African Brew Ha Ha

Ulysses Returns

There were dancers, singers, around a hundred curious tea drinkers (some from Lancashire but I don't think they were following me), a British diplomat, Olive (the missus), a couple of clean Triumphs putting the Tiger to shame, Jill Heyes and all the Tea Baggers, the South African flag, a Union Jack and the Irish Tricolour, and even a gumboot performance to welcome me to Hout Bay at the end of the African Brew Ha Ha.

Thank you everyone for coming out, it was terrific.

I managed half a cup of tea before I made an idiot of myself with a lachrymose speech about the trip and the 'blinding light' that kept me going during the last five months. I can't remember the journey without thinking about the people who have made the trip so unique, who helped me when I probably didn't deserve it, and of all the people left behind. And if that sounds soft, then so be it.\

Top Tea Bag Designs worker Nicholas said: "I know you had a soft heart today but you must have had a strong heart to make this trip and for that we all say thank you."

Ending in a Sea of Tea

February 20-21     The last two days of the Brew Ha Ha have been spent enjoying an alternative beverage in the Cape Winelands. But there is always time for tea: here are some super people I spent time with in Worcester.

Anne Lesch took me in and insisted on introducing me to everyone she knew. We spent the time either going to other places for tea or welcoming people to her home - for more tea.

Bloody hell it's hot here, somebody put the kettle on.

Soweto Legend, African Success Story

Sitting in a plush boardroom in offices within a purpose-built training centre and headquarters for the most famous football club in Africa, drinking tea with a local legend and post-Apartheid success story.

But Kaizer Motaung, he of the Kaizer Chiefs (note the spelling), is a modest, softly spoken man with an illustrious playing career behind him and a secure business future.

The Chiefs, now largely a family business, were created from nothing in the 1970s - the dark days of Apartheid when black teams were forbidden from playing at the best stadia, as they were in 'white' areas. Kaizer was playing for the Atlanta Chiefs in the US and was persuaded to return and build a new club around himself. He was personally very popular in South Africa, so the team grew very quickly. The new headquarters are now situated within a free kick of Soweto and the famous painted power station cooling towers which can be seen from the windows.

Arch rivals Orlando Pirates lost some of their team members to the Chiefs, which sparked a rivalry that exists to this day, and even divides people along political lines. But sometimes, to foreign eyes, it seems everything in South Africa is divided along political lines.

As the country approaches its showcase event of the 2010 World Cup, it is struggling to meet the demands of a growing population and economic growth. We are very aware of those demands as we are sitting in the boardroom during a regular power cut that has affected Johannesburg for the past few weeks. It's not the first time the tea has been warm, but welcome all the same.

Kaizer says: "There are worries about the 2010 World Cup and the impact on Africa's image in the world. For the sake of Africa we must get it right."

Rooibos with a Capetonian

February 15      Jeremy Muller, although his wife would describe as "a so-called coloured", prefers to be known simply as "a Capetonian". He escaped the Mother City to the relatively tranquil, and dusty, streets of Mariental, Namibia, some years ago.

"We don't have a tea ritual as you call it. You get Rooibos in a mug with us."

As national programme manager for the Namibia Development Trust he is involved in helping local people, often in remote settlements, set up small businesses for themselves, for instance to serve the growing tourist sector.

"Although you will notice that there is more money in Namibia than in many of the countries you've visited, the gap between the richest and the poorest is shocking. Even here in Mariental.

The one thing that would change Africa the most is if people would use their democratic rights to vote governments out that do not serve them. Why does the population vote back people like Mugabe in Zimbabwe?"

"It makes no sense to a European," I suggest.

"It makes no sense to a Capetonian either!"

Advice? "Enjoy the time you have left; don't speed down to Cape Town at 140kph, take time to look around."

A Vision near the Tropic of Capricorn

February 12    Windhoek is a big shock: the tarmac, the sidewalks, the western brand names, the white faces, legs and arms, the (mostly white) people who woosh past in washed four by fours with windows up, air conditioning on, eyes focused ahead - 'get out of my way'.

