EPISODE SEVEN – APRIL 4th

It’s another warm, sunny ride. My luck is holding as the rainy season starts. Round mighty Mount Elgon yet again back to Kenya, this time with Alex, who wants a trip to see the Kerio Valley. We travel comfortably together. Despite our age and cultural differences, my Ugandan ‘son’ and I see a lot of things the same way.

We ride over the high Cheringani Hills, up to 10,000 feet. A companion on the pillion makes me see it all with new eyes, familiar as it is now. Alex loves the big forest trees and the open vistas. Most big trees have gone in Uganda. In Kenya, some vestiges are preserved by a more aware, conscientious government.

We’ve come to visit William in Kessup. He and Alex met two years ago in Sipi. They speak the same language, Sipi people being an offshoot of the same tribe. They joke along as we eat supper, gazing far down into the Rift Valley.

****

That view we ponder from our supper table at the guesthouse, is the the Kerio Valley, an offshoot like a thumb of the Great Rift.

As we eat, I suggest we try a hike down and back in a day.

“You won’t make it!” exclaims William. “And the hotel at the bottom (a laughably cheap place of VERY meagre comfort) is closed. And you haven’t done it in one day for some years!”

But I’m up for the challenge. I do wonder when all this will end? How much longer (at six weeks off 77) can I indulge this sort of stupidity? Still sceptical, William relents. “But we won’t get back up till maybe 8pm!”

“Nonsense!” I reply. “We usually get back by five or six.” William looks unconvinced.

“Stop punishing your mzungu!” people call to my companions next day, “You’ll kill him!”

“Hah!” reply Alex and William, “He’s the one punishing us!”

The loose rocky, gravelly path straight down the escarpment is horrible: slippery and steep. Stones roll away beneath our shoes and cascade down the slopes. And it’s no small descent. It’s a 2756 foot (840 metre) scramble. This bit does make me nervous. But ‘no risk, no story’. In record time, two hours, we reach the white rock road that traverses the bottom of the valley, the heat bouncing now off the track. Here at the foot of the escarpment it’s just smallholdings and the most delicious mangoes the world knows. We get tea and chapatis – our normal hiking fare – and stop a motorbike taxi to take us five kilometres along the tedious rocky road to the junction of the upward trail. There’s nothing to see on this white road and only dazzle and heat to endure.

The track we use to climb out of the tremendous valley was planned as a road, but abandoned through inefficient surveying of the friable rock and steep faces. It’s a rough rocky incline winding upwards until it reaches steep faces that proved unviable. A year or two ago, you could’ve ridden a boda up much of it. Now, most of it is being fast reclaimed by rampant African nature.

So, for a quarter of the climb we must scramble up informal rocky paths where the engineers threw in the towel.

It’s 840 metres down to the road in the valley – and 840 metres back up! In this terrain, every foot lost or gained must be gained or lost later in the day. All 2756’ of them.

We arrive back at 4.30! Doubting William! Two hours down. Two and a half back up. Record times.

Every year, I think it may be the last. Then I add another year!

****

That night, the RAINS came. A torrential night of water thundering on the tin roof of my dowdy room. Followed by a morning of clouds wreathing in the great valley below.

Later, we climbed up to the Kessup Forest on the escarpment top, above the soaring red cliffs, so we could say that in under 24 hours we hiked from the bottom of the Rift Valley to the top – from 3904 feet to 7481 feet (1190m to 2280m). A total climb of 3577 feet or 1090m.

****

On the way back to Kitale, the bike journey ended for 2026, the Mosquito once again ignominiously transported back to Kitale by truck. This 2007, 116,00 kilometre bike IS getting old and perhaps past the work I ask of it… The front brake hose burst, fortunately on a flat road, a kilometre past a small grubby town called Moiben.

Alex goes back with a boda. I follow carefully, determined to stay in the background as he negotiates for assistance.

Of course, it’s a useless venture, since a scruffy village like Moiben has no ‘background’ in which a mzungu can hide! Before we even get to town the bush telegraph has signalled that a mzungu biker has broken down nearby.

Wesley, a truck owner, takes us and Mosquito the 32 miles to Kitale for £42. And there the Mosquito languishes until I can find a new hose and get a mechanic.

****

It’s only £30 to hire two cars with drivers: one to the border and one on the Uganda side. Time was on my travels, I’d spend only that in a week (a few decades ago!) and more recently in a day. Adelight phoned her trusted driver and Alex his, and we came home dry to Sipi. Age has its rewards. Or compromises at least.

