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  Encouraged by the easy directions and encouragement, I bought some food in the village, and followed the trail up the steep hill. I continued on a wide mud trail as the vegetation became more dense, the trees taller. The noises from the nearby village disappeared. Sure enough, two hours later I came across a stunted, blackened tree and shortly after that I spotted some branches lying to the side of the trail and a signs of new cutting. This was the trail the Peace Corps volunteer had described. I was on the right track.

  It was now early evening so I pressed forward through the forest trees, following slash marks in the undergrowth. The trail started to peter out and the jungle growth to increase. I started to stoop and crawl and was just about to give up hope, as the daylight waned, of reaching the water source, when I heard the sound of running water. I pressed on until in a hollow below me I saw a pool being fed by a trickle coming from a spring.

  I collected and purified some water from the pool. In the dusk I found an upended tree and unrolled my sleeping bag in the hollow where the roots had been. This was it; I had my campsite. I had a cold snack to eat and some water to drink. I was ready for the experience of spending a night in the jungle. There were no threatening wild animals or local teenagers likely to rob me. I prepared for the good sleep which I was entitled to. I was tired.

  Alas, it was not to be. Just as I was about to drop off, I felt sharp little bites on my legs. My flashlight was weak, but not so weak that it couldn't light up a small army of orange colored ants which had invaded my bag. They were everywhere, I was already bitten on both legs, and my light source was running out. I pulled my bag uphill, and spent much of the sleepless night in the dark trying to kill as many ants as I could with my fingers.

  The next morning, tired and irritable, I dragged myself back to the Peace Corps volunteer's village and handed back the machete. He was not there so I couldn't share my story of the ants and get a laugh from him. Later the same day I reached the lakeside town of Mutambara from where I caught a minibus to Bujumbura and checked in at the missionary's house. When I told him about the attack of ants he smiled, but said nothing. Probably he was thinking about how to secure his health clinic in the event of fighting breaking out. I spent one more night, before heading off to catch a ferry at the port of Bujumbura which would take me the length of Lake Tanganyika, the world's longest lake and second largest freshwater lake, and drop me two days later in Zambia. Unknown to me, my travel experience was about to take a turn for the worse.

  ZAMBIA

  Boarding the Motor Vessel Liemba I found I was sharing a cabin with a Zambian businessman in a suit. Unfortunately, although the lake was smooth as glass and there was no wind, he got sea sick shortly after we got under way and threw up over himself. I loaned him a spare pair of pants while he rinsed his own pants in the cabin wash basin. He bought me supper in the restaurant as a thank you.

  The MV Liemba had a long history. Built in 1914 and named the Graf von Gotzen by the Germans who ruled this part of Africa, it was scuttled in 1916 to prevent it falling into the hands of the British. A Royal Navy salvage crew raised the ship and it was reintroduced into service in 1924. It played a fictitious role in the movie The African Queen, as the object of Humphrey Bogart's gin-swilling riverboat captain's attack, which ended the film. Despite its age, it was clean and comfortable.

  The boat made several stops going down the lake, pulling in close to the shore but not tying up since there were no jetties. Small wooden boats paddled by women would come out and try to sell vegetables to the ship's passengers. Occasionally, someone would climb up a ladder from one of these boats onto the ship.

  I disembarked at Mpulungu, and I caught a ride eighteen miles to the next town, called Mbala. It was getting late. There seemed to be no hotels. I stopped at a shop to buy bread, but the shelves were bare of almost anything except canned potatoes from Ireland. A white man came into the shop to buy cigarettes. He was in his sixties, a little overweight, and his veined red nose suggested a drinking problem. He could have been a character in a Graham Greene novel, the expatriate alcoholic teacher. I asked him if there was any place in the town where I could spend the night.

  "Go to the college," he said, "I work there. The boys can give you a bed in one of the dorms." With that he lit a cigarette and marched off. I found the college further along the main street, a cluster of buildings which seemed to me to resemble a rundown boarding school. There was a chapel, an administrative building with a sign reading "Office here" and two long buildings, from one of which I could hear voices. Apart from that, the campus such as it was seemed deserted.

