DAY 62 WEDNESDAY 8th FEBRUARY 2017. RUSIZI, RWANDA

More of a mixed bag today. The morning was magnificent but by late afternoon I got in a bad mood. You’ll have understood by now that one thing that irritates me is when I feel I am being cheated or ripped off. All my innate stubbornness comes to the fore and I get pissed off! I made the mistake of thinking I might stay at the edge of the large national forest twenty miles from where I am tonight, until I realised that Rwanda is into fleecing the tourists like Uganda. I viewed several hotels and guest houses all of which had cranked up their prices (I left one with a sarcastic shrug, “I don’t want to buy your HOTEL, just a room for the night!” They wanted over £100 for nothing special at all). Another one showed me rooms of much lesser quality than I have used for the past four weeks for double the prices I have paid. Then I saw a bus full of white tourists and I understood that this is the policy where there are captive tourists. To take the 200 metre-long canopy walk – which is just some ropes slung at treetop level, fun to see and do but still just ropes at treetop level – is charged out at £50!! It’s TWO HUNDRED metres long! That’s a pound for about every eight steps you take or £2 a minute! I have done a fine treetop canopy walk with Wechiga in Ghana for about £2.50! A three hour ‘nature walk’ in the national forest is £40. I bet the guide gets about £2.

The result of all this – and then some kid demanded money, as has almost everyone I’ve stopped near today; he got the full brunt of my irritation – was that I rode away angrily, deciding that I’d have to make for Huye, the next town I intend to visit. It was over 60 miles away through the wonderful forest (where I can see as many primates as I would on a £40 walk). Thank goodness, I stopped and told myself that I was acting irrationally (I do sometimes!). I turned in the road and made my way back to the end of the lake and the scruffy towns of Kamembe and Rusizi, (which could be the same place with changed names…) for they were only twenty miles away and I was sure I could find some sort of accommodation here. I have. It’s faded and ratty but the staff are very friendly.

There’s a slight troglodyte feel to the stained hotel, built into the side of a steep valley, my room having its only window under a fifteen foot balcony of the bar above. Right in front, not much more than a couple of hundred yards away, rises the other wooded face of the river valley, with tall houses clambering amongst the trees. Over the small muddy river that is the end of Lake Kivu is a rickety bridge. I am looking at the Democratic (haha) Republic of Congo across from my room. Not far to the left is also the border to Burundi, neither country one that I can safely enter these days. So near yet so far thanks to African politics, corrupt leaders and internecine wars. The tall houses, that look expensive despite the fact that Congo is pretty dark at night, are probably those of the corrupt politicians, ready to be the first to leave and claim they were actually innocent.

*

It was a glorious morning when I left pleasant Kibuye. Sometime overnight, Munvaneza the hotel security guard, had done a magnificent job of washing and polishing my bike. It positively gleamed! He was pleased to be rewarded £3 for his effort. He probably doesn’t earn that in a day. It was cleaner than it’s been since it arrived in that truck from Nairobi. I’m bonding a bit better with it now. It’s still unexciting to ride and far too underpowered, and the seat is terrible, but I am easier with it now. I am so grateful for Rico giving me a pair of handlebars that are exactly the ones on my old African Elephant! One thing I DO appreciate is its lightness. When riding off road it is so lightweight and manoeuvrable. I’m beginning to think I just might keep it for another year. I still want to visit Ethiopia and having invested so much in this little bike, I guess it’d make the journey. A bit slowly, it’s true. I’ve another few weeks to decide. I’m wondering about a two-centre trip next time: southern Africa (Lesotho!) and Kenya/ Ethiopia. We’ll see…

*

It’s very confusing that these fine new roads that sweep and glide through the reshaped hillsides of Rwanda are not actually on the tourist maps on which I am relying for information. I felt completely lost by late morning: the lake was on my right, so I knew I was going south and I knew that when the lake ended I would be at the last bit of the country, but I really couldn’t get much idea of what I was looking at from the colourful but uninformative map in my pocket. However, it was a magnificent ride through the heavily cultivated mountains. At last, about twenty miles later than I expected it, I found the junction that led me to the tip of the lake, Burundi and Congo and, to the left, into the forests and over the hills to Huye. I turned right to see the end of the lake…

Here again were tea estates cloaking the hillsides so prettily. Tea and coffee are Rwanda’s main exports and currency earners. I rode off into one estate and watched many workers pulling at the top green leaves and tossing them into baskets slung from their shoulders. Their multi-coloured clothes made for great views, but as soon as the camera came out, so did a lot of jokes at my expense (by their tone) and the incessant demands for money in the one English phrase known to all, “Give me money!”

I’m finding it difficult to relate with the Rwandans. You have perhaps read that between the lines. Firstly, it’s a matter of communication, for outside tourist areas few people speak even French, let alone English. Then there’s the matter of everyone seeing me as a source of money in this Francophone country. Whenever I do stop and try to engage, hands come out palm up and demands – literally demands – are made: “Give me money.” After a time, it begins to rankle. As I ride everyone is ready to return my smile and give me thumbs-up, but if I stop, so many of them demand money… Of course, I generalise, as I have spoken with many charming folks too, but those who speak English are, of course, educated, and the educated don’t demand alms… It’s making me miss the Ugandans, almost universally charming and polite, with pride that’d never stoop to pointless begging, like almost all of ex-British colonial Africa but so familiar in every French African country I have toured. I have been thinking of returning to Uganda despite the driving! I did like that country. I have to get back to Kenya eventually and I feel that riding right round Lake Victoria might be tedious and rather flat. Well, doubtless I will make the decision on a whim as always!

*

There’s a genocide memorial in just about every village and town through which I pass. Maybe they serve to remind the populous of the terrible events and keep any repetition at bay. It impresses on me just how widespread the carnage must have been, for some of these memorials are in villages that must have populations of mere hundreds… Imagine the horror. It’s difficult. These people were neighbours, colleagues, schoolmates. Suddenly they became enemies to be annihilated, bludgeoned, stabbed, burned to death in churches. It is said that children as young as ten took part in the murders. Many of the people I pass on the road; who wave and give me thumbs-up, are murderers, and killed their friends and neighbours, defenceless children, terrified innocent women and weak old people. Mass graves are to be found outside almost every village and town. It’s a sobering reflection on mankind.

I asked amusing Renee, the young man who’s been looking after me since I found this somewhat grim hotel, where he’s from, for he has a narrow, ascetic face and a tall skinny frame. Many Rwandans are noticeable by their very small stature – most of them reach my shoulder at most – and squarish faces. “Ah, we have different tribes,” he explained. “We have Batwa (pigmy), and Hutu and Tutsi… I am Tutsi.” It was, generally, the Hutus who slaughtered the Tutsis in the genocide. Renee is, I suppose, young enough to have been no more than a baby during the 1994 rampage that reduced the population by about a fifth in a little over three months. He must have escaped.

It was Renee, with his rather earnest enthusiasm at helping a real foreign guest, that persuaded me to search no further tonight. He gushes with eagerness to help in a refreshing manner. By staying here I can still enjoy the ride through the national forest tomorrow, even if I won’t be partaking the canopy walk or guided tours. In the few miles I rode in the forest this afternoon, I saw large numbers of monkeys! And the canopy walk’s a bit like standing on a hill anyway! I’ll ride over a lot of hills tomorrow on my way eastwards.

Funny how one person or event can make the difference. Young Renee, in his almost pathetic desire to help, has made the evening better. “What do I have to do round here to get some warm water?” I asked before supper. He had forgotten to turn on the water heater. Several times over my not very memorable tilapia supper he gave me updates, following me to my room later and pushing into the bathroom to run the shower tap to prove that I could now have a hot (warm!) shower. You can’t remain disgruntled in the face of such ardent zeal!

DAY 63 THURSDAY 9th FEBRUARY 2017. HUYE, RWANDA

Oh dear, I’m on the slippery slope. Today I started my first beer before five o’clock, but only so that Sandrine, the lovely and conscientious server can go home earlier to her little boy. She insists that she must stay until my supper is served as she’s the only one here who can speak some English and I might get a bad impression. I tried to explain that I am the most flexible guest but to no avail. It’s her job – her duty – to make sure I am looked after. Sandrine is tall and slender and the first Burundian I have knowingly met. She’s very charming.

*

It took me almost six hours to ride from Kamembe to Huye, Rwanda’s second city; well, it’s not much more than a town really. The distance was a mere 75 miles, but the road was spellbindingly lovely. It passed through the extensive mountain tropical forest and climbed up to about 2500 metres, curving and winding amongst more impressive piece of road building. Rwanda is certainly a place of scenic delights. This was the best ride yet, over and through all that incredibly abundant greenness. I stopped often to gaze across the vast density of it all. Plenty of L’Hoest monkeys, with their white chin beards played and groomed by the road, not very concerned about the piki-piki rider that sometimes stopped to watch. Sadly, the chimpanzees were rather more shy. Apparently, you do sometimes see them from this road, so said John, with whom I chatted for some time at the park visitor centre.

John was driving and guiding a family of Americans, their tens of thousands’ of dollar holiday perhaps making up for some of the paucity of mine, in Government revenue. I spotted their receipt for US$240 on the book in front of the park officer for their brief canopy walk. John was more in tune with my form of travelling, it seemed, comprehending that I was as likely to see animals from the road as from an expensive guided walk!

Of course, my conversation with John was FAR more valuable to me than any guided excursions, even if we’d spotted chimpanzees at 200 metres! John is a Tutsi by birth and opened my eyes to so much I have been seeing – as he waited for his rich clients. “We are no longer Hutu and Tutsi,” he said, “just Rwandans. What happened must never happen again. You are right, the memorials you see are to remind us…”

Rwanda is very impressive in many ways. They suffered a terrible tragic, horrific event, and they have faced it down: are still facing it down. John gives much credit to the president, Paul Kagame, who’s been in power for 14 years. He is astonishingly advanced in his social politics. “On the last Saturday in every month we have Umuganda when everyone must take part in community activity from 8 until 11! You MUST do it. Even the President, if he is in the country, he takes part. At the least, one member of your family must be seen there. You must have a very good excuse not to attend: maybe you have to take someone to the airport or something, but if you are found driving about without a good reason, you’ll be fined by the community! And when you’ve been to the airport, you must stay there and join the activity before you go home again. We clean the streets, pick up rubbish and those things. Then, and this is even more important that you attend, we hold meetings; meetings in the community. We sit together and we discuss our problems: ‘I have a problem with this man…’, ‘there are difficulties with these land issues’… We discuss it together. We must never be Hutus and Tutsis against each other again. We settle our differences. And each month, if he is in the country, the President will visit a different district and community. It is announced and you must be there -maybe in the local stadium, or the mayor will choose some big place – unless you are unable and can have a good reason. The President, he comes and he asks the people, ‘have you any problems?’ And there’s a microphone, so you say, ’yes, I have a problem with this man… He is claiming my land!’ The President, he will ask, ‘have you spoken with your chief?’ ’Yes,’ replies the villager, ‘I have, but nothing has been done!’ Then the President will call on the chief to stand and explain! And if there’s no satisfaction, he will say, ‘very well, this will be investigated from Kigale!’ Also, the police, the army, they will help needy people. If the community says ‘this old man has no house’, or this old woman’s place is falling down and she has no children to help’, the army or the police, they’ll go and build a house even!”

As to the wonderful cleanliness (SO much cleaner than my own disgusting, litter-smothered land), it’s the responsibility of bus drivers, if they see a passenger throw a plastic bottle or rubbish from the window of his bus, to stop and make the passenger retrieve the discarded items. Wow, we could do with some of this imagination from our government.

Africa has always needed benevolent despots. Maybe here it has one? One can only hope he doesn’t continue until he’s 94, like other well known criminals, as he’s only in his late-fifties… Then in April, the anniversary of the atrocities in 1994, the whole country shuts down in commemoration. “For some people the memory is too strong and they leave the country,” said John. “April is a very quiet time for us. We remember. There were even small children killing. A small child killed his mother because she was a Tutsi. His father was Hutu and the boy sided with him…”

That child will be in his mid-thirties now, with children of his own. How can anyone live with that memory..?