Laughter, never far below the surface in Uganda, makes for happier journeys. Lillian, owner of a tumbledown roadside chai and chapati shack in Chesower village, half way through the magnificent mountain journey, proudly announced that she was making history by serving her first muzungu! Her customers joined in the laughter: no one thinks a mzungu can eat their food or drink their drinks. Alex is a skilful social man, easily chatting to everyone as equals – a skill I much admire.

****

So, the rainy season is here and I don’t like it. I can get weather like this in Harberton, but at least I can keep warm and dry and eat cake, even if I also get bored! As I splash about in Sipi mud, it pisses down, and there’s no escape – or cake.

But people here are used to the variability of their rainy season and just get on with life, ignoring their wet feet. We’ve work to do. And walks to do if the rain relents.

No guests until the end of the week, so we can just get on with things. The way I like best here.

We are always developing the guesthouse. We must improve the landscaping to ease the rainy season mud for guests. Moses, the only worker here with whom I enjoy working, and two of the Chelel boys and I, move tons of earth and concrete to form pathways, a ramp and drainage gulleys. I work some more on the gardens. I wonder if the Harberton hollyhocks will survive in this climate? It’s SO fertile here in Uganda. If the government weren’t so dysfunctional and corrupt, this should be one richest of African lands. Plant a stick and in a month or two you have a bush. It’s glorious – and rewarding. Guests are delighted to find a garden, for flowers are little valued in most of Africa. They are considered useless, inedible and of no profit. Mostly, idle boys with their pangas just chop the heads off!

****

We battle with showers. In moments, the grass lawns turn to lakes and mud; mud blathers everything; the main gate is a slick, deep in filth; the paths turn red; my shorts turn red; my gumboots slip and slop. It’s utterly disgusting! It’s like the Somme. Showers of torrential rain, wet feet, wet shirt even under the laughable (but waterproof) enveloping raincoat I bought in Kitale – you just can’t keep it out, mud filled wellies, slithering in mire, working with Moses and the Chelel boys with concrete and muck.

****

The best days of my African safaris have become the hiking days with Alex, to get away from the pressures, for him of managing Rock Gardens, and cabin fever after six days in the compound for me. Down the hills and around Sipi Hill on a lower earth road, through straggling communities, shambas of coffee and matoke, where everyone is working, now that the rains have started. It probably means that classrooms are half empty as a result, in this country with such lamentable education standards already. Many children are drummed into farming service, considered by many Ugandan parents more valuable than education. There’s no hope for this country.

As we walk, we are the butt of hundreds of jokes, and some compliments too. Most jokes refer to Alex punishing his ‘old man’ and hundreds want to know my age. Some call in wonder, “Hey, he’s made of steel, that one!”, “We can’t walk like that!” It’s fun and cheerful, and friendly.

I find this amusing, then Alex reminds me how very few people reach even 70, let alone 77, in Uganda. 2% reach 70… So I am a phenomenon as well as a celebrity wherever we go in these rural communities, where everyone is so friendly and welcoming. Hundreds of children (no shortage in a land in which 50% are less than 14 years old) call and rush to look at the mzungu, shouting for siblings to come and see too. A few approach for a shy handshake, others run away in terror, some hide in mothers’ skirts, wailing.

A tin mug of black tea and a greasy chilly chapati in a scruffy muddy village. I’m the biggest attraction in days. All gather. Alex is adept at the small talk required. One old man of 89 is respectful and charming, obviously a popular character. It turns out he worked with Alex’s grandfather back in colonial days in Kapenguria, Kenya, farm labouring for a white man. He’s pleased to meet Alex and tell his stories. Alex is a good conversationalist and the old man is happy with an audience.

Others have joined us, as we eat the chapatis, speared on cheap forks that are probably only superficially clean, watching the cook in her six foot circular diminutive mud and thatch hut, who washes up in a splash from a jerrycan. Another old man joins the group, competing in the age stakes, but the first octogenarian assures him that he is at least two years younger than he is! Many tell me that they are 100 years old – most not able to give an accurate date for their birth. They tell me I’m, “just a boy!” amid laughter. It’s always such an engaging time, to sit in these remote villages that see so little excitement that a passing muzungu becomes the attraction of the week. I love the celebrity progress we make, so does Alex.

Climbing out of the village through the back of the basic health centre, staffed probably by a government nurse, we stumble upwards between many families sowing and planting. Everyone shouts welcomes and comments. Alex translates some, but not all. I wonder what he’s laughing at? But it’s all well meant and good natured.

