ssese-seminal thoughts from a stormy lake in africa

Wrapped in a yellow plastic bag, we were being tossed about on the angrier waters of Lake Victoria. Walls of water crashed and lightning flashed. Mr Ssenkoko narrowed his eyes at me through blades of rain and said “Are you Jewish?”

Up till then I’d been feeling a bit over-excited, perhaps. There’s something oddly intoxicating about knowing you’ll probably die and so flinging one’s fate to the winds and tides and things. Up until the yellow plastic, I’d even been teasing Philip who had had his cape belled out, hen-style, over his cameras to keep them from the wild weather. He was also wearing a particularly funny hat.

Ssenkoko’s question knocked my laughter right out of the boat. What was that supposed to mean? I shook my soggy locks.

Mr Ssenkoko was the manager cum tour guide of the professor’s mosquito ravaged lodge or camp on one of the Ssese Islands, a group of 84 bejungled isles scattered over the north-west waters of Lake Victoria.

The professor was from Kampala International University and, the day before, we’d been driving though the city, on our way out to the lake. What was that?

“Ah yes…” the professor murmured, waving a vague hand at a distinctly off-kilter tower veering dangerously off a hill we were passing. “…It didn’t – ah - quite take off”. We were going to see some of the Ssese islands. Although we only had a couple of days in which to do it, we wanted to go. And the professor had been kind enough to offer to host us.

The tower is the top of a mosque commissioned by Idi Amin in Uganda’s murkier days, but had been miscalculated somehow. Its builders had silently persevered, fully cognisant of the fact that their lives were more at stake the more the tower lean became obvious. One day they abandoned the oddly angled tower and escaped.

At Bukukata on the shore, we stood at the little harbour having our photographs taken by some newsman in front of a ferry. I expect our calm faces appeared in something like the Bukukata Beholder a day or so later while we were being dashed about on the implacid lake.

The ferry wasn’t for us. A taxi boat was. Yamaha powered, it roared off with us and many others, a cargo of bicycles and vegetables. It sped for an hour and a half between the water hyacinth mounds, towards the myriad alluring islands that kept appearing and disappearing behind veils of a descending mist. The bottom of our bucking taxi was awash with black water and banana skins.

Buggala, the largest Ssese island, waited for us in the dusk. Then for another 45 minutes we went by fast van, through a darkening forest of monkey shrieks. At the professor’s place was an open-sided, thatched dining pavilion and bar, some separate buildings housing a kitchen and the people that worked there, a water tower and four almost completed holiday chalets. Although my bed sported a mosquito net, I suspected that the thousand-and-one powerful mosquitoes clustering around me could sort out a little obstruction like that.

At supper, at the pavilion, we were introduced to Mr Ssenkoko. He kept slapping his head like someone enjoying a great joke. Except that I could see, by the light of our lantern, over a not-quite cooked chicken, that Mr Ssenkoko was not the amused sort. Under his own cloud of stingers, he was haughty and dignified, as much as the Professor was absent-minded.

Next day, even after the fruitily delicious breakfast and Ugandan coffee, Mr Ssenkoko seemed in no great hurry to get us onto the lake. The weather didn’t look wonderful but the real reason was that he didn’t want to say there was no boat. There also turned out that morning to be no transport with which to fetch one.

These drawbacks took time to resolve themselves as the sky came down lower and lower. Finally, a boat at the ready, Mr Ssenkoko fetched a huge yellow plastic sheet and stated we were to do exactly as he told us on the water.

We couldn’t see the first island to which we were headed so I asked how long it would take.

“ One hour, because we are controlled by horse power.”

It seemed as if we and the mounds of waterweed were the only things on the eternal dark water. With the first huge lightning flash we hit a beach. Rain pelted us. Up the short beach and towards a group of small houses, each with a canoe in front. There we stood in the rain in front of a closed door.

“Why are we here?” I yelled through the storm. Mr Ssenkoko ignored me.