My conversation with John, cut short at last by the return of his clients who’d looked at the tops of trees for £50 each, not into the depths of the human psyche as we had for that half an hour, was SO very valuable to my understanding of this small country and its recent appalling history. To have this trauma, this unimaginably horrible hatred, this incomprehensible tragedy – and to FACE it! I have so much respect for what I am witnessing in Rwanda. It even softens, to some extent, my dislike of ‘give me money’; but were I to attend one of the President’s public meetings, I feel I might out up my hand and ask him why, if he has created one of the cleanest countries it’s ever been my pleasure to travel in, he can’t stop the endemic, habitual demands for money from white-skinned people? “Yes,” said John, reflectively, “family members even killed one another. We must never let it be forgotten. It must never happen again. Our president is doing well. We respect him for his work in bringing us together. Those memorials you say you see everywhere; it happened in every community, however small…”

*

Tonight it was the turn of Sandrine, a Burundian refugee, to tell me some of her story. Her father was an army officer – on currently the ‘wrong side’ in little Burundi, where a few ruling families feud and murder for control in the sadly African fashion. Sandrine and her baby boy (father typically absent) and her brother managed to escape to a refugee camp here in Rwanda. Her father is somewhere in Kampala. (I passed a huge refugee camp on the way here this afternoon – but THAT one is for Congolese refugees…). Sandrine began to study medicine at the university in Bujumbura, but what with babies and politics, she has ended up working in a cheap hotel in Huye, Rwanda. “Oh, when I go home and I have nothing for my son, I sometimes cry. But what can I do? There’s nothing at home in Burundi… Here they pay me 25,000 Francs – a MONTH! (£25) But at home, what can I do? In the evening I must pay 1500 for a moto to get to my home. It’s far! And the ‘padron’ of this hotel, she give me sometimes money for the fare but not always. In the morning is OK, I can get the bus, 500 Francs… I was working in a job in the American embassy in my country. A lady, she saw me and saw I was good to working with customer relations, and she say, maybe I can get you work there. But then we had to leave. Men would come to my house and beat us wth sticks, my brother and me, because our father was gone away…”

Half the world lives with these dilemmas.

*

Up in the high mountains, I was riding on the Congo/ Nile river watershed. For Nyunguwe park claims to be the REAL source of the Nile. Water falling on the western slopes flows into the Congo and the Atlantic, on the east to the Nile and the Mediterranean. Seventy per cent of the rain that falls on Rwanda, falls on the Nyuguwe mountains, that reach to roughly 2500 metres in altitude. About two metres a year falls. Today, small localised showers could be seen all around, just a cloud at a time, fortunately, none of them over me! Scientists believe that these mountains were one of the only places in Africa to remain green during the last ice age, and thus the area has an impressive diversity of species and flora. Interestingly, begonias and impatiens are indigenous here, those delicate popular British garden annuals. There are also 140 species of orchids in this lovely park area.

*

All in all, a very satisfactory day! I reached Huye, very relaxed, about four in the afternoon, and set about looking for a place to stay. I tried a couple of smart hotels on the main street through the small town, both asking £25 or £30 and then wandered off, as is my wont, into a pleasant suburban side street. Here I found signs to guest houses and soon pulled into one: a place of newly built round houses. Sandrine welcomed me. The price is a very modest £10 for an en suite large semi-circular room (where to put the lavatory pan hasn’t been well answered in this configuration!). The place appears new and unoccupied. There’s a restaurant that conjured up some grilled rabbit (!) and I ate early so that Sandrine could get home to her child. Now it’s only 8.20 and I reckon there’s not much to do but go to bed!

*

Wherever I ride in Rwanda I cause a stir. It’s odd this, for there are tourists in Rwanda these days, although I have yet to see any independent travellers, only those on organised tours, even if just a family with their own guide. Not many seem to try to see Rwanda on their own. I realised that being on the motorbike makes me very accessible to the people, especially with my open-face helmet. I become a sort of public property, so unlike the average tourists, seeing Africa through glass and being seen, detached, behind that same glass. I am very much part of the landscape, exclaimed over as I pass, waved at, thumbs-upped at, yelled at, pointed out to babies and smaller siblings, commented upon and inspected when I stop in villages for tea. While it can get wearing, it’s fun too to be such public property, a representative of the mzungu race at close quarters. It’s very immediate and, since I love to try to understand my fellow people of other cultures so much, it’s a wonderful, immersive, immediate, intense and sometimes funny way to travel! I’m happy I’m not seeing the world through a tinted window but am out there in the dust, sun, rain, stinks, weather and mobs and multitudes.

DAY 64 FRIDAY 10th FEBRUARY 2017. MUHANGA, RWANDA

A cultural day, today: an ethnographic museum, the last King’s Palace museum and the National Art Gallery. What’s remarkable is that outside South Africa, there are so few museums on this continent south of the Sahara, and certainly almost no ‘museum culture’. There are some faded old places from colonial days here and there, generally looking very sorry for themselves with total lack of investment, but few others, and new museums are a rarity indeed. But all these Rwandan are initiatives from the past 15 years or so.

The Rwanda ethnographic museum has an impressive collection of the culture that was washed away by the TV and Coca Cola generation. It made me think, looking at those quaint old black and white photographs of people dressed in goat skins, beaded loin cloths, traditional headdresses, with braceletted arms, spears and all the traditional accoutrements, now totally gone except for tourist performances – it made me think that the later photographs were taken within my lifetime… Older ones dated from the early part of the 20th century, but there were a lot from the 1950s too. It’s like when I watch old Ealing Comedies: those whimsical kids in shorts, pudding basin haircuts and school caps could have been me. I don’t FEEL that old! A recreation of a chief’s hut and a fine collection of iron spearheads from the 18th and 19th centuries were the items that most impressed me. That woven grass and reed hut, so beautifully constructed, would have been seen in villages within my lifetime. How Africa has changed; all that tradition and culture wiped away by exposure to the cheap cultural and material values of American media now so prevalent. Of course, those times weren’t all good and cosy, much of that life was arduous, cruel and harsh, life expectancy short, disease rampant. Trouble is, in Africa, it still is, and it’s not improved by the aspirations created by the new world view people now have. Every day I tell people that unemployment is a world problem, not just – as everyone thinks – a Rwandan or Ugandan one. “Oh, in your country there’s work..!” I hear this every day…

*

The king’s palace in Nyanza is actually a rather ugly 1930s bungalow – with some fine local art decorations on fireplaces and friezes. On a hilltop, it must have been pretty impressive to those in the mud and grass huts around. Until, that is, the king went on visits to Belgium and came back realising that his palace was a mere colonial style bungalow. So he started to build a fine hilltop villa with balconies, terraces, sweeping staircases, terrazzo floors and all the rest. Unfortunately he died before it was completed and his son, the last king, who ended up scarpering to USA leaving a republic, never lived there either. Now that’s the national art museum, filled with a worthy but not very inspiring collection of ‘contemporary art’ from the region, derivative and not very African.

Behind the palace bungalow is the traditional palace, a recreation of the previous structures, magnificent domes of straw and intricately woven sticks and wicker. Lined with fabulous grass mats and adhering to age old traditional designs, THIS palace was impressive! So too were the royal cattle, a herd of cows with extraordinary horns a metre or more long, docile animals that seemed to like to have their heads scratched – but they are rather pampered beasts in the now museum compound.

*

I tried to visit two large genocide memorials today, one near the King’s palace and one on the side of the road, but on university grounds in Huye. In both cases I was stopped because I hadn’t got a ‘permit’, and getting one involved a great deal of trouble. What’s the point, I wondered – completely vainly to fairly basically educated security guards – of having a memorial if I am not allowed to visit it? Sometimes Africa can be so illogical.

*

So, after a flask of African tea on a smart hotel balcony, I rode north towards the capital, Kigale. But by four o’clock I realised that at the average speeds I ride here I’d still have a couple of hours to plod along on the curling mountain roads, so I decided to stop here in Muhanga, a small town that sprawls along a few ridges of the terraced mountainsides. It’s not very attractive, but there were various options for accommodation. I found a bizarre place tonight. It’s a multi-storey, shiny, mirror-glass place that seems to be an office block and supermarket. But instead of offices there are small hotel suites. I’m on the second floor overlooking the valley and have a sort of sitting room, bedroom, bathroom and enclosed balcony – that seem like they should be offices. But I have a first tonight! My £30 room costs me £15! That’s impressive, a 50% discount – or ’promotion’ as the quietly charming Pacifique described his reduction. Round the back, next to the supermarket, is a bar and restaurant and the whole place seems to have Catholic overtones of some sort and there are a great number of nuns visible about town too. It’s all a bit of a mystery, but who cares? It’s cheap and quite comfortable and the Turbo King is chilled.

There’s a middle-aged French couple staying here tonight. We all agreed that we had seen almost no independent travellers here in Rwanda or even Uganda. Funnily enough, I spotted their bicycles in the passageway of the hotel in Fort Portal a couple of weeks ago. They also bargained a half-price deal, but they managed it with a nun and that must be more of an achievement than my agreement with Pacifique! Beating a catholic nun down to 50% is momentous! We chatted for a bit over our suppers and I found them to be Africa enthusiasts, with a special place in their affections for Lesotho. Cycling there must be even more extreme than on these mountains. They are heading towards the lovely road through the forest that I so enjoyed two days ago. On bicycles it will be hard but wonderful, to experience the peace and calm of that landscape. Laughing, they agreed that they too will enjoy the ‘canopy walk’ by standing on the side of the shelf road and will get enough forest walking with their bicycles. You bet they will. That road climbs for tens of miles.

How I have been enjoying the cleanliness of this fine small country. It is so refreshing not to see blowing litter, plastic bottles, rusting cars, dereliction and dirt. People even care for the verges by their small houses, sometimes even to planting a little formal garden of clipped and topiaried shrubs. There’s been a government policy to replace all mud and thatch dwellings, which deteriorate quickly and are fire hazards, causing poverty and suffering. Everywhere are new zinc or pantiled roofs and poor but neat dwellings. The roads are generally excellent, the traffic light, disciplined, and courteous, the police apparently uncorrupt, vehicles kept to a standard, all the motorbike taxis licensed and their passengers helmeted. Traffic police are visible – I’ve been stopped just twice as they don’t usually bother with me. It’s relaxing to ride here. It doesn’t feel like Africa.

*

Conscientious Sandrine knocked on my door at 7.09 this morning to ask how my night had been. To my mind, at 7.09, it still was… Twenty minutes later she declared with another knock that my breakfast was waiting – the breakfast I thought I’d ordered for 8.15 to 8.30. Oh well, it IS her third language. So it’s been a long day. Actually, the night was stiflingly hot under an overweight duvet and sleep was intermittent. Yawning away at 8.30, there’s a lot to be said for fresh air, sunshine and complete lack of stress for a healthy life!

DAY 65 SATURDAY 11th FEBRUARY 2017. KIGALE, RWANDA

I’m not at all sure what to make of Kigale, Rwanda’s small capital city, a place of about 1.5 million, spread over a steep ridge and the surrounding hills. In some ways it is so unlike any African city I have seen; in others it could be on no other continent. There’s evidence of astonishing investment, tall modern buildings and an international feel (banks making a LOT of money of course), but at the same time I am constantly importuned by traders, touts and beggars. There are many trees and public gardens and neat roundabouts covered by clipped grass, smooth streets, quiet traffic; but at the same time you cannot walk on half the pavements because they constantly change level, have elephant traps in them and are covered in goods for sale. Traffic stops at zebra crossings – that’s amazing! People are well dressed and enjoying smart shopping malls and tidy coffee shops; but at the same time the street outside is being dug up by legions of poorly paid workers who are carried away crammed in the back of a truck. People are somewhat remote and aloof; but at the same time service is good and professional. There are policemen and women on guard tonight every block or so, cradling their guns; and at the same time I feel completely relaxed about my personal safety.