We clamber up towards ridge on which volcanic plugs punch the sky, pillars of hard rock. We’ve seen them often from our lower walks, now we’re up alongside them, the great Karamoja plains stretching to the very distant horizon below. Our footpath meets the end of a murram road that will take us, climbing rather laboriously all the way, to Chema again, on the main Kapchorwa road. There’s rain threatening; it’s sweaty and humid as we climb the mountainside.

Crossing the road, we pick up speed now we’re no longer struggling up the hillside. We’re caught by a brief heavy shower and take shelter, but I get home still in my shirtsleeves. We’ve hiked another 13.5 miles (22kms) up and down the escarpment by 400 metres or so.

I feel rejuvenated by getting out and walking for the day. The fact that Alex forgot to bring his phone is just great! He’s less stressed, undisturbed by any of the 54 missed calls he finds when we get home shortly before beer time (my beer time: Alex is teetotal). No doubt almost every one of those calls were unnecessary abrogations of responsibility and decisions now solved by the caller. Everyone relies on my wise son rather than think for themselves: “Tomatoes are finished!” So, as we hike in peace, Alex must arrange a motorbike taxi to go to the market in town. I hope I can arrange that he leaves his phone at home next time too!

****

April 4th, and I’m back in Kenya. Tomorrow I take the ten hour bus ride down to Nairobi, to fly back to England on Tuesday night. I’ve been here four months and fear the European spring chill: my body has changed with age and avoiding 14 winters in the cold north. The other day in Sipi, I was chilly, dressed in two tee shirts, a jersey and bike jacket. It was 19°!

****

On my last day in Uganda, Alex and I hike a mammoth 20 miles (32km) between 5000 and 6000 feet, a massive walk up and down the steep mountains. Like all hikes in Sipi, this one ends with an 800 foot clamber back up the escarpment. Alex calls me a motorbike taxi at the bottom. “No way!” I exclaim. “I’ll finish what I started!” I wave away the boda and we begin the climb. Alex is quietly pleased.

I reckon I’ll skip over Dartmoor at just 1100 feet above sea level!

****

Alex accompanies me to the border by car on a gloriously sunny day. We stop for lunch again with Lillian in her roadside shack. It’s appreciated when a mzungu goes back in Africa: it shows respect. I eat the best chapati and vegetables in weeks.

Across the border, reluctantly saying goodbye to Alex for several months, I change to what’s left of an old Toyota minibus. The door handles don’t work, it’s dented and bent, the screen’s crazed all over, the gearbox is shot – but this is African public transport. Half way back to Kitale the driver decants the remaining passengers into a small Probox taxi: he says it’s not worth his while driving on without a full vehicle.

So we squash into an elbow-poking crush: three women and me in the narrow back seat and two women, a schoolboy and the driver in front. The boy sits ‘inside’ the gear stick on half the driver’s seat. Overloading? Who cares? Not the police, who stand at the roadside to blatantly collect their 50 bob ‘taxes’. (Nearer school fee and holiday times, there’re more checkpoints). The driver doesn’t care either: he’s running a car that’s not owned by him and not maintained until it breaks. He makes his money per passenger.

Often, travel makes me very grateful for what I have… I don’t HAVE to do this, like all the other passengers. For me, it’s part of my story.

This is my last day in Kitale. From tomorrow, just the journey home. All familiar now.

‘Who knows tomorrow?’ goes the old Ghanaian idiom. But the likelihood is that I’ll be back in nine months – to avoid my 15th consecutive winter in the chill, damp north. See you then maybe!

JB

DECEMBER 11th to APRIL 4th 2026

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EPISODE SIX – MARCH 29th

Getting back to East Africa, I understand how the infernal heat of Ghana punished me. But I left Navrongo before the heat increased even more: a week later, it was 40° to 42°. Even as they cut the trees, people tell me how much hotter it is getting. Is there hope? Probably not.

Then a kindergarten ‘world leader’ who believes climate change is fake news, launches a war on enemies he just doesn’t understand, calling them, in his best diplomatic language, ‘demented scumbags’ (takes one to know one). I remember with great admiration my travels amongst the cultural treasures of Iran – now being bombed to rubble by a man who gets his cultural understanding from Hollywood action films.

I’m so glad I saw so much of the world when it seemed so much bigger – and before America started attacking it.

****

I never thought I’d see Nairobi as a clean city. Kenya was one of the countries to lead the way in banning plastic bags – even if every loaf of bread and most foodstuffs are still packaged in plastic. Without the billowing plastic water bags, like those infecting Ghana, the country seems clean. I’d dismissed the ban as a frail effort, but perhaps the publicity about plastic bags has had a psychological effect? At least people understand that plastic is a pollutant.

