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    Life on an onion lorry

    Posted by "popular" request (well, someone asked for it yesterday evening):

    April 1987. We were in Nyala in the west of Sudan, having just returned from trekking in the Jebel Marra area. “We” were Hänse, my Swiss friend, Nicola, friend and colleague, and myself. Nicola was to return to Khartoum and then home to England but Hänse and me wanted to find a lorry which would take us to Bangui in the CAR. This was Ramadan time, and food during the day was impossible to find, but at sunset we ate heartily, and at our hotel (basic to say the least) we fell into political conversation with three Sudanese university graduates who shared their food and illicit (but relatively widespread) araqi with us.

    It took quite some searching and negotiating to find a suitable lorry but eventually we were successful and began the journey. The truck was loaded mainly with onions and garlic as well as other fruit and vegetables, and there five Western travellers on top: Hänse, Liz (an English teacher), Dalton and Lisa, an American couple; and myself. There were also a few others: a couple from the CAR with a young baby, and a few merchants. The first stage of the journey was from Nyala to Um Dafuq. This was a border town with a lively market where we managed to purchase tea and fruit and rice for the remainder of the trip (the length of which we had no idea).

    At Um Dafuq I had some trouble with the local health officer who demanded 25 Sudanese Pounds for a yellow fever certificate; I had one but evidently it was the wrong colour. An argument ensued and I was threatened with a stint in a police cell, already crowded with local smugglers. I resisted until resistance was futile and ended up paying, but only after I was promised a new jab with one of the many syringes floating in a bucket of not very clean water.

    Our next destination was Birao in the CAR. Google Maps says it doesn’t have a route for this journey. But there is one, and very bumpy and potholed it Is too. I collected a few bruises as we were thrown against the sides of the lorry and tossed up and down onto the sacks of onions.

    In Um Dafuq we had already seen some signs of the differences between Sudan and the CAR but in Birao these contrasts became more pronounced. Music from Zaire replaced the Arabic sounds; the hairstyles were spikier; the women wore kitenges and were more open, drank beer, danced with foreigners. Obviously more French (and local languages) was heard. The climate was more humid. Humidity has an effect on onions.

    Linguistically it was something of a challenge for me. I had been teaching myself French in preparation for the trip but my level was no more than mediocre. (Five years of studying the language at school had done little for me.) Liz and Hänse were both pretty fluent; Dalton and Lisa spoke no French at all and needed everything translated for them.

    Where did we sleep at night? By the side of the lorry in sleeping bags. I was used to rough sleeping and as ever the stars were in their thousands and beautiful and inspiring.

    I began feeling a bit ill. Sniffles and an earache. But I was more or less okay. We cooked rice and chicken (using wood fires and killing our own fowl). We drank beer with some local soldiers. There were French soldiers too, and an Israeli businessman, looking lost and stupid.

    My diary then takes a week-long break. When I was up to writing again, the following is what I recorded:

    “Hello again! The long gap is because I’ve been ill for a week with a number of things. I went to the hospital at N’Délé where the doctor told me I had a fever and prescribed chloroquine and tetracycline. I’ve also had a nasty cough, complete loss of appetite, nausea, the shits, a cold and now deafness in in the right ear. Hänse has been syringing it out with salt water and telling me that loads of shit came out, and there’s more to come. The lorry ride hasn’t helped – the heat, the bumping. I’ve spent half of my time crashed out, sometimes half-hallucinating. The others have been great, practically doing everything for me. Now I’m improving, although when I had a temperature of 38.8º I felt like death.”

    Looking back, it was surely malaria. We ended up in a place I recorded as Kapu Bandaru, but haven’t been able to locate since then. No doubt the illness was still scrambling my senses. While arriving we witnessed water hippo, antelopes, monkeys and wild boar. Slowly my appetite returned: cassava, roast meat. I also managed a pineapple and a bowl of rice. No onions, though. The traders had sold most of these but those which remained were now super-pungent.

    At another town whose name I unfortunately omitted to record. There was a nice if rather dirty river where people were bathing. There were canoes, topless women, and lots of young boys jumping about wildly. I was on the mend. I listened to the FA Cup Final on the BBC World Service; Coventry’s magic day. Hänse, Liz and me planned to leave the lorry here.

    #2
    Apologies, but I shall copy and paste the remainder of this saga from stuff I’ve already written:

    19 – 21 May 1987: in a hotel in Bagbera, Central African Republic, where we tried to stay at the Catholic Mission (it was full) and ended up at another unrecorded and unremembered (by me at least) hotel in the town. Liz decided that she would like to stick with Hänse and me for a while longer.


    21 – 22 May 1987: in a village whose name we didn’t know between Bagbara and Oumba, Central African Republic, halfway through a 38-kilometre walk. We were fed by the locals: fish and cassava. I also had my very first taste of palm wine, which was sharp but tasty. The route was teeming with insects: colourful butterflies, fireflies, black and red ants, termites; and there was the almost constant sound of birdsong, though we didn’t actually see many. We drank mango alcohol, ate the fruit itself, and gave away garlic (which we had brought from Sudan knowing it was scarce in this region) as presents in return for the hospitality we received.


    22 – 23 May 1987: Oumba, Central African Republic, on the banks of the Ubangui River, a tributary of the River Congo. Here we were offered a whole baby monkey, freshly shot, which we declined. Sleep was in a shelter offered to us by the villagers, who were quick to ask for our cigarettes and coffee, but also very ready to share their own foodstuffs with us. The scenery was wonderful: tree-lined riverbanks, palm and mango trees among them. Our plan was to travel along the river to the Central African Republic capital, Bangui, and we found two fishermen, Gaston and Raymond, to help us.