  Sure enough, pushing open the door in one of the long buildings I came across a group of black teenagers. There were six of them, wearing the same type of shirt and shorts, sitting in a classroom looking bored. I asked if there was anywhere to sleep.

  The students then started to ask questions about me. It seemed that I had arrived at half term. The college was on vacation and all of the students had gone home except this small group. They were eager for conversation, and in no time I had my guidebook out and was showing them my route. They told me that the teacher whom I had spoken was Mr. Richards. He was from England, and taught English.

  I was just wondering how I could get something to eat, and when I would get some sleep, when our excited conversation was interrupted by the arrival of one of the teachers, a stern faced man who ordered me: "Come with me." I wondered if this might mean a meal, but I was sadly mistaken.

  TOURIST ON A DHOW, LAMU

  KIDS ON THE BEACH, MALAWI

  TRAFFIC LIGHT, BUJUMBURA

  We walked across the grassless lawn, and he knocked on a door marked Principal. Inside, an older man, clearly the principal, looked even more severe, and told me to sit down. These two men were upset, and they soon told me why. They thought I was a South African saboteur, since I was white and carried a backpack. I later found that there had been recent incidents in this part of Zambia of South Africans raiding and blowing up buildings.

  I was dumbfounded, tired and getting testy. They were accusatory and relentless. I told them how the white teacher had suggested going to one of the dorms; I offered to open up my backpack, and I showed them my passport. I asked them: "Do I look like a military person?" They remain unconvinced, increasing if anything their accusations. Two other teachers came into the room, and joined in the hostile questioning. Then the head teacher said, "You will come with us to the police station."

  We formed a small procession of five persons as we left the campus, and headed along the main street. Soon I saw a familiar blue light, the sort that shines outside every police station in England. Inside the station behind a counter was the Zambian equivalent of a British bobby, a grey haired sergeant in a dark blue uniform.

  He listened to the outpouring of accusations, in local dialect, as the headmaster supported by the other teachers explained their conspiracy theory. His lined old face showed no reaction. I meanwhile, feeling tired and hungry, simply sat down on a bench while the teachers continued their barrage of accusations. The sergeant asked a couple of questions, and listened to their answers. I was thinking that he was likely getting fed up about being told how to do his job by the teachers. Maybe I would be put in the cells. I really didn't care.

  He dismissed the group of teachers, and they left. He then turned to me and said, "If you go down the street on the right side, in front of the bank building, you will see the guardian. He has a fire there. You can sleep next to the fire, in your sleeping bag. Tell him I sent you." And that is how it turned out. I slept on the ground next to the fire outside the town bank. Thinking back on the incident, the sergeant reminded me of "Dickson on Dock Green," a long-running British TV show about a police sergeant who embodies the virtues of wisdom, judgment and calmness. The sergeant in the Mbala police station was a Zambian Sergeant Dickson.

  MALAWI

  I was heading for Malawi, and did not want to proceed further into Zambia, given the state of the economy and
the obvious paranoia about people with white skin. I caught a bus the next day to the town of Mwenzo close on the Zambia/Tanzania border, and then paid a taxi to drive me to the Malawi frontier. Glad to be out of Zambia despite the expense of the taxi, I walked up to the Malawi immigration building. Inside, a cheerful immigration officer, smiling broadly, said "Mister, welcome to Malawi. What do you have to declare?" "Two guns and some hand grenades," I said, sensing he would go along with the joke. He did. Shaking his head, and chortling at the wit, he replied: "Well, you are nevertheless welcome, enjoy your stay in Malawi," and stamped my passport with a loud thud.

  Easygoing Malawi, where white tourists were welcome, was a pleasant contrast to Zambia. I sat in a bus heading for Livingstonia, the settlement named after the Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingston, who lived here during his years of preaching in Africa. Livingston was an early voice in opposing the slave trade in Africa and revered by the local people. When he died, his body was carried for days across country, and then shipped to London where he is buried in Westminster Abbey.

