Overland To Cairo By Any Means

By Emerson Grossmith

On January 17th, 1982 I received an urgent telegram from my brother, who was a teacher trainer for Canadian University Services Overseas (CUSO) in northern Nigeria.
"I don’t know what the chances are of us meeting in Kenya, but it sure would be fun!”
Little did I know how these words would impact my life. This was pre-Internet and telegrams were one of the few ways to communicate with people half way around the world. On a whim, I flew halfway around the world to meet up with my brother and girlfriend for an Easter holiday safari in Kenya. My brother’s words set me off on my great African adventure, which later culminated in four overland trips and eventually residing in Nairobi.
 
Like any evolving continent, there are always changes taking place, much like there are today. Africa in the 1980s was quite different: Uganda was recovering from the tyranny of Idi Amin and a no-go; travelling was forbidden and non-existent in Marxist Ethiopia, Tanzania had closed its border with Kenya, and Sudan was ruled by western-friendly President Nimieri.
This book is about overland travel at its best and worst, but by any means possible: beaten-up overland trucks, buses, on an overcrowded Nile barge, by foot, by train, or by crowded, shared taxis.
 
Travelling is not about your final destination, but about the people and different cultures you meet along the way. No one ever said that overland travel in Africa is easy, but if you want to see Africa, it might just be one of the ways. In the 1980s, it was the only way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Next Chapter
• Release date: Mar 14, 2023

Book preview

PROLOGUE

One question that invariably comes up amongst a group of travellers, often as a prelude to one-up-man-ship is: How many countries have you travelled to?

Quite honestly, I rarely look at travel through this lens primarily because if I like a place or country then I may want to return there. I have always liked Africa and over time, would continue to return to that continent as often as I could. At the time of this writing, I call Africa my home.

The urge to go on, to see new countries is important, but familiarity with a place, its smells and its people breeds a sense of attachment for me.

The well-travelled writer Paul Theroux mentioned in a recent interview that most travel writers rarely retrace their steps or return to a place that they wrote about previously. I feel that those writers that he mentioned are more to be pitied than blamed. Oddly enough, he returned to Africa after a three decade hiatus to write his Dark Star Safari book in 2001.

There is nothing wrong with returning to a place that has smitten your heart. More to the point, most people nowadays may neither want to travel to some of the countries I have visited nor be able to visit because of a variety of reasons: closed borders, wars, dangerous diseases, or visa issues.

Unlike the title of that book I see in most travel book sections these days; travel is neither a bucket list nor is it a checklist of places to see before you die.

I find the latter a morose way of looking at travelling.

I did not necessarily want to see 1000 places whilst I was alive let alone just before I die. I just wanted to visit places that were of interest to me and should I like them—return to see if my first impressions were correct.

Another reason why I kept returning to Africa is because of my penchant for African music.

My Kenyan wife often remarks that long before I met her on the romantic island of Lamu, I was already married to Africa; married to the music.

There is some truth to my wife’s observation.

Familiarity and feeling comfortable with a place is why I have retraced my steps back through Africa since my first trip in 1982.

This ‘familiarity of place’ has made me return to Africa many times, but for the sake of brevity, I have whittled it down to four overland trips attempted starting with this book of my 1982 overland trip.

My connection with the African continent goes beyond random visits, but allows me, from time to time, to view life in Africa through a different lens.

Maybe I am fooling myself, but this lens skews my vision.

Perhaps this is why when I was with my Kenyan wife driving to a busy Sarit Centre in Westlands, Nairobi, I scathingly refer to foreigners as mzungus.

‘Momma, look at these mzungus (foreigners) blocking the traffic.’

‘But baba,’ she laughed. ‘You are one of them!’

I look at her with an odd expression.

‘No, I’m not.’ I said defiantly.

Then she realizes something, and questions me politely— ‘Oh, you think because you have been here so many times that you aren’t a mzungu?’

I say nothing and just smile beatifically at her.

I think to myself—well, maybe I do have some sense of entitlement, small as it is, which says— ‘Yes I’ve been here before.’

Perhaps it is also this sense of familiarity with a country, a culture, or maybe a language that one can banter in that separates me ever so slightly from the others or at least that is the way I like to perceive myself.

Basically, I have been here before and have acquired some ‘street smarts’ for walking the streets of Nairobi. Maybe I am just plain lucky, but I know how to handle myself; after all, I have been coming to Africa for the past thirty years.

Furthermore, I know what to say to the constant pestering of the chokira or street boys who frequent the downtown of Nairobi, especially around the popular tourist mecca of the New Stanley Hotel area:

‘Sah you need shine?’

