Tag Archives: Travel
It’s somewhere, not nowhere – and we’ve been there. [Part 3 of that road journey]
The darkness I feared is falling, but we’re no longer straddling that hot, narrow, frightening stretch of road. We’ve driven a few hundred metres. The distance from peril to safety. We hope. Hordes of children gather. Women appear, suspicious, but inquisitive. … Continue reading
On the road to nowhere . Part 2.
Eleven o’clock. The heat increasing with every passing minute. I can hardly bear to think of time. There should be another five hours of road before us, but now? God only knows. A stunned-looking Archaeo-man pulls out his cellphone. I … Continue reading
Halfway to nowhere. Part 1
The calls of night-jar and owl punctuate the stillness of the hours before dawn. Four in the morning and the man who lights the fires under the hot water boilers has been and gone. I lie, wishing for sleep, knowing … Continue reading
An entomologist walks into a bar…
A tiny rainbow, flitting across the Indian Ocean, like a teardrop fallen from God’s eye, a prism for the sun. I’m awake. Thinking. It’s 2.30 am – or thereabouts. This afternoon, for the first time in a week I checked my … Continue reading
Subterranean indigestion?
Rotten eggs, a smell I can put a name to, though I don’t think I’ve ever come across the real deal. A rotten egg, I mean. But now I’m standing in the full glare of the tropical sun, wilting, weary … Continue reading
On soap, water and being worth it
We’re bumping along a track through scrubby woodland in a because-we-need-it four-by-four. It’s the end of a dehydrating day spent working in a haze of heat and orange dust. Digging, sieving, scraping. Tstetse flies biting through clothing, sweat bees dipping … Continue reading
The song I know of Africa (who doesn’t know one of me)
Is that a humming sound? Hum becomes buzz. An insect passes by, unhurried. Buzz fades into hum again – and the insect vanishes. A bird on creaking wings utters a plaintive call as it crosses the glinting river and heads … Continue reading
MEMOIRS OF A HUSK 