Pity Kenya doesn’t now concentrate on eradicating single-use plastic bottles, but perhaps even a sovereign African state doesn’t have the money to take on Greed Corp USA, (AKA Coca Cola), that produces the lion’s share of them…

****

Slowly recovering from the excesses of Ghana, it’s time to ride back to Uganda.

At the border, before the great white elephant of a vast immigration hall – nothing more than Chinese bribes and Ugandan hubris – I fall into conversation with Nancy. I must stop and chat; there’s still that cordiality here: a stranger about whom to be curious; welcomes to express. It’s delightful and restores some of the sense of ‘Africa’ that I lost as a largely anonymous outsider in Ghana. Petite, smiling Nancy is in her mid 40s. To my comment on the waste of this vast new border post: “How many teachers could this pay for?” she shrugs with a smile. She inured to the folly of those running her country. She’ll never express an outright opinion: that’s been removed from Ugandans by years of bad dictatorship.

The ride round the mountain is SO familiar now, still a pleasure. The weather’s changing. I’m caught at Bukwo by a torrential shower. The clouds are hovering just above the road as I climb the steep hills, red water coursing down the roadside channels. When it rains here…

Just in time, I pull on waterproofs (which aren’t, of course) so end up with not much more than a wet bum. Then, I’m out into expansive broiling skies.

The next minutes, as the clouds rise again, are magical as I coil through Tulel. Clouds dance and clamber into the deep blue sky. Those below are of many shades, some still filled with rain, others drifting languidly higher, relieved of their weight. It’s beautiful. Magnificent. The roads are steaming ethereally, as if on fire. I’m sweeping and curving along, parting the wisps and wraiths of mist. The views are sparkling after the rain, the banana leaves jewelled in diamonds. Children play in the brown puddles. I’m in Uganda again, and my smile is now instinctive. People wave, children are excited at the roadside; they’ve not yet lost that welcome, the novelty and curiosity about strangers. It’s gone in Ghana, where there’s little thrill at the unusual: they’ve seen it all – on their phones at least.

****

I’ve come to meet Debra from Australia. Three years ago, she visited and became part of the family, like me. She’s a traveller by heart: been everywhere and done everything; taken risks for her life’s story.

Debra and I have advised and helped Alex. We’re delighted with his success. His guesthouse is the most popular in Sipi. Full to bursting yet again, the best marketing – which his competitors don’t understand, is referral by other guests.

Unfortunately, we’ve little time to converse. Debra flew in on Qatar Airways and she has to cut short her trip and hassle to escape, now that bellicose Israel and the demented scumbag have targeted the oil of the Middle East. She gets out on one of the last flights through Doha.

****

A gathering of Alex’s Kapsomin clan was called in March, with members coming from all over eastern Uganda. Alex was asked to address the meeting and spoke passionately about his progressive beliefs: education, especially of girls; lowering the birth rate; abandoning bad cultural practices; respecting one another; working harder; moral behaviour and corruption – all subjects close to his heart.

He was met by a barrage of applause! There and then, it was unanimously decided to sack the current clan chairman, a traditionalist of the old school, and make Alex, just 38, chairman of the clan – a position with moral and judicious responsibility, making judgements on social issues and the first steps in any judicial action.

I’m so proud of Alex! His slow approach, rigorously keeping his integrity intact, brings MUCH more respect and influence than most Ugandans’ rush for instant financial gratification by corrupt means.

****

When it rains in Sipi I want to be somewhere else. It is utterly disgusting: the soil turning in moments to thick, cloying mud.

It came towards the end of an afternoon at Chelel, the clouds rolling in like a blanket, pouring over the mountain slopes and falling into the great yawning valley, soon obscuring the views in chilly fog. Then came a shower for twenty minutes – and a heavy-footed plod home in sticky red mire.

With local boys, we’ve planted another 400 coffee seedlings – (altogether about 1000) – on the lovely lower plot that I bought this year. Next month they’ll plant onions between the young bushes, which help fertilise the young coffee.

The first time I saw growing coffee was in Costa Rica in January 1974. Who’d’ve thought I’d be a coffee plantation owner 52 years later? Well, of course, I’m a coffee planter by proxy, having bought the land for Alex. In the future for which he unusually plans, he has the potential to be a wealthy man who can use that money imaginatively to advance people around him. It’s already bringing work for the young men of Chelel and a market for their manure, seedlings and goods.

