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- Herausgeber: Jonathan Ball
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
'Next year I'm going to be 80 years old. My car will be 20 years old. Together we'll be 100. We're going to drive to London.' ' 'And what route are you going to take?' ' 'I have no idea. I think I'll keep to the right.' When 80-year old Julia Albu calls into her favourite radio show with a zany, half-baked idea, she has no idea that it will lead her to the adventure of a lifetime. With her trusty 20-year-old old Toyota Conquest, Tracy, a giant map and unbounded enthusiasm, Julia sets off on the long drive through Africa and into the UK where she hopes to meet the Queen of England. Beginning in South Africa, she travels through deserts, over mountains and across grassy plains. All along the way, she is accompanied by family and friends. She stays in hotels and hovels, breakfasts with a giraffe and hangs out with baboons, and meets a host of colourful characters who all can't help but be drawn to the charming, white-haired octogenarian in their midst. My African Conquest is a funny, feel-good story about adventuring through life – and never acting your age.
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Julia Albu
My African Conquest
Cape to Cairo at 80
Jonathan Ball Publishers
JOHANNESBURG & CAPE TOWN
To Africa and all her people.
The Call of Africa
When you’ve acquired a taste for dust,
The scent of our first rain,
You’re hooked for life on Africa
And you’ll not be right again
Till you can watch the setting moon
And hear the jackals bark
And know that they’re around you
Waiting in the dark.
When you long to see the elephants
Or hear the coucal’s song,
When the moonrise sets your blood on fire,
You’ve been away too long.
It’s time to cut the traces loose
And let your heart go free
Beyond that far horizon
Where your spirit yearns to be.
Africa is waiting – come!
Since you’ve touched the open sky
And learned to love the rustling grass
And the wild fish eagle’s cry,
You’ll always hunger for the bush,
For the lion’s rasping roar,
To camp at last beneath the stars
And to be at peace once more.
C Emily Dibb, The Conundrum Trees
Foreword
By John Maytham
‘Hello, Julia from Jakkalsfontein.’
‘Hello John! I just love your programme. I felt I had to ring you because I plan to drive my little car … next year it will be twenty years that I’ve had her, and I’ll be 80, so together we’ll be 100, and I plan to drive her to Cairo.’
A taken-aback chuckle from me. ‘You just drop that into the conversation, Julia.’
Not my brightest-ever riposte, but Julia’s announcement was so out-of-the-blue, and so madcap, that I was lost for (sensible) words.
‘Well, it just goes to show if you’ve got a good little car, you don’t need all these fancy things. I have a Toyota Conquest 1997. She goes like a bird, and when I listen to you talking about the president’s wives all having to have new cars – it’s absolute nonsense.’
This is a transcript of part of the radio chat in which I found out about Julia’s plan. Listening now to that conversation of three years ago, it strikes me that at no stage in our relatively brief exchange did my voice indicate anything other than astonishment and wonderment – certainly not disbelief. Right from the get-go, Julia persuaded me, and the many listeners who contacted me to share their delight in what they’d just heard, that the plan was entirely feasible. More than that, it was an entirely logical response to the obscenity that is our government’s rule-book on car purchasing.
Back then, I asked her whether she would be solo or accompanied on the quest.
‘Oh, I’ll need somebody with me to change a tyre, because that’s one thing I can’t do.’
And that was the only concession to her age she was prepared to make. She was completely convinced, and that confidence infected all who heard her, that the ‘two old birds’ would make a journey from the West Coast to North Africa as easily as one might make a trip to the local supermarket.
I stayed in touch with Julia as she turned that spur-of-the-moment notion into reality. As the departure date approached, we spoke several times on the radio. She came into the Cape Talk studios in Green Point, Cape Town on the Friday before her adventure began and she sounded as resolute as ever, although she did confess to some 2am jitters: ‘That’s the time of the night when you imagine all the things that can go wrong.’
As her tale describes, some things did go wrong, but none of us was surprised that this indomitable woman overcame all the setbacks and arrived in Cairo as per her plan. She even went on to drive all the way to London. What baffles me is that the queen wasn’t waiting to offer her a medal and a cup of tea!