It’s so funny that all my friends were so worried at my intention to tour Rwanda – about which the world knows only one thing… Thanks to that horror, I am probably in the safest city in Africa! It’s probably safer than Totnes this Saturday night; it’s certainly quieter and less drunkenly rowdy (imagine a British town or city where the strong beer is 70p a bottle! It doesn’t bear thinking about).

So I have to reserve my judgement; my atmosphere metre is swinging wildly: irritated by touts and pan-handlers, impressed by the safety, absolute cleanliness (FAR cleaner than any town or city in England or Europe), and by the calmness but a bit at a loss with the distance and reserve of the people, for this is very unlike Africa.

*

It’s been a sociable day for once. This morning I was late getting on the road, well, I only had 50 kilometres to ride anyway. I chatted to Tija and Titol, the French couple for an hour and a half before I got on the road. It was fun to meet them and find a common love for Africa in general and Lesotho in particular. Also it was fun to find that we are all of an age: Tija is 67 like me and Titol her husband, 71. And they are bicycling over the Rwandan mountains, having started out in Ethiopia in late October. We shared a lot of enthusiasms and attitudes, not least the fact that old age is a mental condition, the only proviso being that you have to remain healthy, but then, people like Tija, Titol and I do exactly that! We challenge ourselves and refuse to grow old in attitude. Again, I must quote a friend, who from the age of his mid-forties, used to say, “Oh, I’m too old for that..!” and died aged 63, perhaps because he was old enough? There are some journeys that really worry me before I begin them, especially if they are likely to be physically tough, but I know that the rewards are conversely satisfying when I get to the other side. I hope I’ll meet Tija and Titol again one day on their farm near Nimes! Who knows? I have passed SO many ships in the night on my endless footloose travels…

In the afternoon I felt I had to exit the African street life for an hour or so, and stepped into a smart international coffee shop, the sort of place that only the well off middle classes of Kigale and foreigners can afford to frequent. I was joined by Ivan Gonzales, as Mexican as his surname, but not his given name suggests. A cheerful fellow, with some apprehension of going towards his 30th birthday, a significant and serious landmark in Mexico, he told me. He’s doing a Masters degree at a university in Germany in some sort of development and community work, having worked in the field for a number of years. His university sent him to the Eastern Cape for three months (Cape Town area) and now to Kigale for some weeks. Then he goes back to Germany for his second semester. We had a pleasant hour. The last time, well, the only time, I was in Mexico was in 1973, about 15 years before he was even born! “Eh! That was a different Mexico!” he exclaimed. Sometimes it’s impossible not to realise that I am now a senior citizen travelling the world! But who cares? I am still doing it with the same gusto I did when I was approaching 30. I was able to assure him that the early 60s is perhaps the best period of life! That amused him.

*

Finding my rather down-market place to sleep tonight was easy, as Tija and Titol told me to look for this place as I climbed the last hill to Kigale centre. It’s a bit basic but it is only a few hundred metres from the central part of the city, an easy walk up the hill. At £15 I can’t complain even if the decor leaves a lot to be desired and the room’s a bit of a cell. The Turbo King is chilled and the goat kebabs remarkably tender and if I keep the bathroom door shut the aroma of drains won’t impinge. The manager kindly insisted that I bring my bike under the yard shelter amongst the tables and chairs (empty but for me, the only other clients watching – inevitably – Manchester United play Watford on the loud TV in the bar). No doubt my breakfast will be taken next to my bike, as I am writing now as a shower falls. It’s been gathering humidly all day but I am delighted when it rains as I drink my beers. It probably means it’ll dawn sunny again tomorrow: another unknown day in Africa.

In Rwanda the bill is always brought to the table in a small hand-carved wooden, decorated lidded box, a nice touch.

DAY 58 SATURDAY 4th FEBRUARY 2017. KABALE, UGANDA

It’s a colourful event, this wedding that’s taking place in the hotel garden, everyone decked out in their finest, which in Africa is always a glittering rainbow selection. It’s 7.15 now and guests are beginning to leave but the music pounds on. They had a fine day for it up here in the mountains anyway. I had a fine day too; a spectacular ride into just about the farthest corner of the country. It’s the same way I went yesterday, only I continued right over the ranges today. So lovely was it, that I might even go that way again tomorrow if it’s another sunny day. I can go to Rwanda by a short but busy and boring road, or that longer way over the passes. If it’s sunny, I’ll go over the top.

The road was magnificent, sweeping this way and that over the intensely cultivated heights, fields and terraces to the very tops of the hills. It’s a fine example of road engineering too, in places almost equal with the roads of Lesotho. In parts, whole sides of the mountain had been re-sculpted dramatically. I’ve only seen such intense terraced cultivation in the Philippines and Bali, where, of course, it’s been developed into a wonderful scenic art form.

It was almost ten thirty before it was warm enough to start out, my breath condensing in the chill mountain air. It was certainly a morning, when I awoke at eight, to get back under the blanket for half an hour more. All day the distances were hazed atmospherically, the slopes sweeping down from my road into the plunging depths, every acre cultivated or dotted with homesteads: collections of rusty zinc and home baked clay bricks, usually unfinished. The roadsides of Uganda are peppered with small smoking brick kilns, heaps of bricks piled up about ten feet high with small tunnels at ground level for the fires. It’s a seasonal work and carried on near the roadsides for the obvious reason that there the bricks can be easily sold. I also notice, all across the country, the number of men sitting atop heaps of stones with hammers, breaking stones for sale, or sifting sand from roadside embankments. In this near-poverty economy, you make what you can, how you can. The pure effort that is expended all over Africa, doing things that we in the ‘developed’ world take for granted will be done by machines, is breathtaking. I see thousand upon thousands of people carrying water, day in day out, usually in yellow twenty litre jerrycans. And I don’t know the last time you lifted a twenty litre jerrycan of water? I did it two days ago. And I can assure you, it is HEAVY. I see slight women, young girls, even children – admittedly not with twenty litres, but often with at least five or ten – lugging water up mountainsides such that you or I would blanche at the very concept. But this is Africa – the real world; how most people outside our privileged existence cope…

I say it again: thank god I don’t have to live thus. I can come, exclaim, comprehend – and leave again to my easy existence in which I can turn on a tap – indoors! – and hot or cold water comes out almost 100% of the time. No mountains to climb in slippery mud; no boreholes to pump laboriously; no fires to tend to heat a sooty pan of water; no firewood to collect on mountainsides and carry home for that purpose. Just turn the tap… Clean, potable water. Think of that next time you turn the tap. Most of the world – MOST OF THE WORLD – has to carry water.

*

The wedding DJ signed off at 7.30 and all is relatively quiet now, the tents and gazebos dark, the sparkly bridal arches done for the day, guests dispersing. Someone will have a large bill..! Now the bar fire is lit, inevitable football from England – undoubtedly our biggest national export to the world – blares in the corner, tribal, partisan chanting from – I think, but haven’t really the commitment to find out – Chelsea, like an atmosphere track to any Saturday evening in Africa.

*

On my return from the mountain roads, I relaxed for a time at the coffee bar at the bottom of the hill, knowing that the wedding would be in full, noisy celebration up on my airy hill beside the golf course. Today I drank my coffee alone, my Kingston on Thames acquaintance of yesterday being absent. When we spoke yesterday he told me that he attended Harvard at the same time as Barack Obama. “Oh yes, I met him. He used to look out for the East African students. His father was from the Luo people you know, so he used to look for us, as some of us had Luo blood too and he was so interested in his heritage.”

“So what brought you back to Uganda?” I asked.

“My father died in twenty fourteen and I had to come back to sort out the inheritance. It’s amazing in Africa how people behave at that time, even paying lawyers to write false documents…” His father was one of the founding members of the parliament at independence in 1962 and a minister in the early government, although my acquaintance (whose name I omitted to get) admits that Uganda didn’t embrace independence very well, “We were complacent. Lazy…” His opinion of African politicians was low: self-interested, corrupt, arrogant and incompetent. The Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni has maintained power since 1986, thanks of course to widespread intimidation, voter disenfranchisement, fraud and violence – the African political norm, except, I must claim on behalf of my Ghanaian brothers and family, in Ghana, a beacon of – relative – democracy on this continent. Democracy is largely a sham on this continent. Mind you, look what happens when you accept democracy: Brexit and Trump. That’s the problem with democracy – idiots have a vote equal to the informed…

*

An enjoyable day. I like this half-decent hotel and feel relaxed here. I’ll leave quite reluctantly, but there’s not much to keep me here longer. Maybe I’ll find another haven in the next stopping place.

DAY 59 SUNDAY 5th FEBRUARY 2017. GISENYI, RWANDA

It’s still faintly nerve-wracking, entering a new country, even if I’ve done it 96 times before! I never know quite what to expect and have my atmosphere meter turned up to full sensitivity. Different cultures, new languages, diverse customs, diverging expectations – starting again just when you’ve got accustomed to the neighbours.

First impressions of Rwanda are overwhelmingly positive! I don’t remember EVER being accosted at a border post by a personable young official of the tourism department and given no less than nine brochures, a short introduction and an official welcome. For that is just what Marechal is employed to do: spot an incoming tourist at the quiet border post and make him feel welcome and comfortable. VERY impressive. It suggests a degree of honesty that is extremely unusual – for Rwanda is known to the world by the hideous events of 1994. Rather than try to hide that horror, the nation has faced it, reconciled itself and admits culpability, and in facing it, is making very positive moves to try to change the attitudes of the world to this tiny country. “We see you as ambassadors for us! Please go home and tell your friends that Rwanda is a friendly and beautiful place!” exclaimed Marechal, the tall, slim tourist representative. If my first impressions prove correct, I am hereby doing just that! My impression of this small, landlocked country in the centre of Africa (880 miles to the Indian Ocean, 1250 to the Atlantic) is – already – open, honest, pragmatic, mature and cheerfully friendly, if the number of thumbs-ups and waves signifies anything. The tourist literature is frank about the genocide; there are memorials everywhere and nothing is hidden. It’s impressing me in much the same way as Nelson Mandela and his Truth and Reconciliation Commission did in South Africa. Sometimes, uncomfortable as it may be, you have to face your own history and admit the wrongs perpetrated. This seems to me so much more mature and honest than so-called ‘apologies’ for wrongs committed by previous generations, that preoccupy so many nations. Within hours Rwanda has gained my profound respect, not a bad achievement.

*

The day was sunny and lovely, the sun blasting through heavy mountain mists into my slightly jaded bedroom at the White Horse Inn in Kabale, where for some reason breakfast is served on tea plates. Try eating an egg on toast – well, two actually – from a tea plate! African has such amusing gaps in its style! As I topped up the bike’s oil and attended to the chain I listened to a ghastly racket emanating from a nearby public room of the hotel. Worship takes some strange forms… The noise was terrible! Utterly flat, out if tune and toneless chanting from a male voice and some equally horrible female ones, all amplified. “Whatever’s going on?” I asked the polite receptionist as I paid my bill (£50 for my three pleasant nights).

“Oh, it’s every Sunday. They come for two hours. They are called ‘Oasis of Love’,” with an almost imperceptible shrug of dismissal, “they hope they will get some donors…” His smile was discreet.

“So it’s business!” I commented, cynically. The receptionist just smiled wryly and made no comment. So much of what claims to be religion in Africa is just money-raising ventures. You have only to see the huge posters for the American charismatic preachers to know that. Any god that might be up there would have had her fingers in her ears this morning, listening to the cacophony from the White Horse Inn, Kabale. I was happy to put my ear plugs in and ride away into the peace of the magnificent mountains, where for the third day running I rode that wonderful sweeping road high over the passes, gazing down at vistas that seemed limitless, hazed by the mists below, and then through lush forests and great waving stands of bamboo over the heights. I must have been riding at eight or nine thousand feet at least as I crossed over and began the long twisting descent into the last valley of Uganda, where the huge volcanoes of the Uganda/ Rwanda/ Congo border rise skywards to over 4000 metres, one of Africa’s highest ranges. It was glorious, and no hardship to see it all for the third day running.