To Philip he said, “Are you blind?” He indicated a poster on the door and on the poster was a picture of Mr Ssenkoko. It was an election poster and read: Councillor for Bufumira Sub-county, Kalangala District.

Then, seated in blue easy chairs inside, under a blue shade-cloth, at a long coffee table, decorated with blue doilies, we watched Mr Sssenkoko eat a plate of matoke (steamed and mashed savoury banana) and drink a cup of tea. There was a lace curtain across a doorway leading to two rooms beyond and a toothpaste tube on the floor. The squall seemed to be passing over.

Philip was interested to know what all that white was in a distant tree.

“Bards”, said Ssenkoko. I stared at them.

“I think he means buds”, I whispered.

“No. Bards”, Ssenkoko corrected me loudly. “They fly here for the drying fish and settle in that tree.” There were indeed vast beds of little shimmering tilapia and the big white bards above studied them intently.

As soon as we reached the boat, the rain flooded down. It had metamorphosed from a squall to something with much more serious intent. Philip and I had no idea where we were headed if it weren’t into the devil’s maelstrom. But it wasn’t long before another island reared out of the weather.

We ran blindly and got to a stone house or store room that had recently been burned. It was full of charcoal furniture. However, Ssenkoko rushed out soggily again, saying, I thought I heard, that he’d “try to find Madam Tropista”.

“She’s important in the tourism business”, he informed us later, as we plodded back to the wet boat. Just as we’d pushed out, a brilliantly clad woman with whirling hair and a big wet dog materialised out of a swirl of mist on the shore. Madam Tropista?

On the way back to Buggala, the water kept disappearing from under the boat so that we seemed to be travelling through a black sky as much as we dipped through the immense watery troughs of Lake Victoria, the biggest lake in Africa. I realised we were going to be pitched overboard at the very least. It was then that Mr Ssenkoko wrapped us in his length of yellow cling film. Where we all to go down together in a bright bundle?

The mosquitoes would have been disappointed. As it happened they got me instead of the bottom of the lake. Next day, Philip and I were lying sprawled on the back of a fast-moving truck under a singing canopy of equatorial palms, colobars and humidity. We were going back and we were dry and eating a big fish with our hands.

An earthquake an hour

My memories of Sun City were of the inescapable sound of clinking money, and of the way it was always meant to be night even during the day. On your way to the breakfast patio, through dark rooms lit by flashing red neons, you’d pass women cleaning the carpets, wearing shimmering disco outfits.

The resort’s casino hotel has long been eclipsed by the glitzier Palace of the Lost City, which is indeed something to behold.

A two and a half hour drive from Johannesburg brings South Africans and loads of foreign tourists to the Sun City resort. Sun City also serves as a convenient gateway to the Pilanesberg game reserve that is situated within a real 1 200 million year old volcanic crater. However, the resort’s original reason for being was as a gambling Vegas-themed mecca. Today the resort’s description says it is rather focused on what they term the African Experience. The Palace of the Lost City has, as its own theme, the fantasy of a rediscovery of some ancient but idyllic African civilization.

Near the entrance gate to Pilanesberg we had our first glimpse of the spires of The Palace of the Lost City suffused in Disney-gold morning light.

As I got out of the car I looked up and really thought I saw a giant kudu leaping out of a lotus flower on the corner of a tall tower. I held onto my briefcase more tightly. It felt solid and reassuring. Our car was whisked away over a little lake and we followed our bags being trundled around a mighty fountain gushing, rather surprisingly, out of super-ginormous black sable antelope horns. There were maybe fifty people of many nationalities who probably noticed anything remarkable about water gushing from ends of animal horns, no more perhaps than the way it comes out of demons’ mouths in the rest of the world. They were taking still and moving pictures of their partners and friends and the extraordinary fountain was a mere backdrop.

There was more clicking and whirring in the grand loggia where Reception seemed dwarfed by domed and painted ceilings, zebra-striped lofty window frames and the grandest arrangement of St Joseph lilies in creation. There were vast tapestries featuring animals from Africa and even Madagascar, I noticed, for there was its famed indri lemur keeping woolly company with some local springbok and hippos. On the marble floor lay a small Japanese boy. He wailed.

