African Brew Ha Ha

Dapper Sapeur

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A feature of both Congo Brazzavile and DR Congo is the otherworldly presence of dandies known as Sapeurs - 'Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elegantes', which translates more or less as the society of atmosphere setters and elegant people. Photo, above, by Daniele Tamagni is the cover image for ‘Gentlemen of Bacongo’, his book on the sapeurs of Brazzaville.

The men - and they are all men, young and old - spend every available cent on outrageously expensive designer suits from Brussels or Paris. Even though they parade themselves around the poverty ridden neighbourhoods of Kinshasa, sapeurs see themselves as artists, each one showing off a distinguishing repertoire of gestures.

Rather than attracting scorn they are generally admired by people amongst the shacks and rickety stalls of downtown Brazzaville.

The closest I came to meeting a sapeur during the African Brew Ha Ha was when I was helped out of a sticky situation in Dolisie, Congo by the Minister for Sport who was resplendent in blue pin-stripe suit (with the label still attached, of course, to prove its provenance), red shirt with huge cufflinks and pink tie. Watching him stride out of the little Dolisie airport is a sight I will never forget. Lower photo by Baudouin Mouanda

The Book of the Blog of the Trip

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The African Brew Ha Ha keeps brewing ...

African Brew Ha Ha - the book - will soon be available to all the abhaha fans who could not get enough of the blog!

Publication of the book about my tea tour through Africa is due in April 2010 in the UK from the good people at Summersdale. Then who knows!

I've already had a great endorsement from travel writer Peter Moore who read an early draft of the book. Always thought he was a man of good taste.

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)

Very Bad Spots Up Ahead

The three kids I have been left to baby sit are warming to me now and are showing off to the other village kids their new white friend. They gather in a tight semi-circle around me whispering encouragements to each other, hoping I’ll do or say something extraordinary.

“Sweetie bon bon?” one asks hopefully pointing at my tank bag.

My adopted three take great pleasure in telling the gathering crowd of children that there were only three boiled sweets in my bag and they, still licking their lips exaggeratedly, had had them. So there.

One dissatisfied child in a red T-shirt and huge shorts down to his ankles can hardly believe his bad luck and asks for evidence. All three stick their tongues out with satisfaction and the disappointment registers on everyone’s face. One small girl in a denim dress impulsively kisses one of my brood on the lips to get confirmation that she’s missed out on the rare treat but enjoys the shared fruity taste all the same.

“Sweetie paper,” one says. This starts a frantic search around the yard for the discarded sweet wrappers: they are found, licked, sucked and enjoyed every bit as much as the sweets were ten minutes ago. One child wearing nothing but a faded yellow T-shirt chews and swallows one of the wrappers to everyone else’s scorn, but the delight is apparent on his face.

The eldest boy, with clear eyes and comparatively fluent English, confidently informs the others, “This is the bike that will fly”.

“Well, no, it won’t fly but …” I am loathe to correct him.

“Will you go down this road?” He asks with a worried expression.

“That’s the idea.”
”But there are some very bad spots.” He exaggerates the last word with a shake of the head as if the spots were fiendish traps and my planned trip was the very height of folly.

“When you reach those spots you will have to fly. Nothing can go on this road. You will be stuck for many days in those bad spots, there will be no way out.”

He is holding the handlebar of the bike now with his left foot on the peg as if he intends to speed off down the muddy track in front of the house and show me how to fly over the dreaded spots.

I can see what he’s edging towards.

“OK, jump on,” I say.

That was the cue they were all waiting for. Fourteen children push and fight their way on to the seat of the bike brrrmm brrrmmmm-ing their way down an imaginary highway with vibrating lips and screeching sound effects, twisting the throttle and slapping the hindquarters of the immobile bike as if it were a stallion.

Of course now I’ve made a job for myself and have to make sure everyone gets a spell on the bike or there’ll be tears, so spend the next ten minutes lifting smiling kids on and lifting scowling kids off until one toddler in a Celtic FC football shirt and a permanent leak of snot on his upper lip becomes over excited by the whole experience and takes a piss on the pillion seat.

“OK, that’s enough. EVERYBODY OFF!”

Keep Going

January 1 2008              After a relaxing and morale-boosting week off with Olive to give the collar-bone a chance to knit together and the pain of the other injuries to dissipate a little, I find I am looking forward to the next part of the trip with some gusto. While the biking part of the journey has taken a break (!) for a while, the desire to finish the trip is as strong as ever.

For this I must thank the excellent and varied guidance from my Tea Encounters during the past 11 months which has all come in useful at different times on the abhaha, from the practical (“Bring a puncture repair kit” – Bill Beaumont) to the encouraging (“Be open-minded about where you’re going” – George Ogola) to the quirky (“When in doubt, turn right” – Mehdi Benslimane) but perhaps one simple piece of advice from Dave Edmundson has helped me cope more than most when the outlook appeared difficult – “Keep going”.

Not only is backtracking often not an option when we set out on a new [ad]venture (there’s no reverse gear on the Triumph, anyway) but we also have no idea who or what is further down the road, which makes the journey itself worth taking and the future a compelling mystery. Anybody who scans some of the earlier posts won’t fail to notice the wonderful people I have chanced upon who have made the abhaha what it is. When things get challenging, someone usually appears who is able to make sense of the seemingly random series of events that make up a day, and make me look forward to the next. And for that, I thank them all.