Being Sunday, everywhere I rode, the populace walked the roadside, dolled up to the nines in their Sunday best, colourful, flashy and gaudy – but magnificent in the sheer style that even village Africa can present for an occasion. Men wore ill-fitting western suits, secondhand from the bundles that our charity shops reject; children looked charming but stifled in clean Sunday dresses and shirts. Across the border in Rwanda, the numbers of people were even more extreme, and on my way to Gisenyi I seldom was without roadside pedestrians. I know, because I was searching for a place to piss! I didn’t find one…

*

Descending the curls and curves of the fine road towards Kisoro, the last part of Uganda again, I met the first European bike travellers I have bumped into, Mary and Jonathan from Ireland. Jonathan had a slow front puncture on his 500cc Honda and stopped every few miles to refill it – with a motorised pump from his vast luggage. Both of them rode 500cc Hondas, loaded with everything you can imagine on a trans-Africa expedition and no doubt a lot you can’t! They left Ireland in October and have ridden down through Egypt and Ethiopia, making their way to South Africa eventually. Their bikes must have weighed double their dry weight. I looked at my two small part-filled cloth panniers that weigh about ten kilos and wondered what it must be like to ride a bike so heavy. I’ve got it down to an art now, I admit, but to lug all that ‘stuff’ about, to care for it, load and unload, keep it secure. Oh boy! I’m happy I have learned THAT lesson. We crossed the border together but I didn’t see them again as I stopped to relax and enjoy (really good!) African tea – milk and water mixed and boiled together and spiced with ginger and sometimes cinnamon – and to chat with Marechal and then to amble on. They had an appointment tomorrow with some extremely expensive gorillas and had no time to relax and meet the people. They’ll get an hour with the gorillas for their £500; I get endless conversation with Rwandans for nothing. Each to their own of course.

*

My first impressions of this small country are remarkable. I feel tonight as if I am staying next to one of the Italian lakes, although in fact, across the road from my guest house window is Lake Kivu, a long convoluted lake between the Congo and Rwanda. It’s an inland sea of a sort, with sandy beaches and resorts. But my impressions…

Rwanda is so CLEAN! The government has BANNED plastic bags, the ‘flowers of Africa’! The streets and fields are tidy and well kept; traffic is disciplined and no driver has tried to kill me since I entered the country, unlike the two or three an hour who seem set on that in Uganda. People are quiet, respectful and very friendly – as I wrote, so many waved and gave me a thumbs up that it was like riding in Lesotho. It’s so orderly and calm it’s not like being in Africa. And I admit, it’s a relaxing change! And then there was Marechal, welcoming me to his nation, hoping, quite genuinely, that I will go away and expound upon its pleasures.

Maybe the shock of the events of 1994 have left this orderliness and mutual respect behind? For the populous to rise up in a frenzy of murder and killing must leave its psychological mark deeply ingrained, when sanity returns. I am SO interested to investigate this over the next few days, for I shall – inevitably – visit various memorials and testaments to the extraordinary horror of half the people rising in absolute blood lust and massacring members of the other half in the foulest, most obscene manner imaginable. Over a million people – a fifth of the population – were butchered in just 100 days, men, women, children, priests, babies, leaders, cleaners, fishermen, farmers, shopkeepers, waiters, office workers – utterly indiscriminately, by their neighbours, compatriots, and co-workers as the world looked on and kept its distance.

*

One of the surprises of Rwanda is to have to cross the road and ride again on the right side of the road, for Rwanda was a Belgian colony – and they must have been one the worst of all the colonial powers, with Germany coming in a close second, remembering the atrocities they committed in Namibia in 1907 that I discovered a year ago, when they massacred a large chunk of the population in revenge for an uprising, a happening that is said to have been the model for Hitler’s ‘final solution’ a few decades later… Congo still suffers from so many ills brought upon it by being King Leopold’s playground for so long. Rwanda can probably trace a lot of its problems directly back to Belgian influence too…

*

So now I have to remember to ride right! Easier on a bike than in a car, so long as I remember when I pull out of car parks and side lanes. But at least here the traffic is disciplined and careful. There are few boda-bodas, and those carefully regulated and all riders and passengers – one only per boda-boda, unlike up to four in Uganda and Kenya – wearing helmets by law. Gosh, it’s like leaving Africa!

But after a month of riding here I still haven’t worked out the role of indicators! Sometimes – I think, or assume – they mean, ‘don’t overtake’, sometimes, ‘you CAN overtake’, sometimes, ‘I might turn left or right if I think about it’ – but more frequently I think they just mean, ‘I’m not concentrating on anything, let alone the road. I’m too busy on my mobile phone or arguing with my fifteen passengers to bother about my indicator switch’. I honestly don’t have ANY idea what they mean so I just assume they are purely cosmetic entertainment and ignore them all. I admit, I don’t use mine at all. There’s no point, since I’d be using them to signify that I am turning in the road – and no one would expect that anyway, even if they happen to be looking, which is unlikely as they’ve probably not even SEEN me anyway… So Rwanda is a rider’s delight so far!

*

The lake didn’t appear until I was within metres of it. Then it seemed like an Italian lake, but the Congo shores are invisible in the mists. The town isn’t attractive – although it DOES look like a town – and I was getting a bit despondent as I rode through. Then I found myself down by the lake shore passing a busy public beach, this being Sunday. Time to look for somewhere to stay…

Just past the public beach were some small hotels, but with their location they were likely to be expensive. However, I spotted a possible place, just across the road from the lake and pulled in to check. I hit right first time tonight. It’s a quiet, empty guest house and I am looked after by Christine, a pretty, shy young woman with an accent that almost sounds Chinese. The official languages here are the local tongue Kinyarwanda, English and French, but I get the impression that along with putting the genocide behind and looking to a brighter future, the country is encouraging English – in the ironic French phrase, now the ‘lingua Franca’.

My room is on the first floor under the roof; a small room but comfortable with a small bathroom. My window actually looks across the road to the lake and I have just eaten my supper in a timber structure raised up above the gardens looking over the lake. I appear to be the only guest. It’s very pleasant – and £15. I’m drinking my second Primus beer, (5%) surprised to find it comes in 75cl bottles! Not bad beer in the customary gassy lager style that is all over Africa, shamefully, with added sugar.

So here I am in Rwanda! I have positive feelings about the next days. I have 14 days on my visa and motorbike insurance and it’s a small country. So far, so very, very good… At 9.35, I am done – and faintly inebriated…

DAY 60 MONDAY 6th FEBRUARY 2017. GISENYI, RWANDA

It seems that as I crossed the border yesterday I went back in time by an hour: here I am in Central African Time. Thus was I up for my breakfast soon after seven this morning, rather than eight. It’s made it a long day, but I haven’t done a great deal, just enjoyed the calm seaside atmosphere of the town. It does feel like the seaside, even though this is just a large inland lake. The town boasts long sandy beaches, some of them public, some beachside bars and a fine corniche drive of about half a mile, that could be in Europe. The beaches are clean, litter-free and even had evidence of having been brushed this morning by hand brooms. There are litter bins and all is refreshingly tidy, cared for – and, frankly, rather unAfrican. The town’s similarly well kept and tidy.

Up early, waiting on my breakfast on the terrace, the sun appeared over the steep hills behind the guest house, lighting up the expansive lake between the garden trees. Breakfast was excellent – I love the fact that for the past week or more I have enjoyed delicious fresh pineapple every morning. A Spanish omelette is the customary offering in these countries, served frequently with spongy, tasteless bread or a greasy fried chapati. Distrusting coffee as it’s so often instant, I take African tea, a beverage I must perfect for home consumption. Then I got changed to start my day and was quickly engulfed by a torrential rainstorm! I scurried back to shelter, now soggy as I stood amongst wet passers by who’d run in from the road outside to join me under the guest house terrace. Rwandans are friendly but much more distant and discreet than the cheerfully warm Ugandans. They are reserved and shy – and sadly, although they speak limited English, many of them know the words, “give me money…” I hope this is just that I am in a very touristic (for Rwanda) place, where many French people come. This problem of petty opportunistic begging is ALWAYS oddly exacerbated in French-speaking Africa. I don’t feel the warmth and closeness here, although I must say the waving and thumbs-upping is amusing. Just a shame many small hands then turn palms upward as I pass. A few respectable-looking adults too… As I say, I hope it’s just here in gorilla country, for this is the centre of the gorilla-trekking industry – and at £500 a go, it’s a place of wealthy tourism.

*

In 1984 a lake in Cameroon emitted a noxious cloud and 37 people mysteriously died. Later, in 1986, another lake in another part of Cameroon exploded and 1700 people died, suffocated in bizarre circumstances. It was then discovered that it wasn’t, as feared, some chemical warfare, but lethal methane. It was found that those lakes were saturated with methane gas. The Cameroon government began a process of sucking the dangerous gases from the lake bottom and releasing them into the air above. But it was this lake, Kivu, two thousand times bigger than the Cameroon lakes, that gave even more concern. For this lake is surrounded by a population of a couple of millions. The Rwandan government began to investigate how they could prevent a catastrophic eruption of methane in Lake Kivu, and in so doing, realised that methane could be used to generate electricity – in a small country in which 78% of the people lived without electricity. It was a struggle to raise the loans and funding internationally, in a region which is very volcanic – it’s the nearby volcano that pumps its gases into the lake. It’s only 15 years ago that the volcano on the horizon, Nyiragongo, blew its top and engulfed Gisenyi’s contiguous town of Goma, just a mile away in Congo. In 2016 the methane project got properly under way and from my window I can see the well-head a mile or so offshore.

*

After the rain cleared the ground soon dried. I am only a degree and a half from the Equator after all. I took a dirt road for a few miles southwards down the lake shore through endless small villages and farms. Hardly an acre of the landscape here is uncultivated, the sloping terraces stretching right to the high ridges above and down to the beaches below. About ten or twelve miles down the coast I turned around. It’s difficult to get information here and I had no idea how far I would have to ride – on still slightly slippery tracks – until I found a tar road to bring me back. And in front rain clouds were gathering again, although in fact it turned into a hot, sunny afternoon. By the time I turned, I had the impression that the scenery and track would probably continue in just the same meandering fashion for the rest of the journey to the south end of the lake, a long way off. I rode back to town and spent the afternoon sauntering along the beachfront, an activity I seldom much appreciate – but the sun was shining and a day of rest isn’t a bad thing now and again.

*

It was good fortune to find this well placed, quiet guest house. I realised today that the difference in my budgets these days, that gives me so much more pleasure than the old grotels I always used on past journeys, is rather like the difference in wine. I CAN tell the difference between a £4 bottle of wine and a £10 bottle, but I can’t really tell the difference between that and a £50 bottle! Now I tend to seek out the £10 bottle/ hotel instead of the £4 ones. You’ll never get me paying for the expensive ones though; this level is just fine for me, and the extra comforts and peace much appreciated.

The raised timber bar area is pleasant too, people walking past talking in the street below, as motorbikes whizz and putter along the lakeshore road. Smiling Christine is cooking me a meal. Her English is rudimentary (better than that of Janine, the owner, and better, it must be said, than my very rusty French)… “I have meat of cow or meat of chicken, with lice or potato, I cook or fry? Vegetables I have.” All with a lovely smile but an oddly Chinese accent to her English, which is however, her third language. I shall try to stick to one big bottle of Primus tonight (made just along the road I took beside the lake this morning); I didn’t sleep well on two.

DAY 61 TUESDAY 7th FEBRUARY 2017. KIBUYE, RWANDA

Funny, isn’t it, some days just ‘work’! A terrific day; a wonderful ride; I’m at peace. Oddly, yesterday I was riding about rather bored and wondering why the hell I do all this? Then today, I find the answer.

