The Ukimwi Road E-Book

Dervla Murphy

• Herausgeber: Eland Publishing
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Allowing herself several months to unwind, Dervla Murphy, at sixty, set off on a three-thousand-mile bike ride from Kenya to Zimbabwe via Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia. She soon realized that, for travellers in search of tranquillity, Africa is best avoided. Beguiled by the loquacious people she met, she was nevertheless preoccupied by their immense hardships: the devastating effects of AIDS (or ukimwi as it's called in Swahili); drought and economic collapse; scepticism about Western aid schemes; and corruption and incompetence. During her journey, Murphy was sustained by her extraordinary thirst for adventure. Despite being beaten by paramilitaries, and having to endure starvation and a bout of malaria, her deeply personal, compassionate and often humorous description of East Africa and its peoples is high-spirited and hugely compelling.

Leseprobe

DERVLA MURPHY

THE UKIMWI ROAD

From Kenya to Zimbabwe

For Jo and Oisin,who rallied round

One of the more obvious areas of Africa’s decay is the infrastructure. The road is fundamental to the nation and yet it is in large parts in utter disrepair, for mile after mile. It tells us a lot about the state of communications in Africa. It tells us a lot about the African condition. It was Julius Nyerere, founder President of Tanzania, who once said that while the great powers are trying to get to the moon, we are trying to get to the village. Well, the great powers have been to the moon and back, and are now even communicating with the stars. In Africa, however, we are still trying to reach the village. And the village is getting even more remote, receding with worsening communications even further into the distance.

 

Ali A. Mazrui

Contents

Title PageDedicationEpigraphAcknowledgements Maps    1. A Rough Welcome: Nairobi to Sotik   2. Graduates or Warriors? Sotik to Maseno   3. Across the First Border: Maseno to Entebbe   4. A Pause Insular and Urban   5. Other Kingdoms: Kampala to Fort Portal   6. Feminism Rampant: Fort Portal to Kyotera   7. Tanzania Through the Back Door: Kyotera to Shinyanga via Bukoba   8. Trivial Trials: Shinyanga to Iringa   9. Highland Fling: Iringa to Tukuyu 10. One-Man-Banda: The Two Faces of Malawi 11. Over the Hills and Far Away: Karonga to Lundazi 12. The Last Frontier: Lundazi to Karoi  Bibliography Copyright

Acknowledgements

Sustenance on several levels was lavishly provided en route by Maire and Eamonn Brehony, Pauline Conway, Maura and Jim Culligan, William Howlett, Michael Kelly, Audrey and Michael O’Dowd, Mary and Seamus O’Grady, Betty and Michael O’Meara, Anne and Michael McInery, Joy and John Parkinson, Geraldine Prenderville, Brendan Rogers, Isabelle von Prondzynski and Sean White. To all, affectionate thanks for their considerable contributions to my survival and enlightenment.

Hallam Murray provided invaluable advice on the bicycle-buying level; then he taught me how to use derailleur gears after fifty years of Sturmey Archers.

Diana, Jock and John Murray performed their usual heroic feats on the editorial level; ‘What they do/Still betters what is done.’

1

A Rough Welcome

Nairobi to Sotik

In the past it was taken for granted that when travellers said goodbye they became inaccessible for an indefinite period, only sending back the occasional message (a year or two out of date) in a cleft stick. But now we are expected to remain in touch with home, friends and problems; our escape is merely physical, the mental and emotional shackles staying firmly in place.

On and off, over the years, I have brooded on this constraint. Then suddenly I was vouchsafed a blinding glimpse of the obvious. ‘Ease of communication’ could be defeated by not telling anybody – not even one’s nearest and dearest – where one was going. If nobody knows which continent a traveller is travelling on, enjoyment of the present cannot be threatened by calamities back home, like news of your dog being run over, your house being burned to the ground or your bank going into liquidation.

In January 1992 I craved this degree of isolation. During the previous few years a combination of circumstances (not least my involvement in Rumania’s post-Ceausescu problems) had put me under some stress and my self-prescribed unwinding therapy was a cycle tour from Kenya to Zimbabwe via Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia – a carefree ramble through some of the least hot areas of sub-Saharan Africa. I therefore presented myself, for my sixtieth birthday, with a Dawes Ascent mountain-bike, the cyclist’s equivalent of a Rolls-Royce, named Lear. Then I bought a ticket to Nairobi and told all concerned that I was about to indulge in a four-month mystery tour.

At once all concerned rose up in arms. I was being, they alleged, perverse, selfish, irresponsible and neurotic. They needed to keep in touch, to know that I was safe. The illogic of this attitude escaped them. If I were unsafe – diseased, injured, jailed, robbed, murdered – their knowing about it would not materially alter my situation but would distress them. So my insistence on not keeping in touch was a kindness; every sensible person assumes no news to be good news.

I was, I suppose, trying to create an oasis in time. However, it didn’t work out quite like that; if you leave your own problems behind, other people’s come along to fill the vacuum – a lesson that lay in the future as my airbus took off from Heathrow on 2 March. It was three-quarters empty: worrying for Kenya Airways but agreeable for us passengers. After a tolerable dinner and several free Tusker beers I slept well, lying luxuriously along three seats.

A pair of Heathrow scaremongers had warned me that most Nairobi airport officials are surly predators. But as we landed at 7.30 a.m. I had another concern: would Lear be grievously maimed by the baggage-handlers? Most cyclists are capable of attending to their machines’ injuries; I am not. Anxiously I asked a tall, handsome uniformed official – his precise function unclear – where bicycles could be collected. He gazed down at me reflectively, then wondered, ‘Why did you bring a bicycle? It is better for old people to travel in vehicles.’ Already I was streaming sweat, in no position to dispute his next comment. ‘It is too hot to cycle. Even for us it is too hot before the rains. Why did you come with a bicycle in the hot season?’

For cat-sitter reasons (my home is owned by three cats) this journey had been started a month earlier than originally planned. That a traveller’s timing should be determined by feline whims is plainly absurd but it seemed unnecessary to expose this deranged area of my psyche to an airport official. Meanwhile, as we chattered unproductively, someone might be bikenapping Lear …

The young man nodded towards the conveyor-belt and said, ‘All luggage comes there.’ Spatially a bicycle could not ‘come there’ so I hurried to the Information kiosk where a small round amiable man observed, with a twinkle, that in Kenya lions eat cyclists. Then, intuiting that I was in no mood for banter, he indicated a nearby doorway.