Ubuntu Page 3

  Gladis and Anders were near the end of their trip and would be returning to Denmark from Perth. Their travel advice helped cull a little of my mountain of gear: a candle lamp, two of my three novels (not Zen), and a camping spade. But I refused to ditch my scuba fins, mask and snorkel, or my hammock. Dan relented and culled his stack of cassette tapes. Instead of pub meals with a couple of beers and game of pool, we followed their example and cut our costs by making our own food: a lunch of bread, salami, cheese, cucumber and tomatoes eaten under the shade of a tree, or a rice and vegetable curry cooked on a campfire or in a communal hostel kitchen.

  We rode the last stretch to Perth together, following the tracks that hugged the coast, and I welcomed their easy nature and good humour, which deflected the tension between Dan and me.

  Once we arrived in Perth, there was little time to dwell on this tension, as we had two weeks before the ten-day voyage across the Indian Ocean to Durban. Our days were filled with last-minute preparations. There were vaccinations (yellow fever, cholera, hepatitis and typhoid), a dental check-up, and more gear to buy. I purchased a Nikon SLR camera and more first-aid supplies. There was the complicated and expensive process of a Carnet de Passage to organise. This important document was the passport to import and export a vehicle into another country without paying duty. Without it, we would not be riding our motorcycles through many of Africa’s nations.

  I handed over the $7500 as a security deposit to the Royal Automobile Club of Western Australia, which would be returned once I reached Europe, where a carnet was not needed. My money rapidly dwindled to just $2500, which had to last the next four months, until late July, when my bank balance would be topped up with a tax return of over $4000. I carried US$1000, half in cash and half in travellers’ cheques. When this ran out, I could access more through my American Express card at their branches in most of Africa’s capital cities. I’d also given my mother authority to access my bank account to pay for these Amex withdrawals.

  At first our list of necessary preparations seemed insurmountable, but each tiny step brought us closer to departure. When it was time to say goodbye to Gladis and Anders, my embrace was filled with gratitude for their advice and friendship at a time when I was feeling so alone. Our motorcycles were loaded onto the container ship to be stored in an engine room. To stop them rusting from salt air during the ten-day voyage, each was sprayed liberally with the water-displacing spray WD40, and wrapped tightly in clear plastic.

  The ship was 200 metres long with twenty-five crew, plus five passengers including Dan and myself. Diana, a South African retiree, and her German shepherd, who was too old to travel by plane, were returning to Durban after a long visit with her daughter in Perth. Nathan, ‘the Onion Man’ from Tasmania, a tall freckle-faced youth fresh from university with a shock of ginger hair, was responsible for the refrigeration of thirty containers of onions bound for England. And Jim, a retired merchant seaman from Perth hunched over with age and arthritis, just wanted to be at sea again.

  Dan and I shared the owners’ cabin. We both breathed an audible sigh when we saw it had two separate rooms, as we each craved privacy and space from the ever-present negative energy between us. During the crossing we kept to ourselves, only seeing each other at meal times, or passing on deck or in the cabin, when we exchanged a mumbled greeting. I spent my days reading Zen and lifting weights in the ship’s gym, a small room just below deck. When I started planning the trip, I quickly realised I would need strength to ride a fully loaded motorcycle weighing in at 200 kilograms. There was no gym at the mine township, but the police had allowed me to use theirs at their station, and over the past year my body had become a powerhouse of strength, with muscles like hardened steel.

  As passengers we were treated as honoured guests, dining with the captain and his officers at a long table set with plates and cutlery, with five courses for both lunch and dinner. Meals were always accompanied by endless carafes of red wine and freshly baked crusty rolls. Dessert was fresh fruit followed by strong black coffee and the chef ’s home-made lemon liqueur.

  After a few days at sea the crew befriended us, and some nights we’d be invited back to a cabin to drink their duty-free booze. On one such evening, Dan and Nathan called it a night, but I stayed to finish a bottle of bourbon with one of the crew. After living in the Northern Territory for nine years, I’d become firmly entrenched in the Top End ‘drink til ya drop’ lifestyle. Many times I had crawled and staggered back to my one-room unit alone after a night of heavy drinking.