Kibuye is half way down Lake Kivu, in a particularly fine position, with many small tree-covered islands offshore and the still, mirror-like lake below my balcony tonight. I have bargained my way into a half-decent hotel at a 25% discount and for that I have a large, slightly faded room with a bathroom and even a balcony. Better still, though, is the beach bar at lake level and the terrace on which I am writing now gazing across the silent lake towards where the Congo must be. I’ve a ‘Turbo King’ at my elbow, a dark, strong beer, and I am pleasantly weary from a hard ride on some fine but rough, degraded roads.

*

On one beer I slept well last night! And the morning dawned bright, sunny and fresh, in my small room under the roof, across from the lake. It was one of those days that went well from the outset. And looks like ending well too…

I really hadn’t a plan for today. Such as I had, hinged upon whether the road I had thought I might use to the south was tarred or not. I thought I might make for Kigale, the Rwandan capital, but the bright morning, the sun and my relaxed state persuaded me to ride south. And, sure enough, the road was a fine new tarred road.

For the first fifteen miles, it was..! Then I was into road building territory. Road building is perhaps more difficult to negotiate than just dirt roads. For when they are constructing roads, it means a complete upheaval and shambles. (As I write, a sudden torrential shower comes from nowhere! Thunder and lightning and rain beating on the terrace roof above. I thought this was a calm, tranquil evening! Well, so long as it rains at night while I am sleeping – or drinking my evening beers – I don’t care.) Had I been riding that road in rain it would have been a different matter entirely. As it was, (Wow! It’s hammering down!), I just had to bounce and sometimes slither my way through loose soil, rock works, lumps and bumps. I LOVE this sort of riding on a sunny day in magnificent mountain scenery!

In the early part of my ride I climbed up into the most scenically satisfying tea estates. I make no apology for repeating that tea is one of the most beautiful crops: it carpets the hillsides like brilliant green flocking. It hugs the sensuous curves of the hills, is deeply green with that iridescent top and almost unnaturally tidy. The tea leaves that we use to infuse our national beverage come from the bright green, fresh new growth on the top of the plant. So tea bushes remain at a pretty constant couple of feet high; fitted to the slopes and contours and dotted by small coppices and individual trees that supply dappled shadows and give depth and beauty to the landscape. It is one of the world’s absolute scenic delights, is tea. Pity it doesn’t taste as good – but that’s only a personal opinion! And, I have to say, the tea WE now drink is actually just dust from the very bottom of the quality sieves. Literally, for we now drink mainly from tea bags, the dregs of the tea that is graded downwards depending which sieve it doesn’t pass through. So the best tea is the Broken Orange Pekoe leaf tea (I’m talking Sri Lanka here, the only tea I have actually watched being produced) to the dust that is swept out of the bottom sieve (basically, the floor!) and goes into our tea bags…

Well, the tea estates were magnificent, gleaming and lustrous over the hills all around my road. I rode in a sort of intoxication at the loveliness around me. Rwanda is certainly a very handsome country. It brings to mind my favourite, Lesotho. The similarities are there in the elevation, the steep mountainsides, the curling roads and the general sense of landlocked independence. People are ready with wide smiles and the thumbs-up greeting is universal. Pity that the one English phrase known to all is ‘give me money’. This began to irritate me until I remembered that after 1994 and the genocide, for the following decade – or more – the country was flooded by foreign aid organisations and NGOs – well after the genocidal stable door had closed – and probably the rural people just associate white skins with hand-outs. They maintain that national memory of aid-dependency and what have you to lose (except my respect, and that doesn’t count for much…) by putting out your hand, palm up? That and French-language colonialism – for the Francophone colonials were always much more paternalistic in their control – and created unpleasantly wheedling, needy cultures in their past colonies. I well remember the customary greetings in Burkina Faso and Niger: “Bonjour, bon-bon?” and “Bonjour, cadeau?” It’s not to say that petty begging is entirely absent in the Anglophone African lands, but it is rare. Some uneducated children will try and I am often importuned by Basotho shepherd boys for food or water, and occasionally cigarettes – but they are abandoned for months up on the high slopes with the most basic of sustenance, so if I have some in my bag I usually share my eet-sum-more shortbreads!

Oddly, though, the countryside here just now seems to me to be fertile and abundant – unless I am reading the social signs wrongly. This is a season of bananas and fruits and it appears to be reasonably plentiful. Yet I have had a number of people, one man quite smartly dressed, extend his hand and tell me to give him food. Maybe they’re just chancers?

*

Up in the heights, I suppose I was riding at about two thousand metres, maybe a more, I passed through a lovely stretch off coniferous forest and then on into endlessly cultivated hillsides dotted with shiny zinc roofs. Far away I could discern the lake between steep slopes. For a time, I could have been in central Italy, for the houses were roofed in shapely brown pantiles, walls plastered and the landscape with that distinct Umbrian brownness amongst the dense greens. It needed only a few slender poplars… (and a cafe latte..!). My road was wonderful and I was smiling. Here and there I passed road crews and large machinery, although much of the graft here is by hand – many hands. Sometimes I had to slip and slide through mud or deep newly turned soil; often bump and bounce over rocky outcrops. In a year’s time this will be a magnificent road. For now it is torture, but satisfying when you reach the end and look back on a struggle overcome!

At last I reached the tar road again. There is a HUGE amount of investment in this country right now, fine new roads and infrastructure. Of course, the new road I travelled was contracted to the Hunan Bridge and Road construction Company – the usual worrying trend in Africa for China to be building just about everything. China doesn’t do it for the benefit of Africa, but for their own wealth. It struck me today, as I passed numerous signboards, as I do very day, ‘supported by the European Union’, ‘aided by the peoples of the USA’, and the like – I NEVER have seen ‘supported by the People’s Republic of China’. That nation does NOTHING for nothing… Let me know when you see a Chinese charity…

*

Finally, I reached Kibuye. But it was confusing, for many of Rwanda’s place names are being changed and even the tourist maps that I am using have different locations recorded. Sometimes I am not actually sure where the hell I am! I don’t know the reason for the name changes, perhaps they were too associated with the old Hutu regime? Or perhaps this is just Africa… Kibuye, or wherever it now is, is a selection of small headlands reaching out into the lake dotted with small islands. It’s lovely, and rural and peaceful. I rode around for a bit, as usual, having decided to stay here tonight. A few hotels presented themselves. One, at the end of a scenic peninsular was obviously way beyond my budget, but back on a pretty bay I found the ‘Hotel de Golf, Eden Rock’ (not much golf in sight). This one looked just about run down enough, despite it’s layered, balconied, lakeside look, to be within budget, or bargainable budget! And so it proved… “Ah, un person, vingt milles Francs Rwandan!” the receptionist told me. “Oh, what a pity!” said I with a big smile. “My budget is only quinze mille! (15,000 = £15).

I was in! I have a huge room – after last night’s pleasant cupboard – with a bathroom and balcony from which I can view the lake, a vast bed – and another single one should I feel the need for variety – a giant TV that’ll stay off, and dinner on the terrace overlooking the silent, calm lake now the storm has passed. A GOOD day’s travelling today.

The storm passed quickly. All is peaceful now. Tomorrow I think I’ll continue southwards, to the end of the lake. Lake Kivu is about 55 miles long and 35 miles wide.

*

Next door is a new museum, a Museum of the Environment, a worthy effort, if a bit wordy. Rwanda is certainly making every effort to encourage tourism – although a look around Kibuye tonight would probably prove that I am the only foreigner in town. The very charming and elegantly pretty Francine showed me round – I was the only visitor in this expensive new museum. She confirmed my assumption that English is being encouraged over French these days. Her’s was excellent, although the majority of Rwandans I’ve met have limited English as yet. It does make me feel a little more isolated than I was in cheerful, friendly Uganda. I begin to think about returning through that country, for it’s only the driving that puts me off! I DID like the Ugandans! Maybe… I can decide at my own whim.

Time to retire I think. I’ve had three very good Turbo King beers. They are 6.5% alcohol and a good dark beer – pity about the added sugar. I only just realised that they cost 70 pence a half litre bottle, on the hotel balcony with a view worth many pounds! Gosh, one could become alcoholic very cheaply in Rwanda! Seeing me with my Turbo King, with its lion logo, a young man beside me at the little beach said, “Ah, Primus, it is for les femmes… women!” Primus, pronounced ‘preemus’ of course, is the gassy Rwandan lager – at £1 for a chunky 75cl bottle.

DAY 45 SUNDAY 22nd JANUARY 2017. JINJA, UGANDA

A somewhat irritable day today. It happens sometimes. I became (unusually on my travels) thoroughly curmudgeonly! What caused it? Filth – sheer bloody filth… I went to the ‘source of the Nile’, the world’s longest river, and what did I see? Plastic bags, bottles, wrappers, blowing paper, cigarette packets, cans and general decrepitude, all below signs telling me that littering carries a 10,000 Shilling fine. Huh! Sometimes the squalidness of Africa, so much of it so thoughtless, just gets to me. “Oh, the Government should do something about it!” agreed one man to whom I gave my lecture. “But the government doesn’t throw the rubbish around! People do!” I protested – completely uselessly. Of course, I’ve heard the same in Askwith when I lived there: “Yes, it’s disgusting! The Council should do something about it!” and watched my neighbours getting into their cars, stepping over rubbish outside their own houses. “But I didn’t put it there!” No, but it’d take you only a moment to pick it up and bin it… It’s just offensive visual pollution.

Several times today I have had to insist that I wanted TAP water, not a one-use plastic bottle. The water from the tap here is fine – as it is throughout most of the world, yet we dispose of billions of plastic bottles every year, most of them straight into the environment around us, and a lot into the oceans, the food chain, the soil. But the greedy Coca Cola Corporation cares not a jot, only for its profits, whatever the cost (and those profits set to increase now the appalling Trump is in office). For I often read the water bottles and even here in Africa the majority of ‘local spring water’, ‘healthy water from the glaciers of so and so’, the ‘natural waters of the such and such region’, the ‘head waters of another river’ and all the other spurious ways you can describe water that is no better than that from the municipal tap, are distributed – in very small print – by the noxious Coca Cola Corporation… It’s the ultimate marketing triumph, is bottled water – selling a natural liquid that comes for free, is treated at tax-payers’ expense and made potable just about everywhere in the world, sold at profit margins in the 1000s of percent to people who can’t afford it, for the sake of mega-rich shareholders in USA? It’s brilliant, in its twisted, cynical way. Certainly the biggest marketing con of the last century. Often, even the water they bottle has already been treated at local taxpayers’ expense, too! I am still using the water bottle I bought on day one of this trip. I fill it from the tap every morning… Aaaaarrrrgggghhhh! I despair of the capitalist ethic and the way we are so easily duped by shameful corporate business.

Sorry… It just gets to me sometimes. I admit that frequently the thought uppermost in my mind as I travel is, thank god I can come and look – and go far far far away, back to the relative calm of my privileged life.

*

So the Source of the Nile was not a big success! A disheartening experience shuffling through plastic detritus… Apart from the filth, there’s nothing to see. The Rippon Falls, named by Speke in 1862 In honour of the President of the Royal Geographical Society, replacing the perfectly good local names of Omugga Kiyira with customary Victorian arrogance, that tumbled the water out of Lake Victoria, Africa’s largest lake, were blown up in 1947 to make way for a dam downstream! There is nothing now but a bit of turbulent water and a lot of tawdry signs and the corporate yellow and red paint of Nile Breweries, sponsors of the grubby non-event of an attraction. The other local sight, a handful of kilometres downstream, the Bujagali Falls were similarly blown up just a few years ago, for another dam. There’s bugger all left to see at Jinja, the ‘source of the Nile’: only polluted water and rubbish!