I’m relieved to see the investment in farming going so fast. The situation of the hospitality trade in this potentially unstable country is a concern – increasingly so, with unhinged demagogs in charge of the western world, to whom any ‘shithole country’ (his words, not mine) with some oil seems a prize worth attacking. Rumour here has it that he’s threatened the corrupt Ugandan leadership that he ‘will come for them’. Uganda has some untapped oil reserves – and is now drilling in their most famous national park. You wouldn’t believe these people if it wasn’t true…

Land and food will always be needed, especially with the ballooning population of this mad land.

****

Life here can be medieval. The jealousy that is generated when people see one of their own getting ahead is shameful. It’s the result of lousy education and consequent lack of imagination. If you are constantly taught that creativity and imagination are worthless, it withers on the vine. Lack of imagination causes so many here to live in the moment, never to plan, and makes life so cheap that all risks are thoughtlessly taken.

A neighbour comes ranting and shouting in pure envy that Alex has stolen his land. It’s undignified to witness this corrosive jealousy. This anger is caused by the usual family-breaking fact of a man who married several women. Polygamy is still common. The old man who legally sold the land to Alex didn’t consult the other children of the same grandfather – but different grandmothers! If that’s not medieval..?

****

As the rainy season starts, temperatures drop and the sun is less forceful, I begin to get a bit of ennui. I can get weather like this in Devon. Mind you, it may be wet, but it’s still 24° or 25°…

Everyone gets busy, hoeing, planting and sowing. We are no exception: past days have been involved with farming coffee, beans, potatoes and onions – and gardening. The seeds that I brought from Harberton have all germinated: hollyhocks from the Square, marigolds from seeds pinched around the village, sweet Williams and statice from cheap packets and everlasting sweet peas from my own garden.

The guesthouse compound is a terrific sight. Plant a stick here and it grows. Roses, hibiscus, angels’ trumpets, giant geraniums big as bushes, nasturtiums, coffee, camellias, passion fruits, palms, bananas, tropical trees and plants I can’t identify – and the two big Chelum lilies we scavenged from a field on a hike, are both coming into magnificent flower for the first time.

****

I’m proud I can still keep up with someone half my age for 18 miles at about 6000’ altitude! For that’s what Alex and I do between building and farming: keep hiking. I’ll steam along back on Dartmoor at only a few hundred feet above sea level!

We hike across country and on the red dust country roads, through rural communities and small farms.

It’s a fine walk today; we’re off the beaten track and a mzungu is a rare feature here. I’m such a celebrity! I must humour hundreds of small children, racing to the roadside to greet me. Others scatter in fear or hide behind mothers’ skirts, wailing. A group of children gather to interview me: intelligent questions about my white skin, where I’m from, why I’m walking, are there hills and cows where I come from, why are my arms hairy? It’s a delight.

We stop for chai, chapati and beans in a scruffy makeshift cafe and request water here and there, and a couple of disgusting sodas for sugar. We walk happily, free from the strains of home. Alex enjoys this. As an ex runner, he’s happy to keep the pace going and I try to keep up, begging a minute or two under a shady tree now and then.

We walk for seven hours on a warm day – about 33°. The scenery’s fine, the big plains far below. People are happy to see us: many joke and comment, on this lazy Sunday. Today, we walk through a large area that is populated by Alex’s clan – of which he is now chairman! We make regal progress!

We stop to visit a great aunt of Alex’s – a charming, happy old woman, coated now in flour as she grinds maize. There’s a big dob on her nose that matches her curly white hair. She’s so pleased to see Alex and his visitor. When we leave she insists Alex takes some small money because her ‘eggs are finished’ and she must give her visitors a gift.

“Buy some eggs!” she tells Alex. Usually, we dash a few small notes to old ladies, but no, says Alex, this time we are her visitors and custom demands she must present a mark of respect. It used to be just this way in Navrongo. I wonder how much longer it will last here? Longer perhaps, with this dire lack of education and less exposure to the evils of antisocial media…

The next four miles are all uphill. Hard at first, then slowing to a slope that goes on and on.

The first hill is so steep it’s been roughly tarred. A motorbike taxi struggles with two passengers. It stops and the woman on the back, with baby tied behind, gets down to lighten the load. A middle-aged man stays aboard…

We catch them up at the top of the hill. “Huh!” I exclaim derisively to the man sitting complacently on the boda with the driver, “Always the woman who must get down and walk!” The man looks at me as if I’m demented.

“It’s good exercise for her,” he dismisses me.

“Yes, for you too!” I comment with a shake of my head. Does he listen? Do I change anything? No, this is Africa. A poor woman, in middle age, with a grandchild on her back, must plod up the 1:4 hill while the man remains seated, superior in station and ‘Tradition’: the excuse for exploitation largely invented – and maintained – by African men…

****

Hiring a local driver, Alex and I go to Mbale, the ‘big city’, 30 miles below Sipi, to visit the children at school. We miss them. I’m greeted with big excited hugs from Keilah and Jonathan.