‘No, I’m wearing sandals.’

‘What about a safari, sah?’

‘Well, what about a safari?’

‘Where you from?’

‘Canada.’

‘I have many friends in Canada,’ he says. ‘Do you know Steven from Toronto?’

As a matter of fact I do, but I doubt it is the same bloke that this chokira is thinking of.

‘Lucky you—good bye.’

And I head off at a hurried pace.

Of course, my witty repartee has varied over the years from earlier innocent conversations to later terse ones like above. At least that is my story and I am sticking with it.

In truth, I am much more polite in public, much to the chagrin of my Kenyan wife.

As a result of returning to familiar places in Kenya, there are still people who remember me when I first traveled to the Islamic town of Lamu on the Kenyan coast in 1982 and subsequent visits in 1984 and 1986. ¹

These facts help to contribute to my sense of familiarity with the Kenyan Coast and with some other parts of the African continent.

On a different note, one thing that has become quite evident over time spent in foreign countries is that any traveler can become fluent in a foreign language, yet the living culture that embodies that language can sometimes remain quite foreign to many of those travelers.

More to the point, I have worked and studied in the field with many learned Near Eastern archaeologists/anthropologists who may be totally fluent in Arabic language and its material culture, but are bereft of knowledge of the living culture that pulsates around them.

I feel sorry for them, because in my case, the present living culture is just as important or equally as vital as the past one we are unearthing.

One truism I often refer to is something that I wrote down in my 1982 travel journey— ‘Adventure is not in the guidebook and beauty is not on the map.’

Africa is an incredible place to experience—one cannot adequately describe it in neat little Moleskin journals or scribbled ramblings on tacky postcards.

It is a place that one must experience first-hand preferably by oneself, although you do not necessarily have to be on your lonesome when you do this.

Africa is a place of wild emotions: from ecstasy in one moment to an abysmal depth of despair the next.

There is neither rhyme nor reason—sometimes it is just because ‘it’s Africa’ and you must accept the moment for what it is.

To expose yourself to this roller coaster of raw emotions requires that you just go there—there is no painless injection to achieve this state of unexpectedness.

If that were the case then you would not be in Africa, but in some story land that was not real anyways, but imaginary.

In my travels, there are a number of themes which run through my times and stories of Africa.

One is the notion of ‘African time’ and the other is the all-encompassing expression ‘the African experience’.

‘AFRICAN TIME’

The expression ‘African time’ is one dandy expression that I first heard in 1982. Initially, I thought someone was remarking on differences in time zones on the continent. In fact, ‘African time’ refers to the fluid linear time in Africa, which can drive some mere mortals quite crazy.

During colonial times, the British often made reference to this in East Africa as EAWA or ‘East Africa Wins Again’ or if in West Africa as WEWA or ‘West Africa Wins Again’. ²

Many ‘westerners’ and expats often think that bus, train or plane schedules should revolve around their own personal schedules whilst traveling in Africa, but quite often, Africa has other ideas.

‘African time’ means it gets there when it gets there and you, as the traveler, are on the same time as everyone else. It is not about what is right or wrong— it is just about being there at that moment. Nor is it about time, but about a way of life.

The movie, I Dreamed of Africa, is based on the real-life adventures and personal tragedy endured by Kuki Gallmann and her family’s attempts to make a ‘new’ life in Kenya.

There is a scene in the movie which takes place after the family have arrived in Kenya from Italy. Kuki and her Italian-born husband Paolo have an argument about their time in Africa.

He protests and shows her his wrist—

‘Look, I’m not wearing my watch,’ says Paolo.

‘So!’ says Kuki.

‘I took it off as soon as I got to Africa,’ Paolo parries.

Kuki is exasperated and looks at him oddly, not entirely convinced.

‘It’s a different time here Kuki, a different rhythm,’ he continues.

He points outside their house, outside into the dark void of the African night.

‘Out there is just the moment,’ he continues. ‘One error of judgment, one lack of concentration and it’s your last.’

I believe that Paolo truly understood Africa.

It was in his soul, and I can relate to his feeling about the simplicity and beauty of the moment and time in Africa, albeit his own time in Africa which was so tragically cut short.

WHAT IS ‘THE AFRICAN EXPERIENCE’?

In recounting travel scars incurred from past trips to Africa, one often hears the old hackneyed expression— ‘the African experience’.

In 1999, at a staff meeting of ESL teachers in Dubai, the subject of travel plans for the upcoming semester break were making the rounds between us teachers.