  The bus was packed, and I was jammed in a seat towards the back next to a large local woman with a young girl on her lap. The perky little girl, who had braided hair and a clean dress, obviously had never seen a white person before. She kept rubbing her hand along my arm, and saying something in wonderment to her mother. The mother looked temporarily embarrassed but when she saw that I didn't mind she smiled easily at her daughter's curiosity.

  Coming back down from Livingstonia, which is located 1,500 feet above Lake Malawi, I started looking for a campsite. I found a quiet spot, a few hundred years from the road, under a tree and right next to the beach. I could hear some voices in the distance, but I reckoned I was far enough away from the road to remain hidden. Not so. This is Africa, and a sort of bush telegraph operates when outsiders arrive.

  I had no sooner put up my tent than a group of twelve youngsters, aged around ten years old, appeared from behind some bushes, staring at me with excitement. They seemed curious and harmless rather than threatening or potential thieves. So I waved to them to come over, and showed them my tent. An older boy spoke some English and he said they lived in a village nearby.

  Soon we had a nice relationship going. I kicked around an old football they carried with them in an impromptu soccer game. Then I showed them my stove, and indicated I was going to make some tea. Some of them went off, and came back with some wood for a fire and a fishing pole. Shortly after, they presented me with a fish they had caught in the lake. This was my supper. I took a picture of these boisterous, uninhibited kids displaying the fish. The older one told me they had to go back to their village; he had heard his mother calling them to supper. He wished me good night rather formally. I felt completely safe about camping on the beach, and slept soundly.

  The next day I boarded the venerable lake steamer MV Ilala proceeding south on Lake Malawi. This 360-passenger ship was built in Scotland in 1949 and transported in pieces via Mozambique to Malawi where it was launched two years later. I sat on the deck with other backpackers enjoying the sun, chatting and reading. Below decks local Malawi families slept, sang songs and cooked meals on little stoves.

  At Monkey Bay I disembarked and sought out the Heart Motel, recommended by a passenger. This turned out to be a thatched roof building with cabins to one side. A sign on the building read "Motel Heart Vacation Village: where quality never needs to shout, an elegant way of relaxing." Inside was the owner, Mr. Richard, who previously had been a chef in the capital Lilongwe and had returned to his place of birth to start this backpacker hostel.

  With no electricity, and cooking on an open wood fire, Mr. Richard served hot dishes to the backpackers who sat at a table in the garden patiently drinking beer. An order of eggs or pancakes would periodically emerge with a flourish from the main hut carried by Mr. Richard himself, wearing a blue sweater above his apron and a big grin. The setting was conducive to reminiscing about travels completed, and plans for the future. This was budget travel at its best, a tolerant host and visitors adapting well to local conditions.

  Later I hiked in Mulanje Mountain Forest Reserve, an immense block of dark igneous rock rising sharply from the surrounding plain. This is not just a mountain but a massif of some twenty peaks ranging up to almost 10,000 feet, covering an area of 208 square miles. At the lower elevations it comprises rolling grasslands and forested ravines. Outside the ranger station at the entrance to the park I hired a young man with a deformed leg to show me the way to the first mountain hut. I reckoned I didn't need a guide, particularly a crippled guide, since I had a map and the trail system looked well established. But I liked the sharp look in his eye, and reckoned he knew his own capability. It turned out fine; he was wiry and tough, and hobbled along ahead of me for four hours. Then, on arrival at the mountain hut, he said goodbye, left me and went back down to the ranger station.

  The next day I climbed Sapitwa Peak in two hours by an easy trail which included occasional scrambling around boulders but nothing more strenuous. I met no one going up or coming down and wondered briefly about the absence of hikers. From the summit I gazed out over southern Africa, noticing dark green plantations on the lower slopes and enjoying the soft warm breeze which blew up from the plains. I seemed to have arrived during a dry, balmy spell on a mountain known for its damp and misty spells. For once I felt lonely and sad that I had no one to share with on this mountain setting. I seemed to be the only person on the mountain.