“Have you noticed that on every piece of anything, something is killing something else?” said Philip, the photographer as he and I explored the interior. No expense or hunger for blood has been spared on the wallpapers, the tapestries, the drapes, the carpets, the mosaics or even the lampstands and shades. Recognizable or fantasy animals, big and small, are hunting or being hunted wherever your glance falls.

Outside are the fake ruins of old temples, supposedly ancient carvings, illusive grottos. Waters spew forth all over the place. Beyond the so-called Palace hotel is its ‘Grand Pool’ with more gushing water and jungly gardens and a place named The Valley of the Waves.

As though guarding the Palace is an immense bridge, lined with numerous stony, towering elephants, leading eventually to The Entertainment Centre. It is labeled The Bridge of Time. Every hour there’s a powerful booming and much billowing of smoke from the elephants’ direction. The bridge then rumbles and shakes to simulate the feeling of an earthquake. You hear that booming bridge wherever you are in the resort grounds.

It competes for noise level with The Roaring Lagoon. The Roaring Lagoon is part of The Valley of the Waves, which has what looks very like a natural beach and water that comes up to about an adult’s waist. After a mighty echoing roar, 1,8 meter waves appear every 90 seconds for 30 minutes. Otherwise the water is on “bob cycle”, as one of the lifesavers informed me.

We watched. The water was packed with bodies. More lazed over the surrounding grassy slopes. There was a pre-teen sunning herself in her cute bikini, peak cap and earrings, smoking a cigarette. There was an earthquake. She didn’t stir. I checked my watch. Eleven. Alongside was a valley full of people bobbing, facing The Roaring Lagoon to see when it would release their next series of waves.

Next day we took the Palace of the Lost City lift nine floors up and a further few flights of stairs, to The Kings Tower. There one can’t help but be impressed by the size and thematic assiduousness of the surroundings. It was there, too, that I was able to confirm my bizarre giant kudu sighting. Directly below me, on each corner of the tower were four mighty African kudus, all in mid-escape from four giant Indian lotus flowers.

Next to me was a group of visitors up from the Western Cape, I guessed by their voices. Their little boy was naturally impatient to be able to see what they were looking out at, so he was lifted onto the parapet.

“Lion King”, he asserted as gazed out.

“Lion King is not here,” sighed his mother. I glanced at her. Only the adults round the place seemed to be confused about what The African Experience was about. All the kids seemed to get it immediately.

Full steam aside

The idea of old trains does appeal to me, I suppose. The sepia toned Victorian image of machine steaming powerfully through a landscape, past gleaming lakes and through misty vales is one I find attractive.

"Oh, those trains!" people - mostly male people - mostly British male people - lyricised enviously when I mentioned I was off to Wales. "Beautifully restored, gleaming with polished brass, all maintained by volunteers."

The first locomotive ever to go anywhere went along a tramway at Pen-y-darran in the southern mining vales in 1804. In the northern part of the country where quarried slate had to be hauled to the coast in the 1860's and 70's articulated locomotives were pioneered. Wales is the home of the train, I realise, and I can spot a train alright, especially if there's a cloud of steam above it, but I don't really know what else to look for. I thought I'd just go for the rides.

A half-hour drive north of Cardiff produces the Brecon Beacons, gentle green swells for over a thousand square kilometers. At the southern base is the Brecon Mountain Railway, just above the old coal town of Merthyr Tydfil where men with mine-grimed faces put in more than a century's worth of sweat and where now there's hardly a sign of all that hard labour. With the pits closed, the grass has moved in. The name of the station is Pant. A good name for a place of vintage steam engines.

Our locomotive was a 1930 Pennsylvania 61269 that had worked in South Africa for many years, hauling limestone to the Eastern Province Cement Company until 1974 when it fell down a bank, damaging its front and was withdrawn from service. It was shipped over to Wales to be restored and put out to Pant.

