Ok, so perhaps it isn’t actually thoughts from the route, I
didn’t have the space or inclination to actually write the ‘en route’ as it
were and I further refrained from putting pen to paper (or finger to key) when
we arrived last night because, needless to say, 32 hours on a hot and sweaty
bus can really suck the enthusiasm out or a person. Soooo on that note I will
start this at the beginning and try to recapture the excitement and buoyancy
with which I started the journey.
We were scheduled to leave Tana on a taxi-brousse at 14:30
on Sunday afternoon and having booked our seats in advance were advised to be
at the bus terminus for 13:00 to get our luggage strapped to the van etc to
ensure a prompt departure. This left us plenty time to do the last few
administrative tasks in the hotel before we checked out of Hotel Sole and head
to Café De La Gare for brunch before the trip. It was one week, almost to the
hour, since my phone was stolen on the Avenue D’independence on my way to this
very establishment for my first attempt at their infamous brunch so the irony
was not lost on me when it nearly happened again! A group of young boys,
between 8 and 12 years old, started following us down the street. I recognised
them from a couple of nights before when then had followed us out of the hotel
and were messing around trying to feed us from a bowl of rice they were
carrying. That night it seemed harmless enough, although it had made me
uncomfortable when the oldest boy had pushed his spoon to my lips, trying to
force in into my mouth as we walked, and I had to physically brush it away.
That might be why this time I was already on my guard when the boys approached
us and was instantly aware when their begging hands began brushing mine,
pulling at my bag and crowding us as they jostled for position. Between all
their light touches and pleading tugs they had succeeded in unfastening the
front zip of my bag while my hands were actually covering it, but I managed to
break away from the group as the oldest boy had his hand in my bag round my new
phone. As we hurried toward the Café Antoine and I found that both our side
pockets and front pocket had been expertly opened but, having learnt from last
time and now carrying valuables only in a padlocked main pouch, nothing had
been taken and all was well. I was left with a feeling of overwhelming sadness
and frustration that I was allowing my patience to be tested by occurrences
like these and I vowed that morning to view such instances for what they really
are, the reactions of a select few who, fuelled by poverty, desperation and a
lack of social welfare structure, are forced to such things by necessity and a
will to survive. Nonetheless, the padlock will be staying on my backpack no
matter how many strange looks I get from people when I am out.
Having enjoyed a lovely brunch in the gardens of Café De La
Gare, we headed to a small supermarket to buy some snacks for the trip and
piled ourselves, and all my luggage, into a taxi and headed off toward the
terminus. Arriving with Swiss punctuality we watched as our belongings were
loaded and secured on the roof of the 14 seat Mercedes sprinter in which we
would be making our journey and took our places in the front seat of the van
beside the driver, a seat Antoine had requested when we booked which gave us a
little more room and the best view of the passing countryside. We settled
ourselves in and watched as our fellow passengers began to pile on board.
Amongst them was a family with three young boys under ten who fought and teased
each-other as they mother fussed with the bags, a mother and her three teenage
children who arrived visibly upset and cried until the journey began, a young
couple with a 4 month old baby who stared at the world with a large inquisitive
stare, two French kite surfers headed North for a holiday and an array of lone
passengers of all ages. On board too were the driver, his girlfriend and his
assistant who seemed to be in charge of baggage, basic mechanics and rounding
up passengers.
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| Antoine in our chariot of fire |
We stopped on the roadside for a toilet break at about this
time and as all the men peed off the roadside I was tempted to wait for
something more private, but in the spirit of the journey and starting as I
meant to go on me and me head-torched trudged out into the bush where I tripped
over the undergrowth and got bitten by a bug but managed to relieve myself and
get back to the van in one piece, congratulating myself on biting the
proverbial bullet and not being a priss. This turned out to be a jolly good
thing as the facilities in the restaurant and road-side cafés we stopped in
from here on out got worse and worse and really had to be seen to be believed
until I resolved that a patch of dirt at the side of the road was by far the
most hygienic, safe and practical solution to this feminine dilemma and thanked
the stars for the cover of dark under which to commune with nature.
At 20:30 it had been dark for two hours and we stopped for
dinner at a small roadside restaurant. Antoine and I wished each other a silent
‘good luck’ as we tucked into a dinner of reheated rice and chicken bits (offal
included) in a tart tomato sauce. It was tasty and nourishing and my stomach
held out and when we got back into the van I must have fallen asleep because I
was woken at around 23:30 by a whining sound coming from the back right side
wheel and the van ground to a halt. I want to complain about how we were
stranded on a main road as trucks and lorries thundered past, about how long it
took the men to fix the wheel, how hot it was out there in the dark and so on,
but this would all be a lie. As soon as I stepped out of the cabin onto the
asphalt I was utterly mesmerised and don’t know whether we were out there for 2
minutes or 2 hours. I have never been to the Southern hemisphere before, I have
never been anywhere as dark and desolate as the Madagascan landscape and I have
never in all my travels seen the Milky Way. The stars really twinkled, the
Milky Way shone like a highway through the heavens and shooting stars
criss-crossed the night until I had no more wishes left to wish. I lay on the
ground with the other passengers and stared at the sky as though it was
something I had never seen before. This unfortunate breakdown also served to
ingratiate Antoine and I with the driver and his handy friend as we were the
over prepared foreigners who produced no less than 4 torches to aide in the
wheel-changing saga, which I consequently ignored in favour of my engrossed
stargazing and I felt peaceful and light as I thought of my father and I
staring at the stars from our respective continents when I was a girl and
sending messages to one another through the constellations; well we’ve swapped
continents daddy, but if I have even felt connected to you from afar it was on
this night, lying in the dust and talking to you through this alien sky.
