Ubuntu Read online

  PRAISE FOR UBUNTU

  ‘Ubuntu is an inspiring memoir about an extraordinary journey taken by an exceptional woman. Heather Ellis writes about her most daring adventures and deepest struggles with humour, heart, guts and grace. I was enthralled by every page.’ – Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild

  ‘Most of us wouldn’t take a motorcycle solo through Africa. Or remember much about what we were saying, smelling, believing or hoping twenty years ago. Heather Ellis did that, and has written a remarkable book about it too. She tells her story vividly and honestly, taking us through fields, national parks, into towns and down red-mud tracks, meeting other travellers and working with locals, eating rice and fish, honing her self-belief and increasing our respect for her with every day on the road.

  This is a really fascinating and compelling tale, told well. For anyone who has ever doubted themselves, Ubuntu has a message: there is a way through, down a road you haven’t travelled yet.’ – Kate Holden, author of In Her Skin

  ‘No two big journeys are alike, and Heather Ellis’ could not have been more different to mine, but certain fundamental similarities seem to unite us all, from the prosaic –‘My bike was dangerously overloaded’ – to the sublime awakenings that such journeys engender. Hers was a great adventure into the soul of Africa, a thrilling story of endurance and self-discovery, told with care, intelligence and deep humanity. It is beautifully written and a pleasure to read. So read it.’ –Ted Simon, author of Jupiter’s Travels

  ‘Ever wondered what your life would look like if you chose to trust rather than fear? Heather Ellis does just this as she rides a motorbike across Africa. She discovers a land torn apart by war and poverty but also a land rich in beauty and kindness. Reading this book is challenging and inspiring. Heather’s journey will stay with you long after you finish her story.’ – Maggie Mackellar, author of When It Rains & How to Get There

  ‘The next stage of our evolution is how are we to live together. Through Heather’s motorcycle journey across Africa, and the African people who embrace her, we learn what is possible – this is ubuntu.’ – Father Bob Maguire AM, RFD

  ‘Ubuntu is the story of a motorcycling adventure that goes way beyond the physical journey. It takes you to other places too. This story has wide appeal and I reckon it will inspire both men and women, especially women motorcyclists.’ – Damien Codognotto OAM

  ‘In the 1990s Heather had an impulsive idea to ride a motorcycle through Africa and, through perseverance, made this come true. Her story is not just a very detailed, descriptive account of the countries she rode through but also of the problems she faced and overcame. It reveals her ability to communicate with people of all nationalities and walks of life, learn from them and find that if you have faith in the Universe, it will provide. Very well written and immensely readable.’ – Linda Bootherstone-Bick, author of Into Africa with a Smile

  Published by Nero,

  an imprint of Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd

  Level 1, 221 Drummond Street

  Carlton VIC 3053, Australia

  [email protected]

  www.nerobooks.com

  Copyright © Heather Ellis 2016

  Heather Ellis asserts her right to be known as the author of this work.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Ellis, Heather, author.

  Ubuntu : one woman’s motorcycle odyssey across Africa / Heather Ellis.

  9781863958202 (paperback)

  9781925203882 (ebook)

  Ellis, Heather–Travel–Africa. Motorcycle touring–Africa.

  Africa–Description and travel. Africa–Social life and customs.

  916.0433

  Cover design by Peter Long

  Cover photograph by Heather Ellis

  Text design and typesetting by Tristan Main

  Quote p.ix copyright © Desmond M. Tutu

  Map p.x by Mapping Specialists, Ltd.

  For

  my parents, Kitty and John Ellis,

  my children, Ethan, Morgan and Ashton

  and

  the people of Africa

  As I travelled through Africa on a motorcycle, writing became my friend – my travelling companion with whom I shared my experiences as I lived a thousand lifetimes every day. These diaries, filled with my thoughts and conversations, helped me write this book. The rest came from my memories, researched facts and my own interpretation of events. To preserve anonymity, I have changed the names and identifying details of some of the people in this book. While not all the people I met on my travels and all my experiences were included, these omissions were only due to space limitations and the trajectory of the story.

  I wrote the first draft in 1996 when events were still fresh. I did not complete the final draft until 2015. While the events, characters and conversations remain the same, I have the advantage of time to understand what it all meant: all those coincidences, chance encounters and the constant accuracy of my intuition. But the distance of time has also allowed the book to tell its own story. And that story is Ubuntu.

  Heather Ellis, 2016

  www.heather-ellis.com

  One of the sayings in our country is ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.