    23 - 24 May 1987: in a village on the Ubangui River. We slept in a small village on the river bank. My short wave radio was stolen in this village. I was annoyed but too far gone on palm wine at the time to care. It didn't matter in the long run. Apart from this setback, it was a fascinating trip. There were lots of small islands in the river and an abundance of small fishing villages. We wanted to stop off on the Zairian side of the river, but our navigators warned us not to, given that we didn’t have visas for that country. Liz was ill with stomach cramps and a high temperature; thankfully, it wasn’t very hot so she was able to convalesce in relative comfort.


    24 – 25 May 1987: in a suburb of Bangui called Ouango, courtesy of our boat pilots. Here we got quite drunk on beer and araqi made from cassava. In the morning we had to leave quickly due to the wives/girlfriends of our pilots not liking what they saw of us (or them?).


    25 May – 3 June 1987: Centre d'Accuelle Touristique, Bangui; the Catholic Mission, our first port of call, turned out to be far too expensive (4,000 CFA a night; no idea of the then exchange rate). So we paid 675 CFA a night to sleep outside (dew, mosquitoes, a bar with cold beer). We stayed here for a few days; on one of these it rained and we had to run for cover. In other news, Hänse and me went to the Poste Restante where there was a letter for us from Nicola who had arrived in Italy.


    The centre of Bangui was very compact and very beautiful, with lots of trees to give welcome shade. The vegetable market was impressive, including tomatoes, onions, peppers, lettuce, sweetcorn, okra, pumpkin and cucumbers. There were also papayas, mangoes, lemons and bananas. Hot coffee stirred in big pots was sold at many roadside points. The bread was fresh. There was fresh and dried meat, and cheese as well. This may sound all very average for a developed-world reader but it needs to be remembered that we had been travelling through some pretty poor localities. The weather was, in the main, warm and sticky.


    [While staying in Bangui Hänse got a letter from his business partner that he and another friend had received funding to make a film in the USA, so Hänse was needed back to take care of projects in his landscape gardening company. This meant that our original plan (we had visas already sorted) to travel to Zaire would be abandoned (I suppose I could have continued alone but didn’t really feel up to it). So I came up with another plan: to travel to Sudan by some means. I didn’t know at the time how much walking this would all involve! Hänse gave me his money belt and some medical supplies and returned to Zürich by plane with a load of dope stuffed down his trousers.]




    Comment


      #3
      "My short wave radio was stolen" is not a phrase often heard these day."

      Good stuff.

      Comment


        #4
        Thanks for posting, Sporting. That's some story.

        Comment


          #5
          Indeed it is.

          I still have both of my short wave radios, but haven't turned either on for well over a decade.

          The exchange rate question is difficult to answer.

          The CFA Franc had a fixed exchange rate to the French Franc of 1 CFAF = 2 centimes (or 50 CFAF = 1 FF). At the beginning of June 1987, the French Franc was running at almost exactly 6 to the US dollar, so a Dollar would have been worth 300 CFA Francs at the official rate.

          I am almost certain that the official rate would have been meaningless in the circumstances, though.

          Comment


            #6
            It is also quite eerie to see chloraquine make an appearance.

            Comment


              #7
              Weren't visas for Zaire crazily costly back then, possibly the most expensive in the world. Multiple entry visas even more so.

              I'm sure I once read, probably in a Lonely Planet guide, that the more dysfunctional a country appeared the more you had to pay.

              Comment


                #8
                Fantastic, Sporting, thanks for sharing. I think I speak for the many when I say we were agog when you casually detonated your 'onion lorry' bombshell on the stunned Virtual 'Thon audience, so it's brilliant to read more. Although I think I was expecting more about the actual allium-ride experience itself, I reckon you gave a pungent enough précis of that on Zoom for us to get the idea! What an incredible expedition all told, that's quite the read.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by Greenlander View Post
                  Weren't visas for Zaire crazily costly back then, possibly the most expensive in the world. Multiple entry visas even more so.

                  I'm sure I once read, probably in a Lonely Planet guide, that the more dysfunctional a country appeared the more you had to pay.
                  I think the price was actually fairly reasonable, though I'd have to see if I recorded the cost anywhere..

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Great story Sporting, looks,like I missed one of the highlights of the Zoom. So this is the prequel to your A Walk Across the Central African Republic?

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Amazing stuff.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Originally posted by Greenlander View Post
                        Weren't visas for Zaire crazily costly back then, possibly the most expensive in the world. Multiple entry visas even more so.

                        I'm sure I once read, probably in a Lonely Planet guide, that the more dysfunctional a country appeared the more you had to pay.
                        Found the answer. 5,000 CFAF, about 17 US dollars. Re-entry into Sudan cost 9,500 CFAF.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          To put this into some sort of context, when I left Khartoum in Aprii I had 1088 US dollars, 250 DM and 600 Sudanese Pounds. No credit cards or owt like that. The 420 km or so train trip to El Obeid cost 8 Sudanese Pounds and a cheapish hotel from 3 to 5.By the end of May I had 563 US dollars and 63,000 CFAF (which I have recorded as being 223 US dollars). I lived on this money for about three months.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            So the street rate for USD was about ten times the official exchange rate

                            Were the DM useful? They definitely were in Eastern Europe, but I would have though there was less of a market in Africa.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              I added an extra 0 to the CFAF amount, sorry!

                              Can't remember exactly but I think I exchanged the DM with a German heading home.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                Originally posted by Sporting View Post

                                Found the answer. 5,000 CFAF, about 17 US dollars. Re-entry into Sudan cost 9,500 CFAF.
                                Wow, the Lonely Planet Africa 7th edition guidebook for 1995 suggests anything from $75 for one month single entry up to $250 for a three month multiple entry visa if obtained at the border or a neighbouring country.

                                It suggests they could be considerably cheaper to obtain in the UK or the USA.

                                Comment

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