We drive to a smart hotel – the Wash and Wills, that sounds more like a laundry – and buy them chicken and chips and pop. Two big bags of treats from the supermarket and the inevitable new shoes for JB, who gets through them at great speed. Fortunately, they love school, yet it is a Spartan life.

I’m amused to see that Keilah has adopted the name Joy on her schoolbooks! How does she know the name of my late mother, I wonder? With JB’s school fleece embroidered: ‘Cheptai J Bean’, I’m having quite an effect in this family.

I’m content to be able to pay back some of the generosity I’ve received around the world, frequently from those who could least afford it.

THIS IS EPISODE FIVE – MARCH 6th

NB. This episode FIVE will appear on your device ABOVE number FOUR. Scroll down to read chronologically

****

I don’t look back as I walk away from my little ruined Navrongo house, in which I slept for the first time in 1998 with such thrill and expectation. A £2 coin, newly minted then, set in the doorstep, reminds me of the date. Crunching over used nappies and plastic, I walk away, largely ignored by so many strangers, between the ugly dross of half finished, unimaginative, stained block bungalows. The story fades.

But I need to be a bit more upbeat and find the positive… I must try to relax a bit. I’ve always said a traveller must leave his values at home. And now I’m doing the opposite!

****

I’m heartened to find just a bit of old Navrongo left, even if it only confirms that it existed in the first place. I have to visit a man in his late 90s to find that vestige of old courtesy, respect for community life and mutual support.

Mr Atiim, is Perry’s father in law. He learned a bit of quaint antique colonial English when he worked down south in the 50s. He’s been a cattle farmer most of his life and has the formality and deep politeness of the old generation I met when I first came to Navrongo.

He’s very happy to see us, presenting us on parting with a cockerel, a mark of respect for a male visitor; the only one of this visit – where I used to get so many.

He has a spot-on memory for the old stories of past times and traditions: tales of beating down the mud to make a road for the first car; pesoas paid for labour; how far people travelled on foot before our modern times when no one walks any more, and digressions into the behaviour and habits of the old town, back before and after independence. Atiim is the last remnant of that generation; the oldest person for many villages around. His memory of ‘being quite grown’ by 1946 may mean he really is close to 100 as he claims.

He lives a couple of miles south, a walk we’ve taken several times over the years. But now there are no fields, no woodland and few trees. It’s hot as hell and twice as ugly. The place holds little attraction. A 100 foot communications mast towers over his house.

****

At Nyangua village I am still remembered: the white man who came and built their school.

The school now has 220 primary pupils and nearby is a JSS, almost certainly the result of the bargaining power enhanced by building their own simple school buildings for themselves with the help of private donors (Bedford Park Rotary Club and me). I’m proud of this basic project. It’s educated 33 years’ of Nyangua children.

At the newer JSS, with 74 pupils – girls slightly outnumbering boys – we meet Vida, the headmistress, as the pupils break for the weekend. In the dust of the schoolyard, she tells them how a mysterious white man caused their school to exist, and here he is come to visit: excitement, applause and exclamations.

Then Clement, one of the three JSS teachers shakes my hand. Clement was one of those boys, then in P4, who sat at the broken desks of that original ruined mud classroom I visited in the early 1990s! He’s now 42, teaching another generation of Nyangua children. It’s a moving moment.

I’m happy today. We WALK the eight miles or so home in the 38° heat and increasing dust.

****

The Harmattan winds that cool Navrongo should happen in November/ December but now, mid-February, we are in the throes of these dust-laden northeasterly winds from the Sahara. What’s happening? You witness Climate Change so closely in Africa.

Few here comprehend the seriousness. They cut trees, build empty houses, waste water, overuse their soil, increase the population limitlessly, ride every inch they used to walk. Here, you witness this slow destruction incrementally. It’s unstoppable. It was always hot, but this is Climate Change in action. Everyone claims that the heat is increasing…

****

It’s market day every third day. I used to enjoy them so much, but with the narrow spaces now filled with the mopeds of women doing their shopping it feels like Morrisons filled with demanding, smelly mopeds in the aisles. It’s good to see so many women riding – something I’ve never seen in East Africa, but I find myself hot, fractious and short tempered. It’s not fair on Wechiga. I’m trying my best now not to see the filth and the unmaintained scruffy houses. Trouble is, it’s every man for himself now. Pretty much like the rest of the world, I suppose, but I witnessed what came before this casual self interest, when people cared for one another, shoulder to shoulder in the face of a much bigger challenge than new material possessions.