The word ‘inspirational’ is applied too often and too easily, but it’s one that’s utterly appropriate, even obligatory, when considering Julia from Jakkalsfontein’s achievement. It pleases me greatly to have played a tiny role in this magnificent odyssey.
John Maytham
Cape Town
June 2019
1
The beginning
Jakkalsfontein, West Coast, South Africa, June 2016
‘Next year I’m going to be 80 years old. My car will be 20 years old. Together we’ll be 100. We’re going to drive to Cairo.’
‘And what route are you going to take?’
‘I have no idea. I think I’ll keep to the right.’
This was the conversation I, an ordinary woman of 79, had with radio host John Maytham one afternoon. I’d been in my kitchen in my house in Jakkalsfontein, a nature reserve on the Cape West Coast that had been my home for almost two decades. I’d been baking brownies, with the radio blaring, and what had caught my ear was a snippet about how more than R8 million was being spent on cars for the wives of our then president, Jacob Zuma. Incensed, I’d dialled the number of the radio station.
The charming person who answered asked me what I wanted to say, and when I told her, she put me straight through. The next thing, I heard John Maytham’s voice saying, ‘Good afternoon, Julia …’
I only realised what I’d blurted out to him after I ended the call. Oh my god, I thought to myself, I hope no-one heard that stupid announcement I just made.
But hardly had I put down the phone than it rang. ‘Julia! It can’t be true! Are you really driving to Cairo in that old Conquest?’ It was Steve, my electrician, who was calling from Swakopmund in Namibia, where he was busy doing a job.
Well, I thought, the cat’s out the bag then. But maybe I’ll get lucky and my four kids won’t have heard …
Five minutes later, Katherine, my eldest daughter who lives in Rondebosch in Cape Town, called. ‘Mum! What do you think you’re doing? I’ve just had a friend call to ask if it was my mother on the radio …’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it was just a thought. Not to worry; it will all blow over.’ But privately I was thinking, It would be such fun!
The truth is, the concept of driving from Cape Town to Cairo came out of nowhere. I’d never so much as considered it before. I didn’t even know how far it was to Cairo, or what countries lay along the route. Once I’d verbalised it, though, the idea seemed to take on a life of its own.
As the word spread, more members of my family weighed in. Their responses differed. My youngest sister Caroline (nicknamed Sissi, or Fuzzy for her curly hair), then 74 years old, was horrified at the idea and called me selfish to have even thought of it. Sissi lives in Swaziland with her husband, Pip, whom we call ‘Mr Phillip’ because he’s so bossy.
My only brother, George, a year younger than Caroline, who lives in Richmond in KwaZulu-Natal, said I must be mad.
My remarkable 90-year-old cousin Mikey, who lives in Greece, and who in his youth had walked barefoot through India, asked, only half-jokingly, if he could join me.
Simon, my eldest son – so like me – said, ‘Go for it, Mum!’
Giles, my second-eldest, was also keen on the idea. ‘I’ll point out things you have to see,’ he told me. When he was a youngster Giles conducted overland tours in Africa, driving groups of people in huge, purpose-modified trucks from country to country, often off the beaten track and over weeks or months, and supervising the setting up and breaking of camp. He met his British wife, Benny, on one of these trips.
Zambi, my youngest daughter, who lives in Wynberg in Cape Town, thought it might be a good idea to get me out of my rut.
And it became a challenge for me. Since my partner of 30 years, Allan ‘Brookie’ Brooke, had died the year before, it was only me and Kelsey, my elderly black labrador. I was completely independent and had all the time in the world.
Nonetheless, Katherine, who’s very level-headed, continued to try to talk me out of it.
The real impetus to get going came from a complete stranger: a man called Bryan Jones who, with his wife Diana, had driven from Cape Agulhas to the northernmost tip of Norway 10 years earlier. This incredible couple, who are in their 70s, had more adventures under their belts than I could ever dream of, and had also explored America.
Bryan phoned out of the blue, offering to help. He drew me a map showing every detail – and I do mean every detail! – and said the trip would take about a year to organise.
That’s too long! I thought. I want to leave next week! Somehow, in my mind, I saw it as just popping to the café around the corner. It hadn’t yet dawned on me that the café was in Cairo.