  ‘I’ll go now,’ I slurred as I stood, then banged head-first into the door before pulling it open to stagger towards the three flights of narrow stairs to my cabin near the bridge. It was a full moon and the seas were calm. Hands reached for me. ‘I help you,’ a voice whispered and a strong arm circled my waist as I was led along the walkway to the ship’s bow. I was gently pushed, or maybe I fell, on hard, cold metal. Hands pulled at my leggings. Even in my bourbon-fuelled drunken stupor, I realised two very important things. Through my careless actions, a mix of naivety and trust, I’d placed myself in a dangerous situation. And half the ship’s crew were probably watching with high-powered night-vision sea binoculars from the bridge.

  I mustered super-human strength, pushed him away and stood up, almost toppling over but gripping a railing to regain my balance. Placing one hand over the other on the railings, I slowly inched my way back along the narrow walkway to my cabin, where a third very important thing dawned on me: I was no longer in a small, isolated mining town where there was always someone to watch over me.

  Mostly, though, as we crossed the Indian Ocean, the seas were calm and the ship rose and fell with the enormous roll of the waves. I sat at the very tip of the bow, where the crew had welded railings, and as I dangled my legs over the edge, I ran my fingers through my hair. It protruded just a few centimetres from my head, as I’d lined up earlier that morning with the rest of the crew for a haircut from the radio operator who acted as the ship’s barber. I sat there, feeling both invincible and insignificant as I watched dolphins leap and glide as they played in the bow wave far below. I’d just finished reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which has nothing to do with fixing bikes but everything to do with the idea of Quality, which is also what is needed if mechanical repairs are to last. I’d struggled to understand Pirsig’s theory. Just when I was sure I’d grasped it, my thoughts became scrambled and I’d start the process of, ‘If this means that, then that means this’ all over again. But on that tenth day, as Durban appeared on the horizon and I sat mesmerised by the dolphins as they swam and leapt with great skill, I intuitively felt that Quality lay at the very heart of all things. Had the dolphins done the best they could do? Had they, over millions of years, strived for Quality and I now witnessed their evolutionary reward? Maybe, like the dolphins, I too had done the very best I could and made an idea become reality, my commitment helping everything to fall into place. I was here, sitting on the bow of a container ship, dolphins leaping beneath me, with Africa on the horizon. My idea was no longer a string of words that I’d casually blurted out to friends. I’d taken that first step and I was now moving forward, as if driven by some hidden force that nothing could stop.

  2

  THE DAWN OF UNITY

  SOUTH AFRICA

  Once our ship docked in Durban, we rode no further than a youth hostel in the city centre. Each afternoon we strolled to the mall to drink beers and watch the promenade of tourists. The ship would be in port for a week loading and unloading cargo, and most evenings some of the off-duty crew joined us as the sun cast long, golden shadows across the Indian Ocean. A few beers with them would usually end at a bar open till the early hours.

  A week went by and my agitation grew: this was not the Africa I yearned for. I consoled myself with the excuse that to avoid the risk of becoming road carnage, it was best we stay in Durban until after the Easter long weekend. The hostel’s staff had repeatedly warned us about South Africa’
s notoriously bad drivers.

  While Dan slept, I walked for miles each morning along the golden sands of Durban’s beachfront. The council authorities kept most of it clean of the black sludge left behind by the container ships, and the sand was only spoiled at the far reaches.

  I found myself walking there on my twenty-ninth birthday, feeling like I had nothing to celebrate and no one to celebrate it with. I reached an abandoned jetty, its pillars thickly encrusted with barnacles. An elderly African man sat alone fishing with a hand line. He was withered by age and sun and had a wise, Yoda-like face.

  ‘Catch any fish?’ I asked and leaned to peer inside his plastic bucket.