Happily, Wechiga stays pretty much his old self, my brother, despite our very different intellectual approaches to life. He’s endlessly sociable to the world. He knows all the familial relationships of who’s who in Navrongo, but he has little pretence, does Wechiga. He is what he is, with simple ambitions, not a lot of education, patient – somehow, poor fellow – with my moodiness; endlessly friendly to all, upholding the values of his parents’ traditions and honest to a fault.

****

Neighbour Itiel comes as power cuts drench us in darkness – rather delightful, but only to me. The boy I knew and liked so much as a 12 year old is now 21 and has grown into a muscular, athletic man perhaps an inch taller than me; a decent, thoughtfully quiet young man studying nursing at the Navrongo School of Nursing. He still plays trumpet in the police band. It makes me smile, having given him his first trumpet! So many memories still…

****

I can’t help pondering the thousands of work hours lost to funerals. Men (mostly men; the women are busy cooking inside the yards) sit about eating and drinking and conversing. They are teachers, civil servants, workers; but funerals of distant relatives take immediate precedence over duty and work. Days of work sacrificed, lessons cancelled, meetings delayed, business rescheduled. And someone’s always at a funeral. Death is a constant companion here. I always found it difficult to accept THIS cultural formality in which people live in squalor and die in splendour, beggaring their families in the process. It’s nothing I’ll change though, so on this one I just keep quiet and nod.

The final straw is that even keli-weli is a poor imitation now; the WONDERFUL Ghana-defining smell that I remember so vividly, as plantain chips fried with pepper and spices in aromatic coconut oil in big pans by the roadside, is now fried in ‘Frytol’, processed vegetable oil. It used to be served in a screw of cement bag paper with a cocktail stick. Now it comes in three plastic bags, and a styrofoam box, with a plastic fork.

Wechiga is taking me to another funeral. There are so many! Our ‘team’ gathers with drummers a mile away, drums and dances at the first house and then we all drive three miles south into a rural area off the road. Too hot to walk, Wechiga has borrowed a derelict motorbike. I’m taking him. The bike has no brakes, no mirrors, no lights and none of the instruments work. The front brake has been removed; looking around, I find this is a very common adaptation on Navrongo motorbikes. (and on return to Kenya, I begin to spot many boda-bodas without even front brake cables) “Oh, we don’t use it! It makes us fall off; we use the downer one!” they tell me. The ‘downer one’ is the inefficient rear brake. (For non-bikers: good practice is 75% front brake, which is more efficient, and 25% rear brake to control any skidding). Few bikes have mirrors; they are commonly removed by the dealer on request. I’m not surprised the hospitals and graveyards are so full…

The ceremony is diverting. Full of rituals and comings and goings between the ‘teams’. The dancing is great but raises dust in our eyes. The drumming and whistling contains elements that for a while say, ‘Africa’, although it’s captioned tee shirts rather than goat skins on the entertainment troupe. The boys dancing are young and muscular, black skin shining. They wear baggy smock trousers, and fling their arms about as they jump in the frenetic spasms of the local dance. Bystanders – all smocked for the occasion – stick dirty banknotes to the sweat of their brows. It’s fun to watch, and it IS a shred of old culture, even if half the audience clutch and scroll their phones.

We’re beneath a twisted baobab and the African sun is sliding down the sky. As it gets a few inches from the horizon I tell Wechiga that not only can I not see in the dark, but we have no headlight anyway! We beg to leave; I can see things will go on another hour, although everyone assures me it’ll be over in fifteen minutes. We ride home unsafely.

****

Another day, another funeral… The ‘tradition’ of this second one is a rather watered down version of war dancing. Based on the old dances, with customary mad costumes, it all feels a bit tongue in cheek, without the serious import it would’ve had a few decades ago. These men have inherited the old bangles, slave bracelets, dead tortoises, oddly shaped branches, even perhaps the woven costumes – but what they haven’t inherited is the depth of meaning all theses things once had. They are going through the motions, laughter barely suppressed, their smiles spoiling the gravity of the occasion. These young men are carpenters, clerks, junior government workers, teachers; they have phones in their pockets as they dance and go to church on Sundays. And put commercial plastic wreaths on the Catholic burial mound…

And it’s not even a real burial, as the body was buried earlier in the Catholic cemetery. “The Catholics have won! The white man brought his tradition and killed ours!” exclaims Wechiga. Goats are ‘sacrificed’, blood flows into calabashes, a clay pot is broken and a fake body in a reed mat carried about. Here, in the family compound are buried only some clothes. I’m glad that Akay, Adamba and Grace are buried at home. Go and bury some clothes for them in the Catholic graveyard if you want!