But, all other considerations aside, I had no money, and I was going to have to give some very serious thought to how to raise funds for my trip. I thought that problem would be solved when someone called Francois Rebe phoned from Toyota’s inhouse magazine, Toyota Zone, wanting an interview. Ah – the next call will be from Toyota’s head office, offering a sponsorship, I thought. Dream on!
In the meantime, Katherine had slowly started to come round to the idea. I think she and Zambi thought, If we agree, she’ll drop this ridiculous plan and get back to her baking.
But I’d already decided to find out what ‘keeping to the right’ on a map of Africa would entail. My neighbours Collette Mang and Gerard Pretorius gave me a map book, which, to start with, I hadn’t a clue how to use.
If I were to venture forth across Africa, there was no question that my partner in crime would be my 1997 Toyota Conquest. For a quarter of my life, Tracy had been my trusty steed. Windows wound down, music playing, seatbelt clipped in, I could always roar off into the sunset when I needed to.
So I had to look into what had to be done to get Tracy road-worthy for the trip. I’d bought her in Killarney, Johannesburg, two decades before, and she’d been my dear friend over the years. I’d put 330 000 kilometres on her clock. By the time I reached Cairo, that figure would have grown by about 11 000 kilometres.
I took Tracy to the garage in the nearby town of Darling, where she was deemed perfectly roadworthy by the staff there. I then took her to Malmesbury Toyota, slightly farther afield, for a closer examination; and I was also hopeful of some sort of sponsorship. The manager, Robert Orchard, was charming and smiled and said yes, he thought that travelling from the Cape to Cairo in a small 20-year-old hatchback was a fun idea, and that he’d give me four shock absorbers. Well, it was a start.
The guy who put them in also gave me a jack, which he said I’d need in case I got a puncture. I, of course, had no intention of fixing my own flat tyres, and said so: I’d just grab the first person I saw and get them to fix it, I told the guy. I’m not someone who looks on the doom-and-gloom side – I just get on with it.
In the meantime, I rang every company I could think of that I felt might give me something in the way of sponsorship. I was offering an opportunity to use Tracy and me as an advertising tool – I’d brand Tracy with their logo – and take them through Africa, but it seemed that few people could see the value for their company. I’d target the marketing manager or speak to the managing director if I could get through to him or her, and sometimes I spoke to the company’s advertising agency, but it was almost always either a total blank or a flat-out no. Many of them asked how I knew we’d make it!
In the end, I decided to bumble along and do it on a shoestring and a prayer. It was just as well I had no idea then of the enormity of the trip that lay ahead.
Preparation, June 2016–June 2017
I planned to travel as lightly as possible and get what I needed on the way. But something that couldn’t be done en route, and had to be addressed immediately, was Tracy’s internal transformation. I looked at the drooping draylon that hung in tatters from her inside roof and the ghastly seatcovers I’d heartily loathed when I’d bought her all those years ago, and loathed even more now.
Monique Lion-Cachet, a good friend and interior decorator, and representative of Halogen International, a huge fabric dealer in Cape Town, was enthusiastic about taking up the challenge. She said, ‘I like this – it’s a Cinderella story. I’ll find you the fabric you need.’
Now, this was fun! We lost ourselves in fabric at the Halogen showroom, and left with a bolt of beautiful palm-patterned material in a tomatoey colour and another bolt in a chic grey. I was simply thrilled and set about my next venture, of finding upholstery people who would agree to do the recovering.
The first lot turned us down, saying that what I wanted was impossible. Then we were directed to McCarthy’s Auto Trimmers in Diep River, where we met the very smart manager, Michelle, elaborately made up and wearing very high heels, with very red hair, and with a ciggie between very red nails. She couldn’t believe it when I told her that not only must the seats be reupholstered but also the door panels and the sagging ceiling too.
She barked an order like a sergeant-major, and a group of young men slouched towards the middle of the showroom. As she explained what I wanted and why, they started sniggering and shuffling, and eventually they were virtually rolling around on the floor, wiping away their tears.
I brought out my fabric and they all looked at me as if I were crazy. Maybe I am, I thought, but what does it matter?
‘It can’t be done,’ said one of the men, and the looks on the faces of the others told me they agreed.
‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘Give it a try! I’ll be back in two weeks to see how you’re doing.’