Frankly, I'm missing Africa, or what I have come to know as Africa over the last few months: the curiosity of the people, the openness, the easy smile, the wit, the physicality of the people, their attractiveness, the colour, the music blaring from every taxi, and I'm even missing the hassles, the touts, the hangers-on, the freeloaders, the beggars and the way life is played out on the street, in public. If I lived like that, I'd play my life out on the street, too.

I don't want to denigrate Windhoek or Namibia. The city is pleasant enough set amongst beautiful hills and has a gentle, slow pace of life. But for my time there it rains almost every day. One evening the lightning flashes for 25 minutes; it's so bright and so consistent I can read by its light. But up north people are struggling where there is no drainage in the villages. People stand outside their huts knee-deep in water, staring out from the front page of The Namibian newspaper living very different lives from those shopping in the malls and eating lunch under the parasols of Windhoek. Life is good for many Namibians, and who would deny them that.

Then, at a petrol station on the road south, I see a battered vision roll past me: a 1954 Triumph Thunderbird with two English aboard who left blighty a week before me but came the east coast route through Libya, Sudan and Kenya - and their sun-burned faces attested to the fact.

Well done to them, and well done to me too I suppose.

Riding the Rails to Pointe Noire

February 3     Three more guys make a leap for the boxcar and scramble aboard as it begins to get very crowded and very hot in the rusting tin can. There is only around three square metres of floor space left so the stowaways have to pick their way through the bundles, bags, sacks and crates of fruit to find a comfortable place to sit.

The guard shouts a warning which sends everyone scurrying over the mangoes and avocados in fear of being detected by the Chef de Gare. I am left alone at the sliding door and feel terribly exposed. I decide to follow my fellow boxcar companions and dive for cover behind the crates holding up the bike on the far side of the carriage. There are loud stage whispers, evidently talking about me and my dramatic leap over the mangoes, and then suppressed laughter, the kind you hear in church. The guard beckons me back to the open sliding door as the Chef de Gare takes a cursory look into the carriage - he idly acknowledges me and the guard - everything OK here - and moves on down the track. The stowaways are still acting like naughty kids in church and clearly appreciate my solidarity with them in my leap for cover. What they don't know is that I don't have a train ticket either but Le Blanc is not suspected or even questioned.

We're all relived when the train jolts to a start and moves away from Dolisie towards Pointe Noire with some stragglers running after the boxcar down the track.

I am instantly hungry but there is no way I can eat my meagre rations (chocolate chip cookie anyone?) without incurring the wrath of my fellow stowaways. I take out the packet and hand the biscuits round. They're an instant hit and they all decide I should eat some of their food. It is the start of a feast I wouldn't have thought the Congo was capable of.

They buy everything from women and small children who run to the train when it arrives in their village. We feast on grilled fish, boiled eggs, manioc wrapped in its own leaves, we suck ice lollies frozen in plastic bags, chew on corn on the cob, lick and suck a strange sour cooked fruit stuck on the end of a stick and eaten like an ice cream mivvi, eat more unidentifiable fruits with the taste of pineapples, lychees and guava, and to crown it all off we gorge ourselves on the ripening and now warm mangoes and tomatoes that surround us in the boxcar. As I finish one huge mango with the blissful utterance "fantastique!" the guard throws me two more stolen from a crate from across the carriage which I feast on until my teeth are stringy from the flesh and my lap dripping with the juice. Well, there needs to be some perks of riding the rails as a stowaway.

I'm feeling like a character in a Tom Waits song and look forward to Pointe Noire with renewed enthusiasm.

Escape Route to Pointe Noire?

February 3     By 11am, five hours after I arrived with the bike, the station platform is beginning to look like some kind of refugee reception camp. There are extended families of eight, nine and ten members, women, children, small groups of men, and of course the animals, live chickens and goats, some on short tethers some with legs bound, bleating helplessly, slung over muscular shoulders. Belongings are carried in rudimentary sacks tied with string, nailed boxes or blankets tied around the waist.

People spread themselves and their blankets over the scorching platform to give themselves enough space to eat, drink, sleep, change nappies, talk, laugh and sweat in the unrelenting heat. It's a colourful, dirty, vibrant, smelly and occasionally volatile place. Two vicious arguments have played themselves out and a fist fight has just been broken up.