  ‘The sea is not so good today,’ he said and waved a leathery hand for me to sit beside him. ‘Where you from? Not South Africa,’ he said with a frown and I got the feeling that a white woman striking up a casual conversation with a black man was not normally done here.

  ‘Australia,’ I responded, dangling my legs over the side of the jetty as he did. ‘It’s my birthday today. I’m twenty-nine,’ I gushed like a small child wanting to share my special news.

  ‘Well, well. Happy birthday,’ he grinned. ‘You are so far from your family. Do not tell me you are alone here in Africa?’ he asked, his toothless grin gone, replaced with a frown.

  ‘No, I’m with a friend. We’re both on motorcycles,’ I said, but instead of lightness and expectation, my words were filled with sadness. ‘We will ride all the way to North Africa. It’s true!’ I added with a sudden defensive perkiness as I interpreted his look of surprise as disbelief.

  ‘I believe you, I can see you will do it, but you have a problem with your husband,’ he said, his black eyes piercing into my soul like long tentacles probing for the truth.

  ‘Dan. My husband? No. We are just friends. But I don’t think he holds the same desire to travel Africa as I do,’ I said, letting the words spill out as though I were confiding in an old friend.

  ‘Maybe he is afraid. You are a woman and do not see the dangers. But this Dan, he is a man. He see the bad. He must protect. A woman does not see the world the same way as a man. If any bad thing should happen to you, he will be blamed. It is a heavy burden for a man to look after his woman,’ he said.

  ‘I am not his woman. We are travelling companions. That’s all,’ I replied, a little annoyed that he didn’t get it.

  ‘It does not matter. You are still a woman and he is still a man,’ he said, and gave a quick jerk of the line as a fish nibbled the bait. ‘Maybe this journey is not for him. Be patient. You are new to Africa.’

  As he pulled in the fishing line, I looked out over the sea. It was choppy with white caps under a cloudless blue sky. If what this old man said was true, I didn’t need to be held back by another’s fears when I had enough of my own. We sat in silence, and as the old man re-baited the hook, I considered the source of the tension between Dan and me from a different point of view. While I had accepted we didn’t click, I suddenly wondered if he was also filled with resentment against me because he saw me as the cause of him giving up his job, his friends, and possibly his life? Was the old man right and this journey was not for Dan? Had he convinced himself otherwise, just as I had convinced myself we would make suitable travelling companions?

  ‘Do not swim in this sea, it is full of sharks,’ said the old man, startling me from my thoughts as he threw out his fishing line.

  I gasped. In those first few days in Durban, when we’d joined the crew from the cargo ship drinking beers and shooters in smoke-filled bars until the early hours, I had swum in this sea. On one of those nights, I’d needed fresh air and had escaped the press of sweaty bodies and thick cigarette smoke on the arm of a merchant seaman, who’d led me to the beach. I stripped to my bra and pants to swim waist deep in the gentle surf, ignorant of the threat that lurked just offshore. I’d also been oblivious to the threat on the beach, where meaty hairy hands reached for my body which I’d so casually, so naively, stripped to my underwear. Once again, booze had made me careless, and in my drunkenness I was unaware of my vulnerability until the cold sea sobered me. It was another lesson and this time I vowed to heed it.

  ‘I’m going now,’ I said and held out my hand to the old man. His skin was rough, but his touch warm.

  That evening Dan and I sat alone in the hostel dining room. We drank beers and ate pizza and he wished me a happy birthday. I felt light-hearted, the happiest I’d felt in days. It was as if the words of the old man had pushed away the black cloud that hung over me and the sun shone again to bathe me in rays of confidence.

  ‘I want to leave tomorrow,’ I said with conviction as I looked for possible routes to Cape Town outlined on the Michelin map of southern Africa spread on the table between us.

  ‘No worries,’ Dan croaked, as though unfamiliar with speech, and I realised it was the first time we’d had an actual conversation, or at least the beginning of one, in several days. When I returned from my walks he was often gone from the hostel and did not return until after I was asleep at night in the dorm we shared.

