Supertramps

The 62 day journey of 3 men, into Africa

There is a world beyond our doorstep, the world beyond our street. Last year, three of us came together over a few beers, deciding to face up to a large part of that world. It wasn’t just the beer talking. We – Bok Pretorius, Neil Fraser and me, Charl van Schalkwyk – wanted to see the real, the whole of Africa. The challenge was to hitchhike with a minimum of stuff, along the spine of the world’s darkest continent. As told to Nick van der Leek

Sooner or later we must measure ourselves in the real world, against some external standard. And so, when we find ourselves, it’s November 25, 2005, and we’re walking, the three of us, inside one of the three giant pyramids. The flight, the hotel in Cairo, it’s all a distant memory. We’re suddenly transported to another Africa. Deep, rich, dry and ancient. This is the powerful Africa that once was. There was an Empire here, in Egypt, in Africa, that was the centre of the world.

We’re wearing white Arabian cloth on our heads. The three of us ride camels between the tall, silent, hulking pyramids, until we approach the Sphinx. A sphinx is a person who keeps his thoughts and feelings secret, and looking at it, we wonder about all the secrets and treasures not only of Egypt, but that history has left behind for us to unravel. It has a lion’s body, and a man or an animal’s head. I look at Bok, at Neil, and can’t help smiling. So this is what it is like to walk here, to be an Egyptian. And pressing my hand against a rock, glowing gold in the setting sun, I feel the same ancient hieroglyphics that faraway hands and winds have touched. This dry sandy place, with its robes and donkeys, its dancers and incense, its camels and donkeys, is Egypt. And now before anything can sink in, we are already heading south, back towards far away homes, somewhere inside Africa.

Why do we travel? Do we need an external confirmation of our existence? Our road takes us to the river. We swim in the Nile, washing Egypt’s dust from our hands and feet, while temples – like Philae - hover against the dunes.



Lidless statues stare at us from the shores of the Nile. The gods are beckoning, between the palms and plains behind us.
We leave against the flow of the Nile, moving beyond Luxor and Aswan, towards Wadi Halpha.
From the waters of the Nile, we move deeper into The Sudan. We’re filled with nervous excitement. On the ferry, the people around us wear white robes and skullcaps. Meanwhile, the landscape becomes drier and harsher. Lotti – a Sudanese guy, who worked in Cape Town at a Shell garage, helps us buy food for the same price the locals pay. At 5am a guy wakes up to pray on the steel deck of the ferry, and as he starts, the loudspeaker blares for the umpteenth time. Before my eyes close I’m dimly aware that no one has risen to join him.

Hours later we’re on the back of a truck, headed towards Khartoum. I’ve just hit my head against a bolt in the roof, and we’ve realized the desert is not going to be a smooth ride. There are concrete hard corrugations, holes and thick sand. These prevent us from sleeping. We decide to use the time to share secrets – some good ones! At 2am I see a light in the distance, and I think about the 6 tourists that were shot outside Khartoum. We stop suddenly for tea in the middle of the Nubian Desert. I get out and count stars. We quickly open a can of tuna and pass around pieces of bread.
At 2pm we get out and wash the desert off our hands and faces.
After 25 hours on a crammed bus, with virtually no sleep or food, and covered in dust, we get off. We have just begun to move down through Africa and it’s already feeling harder than we could ever have imagined. We check into the El Haramain Hotel in Khartoum. We sms our girlfriends, shower and then pass out, allowing the mosquitoes to drop down and feast.

I wake up with a very stiff back, and plenty of shooting pains. We speak a little about the cool Arabs we’ve already encountered. We walk to the White Nile Bridge, about 4km, and try to make out where exactly the White Nile meets the Blue.

We’re somewhere else, waiting for hours until the bus is full, and, after a bunch of Sudanese have a fisticuff over seats, we get going. We leave Khartoum, a busy, friendly city full of helpful people. The driver of the bus to Al Gedaref doesn’t play games. He passes trucks and buses as though they’re standing still. We arrive at 5:30 and can’t find a soul that speaks English. There’s no one to help us get to Al Gallabat, no way to get to the border, so we check in to the Akim Hotel. We find only one tap that works, and you shower with a bucket. Then we go walkabout. The locals watch us with unabashed fascination. Do white people ever come here, I wonder.

And they love Mandela on our shirts.
Before going to bed we quickly speak about Ethiopia. A long and hard journey still lies ahead of us, that much is obvious.



We’re hoping to leave Sudan, heading towards Gondor, in Ethiopia, today. I enjoy the extra 15 minutes sleep while Bok and Neil wash up. We leave the minus 2 star hotel just before 8am. Our transport is a bakkie, with three guys in the front, and 12 of us in the back. The road shape shifts from tar to gravel and back, meanwhile the driver puts pedal to the metal. Is he possessed? After showing our passports, two more clamber on board, and at one point we are 17 sitting at the back. At Gallabad we go through Sudanese Customs and after crossing a bridge we walk into Meterna, in Ethiopia. The customs area there is a clearing under a tree, and the immigration section is a hut a little further on. We do the black market thing to break on through to the other side. As soon as we exit bone dry Sudan we find 4 guys sitting, drinking beer, two of them completely smashed. Now we’re in Ethiopia. We still need to get to Gondor. I chat to an old fella about South African history while we wait for the bus to fill up, that is, Africa’s version of full.