I happened to make the acquaintance of an American ESL teacher named Andrew. He looked like a young Pierce Brosnan with a clipped moustache, nattily clad in designer jeans with a dark grey button-down shirt and a slender leather tie like the ones that were worn in the movie—The Reservoir Dogs.

Initially I thought he was Californian.

He was too groovy even for his jeans, definitely a cool customer and in time, let me know he was the man.

‘Hey man. So where are you planning on going for the semester break?’

‘I’m thinking of going to Kenya.’ I replied.

He casually mentioned that he had spent most of his youth in Kenya as his father was working there.

‘Cool—are you going on safari?’ He continued.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m meeting an old girlfriend and heading to Lamu to chill out.’

‘Cool.’

And before I could say another word he laid that old chestnut on me.

‘Dude—you need the real African experience.’

Playing the fool— ‘And pray what is that?’ I asked.

‘The real African experience is to take the coast road bus from Malindi to Lamu.’

‘Truly,’ I said, acting quite surprised.

Unbeknownst to him, truth be told, I had already travelled through more of Africa than he could ever dream of yet he just assumed I was a novice on the ‘dark continent’.

I subsequently, but politely mentioned to him that I had taken that very coast bus from Malindi to Lamu quite a few times.

During the 1980s, I had taken this bus trip not because I craved the ‘real African experience’, but more out of necessity: to get from one point to another as cheaply as possible.

Besides, in those days, I was backpacking it (as the Brits would say) and the idea of taking the expensive option of flying from Malindi to Lamu was strictly out of the question.

I promptly told Andrew that the first time I had ridden that bus was in 1982.

This cut him to the quick, and he seemed quite taken aback by my answer, or that I actually knew anything about Kenya.

After this, we were sort of friends, since we would eventually share the same villa in the northern Emirates in Ras Al Khaimah for a year. ³

Moreover, if there is one thing that thirty plus years of travelling through the continent has taught me is that Africa has always managed to throw the odd curveball at you just when you thought you had the place figured out.

In addition, I have found that the ‘African experience’ is an accumulative effect and not just a one off event.

It might be a combination of a number of things: to feel the soft spray from Victoria Falls that soaks you through to your soul, the dry, hot wind that caresses your face on the Greater Karoo, the smoky, woody smell of the mopane forest in Zambia, the pungent aroma of the orangey camel thorns near Francistown, and the funky, donkey doo pong of Lamu on a balmy night.

You have to experience being woken in the still of the morning by the hadidas or sacred ibis squawking high up in the Casuarina trees, the yip yap laughing of the spotted hyena moving in for the kill, or to inhale the sweet blossoms of the flowering frangipani tree, taste the sweat of the African day and be enthralled by the never-ending and engaging African sunsets, and to thank god that you are still alive to see another sunrise over the vast Serengeti Plain.

These are just a few of my African memories!

Africa can easily be a place of crying and sorrow, but, for me, it is always a place of hope.

One cannot forget the sound of women singing and giggling as they struggle to carry their water jugs, balanced precariously, but confidently on their heads as they wend their way to their village some ten kilometers down a heavily trodden red-earth track.

Simply put, in the end, Africa is always a place for reflection of hope, joy and above all—fascination!

I have never grown tired of retracing my steps in Africa, and pray, I never will.

From 1981-1983, my younger brother and his girlfriend worked for the Canadian University Services Overseas (CUSO) as teacher trainers at Manchok Teacher’s College in Kaduna State, Nigeria.

On my first trip to Africa in 1982, I had left Canada to rendezvous with them in Kenya during their Easter break from teaching in Nigeria.

I was supposed to have travelled overland from Kenya through Zaire to Nigeria to meet them, but got sidetracked and instead went north through the Sudan to Egypt.

Later on when we met up in Canada, and to this very day, he still chides me by saying, ‘If you haven’t been to Nigeria then you haven’t been to Africa.’

To which I counter, ‘If you haven’t been to the Sudan then you haven’t been to Africa.’

The argument always ends in a stalemate of sorts, but there is some truth to both claims and when I tell this to Nigerian or Sudanese friends they all howl as if it is an inside joke which it is—inside Africa.

For many who have travelled through Africa, the ‘real Africa’ does not start until you head south from the Sudd which is that area of swampland inhabited by Christian and animist tribes in the south of Sudan. ⁴

Those who have travelled through Morocco and North Africa have really done the African-lite version, as it is more Islamic and Arabic than sub-Saharan Africa.

No offense, but this has been echoed by other travelers and travel writers over time.

One of the first things I learned from travelling in Africa was to make the mistake of confusing an Egyptian as being an African.

In 1982, an Egyptian shopkeeper quickly put this in perspective for me.

‘But you are African, aren’t you?’ I asked innocently.

