I remember arriving in Santiago de Compostela, the great Spanish pilgrimage city, on a cool, misty, Galician morning. It was that blue pre-dawn hour when anyone with a bit of common sense is curled up beside a pretty Spanish girl, not tramping around with an oversized backpack, looking for their hostel. I had arrived by train, from Madrid - hardly the arduous, soul-sapping slog across 800 miles of French and Spanish countryside that constitute the famous camino del Santiago. In the plazas, already bracing for the day’s traffic, they were setting up their souvenir stalls: the plastic rosaries and wooden crosses, the pocket-sized icons of Jesus and St. James. In the morning, with the sun lighting the flagstones outside the cathedral, I watched those road-weary pilgrims trudging across the plaza, their legs spattered with mud, their ... read more

There’s a steady rain falling over Stone Town in the morning, and I’m dodging rank-smelling puddles on my way to Mercury’s, where a taxi driver waits to whisk me away to The Palms. With my Zanzibar goodbye just days away, I suspect these next three days will be my last - and, in effect, only - bit of beach time on the island. About that fact I have few regrets. While hardly immune to the charms of palm-fringed coasts and Italians in skimpy swimsuits, the essential elements of the Zanzibari beach retreat - swimming, boozing, basking in the sun - hold just a slight, passing appeal. Rather than trading well-worn travel tales with a bunch of glassy-eyed backpackers in Kendwa, I’ve been happier to plod around Stone Town these past two months, haggling at the market, ... read more

Ali Baba will find a place for me. He makes this promise, sweat shining on his fat Buddha’s cheeks, eyes pinched and squinting into the sunlight. In the week I’ve spent in Dar, hanging around Chef’s Pride while Ali Baba works the crowd, it’s grown obvious that this is a man with a chubby hand in many pots. He gives me the number of his nephew, Ibrahim - the owner of a popular budget guest house in Stone Town, the Pyramid Hotel - and suggests I look him up as soon as I arrive. On my day of departure, hauling my bags to the ferry terminal, finding a seat in second-class amid a chattering crowd of American college kids, I see Ali Baba himself settling into a seat in the rear. Having arranged a Zanzibar tour ... read more

Leaving Arusha behind, driving through market towns and fields of maize and bright, sunflower-filled pastures, I arrive in Moshi upbeat, ready to square myself for the journey south. Surprised to see two weeks pass in Arusha, having glimpsed not a single lion or leopard or loping giraffe, I don’t want to linger long; memories of a month spent worrying over finances in Nairobi are, after all, still fresh. But the fortnight in Arusha was intense: the pile-up of impressions after arriving in a new country, the whirling circus of the Sullivan Summit, the commercial frenzy around the clocktower. I was busy gathering, hording images, devouring tales of woe in the local papers; my senses were constantly engaged, and by the time I left town, I felt curiously spent. It’s something I’ve learned, after nearly a year ... read more

I’ve left Nairobi for a few days in Nakuru, where I’m meeting up with my footballer friend, Peter. When I last saw him in November, Peter was upbeat: he’d spent the months since leaving Naivasha in talks with Mathare FC - a team that, at the time, was in a heated race for the Kenyan Premier League crown. (They would eventually finish second to champions Tusker.) Peter had been invited to try out for the squad in January, but he was at home in Kitale when violence broke out following the disputed presidential election. For Peter, the timing couldn’t have been worse: Mathare was a chance to get back into the Premier League, to play for one of the country’s top clubs. Stranded in Kitale, hundreds of miles from the capital, Peter had no way of ... read more