  In Blantyre, Malawi's commercial capital, I camped in the grounds of the country club which still bore signs from colonial days. Notices informed members that afternoon tea was served on the veranda each afternoon from 4 p.m. and that members were required to dress in jacket and tie for dinner. I put up my tent next to a cricket pitch, and washed in the clubhouse men's room.

  My next destination was Zimbabwe, and to get there I had to cross through Mozambique, then embroiled in a civil war. However, Malawi was an important supply point for landlocked Zimbabwe and supply convoys left daily, escorted by military vehicles, for the 80-mile trip through Mozambique up to the Zimbabwe frontier. The trucking companies have no trouble letting hitchhikers ride in the convoy, and I easily arranged to get a ride with a specific driver the next morning.

  I duly turned up at 6 a.m. and climbed into the cab of a large truck carrying canned goods. The driver told me not to be worried; there had not been any attacks on the convoy for four weeks. But he warned me against leaning out of the window and drawing attention to myself. Our convoy of eleven trucks escorted by six armored cars from the Zimbabwe army left Blantyre promptly at 8 a.m.

  MOZAMBIQUE

  Two hours later we arrived at the Malawi/Mozambique border, and here we ran into a problem. The truck I was in broke down. The convoy, cleared by immigration, was ready to continue. None of the other truck drivers wanted to take me, since their boss had not authorized it. I was left, on the Mozambique side of the border, hoping to get a ride on the next day's convoy.

  I was looking for some food to buy, and hoping to find a spot where I could put up my tent when a white woman started talking to me in Portuguese. We switched to English, which she spoke a little, and I explained my problem. "You must come and stay in my house," she said, "You can sleep on the couch. It is not safe for you to camp out here at the border."

  She took me to her house, and gave me a plate of chicken and rice to eat. She explained that she was Portuguese and had lived many years in Mozambique. She was trying to sell her house and return to Portugal, but the war situation made it difficult. She made no mention of a husband. She loved the country, and had spent all her adult life there, but her hope of spending the rest of her life in Mozambique ended when the country attained independence (in 1975, twelve years previously) and she was resigned to returning to Portugal, which she had not seen since she had left as a young girl. She was facing a similar situation faced by expatriates around the world since World War II, when they discovered that the coun
try they considered their home had changed ownership and they could no longer count on the same conditions and comforts as before. I felt she was lonely and enjoyed having someone to talk to, as well as being of use to a traveler in need. I certainly was happy not to be sleeping outside in a dangerous border region, as I told her, with many thanks, when I left the next morning.

  The next morning, I pleaded with a driver in the morning convoy and explained how my truck from yesterday, still immobile, had broken down and I was stranded. He said okay, and to climb into his cab. Ten hours later we rolled into the outskirts of Harare, Zimbabwe after a trip without incident.

  ZIMBABWE

  Zimbabwe was a happier place in those days than it is today, and a much more prosperous country than its neighbors. It finally achieved independence from Britain in 1980. The country was now black-ruled under Mugabe, although many white farmers retained their lands and acquired citizenship in the new republic. Mining, agriculture and tourism were the main industries. It was a rich country.

  My truck driver took me to a campsite before going to unload, and I spent a safe if hungry night. I had run out of food and it was too late to buy any supplies. The next morning, telling the camp guardians I was coming back in the evening and leaving my tent up, I took a bus into town. First I consulted Africa on a Shoestring, the bible for information for backpackers.

  I needed to exchange money and among listings for accommodations and restaurants the guidebook pointed me to a black market money changer: Tony the Greek's hamburger joint in downtown Harare. Changing black market money can get the tourist and the money changer both into trouble, since it's against the law. So I approached the counter in the hamburger place warily and simply asked if Tony was in. The serving girl nodded her head towards a door to one side, and said "Go in there."