It feels like the sea. It’s restless and tiring tides. We load, we’re full, and then it’s the road and the ride…it fills and empties…. Again we need a new transport. And again and again.
We arrange transport for the remainder of the road to Gondor (not quite in Middle Earth, but almost) on an Isuzu. We travel in style, lying on bags of corn and taking in a stunning sunset. After dark we stay over in an Ethiopian dorp called Chicene. When we at last have our beds open, sleep hits us with its hammer.

A wonderful sleep is over too soon. We sit for a long time in our sleeping bags while the great morning dawns around us. Then it’s another day eating dust, the Isuzu’s racing each other like the remnants of Paris to Dakar or something. In Gondor, with home still unthinkably far away, we decide to go bigger, and board a bus. Roll, roll, roll the bus, all the way through Ethiopia. I speak to a tour guide called Wajje before we bail out and clamber onto a smaller bus. At Gauer Gaurge the next day, we’re drinking Dashen beers in a Glorified Shebeen. Africa’s bad, but in a good way.

And so it continues. Dust and road and sweeping landscapes. Faces fill the emptiness, the drone of oil through engines that one day Africa will boil and stew and leave for dead, another steel skeleton glinting in the desert.

It’s Tuesday and we’re in Addus Ababa. Bok and I go to exchange traveler’s cheques at the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia.
We eat vegetable omelets afterwards and slurp down cappuccinos. The latter is the same colour, but a lot sweeter and smoother than dust. Yum.
We walk from Meskel Square to Mexico Square. People stare less at us here than in the rural areas. We walk past a soccer stadium, and it’s buzzing. We see the Ethiopian soccer team – who beat Rwanada 2-0 – on the back of a truck. They hold the East African Cup aloft. The crowd goes mad.

I wake up and it’s Wednesday, almost halfway through December, and where are we now? It’s not yet 5am, and the guys are full of jokes. We find our ride, and hours later we arrive at the breathtaking sweep of Ethiopia’s Lake Shala. We sit for a long time and chill, soaking it all up. Then we stomp along a dusty track again. A minibus stops to pick us up. When they ask us to sit in front we know that now they were going to pack us in. And how right we are: 4 in front, 2 goats in the boot, 9 goats on the roof rack and 24 dudes in the back. True’s Bob.
At Dilu we get a single room with a double bed for a 2 pound coin. We chow down on roast lamb (precooked in foil), with some cauliflower, bread and Coke.

Now the days flap flap flap away. We wake up for the umpteenth time with the chickens. And then, the next few days are hard. Corrugated iron roads – the worst since the Nubian Desert. We’re almost through Kenya. But each day is a hard living. We’re hungry and dirty, but we keep at it.

Njorka’s village is 9 wooden huts, a store room, 2 stables and coffee and tea plantations. Nairobi is one of the cities that impresses us the most, so far.
Kilimanjaro blips by. Zanzibar is bright white and brilliant blue. We feast on prawns, the sun soaking into us like salt into skin, and we dive in the shallows and the deep and sleep late. I’m still regaining my appetite after the food poisoning in Arusha, a place close to the shadow of Kili. Neil is still suffering from Malaria. It’s Bok’s turn next.

It happens in Malawi. We’re in a truck, we’re roosting on bags of corn again, and he’s sitting with his leg hanging out when the truck bounces over a donga, and the steel door that’s been left open, bangs closed, scissoring into the meat of his leg. It’s another attempt to break us, and let’s face it; sitting in cramped busses and bakkies with a busted leg is no walk in the park. But Bok grits his teeth. It’s not broken, but it’s badly bruised, and he can’t bend it. We soldier on through what remains of Malawi.

At Blantyre I want to take a map and see how far we’ve traveled already. I want to follow exactly where we’ve been, and yet, there’s still plenty of road ahead of us. We chill for a day or so along the lake, then take in Mozambique. It’s muddy and wet. It’s warm, and the palm trees remind us of the beginning of this long journey, but also, that we are approaching its epilogue. At different times, an unexpected sadness steals over us, and we become uncharacteristically quiet.

Finally we’re on the tar, the smooth civilized, hole-less stretch that takes us past Komatipoort, into the land of boerewors and braaivleis. We’re heading quickly towards Pretoria now. I take over the driving when we notice our driver’s eyelids drooping dangerously. After surviving Sudan, we’re not taking any chances.
After Pretoria we visit a remarkable man, Ben Dekker, in the green hills and bushes near Port St. Johns. Then, using my father’s orange kombi, we quickly comb away the final blonde strands of beach on our way to the Cape of Good Hope. As we approach the final kilometers, no one says a word. We arrive at Cape Point on January 26, at 4pm. In a howling gale, the 3 of us walk to the stone hewn turret that guards the Cape Point lighthouse, and with the great ocean clapping and swirling below us, we burst open a bottle of champagne. I kiss my girlfriend; we all hug each other and celebrate life, the abundance we have seen, over the sands and forests of the great continent, and in ourselves.

In the weeks since we three have had had time to think, and dream new dreams of trips to other faraway places. Traveling is about movement. Leaving places, finding places. Arrival and departure. Landscapes and faces, with their lines and silhouettes slipping away, and something sphinx-like in ourselves rising in their stead…some secrets only we know, and there is no way to tell them, except to go yourself, and travel the long, long roads of the world.

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