  ‘I was thinking, we could ride across Lesotho to reach Cape Town instead of the boring stretch of highway,’ I said moving the map towards him.

  ‘Sounds good,’ he replied and so it was settled, the next morning, on Good Friday, against all the warnings about atrociously bad drivers during the Easter holiday weekend, we would venture into Africa.

  *

  Traffic sped past with no regard for speed limits or road rules as we rode away from Durban towards the mountain-top country of Lesotho. We would ride up the notorious Sani Pass, a nine-kilometre gravel track of hairpin turns covered in shards of loose rock that heads up over the northern Lesotho mountain range. There had been horrific vehicle accidents on this back road into Lesotho, a land-locked country surrounded by a slowly collapsing apartheid regime. But I did not know this then. I had only looked for interesting roads with many twists and turns – the tighter the better – rather than the more direct roads heading south.

  Once away from the city traffic, we rode on smooth tarmac winding its way through undulating farmland to a backpackers’ hostel at the bottom of the pass. There we met three dark-haired Israeli motorcycle travellers – Romie, Ari and Ariel – on their Yamaha XT500s. We’d first met them, very briefly, at the hostel in Durban. They’d spent the past week touring the Transkei coast south of Durban and, like us, they planned to detour through Lesotho on their ride to Cape Town.

  The next morning we tackled the Sani Pass together. As the track climbed, we had clear views all the way to the Indian Ocean. I took quick glimpses until it became a dangerous distraction. Each hairpin bend was covered with shards of rock that moved in waves of instability as the TT powered over it with careful determination. I was grateful Dan had suggested I change the bike’s gearing and helped me fit my spare 15-tooth front and 48-tooth rear sprockets to tackle the ascent. Steering the TT around each bend, steely concentration was needed to focus on the track and not the vertical drop-off that lay a few feet from my tyres.

  At the top, the scenery was desolate and windswept with ragged mountain ranges in the distance. We just made the border post before it closed. Two immigration officials emerged from a hut erected out of stones and lengths of rough-cut timber. They were small, dark-skinned men, and to fend off the biting wind they wore brightly coloured blankets wrapped tightly around their shoulders and box-shaped wool hats pulled low over their ears. As they stamped our passports and carnets, we asked them to stay open a few moments longer as the three Israelis were still a short distance behind.

  Just near the border post is the Sani Pass Lodge, perched on the edge of the steep Drakensberg mountain range. The Easter long weekend and an unexpected cold front saw it overcrowded with hikers, but Elizabeth, the stout African landlady who smelled of mutton stew, did her best to accommodate all who arrived wet and cold on her doorstep – hikers, four-wheel drivers, motocross riders and five foreign motorcycle travellers. Our room was no more
than four walls and a cold slate floor, and cost 50 rand (US$4) each per night, but at least we had a room. The wind howled outside, blowing an icy rain against the window, which rattled relentlessly.

  Over the next two days, the weather steadily deteriorated. Rain turned to snow that blanketed Lesotho and we huddled around the open fire. On Easter Monday the weather cleared, but a cold snap forecast that evening would leave the roads and the top of Sani Pass covered in ice. Riding motorcycles across this mountaintop country was now impossible. Instead, we would ride south to Cape Town via the Transkei coast and its warmth and sunshine.

  The TT struggled to start in the cold, thin air. When it fired into life, I let it idle, and while it warmed, I realised how very comfortable I’d become with my motorcycle, as though it was an extension of me, and I of it. I realised that its survival lay at the heart of mine. Without the TT, there would be no ride; without it, the journey would not be the same. I felt a deep sense of appreciation for it and I had the uncanny feeling it responded, as though its sole purpose was to protect me and do all I asked of it. I trusted it implicitly and I held none of the fear on the ride down as I had on the ride up the Sani Pass – even when several times the tyres skidded on the loose rocks on a hairpin bend and I was only inches from hurtling over the edge and down into the valley far below.