone to hell too as they didn’t believe in Christ. Strangely enough none of them had given this any thought and hadn’t a clue what to say. Alice tells us how one of the missionary’s she met in a hospital in Tanzania had told her that it didn’t matter what you achieved as long as you were serving Christ! I’m impressed at Tom’s passion for Africa, he has an honest and decent approach and both Alice and I are inspired by it.

The guys are quite shocked at my attitude to Africa. They say that I’ve been traveling too long and I’m negative about everything. I point out I’m not negative about anything I just say it as I see it - nothing here does work, everything is broken, people regularly do try to cheat you and lie to. I tell the guys that we were all surprised when water came from the taps in our cabins. We were all surprised that the cabins were clean and had power. I tell that I don’t believe it’s the peoples fault everything is broken. When the people who run Africa are despicably corrupt and have levels of selfishness which reach pure evil, countries get broken and acceptance and worst still, no knowing any different, leaves things broken. Kaunda the former President of Zambia spent one million dollars a day on himself for everyday he was in office. What hope has power and water, let alone education and health care with such actions? The WTO, IMF and the World Bank don’t make life any easier by imposing trade tariffs to suit western nations and lending money only to developments which are fundamentally self-serving. African people are, to make a massive generalization, incredible helpful and respectful. People will always help you out, whether it is with directions, some where to stay or just to show warmth and kindness of which I receive on a daily basis. But with such despicable leaders what role models of right or wrong can people look towards? Corruption becomes away of life when the government and the police are the worst of them all. So how can cheatings a tourist out of a few dollars be a bad thing?

But I do wonder about the guys comments. I don’t want to turn into one of those people who have been traveling far too long and are negative and pissed off with everything. They do reassure me I’m not like that - yet. Alice does say something which makes me think though.
‘Your relatively normal seeing as you’ve been living on a bicycle for the last two years’ she says,
‘Only relatively normal’
‘Well yes Ben’
‘Not totally normal’
‘No Ben, normal people don’t spend two years living on a bicycle. Do they?’
I guess she has a point. I notice later she describes me in her blog as, ‘Crazy, shouting, often piss drunk British guy’. But that’s a bit harsh I think.

Avi gets off somewhere along the shoreline of Tanzania in the middle of the night so the following morning there’s just the three of us left. Tom and myself learn that Alice and Avi had had a bit of a kiss the previous evening - we just take the piss out of her some more. We see the shores of Zambia ahead and our forty-four hour boat journey is coming to an end. I don’t need porters to alight the boat this time as now I have friends to watch and help carry my bags. All three of us step off the LV Liemba and onto Zambian Shores.

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