Nobody knows when or if the train will arrive or leave, and, to be honest, no one looks as if they're all that bothered as the sun reaches its zenith and the crushing crowd huddles in the diminishing shade up against the station wall. Curious women strike up odd conversations with me and ask for medication of any kind, while men and boys surround the bike and stare silently at it.

All the while food vendors pick their way through the throng selling water in small plastic bags tied with a knot, corns on the cob, grilled chicken and the ubiquitous groundnuts wrapped in pages ripped from old school exercise books.

This is supposed to be my escape route from Dolisie in Congo to Pointe Noire on the coast, as the preferred option of taking the Brazzaville road has been denied me. Four different sources in Dolisie have all argued against taking the Brazzaville road because of "gangsters, bandits, ninjas". (I'm not sure if these are three seperate groups or three different names for the same band of highwaymen operating on this notorious stretch of road.) Second choice was to take the train to Brazza but all services have stopped because of the flooded tracks.

So it's Pointe Noire or nothing; and perhaps it's nothing if this train never comes.

(No picture but three new ones posted for the previous two posts)

Dancing with One Foot

February 2     Severin Galley dips a corner of his bread into his cup and sucks the soggy dough while also slurping the milky tea with a teaspoon.

I’m not sure he’s done this tea thing before but he seems to be enjoying it OK.

The second English teacher in a row on the Brew Ha Ha has abandoned his teaching class after getting a phone call from a friend who said l’Anglais who was in town needed help. Ten minutes later a traditionally dressed man with a brief case and a willing manner is standing before me.

“Can you help me get some information about the state of the roads and rail tracks to Brazzaville? Or anywhere?” I ask plainly.

“Why not. I am in your disposal,” he replies, and prepares his robes to jump on the pillion seat of the bike.

We spend the next five hours making grooves in the sandy streets of Dolisie checking timetables, prices, options, and speaking to anybody who might know what was happening in other parts of this vast country.

“Do you think there is a way out of Dolisie?” I ask somewhat desperately.

“Of course. We are able to find solutions to our problems; it is what makes us different from the animals.”

I can’t argue with that.

Severin doesn’t need much encouragement, in between slurps, to talk about his beloved Congo and its place in Africa.

“To improve Africa we must reduce the birthings, and as a rich country, naturally speaking, we must respect the earth and make better use of our raw materials. We must also not worry about politics too much, otherwise it may lead to more wars.”

“Civil wars?”

“Of course.”

“When, exactly?”

“Nineteen ninety three …”

“Was there much …”

“Nineteen ninety seven …”

“fighting here in Dolisie?”

“Two thousand … and often in between too. In Dolisie there was a lot of fighting, it was most terrible.”

Looking out from the hotel reception where we are sitting it is hard to believe that these streets were the scenes of some of the worst fighting in those civil wars.

“We should spend less time arguing about politics and more time listening to others’ advice wherever we go. We have a saying here: ‘If the locals dance with one foot then you should do the same’”.

An Introduction to Mister Joyce

January 29    

RAP RAP RAP RAP RAP!

Who the bloody hell is that. I told them I was going for a lie down and I’ve just managed to nod off. It’s been that kind of a day, when you don’t feel guilty having a lie down at ten to six in the evening.

“Le professeur d’Anglais est ici,” says the voice through the door.

An English teacher here? In Ndende (the now famous Ndende, Gabon, the bogey town that some thought I would and should never reach. That Ndende).

I go to the bar where a jolly little fellow stands up and extends his hand.

“Mister Alan, I think, yes? So pleased to meet you. The manager of the hotel is a friend of mine and he called me to say he had a real Englishman staying and I hope you don’t mind but we’ve come to welcome you to Ndende.”

(We?)

He steps aside and presents a group of smiling 20-something students in uniforms sitting in the corner drinking pineapple sodas.

“They have been learning English for three years but have never actually met someone from your remarkable country and would love to hear how it should be spoken. They have some questions for you if you have the time.”