*

The town of Jinja, though, is relatively attractive for an African town. Main Street at least has pavements and orderly shops beneath arcaded walkways that dissipate the heat a bit. The pavements are just about contiguous and level, rare on this continent and on Sunday the town was relaxed and quiet. There’s a very large Asian influence – in the architecture and in the business of the town. Ejected during the Idi Amin years, the East African Asians returned in the late 80s and reclaimed their pretty successful business ventures. Always the traders, they recouped their positions quite quickly. Main Street has the feel of the subcontinent, the dates on the Indian-influenced frontages from the 1920s through the mid-century. Happily, I found quite a good Asian meal for my supper tonight. (A sort of cashew korma). I also found a good coffee shop, unusual around here, in these countries that grow fine coffee and drink rubbish! I wandered quiet Main Street and slowly recovered my equilibrium from the dispiriting experiences of the morning.

*

There is, fortunately, still one sight to be seen in the young headwaters of the world’s longest river. There is Itanga Falls, twenty miles or so downriver in the countryside north of town. I bounced and blustered along very dusty tracks through scattered mud and zinc villages in the steamy heat of the afternoon and found a clean(-ish) site overseen by the Parks Service. “I hope this place is clean!” I demanded irritably as I paid my expensive $15 entry fee. Well, it wasn’t bad. A number of afternoon visitors, almost all of them Asians, took endless selfies and a wedding couple posed for a thousand pictures for their official photographer, the groom in a magenta floral waistcoat and black suit, his bride, the size of a barge, in acres of spangly netting and flounces. It was a nice domestic scene that brought a smile (finally) to my face. Nearby, boda-boda riders (the derelict Chinese taxi motorbikes) washed their decrepit machines in eddies of the great Nile. Behind them all thundered the river, all white spume as it cascaded between rocky islands and thick rainforest greenery. Rain clouds in the west – they’ve been gathering each afternoon, bringing high humidity but as yet not the shower that everyone someday soon expects – made a dramatic sky backdrop, for the frothing white river, the wedding album and the obsessive selfies. Thank goodness my day ended on a sight of the river in its majesty after all.

It takes three months for the water – and no doubt a million plastic bottles – to reach the Mediterranean from here. In four thousand miles the river will drop by 1133 metres through South Sudan, Sudan and Egypt. The last time I saw the mighty Nile was in 1972 at Luxor – before cynical corporations invented bottled water!

*

Further to my depressing musings on overpopulation of the other night, I found some statistics – and they do nothing to lighten my forebodings.

Uganda now has a population of over 38 million (remember, it was 9.5 million in 1969) and arguably the fastest growth rate in the world. It has the youngest population in the world, with no less than 49% of the population under 14 years old! Forty nine percent! That’s far worse than even I speculated! 78% of Ugandans are less than 30 years old. The average life expectancy is a mere 58. Only TWO PERCENT of the population is over 65! The average number of children born to each woman is even worse than I recorded: SIX children. AVERAGE!

Is there hope? I don’t think so…

39% of the country is Catholic (THAT won’t help…), 32% Anglican, 11% Pentecostal, and 14% Moslem. The other five percent aren’t mentioned, but professing to non-belief here is not really an option. This is a VERY conservative society which probably considers atheism in much the same way it looks on homosexuality, still a severe crime. Human rights don’t count for much in Uganda, a country in which individualism is not much tolerated. TV today was dominated by endless sermonising and church services. Everything is accompanied by TV of course; it blinks and blares in every hotel reception, bar and gathering place – and is usually switched on for my ‘entertainment’ in dining rooms, drinking spots and the like. I saw a good quote in the newspaper today – from some American multi-millionaire: ‘Rich people have small TVs and big libraries. Poor people have small libraries and big TVs’…

Well, I liked the quote! Maybe it accorded with my cantankerous mood.

*

One good outcome of the day is that the new spark plug I bought, such things being virtually unavailable in Kenya, starts the bike in the morning. I was struggling to start the machine. Tomorrow I hope to find a new rear tyre. Jinja is Uganda’s second city and I was going to wait until Kampala but I fear my mood might suffer when I hit such a big city! I realise that cities are not my favoured places now. See how contented I was in those villages with William and Alex?

DAY 46 MONDAY 23rd JANUARY 2017. BWEBAJJA, UGANDA

I’ve seen traffic. I’ve seen bad driving standards. Now I have been to Kampala! NOTHING touches Kampala for the two. The main road that crosses Uganda, passing through Jinja and Kampala is perhaps the most dangerous I have ever witnessed on my African travels. Thankfully, I am an experienced biker, trained in the fast traffic of Europe and pretty much aware of what’s around me at all times. Riding here is NOT relaxing! Oddly, in the city it is far more fun than on the main roads, where matatus and buses compete at speed and private vehicles race by a whisker away from my mirror. In the city I can just drive like an African – only better because of my training – ignoring every rule of the road and weaving about like all the other bikes. It’s quite exhilarating to be able to break every rule in the book!

*

Jinja, I have decided this evening, was a pleasant, relatively sleepy town; a town that felt like a real town, with old infrastructure unusual in Africa. Main Street really is almost charming with its arcaded shops, calm traffic, central reservation and colourful shopfronts. Compared with the chaos of Kampala it was almost quaint. I was quite reluctant to draw myself away, partly because I justifiably feared the road west. I took my breakfast in the hotel, joined by Ruth, a Ugandan by birth who lives and works – as a lecturer – in Windhoek, Namibia and has a Ghanaian husband. Of course, we had quite a lot to chat about. Thanks to her I find myself in Bwebajja tonight, with a bungalow to myself at the Home Sweet Home Guest House, owned by another William, a retired chap whose family seems to have a number of small bungalows to let in a compound a hundred grateful yards from the road. Thank goodness I have not had to search for a place to sleep in the nearby capital, fifteen kilometres up the road. I’m on the road south to Entebbe on Lake Victoria and MAY consider a trip to Kampala on Wednesday. May… And then maybe by public transport! Rico warned me a day or two ago in an email: ‘The way you dislike Eldoret is not boding well for a pleasant trip to or even inside Kampala. All around Kampala traffic is horrible and inside it is not much better. I can only advise you to go around Kampala on the north eastern route, unless your Suzuki has amphibious ambitions of course.’ Once again, he was right…

*

Parts of that road were quite scenic, if I could take my eyes off the crazy traffic antics. I passed over the dam top that wiped out the only real sight that Jinja had – the falls out of Lake Victoria – and headed west through tea and sugar cane country, rolling hills and dusty wayside towns and villages. A stretch of forest represented the place I had thought I might investigate tonight, but I was so phased by the terrible madness of speeding vehicles that I missed the Mariba Forest Reserve entrance. And the nearer to Kampala I got, the worse it all got!

In the morning, over a good latte – the only good coffee I have found in these two countries that grow the stuff – and this in a Dutch-owned cafe in Main Street, Jinja – I spotted a somewhat larger Japanese bike parked nearby and searched out the owner to ask where I could find a new rear tyre, having failed all over Jinja. “Ask at City Tyres as you enter Kampala,” he advised. Fortunately, City Tyres was big enough to spot in the bedlam and a somewhat bemused manager (of a smart business selling car tyres, not motorcycle tyres), Robert, turned up trumps to direct me through the centre of the mad city to the area that deals with motorbikes. I even managed to find it eventually! So now I have a new tyre – and not a Chinese one, which I could have had time and time again. Very little of any worth comes out of their manufacturing and I was insistent that I wanted an ‘original’ (which, in this case meant Korean). It cost £58 and another £4.50 to have Ben and Nicholas fit it for me in a filthy, oil-dribbled roadside shack in the motorbike streets. I feel more confident to have that extra rubber under me. I may go back on my way out and investigate shock absorbers, since the one fitted is getting spongier by the day. An expensive bike, for so few cubes…

*

Shamelessly, as always, I bargained my bungalow down from £23 down to £16! It comes naturally now. “Oh, what a pity, my budget’s only 65,000 to 70,000 per night. You see, I am travelling for four months (slight exaggeration doesn’t do any harm!) so I have to keep to a budget… Do you know anywhere else..?” William’s a decent bloke and I did feel a very small twinge of guilt (very small!), but I know he’d rather have a room let at 70,000/- than empty for nothing. I did agree to stay three nights, which won’t be any hardship in such a comfortable retreat. I want to spend a day at Entebbe on the lake shore and perhaps I’ll risk a day in the capital. I must say, everyone with whom I have dealings is very friendly and helpful. It makes even the strain of the traffic conditions better and of course asking for help or directions is so easy in a land where almost everyone speaks English as their second language. I like Uganda. Pity about the driving.

I’m tired from the short ride. Only 50 miles between Jinja and Kampala. It felt like a couple of hundred.

DAY 47 TUESDAY 24th JANUARY 2017. BWEBAJJA, UGANDA

Entebbe will always be infamous for the hijacking of a Lufthansa plane in June 1976 by German and Israeli terrorists. Non-Israeli hostages were released and the hijackers demanded the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel, while holding hostages in the plane on the tarmac at this inconsequential airport. Idi Amin, the fat dictator who made Uganda so unfortunately famous, set about trying to negotiate his own solution but, considering he had already expelled Israeli advisers and was known to be sympathetic to the Arab causes, and had his own motives, he wasn’t a likely negotiator. Independently Israeli paratroopers, helped by Germany and Kenya, took the situation into their own hands and landed their own plane at Entebbe and drove out of it in a presidential Mercedes! It was a masterful attack. The hijackers thought the Merc held Idi Amin, returning from negotiations and were taken by complete surprise. All the hijackers were shot dead and all hostages released, except one unfortunate German woman who disappeared, having been taken to the local hospital earlier, probably killed in retaliation for Idi Amin’s utter humiliation. It’s now the stuff of legend and Hollywood and we all know Entebbe, a remote African international airport for no other reason.

The airport sits at the end of the road south from Kampala, about 20 miles distant, on a promontory into Lake Victoria, itself as large as an inland sea. At the neck of the promontory is the pleasantly green town of Entebbe, once a colonial capital, so peppered with the customary whitewashed and red clay tiled colonial buildings. Now it’s a bustling Ugandan town and a resort on the lake’s edge; a place of big hotels and sunny beach bars beneath palms and tropical trees. It’s just a slither north of the Equator, a handful of miles. A pleasant enough place to ride about for an hour before repairing to the botanical gardens and then one of those beach bars, cooled by a gentle breeze off the water.

One thing British colonials gave to the world was botanical gardens! I’ve seen so many now, always relaxingly calm retreats for a hot afternoon. This one is well kept but there’re no explanations or identifying signs, but it’s a rambling area of established hardwoods and Equatorial forest, with a shoreline that lifts it above others. The season’s very dry now so the paths are dusty like the rest of the country. There are some spectacularly huge birds, hideous storks, eagles and big, sleek herons. Uganda is said to have one of Africa’s most diverse bird species occupations, with over 1000 species. Most, I enjoyed watching troops of monkeys, habituated to humans, playing in the lower branches of the trees, swinging and leaping on one another with glee and delight. To say I could see the smiles on their faces WOULD be anthropomorphic, but their joy was manifest. I could stand and watch them from just a few feet away, throwing themselves on and off bendy boughs and grooming one another. Very entertaining. Empty plastic bottles and plastic refuse gave the usual Ugandan background colour of course.

It was a relaxing day of little moment. I ate at a lakeside bar in the late afternoon, preventing the need to ride out from the guest house at night. I have a headlight that is of no use whatsoever as it points up in the air thanks to the bracket we made for it in Kitale, and anyway, riding these roads in daytime is dangerous enough, without venturing out in the dark. I am not enjoying riding in Uganda; it makes Kenya look disciplined and safe by comparison and I shall be glad to get away from the proximity of the big cities hereabouts in a couple of days. It’s not the matatus. Reckless though they undoubtedly are, at least they drive in a somewhat predictably dangerous way. It’s the drivers of private vehicles, and the bigger and more expensive the car, the worse the risks they take and dangers they cause in their arrogance and bullying tactics, especially to motorbikes… No, I like Uganda, but I won’t return here on two wheels; it’s just unpleasantly stressful and I have no faith in anyone’s ability behind the wheel. The worst drivers that I witnessed in 96 countries of the world. By far. Not fun at all. Not in these urban areas.