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| Flat tyre in the night |
After this I have the say that the trip started to get long.
We piled back into the truck at around 00:30 and by 03:00 we had stopped again
in an abandoned street and the driver, girlfriend and helper all disappeared
for around 30-40 minutes. Then the sun rose at around 05:15 and we stopped
again for breakfast and to swap some merchandise we were carrying with another
car. I felt as though I had been awake all night and by back was beginning to
hurt from trying to keep my feet out of the furnace beneath them. Upon leaving
this terminus as around 05:45 I fell asleep again and was woken at around 07:00
by the bright sun glaring at me through the windscreen. The only way I can describe
this awakening is as though I had fallen through the wardrobe door into Narnia
and having fallen asleep in a decidedly urban Asiatic land I had now awoken in
rural Africa. I can not describe it except to say that the landscape was
different, the air was different and the people bore almost no relation to
those we had left behind in Tana, including in features, language and dress.
This was the Africa I had so longed to see and women in bright coloured sarongs
emerged from the haze balancing impossible loads on their piled high braids
while men strode across the dusty plains carrying machetes, pick-axes and hoes
as they headed into the brush to begin their day of work. I was marvelling at
this amazing transition, basking in the glory of the experience as we rattled
down the highway at 90km/h when we hit a bird. A big one.; a hawk, an eagle or
something slammed straight into the windshield in front of me and I gasped
involuntarily waking anyone who had succeeded in sleeping till that point up
quite violently, including Antoine and the 4 month old baby who had until then
been remarkably quiet. Whoops.
At this point the heat really began to descend. At this
point words fail me. I was like being wrapped in a woollen blanket on the
hottest day of a Maltese summer and then forced to sit in a sauna. Despite
having the windows open and travelling at such a speed there was no air in the
van and I felt like I was choking on my own breath. Not to be horrible but it
was at this point, after half a day and a whole night in the bus that its
occupants (myself included) and their various food choices (one of which was
cream cheese) really began to pong. But
it was ok, I assured myself, as there were only a few hours left to go. Ohhhh
how wrong I was.
The rest of the trip doesn’t bare talking about. The stops
became more frequent as the driver became tired and began to look for excuses
to stop, some of which included searching for a new tyre to replace the one
that went bump in the night, chatting to friends he passed in other taxi
brousses and the COUNTLESS checkpoints manned by armed guards who all needed to
be bribed and smiled at sweetly or told a dirty joke in order to let us through.
Morning turned into lunch (for which we stopped in a transit town for an
inordinate amount of time during which I am absolutely sure the girlfriend
offered her services to the driver to perk him up a bit) and lunch turned into
late afternoon. At around 17:30 on the second day with around 250km to go and
already hours behind schedule, stinking, sweating and having been listening to
the same music CD for hours the road got bad. Really bad. Like driving on the
surface of the moon bad. Also the baby was vocalising what we all were feeling
by screaming intermittently at the top of its poor, tired, hot lungs. By this
time all my good humour had been inverted, along with most of my back muscles,
and each time we stopped for some banal reason, one of which saw a bucket of
diesel stored in the drivers foot well which made me want to vomit, I wanted to
cry. To make up for all the lost time the driver began to drive faster on the
parts of road where this was possible and we barrelled along in the dark,
sliding past oncoming traffic so closely that I had to close my eyes to keep
from my incessant gasping. As darkness fell on the second night Antoine and I
mused on the possibility that Diego Suarez did not in fact exist and that we
were in some kind of purgatory reserved for those who revelled in their
self-professed ‘spirit of adventure’.
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| My reaction to tierdness on the second night |
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| Antoine just wanted to be in a rave |
Needless to say we did arrive in Diego. It was around 21:00
on the second day and we had been in the van for around 32 hours and I was
caked in a layer of black scum, tired and sore and not in the mood for
blogging. We made our way back to the hotel, had a shower and something quick
to eat at a nearby cantina and fell into our beds just as a huge thunderstorm
hit the sprawling coastal town. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow and
stayed that way till 08:30 this morning when the sounds and smells of Diego
Suarez woke me from my slumber. I do not regret our decision to make the
journey by road as I really feel it was an experience that will stay with me,
it was beautiful and exciting and, as I will remind him when his back hurts
over the next few days, a real bonding experience for me and my
not-quite-step-brother; BUT just because I don’t regret it doesn’t mean I am in
a hurry to repeat it either.
Tata for now. More on Diego another day. xxx
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