  Desmond Tutu

  Prologue

  PART ONE

  KAKADU TO KENYA

  1 It Started with a Kick … : Australia to South Africa

  2 The Dawn of Unity: South Africa

  3 The Travellers’ Trail: Zimbabwe to Tanzania

  4 Alone: Maasai Mara to Lake Naivasha

  5 Show of Strength: South Horr, Northern Kenya

  6 The Kindness of Strangers: Loiyangalani, Kenya

  7 Lost: Lake Turkana, Northern Kenya

  8 Chance Encounters: Lake Turkana, Northern Kenya

  PART TWO

  UGANDA TO ZAIRE

  9 Friends and Enemies: Uganda

  10 Old Meets New: Zaire

  11 Forest People: Zaire

  12 Where God Goes to Get Away from It All: Zaire

  Picture Section

  13 The First Christmas: Zaire

  14 The Floating Village: Zaire

  15 A City in Decay: Zaire

  PART THREE

  CONGO TO MAURITANIA

  16 Thou Shalt Also Decree a Thing … : Congo

  17 A Friend of All the World: Congo to Gabon

  18 The Throwback: Cameroon

  19 Land of Oil: Nigeria

  20 A Tribal Clash: Togo to Ghana

  21 An Unguarded Moment: Burkina Faso to Mali

  22 The Vision: Mauritania

  23 Ubuntu: Mauritania

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  PROLOGUE

  I was eight years old when I first rode a motorcycle. It was on Ingomar Station, an 1800-square-kilometre sheep property near Coober Pedy in outback South Australia. My ten-year-old brother and I lived there with my aunt and uncle, while my parents mined opal a day’s drive into the desert. With our cousins – three girls, just a few years apart – we rode Honda Z50cc mini bikes. We lived on those dirt bikes: on weekends, after s
chool and even during playtime, when we escaped from the school ground in a cloud of dust. During shearing season we mustered sheep on our little motorbikes through mulga scrub, spinifex and fine red sand – the same riding conditions I’d encounter in Africa as a young woman twenty years later.

  I was a strong child. I looked like a boy. I had fine sandy-blonde hair which my mother kept short because she said ‘it would thicken it up’. My cousins, with sun-kissed locks trailing down their backs, teased me incessantly. I spoke with a lisp and was teased for that too. Alone and left out, I befriended three Aboriginal girls, daughters of the station workers. They wore faded floral dresses with frayed hems and carried digging sticks. I wore shorts and a T-shirt, cast-offs from my cousins. Together we’d walk barefoot into the mulga scrub near the homestead to dig for yams. We’d chew on the water-laden tubers, spitting out the grit as we sat amongst our rabbit-warren-like excavation in the red sand. Or I’d join them to dig fat white witchetty grubs out from under the roots of the mulga trees, screwing up my face every time one of them popped one into their mouth as if it were a strawberry plucked plump and ripe from a vine. They’d laugh, and our giggles joined the happy chirping of the small birds that darted amongst the scrub.

  During school holidays, my brother and I went to the diggings, to stay with our parents in their caravan on the opal fields. As they mined, we’d wander into the desert in search of opal floaters – broken bits of white rock that indicated where a seam had pushed up deep from underground. In the stillness, I felt something strangely comforting, as though I too was part of that vast expanse.

  After two years in Coober Pedy, when my parents had mined enough opal to buy a house with a pool, a new car and a colour TV (the first in our street in 1974), we moved to suburban Townsville, in Queensland. Motorcycles and the sense of connection I felt with the Aboriginal girls and to the desert were gone from my life – shelved to emerge years later. I turned to books and discovered Africa. I read on the school bus, in the library during recess, in the classroom with the book hidden under my desk, and at night when my parents thought I was sleeping. I started with Robert Ruark’s Something of Value and while the bloodthirsty account of Kenya’s Mau Mau uprising against British rule both mesmerised and horrified me, his descriptions of Africa and its people fostered in me a longing to go there. Ruark was quickly followed by most of Wilbur Smith, starting with the The Sunbird.

  As I grew older, I drifted away from my dream to travel to Africa. After high school, I followed my parents to the Northern Territory, where my father had recently started work as an operator at the Ranger uranium mine on the fringes of the Kakadu national park. I worked there, all up, for nine years, living in the nearby township of Jabiru alongside my three-hundred-plus colleagues. I got my start as a receptionist, but soon transferred to the better-paid position of stores clerk in the supply department. In 1983, I resigned to backpack through Europe, but returned to the mine two years later to work as a tour guide and, finally, as a radiation safety technician.

  Living in a small mining town with just about everything within walking distance and a free bus service to the mine, there was no real need for a car, so the obvious choice for transport was a motorcycle. When I first moved to Jabiru after high school, my father assured the local police sergeant, who he was mates with, that I could ride a bike, and I was issued with a motorcycle licence on the spot. My first bike was a little Honda XL185, ideal for exploring Kakadu’s wild places.

  After nearly six years working at the mine, I was twenty-eight years old and yearned for change. My restlessness ate away at me; I felt as though my life would only begin once I’d left the isolation of the mine and its small town. My backpacking trip had given me a taste of adventure, and I wanted more. But I had no ideas, no plans, no dreams of any substance – until a sudden moment of illumination on a Sunday afternoon.

  I was drinking beers with friends at a barbecue when, for no apparent reason, I blurted out: ‘I’m going to ride a motorcycle through Africa.’ As I recall, motorcycle travel was not a topic of our idle chat as we sat on eskies and plastic chairs in a friend’s backyard. I couldn’t believe the words had come from me. But the idea felt like it had been there all along, lying dormant for years, waiting for this moment. I sat stunned and speechless, as if some otherworldly force had gripped me by the shoulders and said: ‘You need to do this.’ In that instant, time stood still. It was only a brief pause, but it was long enough for me to notice. And while my drinking buddies quickly forgot my momentary lapse of reason, I did not. I could think of nothing else: the idea both frightened and enlivened me. But at the same time, I also felt in complete balance, as though I had known all along that this was my life’s purpose.