DAY 48 WEDNESDAY 25th JANUARY 2017. BWEBAJJA, UGANDA

My expensive little bike just got more expensive (creeping up to £2500 – for a ten year old 200cc with 73,000kms!!!) – but I have determined that whatever it takes, I will get the most out of my journey. And peace of mind helps a lot, as one of the world’s worst mechanics! So today I managed to search out a second hand shock absorber – of indeterminate age but significantly stronger than that on the bike, and invested in a new front tyre. I can’t leave these things until later as I know that Kampala is the only source of motorbike parts this side of expensive Nairobi. Finding the shocker took some time and meant some fairly big surgery to extract the old one so that a young man could take it away to look for its replacement. Meanwhile, Tony Timothy and I waited in a filthy workshop in which stood some of the only ‘proper’ motorcycles I have seen in East Africa so far, giving me a little confidence that Tony Timothy just might know what he was doing. His and my only problem seemed to be the propensity for any number of amateur mechanics to get involved and start undoing sundry nuts and leaving them scattered in odd places about the workshop and lodged around the bike. Tony Timothy did seem a little better organised and I kept a beady eye on what was going on. About two and a half hours later, I had to convey one of the fellows on my pillion to an ATM. There was no way I was going to be allowed to ride away on my own! I paid £70 for the second hand shocker and paid Tony Timothy (he really did introduce himself that way!) a fiver for his time.

*

Then I rode off into the crazy traffic. As I intimated before, riding in town is actually quite exhilarating if you can ride confidently – and even though I complain about the tinny little bike having no power, it HAS got more than almost all the 100cc and 125cc Chinese bikes! At least in town all traffic has to slow down just through the density of vehicles, pedestrians, carts, boda-bodas, bicycles, holes, piles of crap, abandoned cars, matatus stopped everywhere across the roads, broken gratings, and various obstacles! It’s quite fun to weave in and out, use the opposite carriageway on occasions, drive over pavements and traffic islands, down the hard shoulders, ignore traffic lights and policemen, cut between parked cars, weave round buses, scurry between market stalls and traders and be as anarchic about the regulations as everyone else! It brings out all the rebelliousness and independence in me! And as a European trained biker, I am well equipped with my observation techniques. I’m glad I ventured right into the crazy, mad, congested city centre: it broke down some of my fear. Mind you, I will still be extremely wary on the main roads, although William, the guest house owner, tells me that my road to the west will be much quieter than the main East African highway that I was forced to embrace to get here.

*

There is a complex system of kingdoms and chieftaincies in Uganda. Amongst the most influential of these is the Buganda Kingdom, centred around Kampala and the central part of the country. There’s still a king, King Ronald, who holds sway over about a quarter of the population – around ten million these days – and through the 54 clans of the kingdom. There’s a a Buganda parliament, although it has no executive power now (although having the control of a quarter of the people must give it some persuasive influence). The parliament meets in a large building at the opposite end of the ‘Royal Mile’ – an acknowledged nod to Edinburgh – to the Royal Palace, both of them on hills facing each other along a formal avenue, with its 54 trees of the clans. I was able to visit both sights, the palace and the parliament, the latter based on designs from Dublin, where one of the kings was exiled during various African political upheavals. Frankly, there wasn’t much to see, although my two guides tried to enhance the importance of it all. The palace isn’t where King Ronald lives any more and it was closed for renovation. The grounds – 65 acres of downtown Kampala, are scabby grazing lands for the king’s clan, and some mean housing and shred-draped washing lines had to be negotiated as we walked in the heat of the day. We visited Idi Amin’s torture chambers, built underground by Israeli contractors and in which approximately 25,000 Ugandans were murdered by electrocution, starvation and suffocation. “Don’t you want to take photos?” asked my young guide, whose name escaped me. It wasn’t anything I wanted to remember, frankly.

Half way down and up the Royal Mile, measured, I was assured, from the throne dais in parliament to the other one in the palace, I stopped for tea, gasping in the heat and dust. I have become hooked on the East African ‘mixed tea’ with spices, a most refreshing drink, the milk and tea boiled up together and spiced with cinnamon and ginger. “Make me a jug!” I demanded. “I’m THIRSTY!”

Then it was to the Buganda parliament, again not much to look at, built in 1954 and a bit worn round the edges, externally based on Dublinesque lines, internally on Westminster with it’s opposing benches and Speaker’s chair. But this parliament only discusses traditional matters, social issues and cultural concerns. It has no real power in the country.

*

Then I took the leap and plunged into Kampala proper! I have seldom seen so much massed humanity in one city. And I have travelled in a lot of African capitals now… A city built, or at least planned, as capital for a population of about 10,000,000 Ugandans, as there were in the whole country at the end of the sixties, it’s now the capital of a country four times more populous – and most of them seem to be in hectic, noisy, colourful, slightly decrepit, seething Kampala. Already work is short, people hit by poverty and the drought conditions that most of Africa has been suffering these last few years, probably caused by global warming and overpopulation. What of the future in this ballooning country..? I parked up at random – everyone parks at random in Kampala – and wandered for a while. I was well received and felt no tension whatsoever, but I DID begin to feel increasingly hot. It’s been a warm day, probably a bit over 30 degrees, I guess and the clamour and closeness of the city streets exacerbated the discomfort. I decided I had seen enough of Kampala. For life.

*

My last mechanical chore was to get Ben and Nicholas to fit a new front tyre for me to join the rear tyre they fitted on Monday, purchased back in the motorbike part of town, fortuitously on my way back towards Bwebajja on the Entebbe road south towards the lake. I wasn’t sorry to ride the final fifteen kilometres ‘home’.

*

On my journeys I eat to live. Today’s a case in point, a very strange diet. Two nights ago all I could get was an unremarkable pizza, not a food I enjoy (unless from the Church House Inn, Harberton!). Of course, it was FAR too big; they always are. Usually I wouldn’t consider taking the leftovers away with me for I can think of little I want less to eat than yesterday’s pizza… Happily, I asked for the uneaten half to be wrapped and brought it back to the fridge in this bungalow. I ate cold veggie pizza for breakfast, an egg sandwich for lunch and microwaved pizza for supper, with half a fresh large pineapple (pretty much straight from the field at 58 pence), a chunk of Pat Mills’ Christmas cake (steaming away in my black saddlebags for the past weeks for emergencies!) and washed down by two pints of beer. A balanced diet..? Well, you can’t say I don’t know how to live! And it did mean I didn’t have to ride out again, weary and tired from heat, people, traffic and city stress.

I can say I have visited Kampala. But once is enough… Bed at 9.00pm again. On my way west tomorrow.

DAY 49 THURSDAY 26th JANUARY 2017. FORT PORTAL, UGANDA

The tinny little bike certainly rides better with the new shocker and tyres. Just as well, as I rode no less than 300 kilometres (190 miles) and survived several more attempts on my life. I was so happy to quit the environs of Kampala. The first forty miles of my journey were ghastly, but things improved as the traffic thinned and the capital fell behind. Then I had only the killer long distance buses and the criminally insane private drivers to watch for. I honestly doubt that I can consider going back that way.

My backside is still sore three hours after dismounting and after a couple of beers! It’s an uncomfortable bike – but it got me across Uganda today.

*

Ruth Abankwah, whom I met in Jinja at breakfast and who recommended William’s guest house to me, was back at that same guest house last night, leaving the country from Entebbe tomorrow. We met on my terrace this morning. Who knows, maybe we’ll meet some day in Windhoek, Namibia. I was on my way there last February when the fifty degree Celsius heat finally beat me. Astonished that I can even ride from Jinja to Kampala, how amazed everyone is when I tell them that I rode from the other side of Kampala today. The concept of riding from Cape Town to Lokkichogio in the far north of Kenya, as I once did, is just beyond comprehension. When I tell people I am on my way to Rwanda they are speechless with wonder! Seems quite natural to me…

*

Getting out of Kampala was at once cathartic and horrible. The first miles were just constant, endless traffic in hot sun. Crazy, chaotic, undisciplined, seething traffic. With me negotiating a way through it all, intent on getting it all behind me. Just as well I have that legendary stubborn streak. I needed it this morning. I suppose it was forty or fifty miles before I could relax a bit – and even consider breakfast, which I took in a hotel in Mitayna, the first provincial town, where the traffic finally thinned, leaving me on a relatively empty road through large rolling hills, cultivated everywhere with banana, desiccated maize and subsistence crops. Seldom was I out of sight of scrappy villages and small dry, dusty towns for more than a few minutes. This is a vastly populated country, with most of the ballooning population living in a sort of mud-brick and zinc sprawl along every road, however mean.

*

I’d meant to stay in Mubende, the only large town between Kampala and Fort Portal, but there was nothing whatsoever arresting or attractive about the place and it was not yet two in the afternoon, so I pressed on, the stubbornness a great attribute for the second hundred miles, shifting from cheek to cheek for bum relief. At last, perhaps forty miles before Fort Portal, the road began to become much more scenic, curling into big hills and eventually into forest, always rising gently towards the western mountains. Here on the west side of Uganda are some of Africa’s highest ranges; beyond them countless miles of Congo jungle and rainforest, all the way to the Atlantic. Mount Stanley, somewhere not too far from here, is Africa’s third peak (Kilimanjaro, Kenya, Stanley and Elgon – all of them not so far from here, but I think I am right that the next one is in my wonderful, much-missed, exceptional Lesotho).

Clouds rolled in and tempered the extreme heat of the Equatorial sun, making my ride surprisingly comfortable without that searchlight blast from almost vertically overhead. I rode on. In the final miles to Fort Portal, I passed through fine scenery with thick, preserved forests and satisfyingly tidy, carpeted tea estates clothing the mountains.

Fort Portal spread-eagles over slopes and hills, the Rwenzori Mountains, as a distant western backdrop. By now I was tired, but still had to face the trial of every day – finding a suitable place to sleep. But the bike is a great help in this, for I can tour the streets, ride about town, assess the options and then begin to negotiate with the most likely places. It’s all part of the joys and pains of my travels… I tried a couple of quite dingy places a little away from the town centre and finally settled on a three storey hotel in the heart of town. I have a decent enough room (by my not too discerning standards!) on the first floor, overlooking the town. I’ve an ensuite with warm water (when the lad on the reception remembers to switch it on – just as well a cold shower was refreshing and anyway I doubt I could have cared by then!). The cost of all this is less than twelve quid, with breakfast. There’s a bar on the top, overlooking the street, with old country music playing – ‘Darlin’, save the laaast dance for me…’ – and a restaurant down below. My bike’s in the car park, moved, I notice, to a quiet corner, but there’ll be a guard on the gate and now I’m waiting for my dinner: orange chicken with cinnamon..! It was a combination I’d never considered. (Not bad… Not memorable… On the whole, probably not to be repeated…). Lovely staff, though. Daphne, who served my supper, seems quite excited that I will be here again tomorrow! How nice it is to be able to please people just by being smiling and friendly. It really IS the advantage of older age travelling! An ‘old man’, as I am doubtless perceived by most in a country in which only an average of 2% make it to my age, riding a motorbike across the land is a matter of indulgent head shaking. As a ‘pensioneer’ (Africa-speak) can get away with so much with a smile; much more than I ever could as a youth! Haha.

A tiring day, but now I will relax for a few days as there’s plenty of fine scenery and natural attractions to keep me entertained.

DAY 50 FRIDAY 27th JANUARY 2017. FORT PORTAL, UGANDA

THAT’S better! You may have read between the lines of the last few days that I have been a bit dull and unenthusiastic. Today the smile’s back on my face. Quite simply: give me some mountains, a rural area and friendly people and all’s right with the world again. Just seeing those mountains on the horizon as I rode westwards yesterday lifted my spirits. For several hours I rode into, around and then over them and now I am happy once more.