With that in mind, especially if you’ve had a difficult 12 months in 2007, my sincere advice to followers of the African Brew Ha Ha is - Keep Going.

Happy New Year

Alan

Anyone got a Band-Aid?

December 18              Thank you to everyone who has sent their best wishes and messages of support since the last posting. When things are going so well you hardly think of the possibility of your plans going pear-shaped (rather like my injured hip at the moment) and I can sense the surprise in people’s comments that anything knocked me off the route marked “Cape Town”.

I know many people say they have trouble with the Comments function (below) and are sending emails instead. Either way, thank you, I appreciate them all and please don’t stop.

There is no point pretending the fall last week didn’t hurt in a couple places but it’s nothing a three-foot Band-Aid can’t put right. So I expect to be up and mobile by the end of next month and plan to continue the abhaha to Cape Town using a more direct route.

In the meantime I plan to take it easy over Christmas and hope Santa brings a new pair of stabilisers for the bike and a fresh supply of anti-inflammatory tabs for me (O, and a big fat kiss from Olive!) and I leave you with a picture taken in happier – and muddier - times.

Cheers

Alan

2 Degrees South, then Ouch!

“Thé? Non.”

It was the final nail in the coffin of a black day on the African Brew Ha Ha. Not only was there no tea at l’Hopital Regional de Mouila but there was also no food of any description, no sheets or pillow for the bare mattress, and no medication or first aid supplies. What kind of a hospital is this, anyway?

I found a sympathetic nurse (not necessarily tautological), the wonderful Ngoma, who went to town for an omelette, bread and fruit juice for me after the end of his shift – and for some reason returned with a slice of stale cake and two Fantas – and I paid for someone to find a pharmacie to buy the drugs and dressings to treat me, so things generally were soon looking up.

After a brief visit to the drunk Brigade Secretariat, his side kick, and their two good-time girls in tow, I realised “le tourist” would get no help from the police to recover the stranded bike this night and returned to the hospital with Ngoma in the torrential rain to allow the events of the day to sink in.

I can remember lying on my side, knees up, feeling for signs of trauma as I looked over at the bike, which was positioned in a perfect mirror image of its prone rider: lying stranded in the road, its headlights staring back at me wild-eyed, its dirty body torn, broken and bruised, helpless as a baby.

Like the stricken Triumph, I could do nothing but wait for someone to right me, check me over, and get me back on the road. But something told me, not least the strange protrusion from where my collar bone should have been, it was not going to be so easy this time.

Lying on my hospital mattress that night, I prayed the Triumph was still where it came to rest on the dirt road to Ndendé, 2 degrees south of the equator on the Gabon/Congo border, where it did its valiant best to simultaneously avoid some death wish goats and remain upright. As you will have realised by now, it was less than successful. The general consensus among the hospital staff was that if it was not retrieved tonight from such a remote road to the frontier, I could say goodbye to ever seeing the bike again. That night I was haunted by the possibility that the abhaha might end right here, right now, in this grim environment. Ha Ha. A less suitable place for its conclusion I could not have found. And no tea.

But Africa is full of surprises. Not only did I become an in-patient at the less than fully-equipped Mouila Hospital under the care of the extraordinary Ngoma Serge Dimitri (on the left with Severin) but so too, the following day, did the bike.

9,000 miles for Bananas

December 7    

Considering I have just passed something of a milestone on the African Brew Ha Ha – crossing the equator – and have had a couple of fantastic days’ riding through the Gabon rain forest, I thought it appropriate to post an update from the Bananas Hotel & Bar, Lambaréné, on how the Triumph is holding up.

As Tabot, my guide from two weeks back might have said, "Mister Alan, we are moving." And apart from the problem with the clutch – which many readers may feel was actually a problem with the rider, I won’t argue that one – the Triumph has kept moving brilliantly well. [Incidentally, a new clutch from Triumph UK found its way to me in Douala, Cameroon, within 72 hours arranged by Blackburn dealer Philip Youles.]

I have travelled 9,000 miles since I left Lancashire on October 1 and it has to be said there has not been a hiccup. Well, just one … when it wouldn’t start in Agadir, Morocco; someone from a local garage came out, looked it over, said a prayer, and it roared into life. "Allah did it" he said, and left without any further explanation. Maybe it just needed a little divine encouragement as we were approaching the long desert stretch at the time.

Alright, that’s two things, but on a punishing journey like this something has to give.

Everyone loves the Triumph but has the same criticism: "It’s too heavy". Well, yes, it is a heavy bike but also a superbly comfortable one on tarmac, which is 95% of the trip. The remaining 5% is a challenge, there’s no doubt about that, but in the hands of a good rider (I’m getting better as the trip progresses!) it can be surprisingly adaptable.

I have taken it over roads that I wouldn’t have thought possible before the trip, so it has been a case of ‘the bike is better than you think it is’ – it just requires confidence … and as Tabot might have said: "With courage [and the Triumph], mister Alan, you will conquer your journey."