Some days Africa grinds you down. And some days Africa rips your heart out. Having been searched thoroughly I wait over an hour in the Ethiopian embassy Consular Section to be told I could not be given a visa because I didn’t have a re-entry pass for Kenya. ‘I’m not… Continue reading
The Tana Guesthouse, Malindi, turns out to be a 2 minute walk from where coaches leave for Lamu. We pass scrub and small settlements. It takes 5 hours to reach the end of the mainland at Mokowe. Its been a bone shaking journey, mostly over compacted dirt road. The easiest… Continue reading
A couple of hours along boring scenery and new road brings the Tanga express minibus to Horohoro, the Tanzanian side of the border. We pass flat expanses of farmland, and the first herds of cattle I remember seeing. Countries rarely noticeably change character on the border with their neighbours. The… Continue reading
Fun in the sun? Its the wet season The imam on the dalla-dalla from the port on Pemba island tells me its “18 miles from Mkaoni to Chake. The same again to Wete”. It takes me nearly 2 hours to make it those 18 miles to Chake. We pass a… Continue reading
I wait for the rain to stop. No one is moving about Stone Town’s streets below. It hadn’t quite finished drizzling, but I couldn’t take the sitting indoors any longer, and depart. The Pemba ferry for the next day is already fully booked, so I have to buy a ticket… Continue reading
The blue smoke that had been billowing from the 60 seater coach’s exhaust stopped at Ikiwiri (literally meaning “the white man simply died of despair”). After 2 hours we are told that if the problem (that remains unspecified) can’t be fixed soon alternative transport will be provided. I miss the… Continue reading
Dhow to Kilwa Kisiwani In Mocimboa the sky was cloudless, the sun burning at 9am. Perhaps a reminder I’m slowly creeping back towards the equator. The knock for transport to the frontiera comes at 2.20am. I wasn’t really sleeping anyway. As one of the first to board I’m given a… Continue reading
In the morning half-wakefulness the gubb gubb gubb of the turkeys outside my room sounded like ‘up up up’, meaning ‘north! north! north!’. I head north from Pemba to Quissanga, the next town along the coast. Within a couple of minutes of walking I can see that Quissanga is exactly… Continue reading
Tumbledown island Nampula is not coastal. It is a relatively large town, meaning running water, proper sugared ring doughnuts, and onward connections to Mozambique Island. A large minibus (capacity around 25, today’s capacity about 35) is almost ready to depart, for the morning’s journey. The poverty of the island –… Continue reading
The tar runs into smooth-ish orange clay that’s just beginning to become crennalated not soon after Mocuba. The sun tries to break through the clouds-cum-mist over the vast green of Mozambique in the rains that can’t have changed much in hundreds of years save for the mobile phone masts. We… Continue reading