*

Fifty-odd miles took me through several climatic zones and vegetations. Here, near the Equator, this is dependent on altitude. Fort Portal sits at 1580 metres (5100 feet) amongst mixed conifers and deciduous woodlands. A few tens of miles north I dropped into the Rift Valley again, at 683 metres (2220 feet), and here the vegetation turned to bush country, dry dusty landscapes dotted with mango trees and acacias. Ten miles further on and I had climbed back to about 950 metres (3000 feet above sea level) and I was in tropical, Equatorial forest, abundant, thick and densely green. The road was excellent, sweeping around the contours and dropping into the great valley. The road is quite new and hasn’t deteriorated into customary African conditions yet. It now circles the end of the range of steep mountains and curls back into the next parallel valley on its way to the border with DRC – the Democratic Republic of Congo – a gross misnomer if there ever was one. I rode to the border post, gazed over at the Congo as I chatted to a policeman, probably the closest I will get to that wild, lawless, embattled land.

Beside me the mountain slopes rose dramatically beneath the hot Equatorial sky. On the other side the land dropped away into an apparently endless lowland of thick forest that stretched as far as the eye could see into the remote mists of the extreme distance. Thick forest crowded the roadside where it was preserved by the state; disfigured by local agriculture and mud brick dwellings everywhere else. At least the Uganda National Roads Authority everywhere keeps a wide boundary at the roadside, at least five to ten metres on either side, so no private projects impinge too closely. It did seem odd that the majority of the firewood collection takes place, evidenced by large piles of branch bundles at roadside villages, in the bushland areas where wood is most scarce.

Uganda ends at Lamia Bridge, a place of little note beyond the main small local town of Bundibugyo. At the police post I turned about and headed back to investigate the National Park and the Batwa Community. The latter, which, perhaps fortuitously, I failed to find, is a village of the indigenous pigmy people, known to us all, but now largely displaced from their traditional lands by the imposition of national parks, wildlife preservation and tourism. I admit I’d have liked to see some pigmy people but I always feel very uncomfortable at these faked-up tourist sites, where as soon as you arrive, the people begin a meaningless ‘traditional’ dance in your favour, clamour for sales of ‘cultural’ souvenirs and create a sense of unpleasant voyeurism. On the whole, I was content that I missed the turn to their ‘cultural village’. Of course, for them, it’s probably the only way their culture can survive, but maybe this ersatz touristic culture is best lost anyway?

It was hot and increasingly humid by the time I stopped to investigate the small national park. Most of it is across the border in Congo, but on this side are a series of hot pools and springs and it’s possible to take walks in the tropical forest with a ranger guide. Well, it would be if you are stupid enough to part with the scandalous fee for a foreigner of US$65! Fifty three pounds Sterling to look at some hot springs and wander the forest paths for a couple of hours? This government exploitation of tourists will eventually kill the golden goose (I frankly hope!). “Huh!” I exclaimed, “I’ve seen the world’s best hot springs for nothing in Iceland anyway. And if you went to Iceland, you’d be charged the same as the Icelanders! Anyway, I’d rather spend my time talking to you people than looking at animals or hot water!”

“Maybe we should charge you for our conversation!” suggested one of the rangers, in jest. “Yes,” I agreed, “and I’ll charge you for the information about the Icelandic hot springs!” At least in Uganda I can joke with the people.

Just to the south of here, in the corner of Uganda and Rwanda is the largest remaining population of mountain gorillas. You can book to go on a trek to see them, only six people per group and limited groups per day. The charge for this is now an astronomical $600 (£490)!!! You get a maximum of an hour with any gorilla group you find (and, cynically, I wonder if they are by now chipped so their whereabouts are known on GPS?) – and you can’t even ask the gorilla how it feels about being ‘habituated’ to humans and visited daily, not unlike in a zoo it seems to me. Well, each to their own, I suppose, but I really WOULD rather chat to Simon, the waiter at this hotel, a charming lad who’s studying engineering in Kampala and earning his keep here in the holidays, than visit a gorilla. Oh well, it’ll keep my costs down!

*

On the pictorial map I bought yesterday of Fort Portal area, I spotted ‘the old road’ over the mountains – the Buranga Pass – from the national park entrance back to the road on the other side of the mountain range. Here, on the most wonderful, scenic and beautiful curling, corkscrewing, serpentine, earth and grass road, I got my forest experience for nothing except a bit of muscular energy and pain in my now not well covered bum, with the bones poking out as usual. How I enjoyed that ten mile ride! The views down to the incredible, extensive forested plains below were terrific. The forest enclosed the winding track on both sides. The grass had grown back over what must have been – in a derelict matutu especially, a terrifying trip. The track was wide enough most of the way for one vehicle with dramatic plunging drops to the side and trees draped in vines hanging out over the trail. This road was, I realised as I wound my way up into the mountain fastness, undoubtedly hacked from the mountain by hand. Tracks like this make my travels worthwhile. It was SO satisfying. For the first ten kilometres I met no one, then I came across a group of men armed with machetes and one with a fine seven foot spear like a real African hunter, the effect somewhat spoiled for this romantic tourist, by a Uganda football tee shirt and a pair of torn and filthy jeans. Later I met two fellows loading a small Chinese motorbike with two vast sacks of produce that they were probably going to ride – the two of them on top – down the frightening, twisting, curling track. It rather humbled my imagination of the intrepid nature of my own ride! At the top of the pass I met a boda-boda rider on his tiny Chinese bike, three up, and decided that what I was doing wasn’t in the least adventurous after all! But I DID enjoy that ride, one of the best I have had in days.

*

I’m sitting on the hotel balcony with a beer as I write. The sun’s just about gone now at 7.30. It’s not the quietest hotel to have chosen, but it IS friendly and inexpensive. My room is acceptable (with ear plugs) even if I have to have cold showers. “Oh, use the right tap, the one with the blue spot! (Cold, to you and me),” said the lad on reception when I asked if I could get some warm water today. Later, I told him I had taken another stone cold shower (not so difficult in this warmth). “Oh, we will fix it! The engineer is working on it! (Like hell!). Tomorrow we bring hot water!” At that moment a woman brought a gallon container of hot water she had heated for me. I had cold showered fifteen minutes before. But, you know, in Africa, it’s the thought that counts and I really was grateful for that! How kind. The water heater is defunct, so you go away and heat water on a gas stove – or it could be, even in this working hotel, on charcoal – for your mzungu customer! You have to smile. Well, I do.

And that’s the best thing that happened today: my smile came back.

Sitting here on the balcony overlooking the street, I have become aware that everyone, but everyone, switches off their engine to freewheel down the hill past the hotel to the roundabout at the town centre – small motorbikes, three and four up, cars, lorries… All of them out of control; no engine braking; accidents awaiting to happen – as they do in this country. The driving is absolutely APPALLING! I’ve been watching for the last couple of hours. I admit I’m not good at parking my car (almost 40 years’ reliance on motorbikes) but even I can do better than anyone I have seen here. And as for observation, road safety, courtesy, machine control…

Now I have to go down to the ‘restaurant’ and see if Daphne is as excited to serve me again as she intimated!

DAY 51 SATURDAY 28th JANUARY 2017. FORT PORTAL, UGANDA

It’s something of a shock to witness rain – and it’s gone COLD with it! Oh well, at least the bike got washed out in the hotel car park. I’m wearing my long trousers, jersey and fleece jerkin. I am at 5100 feet, I suppose, and it will lay the dust a bit. I just hope the sun comes back in the morning.

There was thick cloud cover when I looked out soon after eight, wondering why the room wasn’t full of sunlight. Soon after there was a shower. I waited for the sun, for it’s never long in returning in Africa. By 10.30 the cool air was drying and I set off, back a few kilometres along the Kampala road to the area in which tea carpets the hills in glorious green profusion. I’d intended to visit one of the estates until I discovered that the fleece-the-foreigner habit even extends to the mzungu-owned tea estates. It’s really not worth £25 to look at tea drying, something I have seen before anyway. I regret this policy of extortion in these countries. It makes a bad impression for visitors – a three hour walk in the nearby national forest would have cost me almost £60! Locals pay something over a fiver. For £60 I can stay five nights in this hotel.

*

I rode off without asking – or paying – around some of the tea estate tracks between the gloriously green tea bushes, low-lying and cropped regularly for the top, brilliantly green leaves, which makes for such a regular, orderly scene. Red dust lanes curl between the expansive verdant fields that cloak the gentle hills. Here and there graceful trees have been left to flourish amongst the green-flocked slopes, providing dappled shade. It’s one of the most beautiful crops to see and I remember with the greatest pleasure my days, half a lifetime ago, sitting on the steps of the wooden trains in the highlands of Sri Lanka, one of the finest landscapes I ever saw, trundling along at not much above walking pace, twisting and rumbling between the beauty of the vast tea estates, pickers in brilliant, vivid, floating saris tossing the new green leaves into baskets on their backs.

Returning to town, I pulled into the local botanical gardens and enjoyed a delightful walk with Andrew, informed and entrepreneurial. ‘Breakfast with Birds’ is a clever initiative he brought to the gardens for bird watchers, for bird life is diverse and spectacular in these parts of Africa. Astonishingly, considering the wild profusion, these gardens are only fifteen years old. Given sufficient water – the sunlight is unquestionable less than a degree from the Equator – plants and trees thrive. There are about 90 acres of the gardens, right on the edge of the town centre, used as a research station, medicinal plant supplier, nursery and recreational space. There’s even a tree house for bird watching mounted high in a mature giant fig tree.

*

It struck me today that over the past few weeks I have seen tens of thousands of small bodo-bodas, the smelly 100 and 150cc Chinese motorbike taxis that have infested this continent. There is seldom, at any time or place, not one in view, usually dozens. They are Africa’s new pack animals and individual small time business. Vastly overloaded, they puff and struggle, the rider sitting on the front of the tank with anything up to four passengers behind, women often side-saddle, or huge loads of sacks, crates, firewood, baulks of timber, festoons of jerry cans, doors, bed frames, fence posts, other motorbikes, bicycles, dangling flocks of live chickens, trussed goats and sheep, tables, chairs, suitcases, milk churns, oxygen bottles, boxes, bags, wheels, fabric bolts, piles of men’s suits, car parts, whole families – and anything else your imagination can conjure. The most extreme loads I have seen, apart from ten foot timbers reaching five feet each side of the bike, have been a double two foot six high pile of fresh eggs in cardboard trays (how many reached their destination?) and a four foot square mirror in a wooden frame, held across the bike behind the driver – on quite a breezy day – by the passenger staring at his own reflection and the receding road behind.

What really made me think of the small motorbikes though, is that of the tens of thousands I have seen in over seven weeks I have seen not one – NOT ONE – ridden by a woman…

*

Daphne, the waitress, back tonight, having, she tells me, washed clothes all day (an arduous activity done by hand) is disappointed in me tonight I think! Asking me whether I was going to church tomorrow, I told her I was a non-believer. Well, sometimes you have to open people’s minds to new concepts! She stopped in her tracks, stunned by my revelation – the first person she ever met who doesn’t believe and wont be going to church. Or maybe just the first one who told her so… Religion is so powerful in Africa – generally unthinking and indoctrinated from the earliest years thanks to educational institutions being largely religion based. But I bet my ‘Christian’ principles are probably wider, more accepting and compassionate than most in her church. Uganda is particularly conservative in its attitudes. As I wrote the other night, atheism and devil worship probably occupy the same parts of most Ugandans’ opinions, along with homosexuality and women priests! Not an enlightened, free thinking country. (Rather like Trump’s New America. Hitler and Judaism come to mind today with news coming out of that country. But enough of that depressing subject.)

*

The Rwenzori Travellers’ Inn isn’t the quietest place to stay, right on the main street through town. But it’s cheap and the staff cheerful. The electricity has been off all day and the next building, in a yard below my first floor room, has had a thundering generator roaring so it could play the English football games to its patrons. Football – the biggest export of my country. Football unites all Africans, perhaps the only thing that does. The constant first question I am asked is, “Which team do you support?”

I fear I am sometimes a gross disappointment to my African acquaintances, no kids, no football, no god..!