‘ be delighted. It’s the most English I’ve heard on the Brew Ha Ha for an age. Tati, for that is his name, chooses his words with care and enunciates the words a, little, too, clearly, but it’s a joy, all, the, same.

“Would you like to join us for a drink?”

“Tea. I think I’ll have tea.”

“Tea, of courrrse,” he says.

The students are shy and are happy for me to rattle on about everything and nothing in particular for a while and when they discover I am an English teacher (in northern Africa I pretended to be a social worker but that took too much explaining!) I get the third degree on the English education system.

Tati is terrific and must be a great teacher, an enthusiastic joy to have around but who has a habit of re-emphasising every point I make with seriousness and with care as if it was an opinion he has long held but had somehow neglected to mention it (“Yes, I’ve often felt that …That’s true, so true … O, yes I agree”).

“This may seem a little journalistic but what have you learned on your journey so far, Mister Alan?”

“Just Alan is fine.”

“Yes, how true, I always find it is too formal.”

“I’ve learned that it rains a lot in Central Africa …” everybody laughs,

“Yes, perhaps like dogs and cats, as you say.”

“… and that there is nowhere quite like Africa in the world, or Britain for that matter.”

“O yes, home sweet home, as you might say.”

This is great stuff, everybody’s engrossed although I’m not sure they can all keep up. But that’s obviously not the point. After taking some pictures of themselves and me on the bike with their mobile phones we stroll back up to our drinks where the African Cup of Nations has got the whole bar gripped.

Tati asks: “May I ask you, do you have any heroes?”

“Only one in English literature: James Joyce.”

“They won’t know who he is,” he gestures to his students.

“Why don’t you introduce them to Ulysses, it’s an unforgettable read.”

“Perhaps I will, perhaps I will …”

That should keep them all busy until the next Englishman drops by.

(Photo to follow, hopefully)

The Unforgettable Serge

January 27 Ngoma Serge Dimitri pushes the plate of ten raw sausages across the table towards me.

“Please eat, I bought for you.”

I look down at the ten sweaty pink fingers he has just unwrapped, still partly frozen. I look back up at Serge, his wife, and eight – yes, eight – children staring at me, all wondering how an Englishman eats his sausages.

“But they’re raw, Serge. Generally in England, in Lancashire anyway, we tend to eat them cooked.”

“What is cooked, please?”

“Cooked is not raw. Sauccisse chaud.”

“Ah, hot. My wife she make a fire. No problem.”

Serge’s wife Lyda is sitting on a bench with a crowd of children and cradling a new born in her arms (a beautiful black doll in a woolly jumpsuit who came into the world since my last visit to Mouila) and she doesn’t look in any fit state to be making fires for sausages.

“No, really, it’s OK. Save them for the kids. I just came for tea. I’m sorry, I appreciate it Serge but I don’t think I can eat them.”

“Please, what is appreciate?”

I drink the last of the warm tea mixed with powdered milk and hope someone will change the subject.

A disappointed Serge changes tack and says: “I have for you something.”

He digs into a bag and places on the table a plastic bottle of long life milk.

“You have milk with your tea in England, yes?”

“Well, milk in the tea, actually. I used the powdered milk you gave me earlier.”

The words coming out of my mouth sound so unkind.

O, Serge, Serge, I wish you hadn’t. Serge, the nurse who (luckily for me) was on duty the afternoon of the accident seven weeks ago, the one who brought me food in the hospital, the one who took the time to find out why I was hurting so much, the one who ran down to the pharmacy for medication, the only one who could lift me up from the bed without excruciating pain, the one who dressed the wounds, the one who walked with me in the deluge to the police station to seek help retrieving the bike, the one who was man enough to admit (as nobody else would) that I needed more professional help and that it was important I went to a hospital with more facilities in Libreville. I invite myself for tea and you go and blow the weekly food budget on a packet of frozen sausages and a bottle of milk which stare back at me accusingly. I'm sorry.

The two teabags, which I suspect have been borrowed, have now been used and I’m feeling a sickly wave of guilt – and the Brew Ha Ha is not meant to leave you feeling guilty.

But Serge, for all that you have done, and for making this part of the journey unforgettable, the Brew Ha Ha salutes you.

Cheers