Two weeks later, armed with a chocolate cake, I returned. I could feel the excitement as I approached – and there Tracy was, ready for the ball, with a ceiling so gorgeous that I had a little weep, and the most comfortable-looking two-seater sofa in the front. And not only had they beautifully covered the seats, the visors, the door panels and the ceiling, carefully matching the different fabric patterns, they’d also covered the spare tyres!
With hugs all round, I drove out in Tracy and went to show her off to family and friends. She was the talk of the town.
Then it was on to the more serious stuff. Joost van der Ploeg, my son-in-law (Katherine’s husband), really took the bull by the horns. He insisted that for the sort of driving I’d be doing in Africa, Tracy needed sturdier tyres, and offered to also raise her chassis. ‘We’ll lift her up and put bigger wheels on her so she won’t disappear into potholes, and we’ll check the engine and give her a once-over,’ he told me. I really didn’t care too much what they did as long as she kept going – which I knew she would, because she’s reliable.
The bigger tyres were going to be expensive. I still had no money, but what I did have was a belief that it’d all come right in the end. And this particular problem was solved by my neighbour, Mike Kingston, a boisterous man who’s known for his loud parties that ran late into the night.
At the time I had wonderful tenants in the little cottage alongside my Jakkalsfontein house, a couple whose job was researching the rare birds in the nature reserve. Their speciality was the graceful endemic black harrier, with its striking white markings, piercing yellow eyes and long barred tail. Black harriers have lost over half of their breeding habitat in the last century thanks to changes in land use because of agriculture and urbanisation. Researching the breeding sites of the black harriers on Jakkalsfontein, my tenants literally had to be up with the birds every morning.
After one too many nights of disturbed sleep because of Mike’s long, loud parties, they begged me to have a word with my neighbour. Shortly afterwards one evening the familiar music and laughter came floating through the air, and I marched next door with more vigour than I felt. I walked right into Mike’s house and up to him, yanked on his sleeve, and told him firmly in front of all his guests to shut the hell up, otherwise I’d lose my tenants.
He turned off the music and shouted, ‘Listen up, folks! I want you all to witness this. I’m going to sponsor my crazy neighbour with six extra tyres for Tracy, and more if she needs them, for her drive to Cairo!’
Well, the wind was knocked clean out of my sails as I flung my arms around this generous giant of a man to the sound of wild applause. I went home to my ruffled tenants and yelled, ‘Tyres! I’ve got tyres!’
That sorted, Joostie and his brother Geert, between them, knew exactly what else to do. With Tracy’s engine running perfectly and the wheels raised, the next question was where I was going to put the petrol tank and the extra water storage. Tracy needed a roof rack. Where would I find one? In short order, people started coming up with what I needed: a Jakkalsfontein neighbour, Ant van Malsen, paid for a roof rack, which Joost fitted; Joostie also supplied me with a petrol tank, and another friend sent a water-purifying container which would be tied on to the roof rack.
When it came to kitting out Tracy for camping, I was quite excited. Again, it was a good thing that I had no idea what lay in store for me! I asked Joost and Katherine to come with me to a camping shop, where I was helped by Lennox, a lovely man with a lot of beautiful teeth that were permanently on show because he never stopped smiling. He walked me step by step through what camping equipment was required.
I tried to climb in and out of every tent on the floor. This was agony for me to do – it wasn’t easy at age nearly-80 to climb into a small sleeping tent – and agony for them to watch.
Eventually, kitted out with a tent, a groundsheet and a stretcher to sleep on, I decided a portable loo was needed. A lovely collapsible portable loo was brought out and I bought it. (As it happened, after one use of this loo out in the bush, feeling as if I were surrounded by a hundred hidden but watching eyes, I gave it away.)
Christmas was approaching, and my wish list included things like a tow rope, a spanner and various other vital car tools. When I received these wonderful gifts, they were better than any diamond necklace. Friends came forward with lots of thoughtful contributions, from plates and Stanley flasks (which keep water hot for a week – thanks, Peter and Brenda Gibbs), to solar-powered torches, to presprayed mosquito nets (thanks, Robyn and Shari). To add to this, I decided to take Mummy’s beautiful old Irish linen sheets and pillowcase because home comforts and familiarity are most important when one is out of one’s own environment.