  Days later, although my friends and work colleagues responded with a barrage of doubts, the idea had not died. Instead, it had grown in strength and, like a tiny living thing, I held it close and nurtured it.

  In those first days and weeks, I had a lucid dream of flying over the Indian Ocean. With my arms outstretched, I skimmed above the waves until I hovered over the docks of Durban in South Africa. My motorcycle was on the deck of a ship and, after it was unloaded, I rode fast and confidently over Africa’s desert plains. The dream reassured me that my idea was true and solid, and that I was on the right track.

  The planning began. I told my parents, on a visit to their banana farm in north Queensland where they’d moved from Jabiru several years earlier. With slow deliberateness, I explained that their only daughter would soon ride a motorcycle alone through Africa. They understood immediately that I would do it, and that none of their objections would sway me. My father hid his worry behind humour and mumbled something about me ending up in a cooking pot. I told them not to worry. I would be okay. I could not explain why, but I knew I was meant to do this.

  PART ONE

  KAKADU TO KENYA

  1

  IT STARTED WITH A KICK …

  AUSTRALIA TO SOUTH AFRICA

  I rode on a dirt track fringed by two-metre-tall spear grass the colour of golden wheat ready for harvest. It would soon be flattened by the knock ’em down rains signalling the start of the wet season in the Northern Territory. My motorcycle was a Yamaha TT600 built for extreme off-road riding. I’d bought it in Darwin a week earlier, following advice from my motorcycle-riding workmates about what motorcycle I should take to Africa. They had all said: ‘Nothing is as tough as the TT600.’

  It was my rostered day off and the first chance I’d had to take my new motorcycle off-road through a stretch of muddy swamp, down a gully and over a section of rocks that littered the track – similar conditions to what I’d encounter in Africa. An hour after I began, I reached a gorge of monsoon rainforest at the base of the Arnhem Land escarpment. It was a majestic place where a 500-kilometre-long escarpment rose up 200 metres from an ancient seabed, now the Kakadu wetlands. Leaving my bike, I hiked to a spring-fed rock pool and glided silently through water made cold and dark by its depth. Chilled, I lay on a ledge to warm my body. I felt at home. As if I belonged. As if this secret place embraced me – protected me, spoke to me. Looking up, I saw that dark clouds had gathered above me. I quickly climbed down from the ledge, swam back across the pool and trekked down the gorge to my motorcycle. Before I headed home, I stopped to stare in awe at the place where the track ran parallel to the escarpment. Against a backdrop of gunmetal grey clouds, the late afternoon sun illuminated the reddish-brown stains that ran down the cliffs, as if a prehistoric serpent had perished on its summit, plucked from the sea below by a giant pterosaur.

  Towering above me was a sheer wall of sandstone. I rode towards it, leaving my bike at the base of the cliff and scrambling over truck-sized boulders to reach a ledge. I stood breathless and sweaty in the humid summer heat and gazed out over Kakadu. It was a giant patchwork of brown and black where the wetlands had shrunk and controlled burns had left the land bare, but the rains would soon return and it would be alive and green once more. I leaned against t
he smooth rock. It felt cool through the thin cotton of my shirt and I pressed my body against the ancient stone, as if it radiated a hidden energy as old as the Dreamtime. I asked for its blessing: for it to empower and protect me on the journey ahead. I did this without thinking; my actions were an instinctive response to the feeling of the stone.

  I would never have dreamed of doing anything like this until recently. Previously, I’d given no thought to the meaning of things, to this ancient land or to the earth’s hidden energies – other than the radiation levels detected by my monitoring instruments at the mine. And the connection that I had made with the desert and its people as a child in outback Australia had faded. But since that moment at the barbecue nearly nine months earlier, everything had changed. Now, as I looked up, the cliff towering over me, I intuitively felt some kind of ever-so-slight mysterious force – a primordial energy that permeated everything.

  The storm clouds grew blacker and heavier. I climbed down from the ledge and scrambled over the boulders. Behind me, the rain fell in great sheets. I reached my motorcycle as the first heavy drops stung my back and arms. Water gushed down the track, and where it crossed a gully it was a raging torrent. I had no choice but to ride across; if I hesitated the torrent would soon be too deep and I would be trapped until the waters receded hours later. I rode through, water lapping at the muffler. I reached the other side, the bike climbed out and I opened the throttle for home.

  On that solo ride into one of Kakadu’s secret places something happened – an awakening of sorts. I felt it as a heightened sense of aliveness. This awareness was physical, but my mind could not grasp what it meant.

  Something else remarkable happened on that daring ride. In our shared adventure, in our shared moment of vulnerability in the rising flood waters, I no longer saw my motorcycle as a pile of nuts and bolts, plastic and steel. It, too, seemed different – as though it radiated its own aura. From that day on, I affectionately referred to it simply as the TT.