Two trim carriages stood on the narrow little line while our engine huffed and puffed and hissed towards us. A poopity-poop and the sheep dutifully trotted off the lines to nibble at daffodils further up a picturesque slope.

With lurches and more hisses we were soon moving past a wall that mentioned in white and red paint that Jesus was the way. Our little train bing-banged along the way to a chasm and into the hills, smoke billowing heartily.

This was once one of the deep dark impoverished places of the world where wives and children were also roped into the dragging of carbon lumps into an age of industrialization. I glanced down today’s hillside and saw a woman in a yellow pullover doing handstands on her lawn.

A reservoir was just coming into view when a sonorous voice boomed, 'This is your God speaking!' The wall had been right. God went on: "We are making an unscheduled stop." True to his word, the train came to a full stop at Pontsticill. Then nothing happened. Nobody delivered anything or rearranged the coal - nothing that I could detect, for an eternal five minutes, until the train squeaked off again after fulfilling God's prophecy. Having spoken, God then remained silent.

So were the people on the train for the most part. All the men were wearing royal blue parkas and all the women cherry red ones. They didn't seem to know each other - it's obviously just what you wear to travel on old steam trains in Wales. There was a young boy in a pale blue one and a little girl in a pink parka, in training for true blue and cherry in their adult years.

A red parka and a blue one were quite close to me.
Red parka: "Scenic".
Blue: "Very scenic".
It was quite a nice reservoir, I admitted to myself. Apparently called Taf Fechan, with a little gothically turreted pumphouse.

When we reached Dol-y-Gaer which is nothing more than a place with a signboard at the far end of the reservoir, our engine uncoupled and travelled backwards alongside us, presumably going back to Pant without our carriage. But it just made a bit of a fuss going round to the other end of the train to lead us back.

Red parka: "Lovely big windows aren't they?"
Blue: "Oh yes."
It was an all-weather observation coach, I read on a pamphlet, and one of the most popular railways in Wales. The locals certainly seemed to like it. It was one way of traveling seven miles in an hour.

Down in a damp ditch were two mopey drays as well as many, many sheep. Red and Blue seemed to be getting along well. Blue was nothing if not agreeable.
Red: "Look - horses"
Blue: "Yes"

I saw God for the first time. Uniformed as a guard with a loudhailer, he was announcing a properly scheduled stop at the same place as before, but this time he said we could get out for 20 minutes and have hot drinks, chips, ice-cream and sandwiches.

With an icy wind shaking the daffodils and my being without a cherry red parka, ice cream didn't seem the right choice. Styrofoam-cupped coffee 1123 feet above sea level seemed better. God was having a sandwich.

To escape the wind as quickly as possible, I got into the other, older carriage and found a Victorian stove in the middle of it, unfortunately not in hand warming order. A sad young woman with a gold ankle chain and a pram drooped silently on a seat while her small son clambered over everything a few times over.

All aboard again, our vintage train hissed untidily, whooped twice and we were off again. For the last heroic 100 meter sprint to Pant.

Further over to the west of the Welsh map and up the road from the town, Camarthen, where Merlin, amongst other magicians, was born, is another famous railway line: Gwili. Not a name endowed with much glamour. The Gwili steam trains run on full-width lines from the Bronwydd Arms to a riverside station at Llwyfan Cerrig, where another narrow gauge line takes over for a short distance.

It had been snowing the day before we got there and the snow was melting quite audibly. So it was another nippy spring day as we got out of the car at the Bronwydd Arms signal box. Like a lonely standing stone on the white Welsh landscape, a mobile wooden staircase stood, as there weren't any platforms. There were also no people. In front of the signal box was parked a nice blue Hunslet engine 686, built in 1898. But there was a sign on the ticket office that read 'Next Train:' and then nothing. Blankness, silence except for the melting snow murmuring "Nts-u, nts-u".

It turned out there’d been a Thomas the Tank Engine event at Bronwydd a few days before and there wasn't going to be any other action for another fortnight. Understandably.