My mother, Betty Albu, was an incredible woman. She was born and grew up in Barberton in the early 1900s, around the time the town was declared a municipality. A rich gold-bearing reef was discovered there in 1884, and Barberton had grown quickly as a centre of the gold rush in the region. Situated in the De Kaap Valley and fringed by the Makhonjwa Mountains, the town was (and is) rich in natural resources, and Betty was very much a woman of the land. Her mother had died giving birth to her, so she’d been brought up by her father and brothers to fish, ride and shoot with the best – she was well known for her excellent eye. She had a great sense of humour, and our house was always filled with laughter and happy guests.
It was awful when she died early, around age 50. I was a teenager at the time, and it was hard on me, but it was much tougher on Sissi and George, who were still very little.
My father really battled to recover from losing my mother, but he did eventually remarry Eve, our stepmother. My father also died young, only a few years later, and when Eve eventually died many years later, she left me and my sister her house in Parktown North.
With Tracy being sorted out, inside and out, there was also an endless ‘to do’ list to get myself ready. First I had to check my medical requirements – all the jabs I needed. These included vaccinations against yellow fever, measles, mumps and rubella (German measles), meningitis, polio, hepatitis, typhoid and rabies, with different countries requiring different jabs.
When I went to the office of the medical authority in Cape Town, I met a little man who was so distracted by the phone conversations he was conducting, via earbuds and a mouthpiece, that he really didn’t seem to know if he was going to jab me for flu or yellow fever. Paying alarmingly little attention to what he was doing, he snatched up a hypodermic needle that looked as if it should be used for horses and cows, and before I knew it he’d pierced my arm.
I yelled. He took a sucker from his desk and rammed it in my mouth. ‘Come back in three months for the next one,’ he said.
The real shock came when he told me how much the vaccinations would cost, and let’s just say I was horrified at the price.
Three months later I duly returned for the next one, and this went on for almost a year until I looked like a dalmation from all the necessary – and quite likely unnecessary – pricks.
When I’d finally been inoculated against practically every known virus – although the doctor said he didn’t think I’d need one for sexually transmitted diseases, which I thought was a bit insulting – my bank balance was a hell of a lot lighter.
Next was visas. As I still wasn’t sure of exactly what countries were on my route, I went to Map Studio in Cape Town and said, ‘If I go up the right side of Africa, what countries will I be going through to get to the top?’
The man in charge, John Loubser, looked at me curiously and asked, ‘Why? What do you plan to do?’
‘I’m driving to Cairo,’ I said.
I could see him thinking, Shame, she’s old and must be smoking something; I’ll humour her. So he went country by country – nine of them, all apparently strung out along something called the Great North Road: Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt.
My eyes were popping out of my head, as I couldn’t even spell most of the countries John listed. In my distant past, at school, yes, some of them may have come up in geography class, but I’d been far too busy gazing out of the window to take any notice. Oh, how I wished I could repeat those misspent lessons!
While the people at Map Studio worked on maps and distances for me, Bryan drew maps and wrote lists, and then wrote more lists. He took me shopping, and sat and talked to me for hours and hours, hoping I would retain at least some of what he was saying. Sadly, most of it went in one ear and out the other, but I managed to get some of the relevant points and soldier on, organising the event of my life.
One incredibly important thing that Bryan told me about was something absolutely essential that I’d never heard of – the carnet, which is a passport for your car to go through each country. I rang the local Automobile Association (AA), and it was explained to me that I had to put down a hefty deposit, which would be returned to me once the vehicle was safely back on South African soil. For Tracy and me, I’d need to lodge her full value, which meant finding R20 000. So I dipped into my savings and swore that Tracy would return to South Africa.
My neighbour Neil mentioned Voetspore, an Afrikaans documentary on travel presented by Johan Badenhorst who, like a detective, I managed to track down. I’m very persistent – like a dog with a bone – and finally, after much badgering, I persuaded Johan to come to lunch at my home in Jakkalsfontein to go over my journey. He and his very chic wife arrived in the biggest, most luscious overlanding travel beast I’d ever seen – poor little Tracy must have blushed in embarrassment, with her (at the time) torn upholstery and drooping ceiling.
