Nampula is cursorily dismissed by my guidebook as “just another Southern African every town,” a description which overlooks its shabby charms and jostling markets. Leaving these, admittedly, rather modest attractions behind, the tarmac morphs into a long dusty, palm-tree bordered road, and the urban sprawl of 1960s-built high rises recedes into open, shrubby savannah. It's just after the rainy season and although shorter than usual (a drought is feared in these parts), the land still looks lusciously lime-coloured. The horizon is dominated by rocky outcrops, the most prominent rese [View Full Entry]

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It's been a slightly stressful last few weeks for people here in Khartoum & Abyei. Abyei town was burnt down in mid May following heavy fighting between North & South (I was in Kassala in East Sudan at the time). The catalyst? Apart from oil revenues, it seems the North hadn't taken kindly to the South recently installing their own governor in the town. Thankfully, 30,000 local inhabitants & agency staff managed to make it out in time. There's virtually nothing left in Abyei now & all the UN & agency compounds have been looted. Tensions had been mounting of late [View Full Entry]

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Getting out of Abyei for your R&R is not so straightforward. You find out the day before you fly that you're only on the manifest for the 2nd connecting flight. Your departure time from Agok, near Abyei is unknown; you're advised to get there 1st thing & just wait. You also have to hope that there's a reasonable soldier on duty at Banton Bridge check point. It's usually 50/50 as to whether they will hold you up. That part goes smoothly anyway. So lunchtime comes around & there's no sign of a plane. We've already missed the connection. There's no departure [View Full Entry]

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Such is the intensity of the swirling dust & heat here now in Abyei, that at the moment, it feels like I’m on the edge of or about to enter the seventh circle of hell, which I imagine would be a pretty hot place! OK, I exaggerate a bit but the temperature was clocked at 42 degrees yesterday & it’s only starting to heat up. Nights are sticky & mainly sleepless, it goes without saying. Add to that all the construction going on our compound at the moment which means we’re living on one big, noisy, dirty building site. The compound [View Full Entry]

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You know you’ve reached somewhere pretty remote when your little UN plane has to wait to land, circling the landing strip until the cattle have ambled off. This is Abyei, a few hundred miles south west of Khartoum, in South Kordofan province, where I’ve been for a couple of weeks now. Abyei is a rickety, tumbledown sprawling town, growing all the time as internally displaced people come back gradually to re-settle after more than 2 decades of civil war. But there’s very little infrastructure & few jobs here to support the increasing numbers. Topographically, Abyei is flat [View Full Entry]

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Khartoum is without doubt one huge, hot, tough, dusty city to get to grips with at first. I can't lie to you about how attractive it is either: the low, cement apartment blocks & offices & half-finished building sites everywhere are not really doing it for me. The mosques dotted all around do offer some variety, & when lit up in neon at night, are quite attractive in a gaudy sort of way. The lack of any pavement (Africa doesn't do, or at least, rarely does sidewalks) & tiny three wheeler tuk-tuks that come careening around every corner means that you [View Full Entry]

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I confess that I only made it about a third of the way across Tanzania before I copped out, breaking my self imposed all-overland rule & flew the rest of the way to Dar in order to complete my East Africa loop. I figured I'd swap a few days bumping along Tanzania's dirt roads for more time on Zanzibar. The lure of the Spice islands was too much to resist for me! And Zanzibar's beaches did not disappoint. With their white sand, turquoise waters and dhows drifting past leisurely as the sun set on the Indian ocean, how could they? [View Full Entry]

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Inevitably, budget constraints mean that I've stayed in rather less than salubrious establishments on my travels. But the Hotel des Grand Lacs in the DR Congo was just plain weird. It was probably once a very fine place, the decor done out in the Belgian colonial style. Since independence though, it has just been allowed to dilapidate. For 20 dollars, you get a cavernous room, apartment sized really. But there was no water, you asked for buckets of cold from downstairs. The plumbing had had it, black treacly stuff suddenly gurgling out of the bath when you chucked water down the [View Full Entry]

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I've just finished spending two weeks in 'the land of a thousand hills.' Rwanda's size & decent roads (tarmac is a wonderful thing) & comparatively efficient busses make it an easy country to travel in compared to Kenya and Uganda. Topographically, (the east apart), Rwanda's numerous hills, mountains & valleys are intensely cultivated & terraced in many places. Bus drives especially in the north along steep, twisty, mountainous roads offer gorgeous views. The contrast between the lush greens and deep red earth, in particular, is really striking. Kigali also seems to be quite a sophistic [View Full Entry]

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Bus journeys, though long, are rarely dull in this part of the world. There is always something to catch the eye as everyday rural Ugandan life unfolds before you. It is always women you see cultivating the fields. Apparently, the men are either working away from villages doing construction work or are simply sitting in the shade drinking the local banana brew. Women also seem burdened with most of the carrying jobs. Notwithstanding the inequitable division of labour & hardship involved, their ability to carry all manner of heavy pots, very long bamboo sticks & various other awkwardly sized & [View Full Entry]

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