After Gwili, I determined to consult the train timetables more devotedly. We had plenty of time to get to our next train appointment at Porthmadog in the north of the country, go to the station and check the departure times of the narrow-guage line trains. In fact, we felt so confident that we thought we'd skip the next train, go sightseeing and get the next train at midday.

There was some snow up there too and more icy winds. But I was looking forward to a little steam train that really went somewhere, preferably through lake and vale country, and I thought the Porthmadog-Blaenau Ffestiniog trains had a good chance of doing so over 13 and a half miles and back, in over three hours.

And so it was. First a wide and wonderful estuary to tootle over from Porthmadog's Harbour Station, with the promise of scenic splendours on the hinter side of the gull-mirrored water. I was just warming to all this when we swung onto the dark green land and I could get a good view of our engine ahead. No steam.

Somehow or other we were on one of the only diesel trains in existence on those tracks. Out of 148 little trains running that route that month, we'd managed to catch one of the only 12 diesel ones. It cast a new light over the whole damn thing. But I comforted myself with the thought that we'd see the other passing steam trains better from ours, without too much mingling of steam.

We'd been relegated to third class , presumably because we had free tickets. I roamed the train and decided that third was really nicer. I liked the slim art deco tables with chairs fixed before them, covered in yellow shadow-checked 30's fabric. First was all red plush and faded glory and there wasn't a second class. In the carriage was another couple, tourists from England, not too far from the Bow bells. They were elderly and they were a little unsettling. When the conductor or guard sauntered through, selling brochures and information packs about the train route, I declined any, showing him I had all of them. But when he got to those two old people behind me in the carriage, I heard Mrs explaining, "We're all together you see and she's got the lot."

Our guard this time favoured the Welsh option when announcing anything. The further north you go, the less English you hear.

"China Bull" he yelled confidently, without any need for a loudhailer. When we got to the platform the sign read "Tan-y-Bwlch".

The scenery was Wales in microcosm - all the greens for which the language is renowned, all the sheep, rivers, valleys, slate cuttings, daffodils and a gloeious lake, serenely called Llyn Mair.

"You'll have to do it out the window then", I heard Mrs shriek to Mr. He stumbled past me down the aisle mumbling "All right, all right", rather embarrassedly. I didn't want to know. But, after wrestling the window open as the train chuffed up to a platform, all he pointed out of it was an aged instamatic camera. Shakily he took a picture of a telephone pole in front of infinity. The fact didn't escape him and he wailed, "Now look what you made me do!" and then plodded back up the aisle with his camera dangling sadly from his wrist. His spouse shrilled as he reached his seat, "All of yours have spots on them anyway."

The wide open pale spaces narrowed into black nothingness as the train rumbled through Garnedd Tunnel and then pitched us out on the other side into woods and vales. At the black hill of Dduallt, after Cowhouse Curve, the train painstakingly described an upside-down e-shape and then rumbled into a few groves. The peaks of Snowdonia emerged more clearly the closer we got to our destination, quite literally a quarry - Blaenau Ffestiniog.

On our return, the man who did it out of the window and his wife, had class-hopped. I found them guiltily ensconced in red plush as I walked through.

The wheels, the guard said, were slipping on the tracks because of the light snow. Remembering the now right-way round e-shape and the full spiral that the train had to perform at steep Dduallt, I tried not to imagine how the wheels would cope. So I was quite pleased to see China Bull again. And it was there, halfway back to Porthmadog, that a real stunner of a double-headed Fairlie steam engine passed in full view and glory.

“See,” I crowed to Philip, the photographer, “we couldn’t have had that excellent view of the steam train if we’d been in it.”

A lot of fish

I have learned that, when eating with Algerians, it’s generally a good idea to count the before you start. I learned that lesson on a hazy-hot day on the cutlery ambassador’s lunch patio. Within a few days I was to accompany a trade mission to Algeria. The prospect was thrilling. I love visiting places that aren’t on the usual tourist radar. I was keen to impress the ambassador. Already he was happy that I knew something about Algerian wines.