I desperately needed Johan’s help, and I’d cooked up a storm, remembering Mummy’s words, ‘The way to a man’s heart is through his tummy.’ Over coffee he swept the table clear and ordered me to bring out my road map, which Map Studio had made for me, a one-of-a-kind, completely personalised full-length travel map of Africa. On it, with a flourish, Johan drew the route I should take, highlighting the must-sees. Quicker than it took me to finish my coffee, he was done.
His wife, who had kept quiet up to this point, suddenly came alive and asked Johan if he’d allow his mother to do the trip. He said, ‘Absolutely!’ (although I’m not sure his mother would have agreed), and carried on, by now totally enthralled by the madness of it all.
He nearly fell flat on his face when he saw Tracy but assured me that the Chinese were hard at work tarring all the roads in Africa, and I would be fine if I just stuck to the Great North Road.
I whittled down my travelling wardrobe to the absolute bare minimum, and the exact right clothes for a year-long overland trip through Africa, which was quite a challenge. I packed three pairs of my lightweight mealiebag trousers which I loved, three long-sleeved button-up shirts, two caftans just in case, my wonderfully stylish UV-protected hat from Emthunzini, two pairs of Crocs with socks, and some scarves to cover up when needed. For those cold desert nights I had a puffer jacket. Everything was lightweight and took up very little room, and there would be absolutely no ironing.
For accommodation on the way, I intended to stay with locals wherever and whenever I could, to fully experience the people, the culture and the food of the places I was to visit. I was also blessed to have friends all over, and many volunteered to drive parts of the route with me so I’d never be alone – there would always be someone with me.
Katherine, having been so against the venture to start with, was now joining in enthusiastically, sussing out great cheap accommodation throughout Africa – Bryan had given us the names of places where we’d be likely to stop over. Where I would’ve been without my daughters, I hate to think.
When it came to my own documentation – mainly tourist visas for many of the countries I would be passing through – the fact that I didn’t yet have exact and final dates for each country I would be travelling through made getting some of them nearly impossible. I planned to leave in June 2017 – midwinter and, for the most part, the African dry season. Tracy is a car with low ground clearance, even with her bigger tyres and raised chassis, so I had to choose a time to travel when the roads wouldn’t be impassable due to wet conditions. The journey would take as long as it would take, anything from months to a year, if need be.
I decided to get whatever visas I could for the beginning stages of the trip, and play the rest by ear. Poor Inge from Sure Travel sweated blood and tears for the entire duration of my trip, sometimes having to manufacture itineraries out of thin air in order to get visas. And, I was to discover, in some cases securing specific visas meant returning to South Africa to apply.
My dear friend Gilly’s daughter, Cindy, who lives in Australia, said, ‘You must have a blog.’
‘What the hell is a blog?’ I asked.
Fortunately, Cindy is a frightfully organised girl, and runs huge organisations in Australia. She took the time to sit and explain it to me, not once, not twice, but a dozen times, and to get it up and running for me. Then, thank heavens, Zambi, who’s in publishing, agreed (albeit with a lot of pushing) to run it for me.
While I was planning and preparing, it popped into my head that I could share the experience with a charity and raise money for them along the way. It was the hardest thing ever to make my selection, and for months I battled with myself because everyone needs support of some kind.
Eventually I settled on Shine Literacy, a charity that was started by a teacher who saw the need to spend time with children who battle to read. I’m dyslexic and didn’t read properly until I was in my late teens, and only then did I realise the value and importance of the written word. My love of reading has grown over the years through book clubs I’ve joined, and countless Hello magazines, which are essentially comics for grownups. My motto is, ‘If you can read, the world is your oyster.’
Shine gives structured support to children, providing storybooks and readers, and helping parents and caregivers to participate through family literacy workshops. They gave me a box of books to distribute and share along the way, as well as extracting a promise from me to visit as many schools as possible. The books, all in English, were beautifully written and drawn – although, as it turned out, the medium of English wasn’t ideal: the farther north in Africa I travelled, the more I recognised the hunger to learn in mother tongue, which included reading material for young kids.
Taking advice from experienced Africa overlanders, I also packed lots of biscuits and sweeties in containers on Tracy’s roof racks, and Bic gave me two thousand pens to be distributed and shared along the way.