****

I never imagined I’d be glad to leave Navrongo. The compromises I must make are just too uncomfortable. I used to make these adaptations easily, but not so much now. The squalor of life upsets me; perhaps I just don’t rise to the challenge any more? I mean, I know I CAN adapt, but I don’t want to now! Perhaps I’d forgotten how much adaptation I need to make?

At home life is basic, a bit above subsistence, but only just. There’s no time – or imagination – for beautifying and personalising the home. It’s all bare concrete and twisted tin, mess and scurrying scraggy chickens. It’s simple and crude, this life. And HOT!

****

Wechiga agrees to travel south with me. We’re going by ‘public transport’, taking five days. It’s about 16 hours of extreme discomfort in old minibuses. We stop to see Gladys again: his sister still her effusive, laughing, generous self and I’m happy at least that these two old comrades come through my disappointments unscathed.

****

But finally, I’ve decided there IS something for which I’m too old: travelling by African people’s transport. Time WAS, the cattle truck travel was part of the story; proving I could do it – was as tough and accepting as an African. Maybe that was a fable for myself. 2026 Navrongo has challenged me. My fastidious nature objects to the number of compromises I must make to survive here: the basic squalor of this life, and the effort it takes, the HEAT. Time IS, I can’t stand it, get irritable and grumpy and most likely embarrass poor Wechiga.

****

The final straw is that even keli-weli is a poor imitation now: the wonderful Ghana-defining smell that I remember so vividly, as plantain chips fried with pepper and spices in aromatic coconut oil in big pans by the roadside, is now fried in ‘Frytol’, processed vegetable oil. It used to be served in a screw of cement bag paper with a cocktail stick. Now it comes in three plastic bags and a styrofoam box, with a plastic fork.

We stop the penultimate night 100 yards from the Atlantic beaches. Winneba is a bit down and scruffy; the traffic is a minor irritation and the breeze a delight. The town is not touristic; a low rise place with some old decaying colonial buildings and no attractions except a rather nice (cleaned) beach to the west backed by palms. It’s still 34° and horribly sticky, but the ocean breeze tempers it. I can walk the small town with a smile on my face. Popular on Saturday, it’s fun to drink beer and watch the enjoyment of so many young folks frolicking in rollers of the bath water warm ocean.

And what’s at the very centre of town? The prison! Backing onto Ghana’s huge free range toilet and refuse dump (ie. the beach). The sea is lined by ruins. Where in any other towns in the world would be the most expensive real estate, Ghana puts its slums and rubbish. Accra was always thus, a capital city on the coast, facing inland – pointing its backside at the ocean like so many of its inhabitants. So odd, that (many) white men look upon nature as an inspiring asset while so much of Africa looks upon nature as a nuisance and dumping place. You’ll never see flowers planted for beauty in Africa. If they have no edible value, they’ll certainly not be food for the soul.

****

We wander on Winneba beach in the morning. It’s still hot, but there’s a trifle of breeze as we watch local fishermen straining to haul in nets filled with plastic bottles and a few meek fish.

Then we are at the lorry park; a minibus is just loading the last passengers. We’ve timed it well. We crawl into the back seats.

What follows, the last journey in Ghana, is the worst – in a derelict van which should be scrap. It’s so hugely overloaded that soon we have a puncture as we bounce cross-country.

We wait half an hour. There’s not a tree left to give us shade. Another van is sent. It’s even older. The sliding door wobbles without catches and I must now hang onto a stanchion for my life. The front door only has one hinge and must be heaved into position and slammed energetically in the hope of finding purchase. Later, it won’t open. The screen’s crazed like a map of some mad city (it could be Accra, where we are going). There are no instruments left – they’ve just been ripped out leaving their arteries hanging. The steering wheel is a skeleton without a centre. I can hear the crankshaft crashing around and something clangs loudly underneath. And it’s three seats smaller. We are 26 people. This is an 18-seater. It takes ten shouting minutes to decide that we’ll now be squeezed five across on some rows and three people must crush in alongside the driver. I get a fairly short straw: the conductor’s seat by the flapping side door. Oddly, today, I’m quite amused by all this. Maybe the seaside relaxed me?

It’s a couple of excruciating hours to the outskirts of Accra. There’s a new highway being built, but there’s no planning as to how all the traffic will find its way through the large and extensive roadworks, so it’s just a free for all. Red dust billows.

Sometimes, I imagine what it’d be like to be condemned to live here. Then I count my blessings and appreciate Harberton with its petty concerns even more!

****