“Do you like couscous?”

“Mais oui!”

“I produce a very good one.” He beamed. After a hot and spicy soup course on that sweltering day, the promised dish was delivered to the patio.

Rotund but spry, the ambassador sprang to his feet and began, enthusiastically explaining the symbolism as he worked, to disseminate the golden grains, the meats (both red and white) generously heaped over them, the vegetables (both red and white), strewn gorgeously amongst them, the sauces (both red and white). I was daunted. But, not only did I know Algerian wines, the ambassador seemed to approve too of my managing to consume more than a spoonful of harissa without crying out or passing out.

From then, all I felt I needed accomplish to retain his respect was consume my mountainous portion of the speciality of his kitchen. I may even have prayed a little for waistband forgiveness. Certainly, afterwards I know I sipped the ruby Mascara wine both thankfully and victoriously. As I put down the glass I saw, with a hot rush of panic, the further array of silver cutlery laid out next to my plate. I had merely consumed the entrée.

By the time I was in Algiers, I knew to count the cutlery.

A few provinces away along the coast is a place called Jijel, the location for a proposed Free Zone and considered a tourism possibility. There the mosquitoes are the size of helicopters. After visiting the sites, we were driven out along the corniche, many beautiful kilometers of gasp-inspiring cliffside with significantly sheer drops to the sea below. Our little bus then returned us to the provincial governor’s guesthouse where we’d been staying. We were to fly back from Jijel to Algiers that afternoon.

Someone said, “Ha – smells nice – fish for lunch,” as we straggled in. In the long dining room, in front of every place setting were two pieces of pissaladiere, embedded with anchovy and studs of chilli.

The rounded, fresh-faced Scotsman sitting next to me nudged, “Here – if you don’t want your other piece, I’ll eat it.” He did. At least here, in an outlying seaside province, we weren’t going to have to wade through seven courses, I understood, studying the cutlery.

Whoever it was had been right. It was fish. There appeared an exquisitely prepared sole and a red mullet in front of each of us with an inviting salad alongside. Not the sort of dish one would describe as a light lunch, what with two sizeable fish in one go. Then came the next course. It was also fish.

Two giant rock cods with white frills on their tails were borne in by strong men. The men ripped off the skins with something of a flourish and plated the fish. It was good, lightly curried inside, presumably marinated to achieve that interesting result and served with vegetables. It was particularly filling. I smirked at Tom who’d eaten my piece of pissaladiere and must have been feeling better fed than I. He looked slightly flushed.

“It’s a lot of fish,” he said simply.

Now for the dessert. Bowls were brought in, steaming, and set before us. In each bowl was a rosily pink stew of shrimps and prawns, presumably to be eaten with the spoons and forks that were all that remained of our settings.

“First time I’ve eaten fish for pudding, “ mumbled the Belgian on my other side. His voice sounded strained. I said something idiotic about liking oysters for pudding. It probably wouldn’t have sounded quite so silly if we hadn’t seen the waiters resetting our places with three more sets of cutlery each. By then everything seemed idiotic, especially fish.

Thankfully, the real dessert, when its turn came after the two intervening courses, was fruit. Afterwards each of us was presented with a rather large and perfectly detailed galleon made of cork. I think it was intended to serve as a reminder of the coastal delights that Jijel had to offer. To me it felt ridiculously light.

It was also a ridiculously ungainly item to carry onto a plane along with an overnight bag and a handbag. However, on board, the seats tipped back in a kindly fashion to accommodate all those fish-filled bellies travelling through the air. A stewardess appeared.

I sat up and glared at her after she reached me. Were these people round here completely iodine stuffed and crazy? I’d distinctly heard her ask me if I’d like to have a fish.

Stewardessily unfazed, she repeated: “Voulez-vous avoir le boisson”? I slumped back. I nearly groaned: “Oh, thank the god in this heaven! – she wants me to have a drink, not a ‘poisson’.”