‘No, I am Egyptian,’ he brusquely told me and thus quickly ended our conversation, but began my long education of what is Africa.

Even today, forty years later, I am still learning about this vast continent.

CHAPTER 1

GOING OVERLAND IN 1982—‘MY AFRICAN EXPERIENCE’

EN ROUTE TO AFRICA

The idea of going to Africa in the first place started out innocently as just a dream via a long distance aerogramme from my younger brother who had been recently posted to Nigeria.

Harry, and his girlfriend (later wife Kate), had gone to Manchok Teacher’s College in Kaduna State, Nigeria to train teachers as part of their ‘African experience’ for the Canadian University Services Overseas (CUSO) in 1981. ¹

In a letter sent to me dated December 1981 from Nigeria, they invited me to join them in Kenya for the following Easter 1982, he wrote:

‘I realize this sounds like a hair-brain[sic] scheme but I really (and Kate too) want you to come… if you are interested, the quickest way to let us know is to send a telegram. They only take about four to five days [to get here]. We will also do the same if it looks like you’re coming. So start saving your money!!’

Nowadays, this would not seem like quite an obstacle what with e-mail, cell phones and i-Phones, but this was pre-internet days so god knows what might happen to a telegram travelling between Canada and Nigeria in 1981.

Nevertheless, the die was cast, so to say and I started thinking of that hot, tropical land called Africa as an adventure of sorts.

Unfortunately, at the time, I was freezing my ass off working in the great frozen north of Canada and even trying to send a telegram from Spirit River, Alberta seemed insurmountable.

However, with the aid of a remote ‘camp phone’, and an annoying five-second delay, I was able to arrange travel plans with my travel agent in Calgary.

Initially, I sketched out some rough travel plans that would include a trip starting in Calgary, flying to Los Angeles, then via Hawaii, onto to the Orient (Tokyo, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Bangkok), and finally arriving in Kenya sometime in March, 1982.

My lovely travel agent in Calgary had tried to talk me into going with one of the many overland companies that do overland trips, i.e. Guerba or Kontiki Expeditions to name two. They organized these mega overland treks that lasted months usually starting out in London or Amsterdam and finishing in either Nairobi or South Africa.

The idea of being crammed cheek by jowl in a 4X4 huge overland truck for months on end through the vast continent did not appeal to me. I also knew that many couples who went on this type of trip often broke up with some girlfriends finding comfort in their 4X4 driver.

Moreover, this was not my idea of travel and what if you liked a place and wanted to stay longer—then what?

Seemed a no brainer to me: I wanted to be on my schedule not on some company’s itinerary.

At any rate, my job in northern Alberta entailed living in a remote camp and working outdoors in minus 50 F doing geophysical surveying for potential oil drilling rigs for Shell Canada. I usually worked 21 days on with a week off between shifts so as not to get ‘cabin fever’ in the Canadian mid-winter.

Given the magnitude and multitude of difficulties in timetables and flights—my brother and I never really expected to pull it off or to actually rendezvous in Kenya.

To quote from a later letter my brother sent me dated January 17th, 1982:

‘IMPORTANT—the time frame you gave us for your trip seems a bit tight. Do you think you can make it through L.A. - Honolulu - Japan -Taiwan - Thailand - Kenya in one month? Would it not be better to fly to Kenya first and go east instead? …I don‘t know what the chances are of us meeting in Kenya, but it sure would be fun!’

Well, to say the least, the timing was crucial as there was only a three-week window of opportunity in which to connect with my brother and his girlfriend in Kenya.

As luck would have it, I was able to put together back-to-back 21-day shifts in the Great White North of Alberta with the last shift being solid overtime.

As a result of the double shifts, I did manage a short, but exciting stay in Hawaii and the Far East as I left Canada earlier than expected by about a month.

This was the first time that I was doing an around-the-world-trip.

Upon arriving in Hawaii, the gorgeous stewardess put a lei of flowers around my head and I must have looked quite a sight as I left the plane with the flowery lei on me.

Moreover, I was a tad naïve regarding the discomfiture that a traveller actually has to endure to complete such a task.

For one thing, I was totally ignorant of the concept of reconfirming onward flights, especially from Hawaii which, incidentally, just happened to be the wedding destination for Japanese tourists at this time of year.

I ended up being stuck in Hawaii during this wedding month of March. As a result of failing to reconfirm my onward flight, I subsequently missed my initial flight to Japan.

This entailed returning to the airport in Honolulu every morning in the hopes of a Japanese couple cancelling their flight home or extending their honeymoon.

Killing time in Hawaii was not such a