VIDEO: uploading chickens – Burkina Faso

Uploading chickens onto the bus roof in Burkina Faso

On the rough road – GUINEA-BISSAU to GUINEA

 Often you know when a journey will be difficult, when it with wear you out, when it will numb your bum and tire your mind but hell it will be memorable and etched in your head and so this was one – one, of 100s – that I’ll remember (assuming that a mind-rotting disease doesn’t kick in) but hell for now it’s here. But how did it begin …? I forget.

On the road towards Guinea

NOTE: Presently I am in Labé in the Fouta Djalon region, the lush, canyon-ed high plateau of north-eastern Guinea, writing this on battery by candlelight …  and I’ve drunken several beers at a friendly, hole-in-the-wall bar shortly after the Ramadan fasting came to an end today.

So where was I? Remembering … Okay, let me listen to my audio diary and get back to you …

Koundara: just been talking to Captain Thomas and friends – very drunk soldiers, missing teeth, red berets slopped everywhere. They came into this shack-bar/disco/hotel where I was staying – few other choices … the boss-chick has just gone out to appease them; I fucked her when I arrived – in the morning & in the evening … don’t know where to start … this was on the eve of Ramadan, drinking amid drunk, ragged, aggressive soldiers in a scene from a twisted movie.

Lone hut in the early morning light

This is a country that is deemed the next failed state – here a history of dictatorships and coups and economic mismanagement despite it being a major Bauxite exporter and having other vast mineral riches – Guinea is driven by a general who for the last 20 years has succeeded in keeping himself in power by cheating at the ballot and by changing the rules to suit himself, and who was last shot at in 2005. Even his soldiers, after a pay revision, revolted, but he survived despite an artillery siege at the presidential palace and then after an agreement there followed the sudden execution of mutineers. Today Conte still rules; this is another banana republic that we don’t know or care about. (And I read on the internet this morning that the soldiers just this week are threatening violence again unless pay owed from the late-1990s is paid. But I also hear that nothing will happen until after Ramadan). 

There is no running water; electricity is either occasional in major towns or more likely not at all unless supplied via private generator. And, most roads are appalling.

Which brings me back to the roads – the journey … a test of the will, or at least this western will. Not the most difficult but (that was yesterday on route to Labé – shattered roads that are red clay hard ruts, deep festering holes, thick mud eating trucks; to avoid holes one side of the car driving along road’s outermost edge and other down lower along the mud track, car riding at a sloping 45 degree angle – branches hitting windows. Fucked up but … the mountain slopes often the best traction – less erosion uphill apart from some deep rain ruts that channel down; early in the day passing thatched huts and long green red-tipped grass then and later jungle and  grouped chimpanzees on huge rocks seated calmly in dusk light as we struggle uphill. Followed by cattle and goats across the track – kids waving – when I wave at then – astonished at my white presence – Foto, they call – meaning white in the local tongue. Women with bowls on heads going nowhere obvious but greenery all around and our journey slow, bumpy, broken; painful.

Awaiting more passengers in Koundara “taxi” station

I woke at 6:30 AM in dark, waited till 7:30 for the car to fill and we arrive in dark at 9:30 PM; we have only covered 265 km … we have 4 people in the front including the driver, 3 in the back – only cos I paid double for an extra seat/space, and then 3 more cramped in the boot-bench-seat of the Peugeot 505 over the rear wheel, and one more in the tiny actual boot and two more on top of the heaped baggage on the roof-rack. And so a humble 5-seater hatchback is a 14 seat slave … But this particular journey of Guinea is another story. 

So I forget, I forgot, my mind is rotting … back to this day, this journey: Her name was Monica, 3 babies at age 25, tribal slit cut down along the rims of each ear-lope; when I arrived she offered me sex … fingers placed together then the in-out motion is understandable in any language – especially mine, her washing the rooms – dusty, concrete, lino-clad floors, spider web corners, sunken thin mattress, showers equal water in a bucket, a fan when the generator kicks in at 7 pm … She got on top of me. Twice … actually, five times by the time it was over that evening.

Anyway before that there was the border crossing between Guinea-Bissau and Guinea in a crammed car, no room for legs or arms or beer bellies … that lasted checkpoints and past villages to the now searing mid-day heat of the frontier, where the Immigration officer in a small tatty concrete office was pleasant, decent, friendly but the Customs across the dirt road made me empty my backpack. But I threw off his ambitions of a full search straight away by showing him my dullest aspect of my bag first – here’s my towel, my books, my toothpaste, my … after wanting something from me – he got nothing, he actually thanked me, keen to have met a New Zealander, a nomad who had nothing but his bags – for he understood slight English and I explained my life to him. But then the soldiers in the thatch hut wanted me to enter … Alert: nasty dumb fucks ahead.

River crossing on route to Labé; the barge was broken, so cables welded for 2 hours and then we crossed … by two men turning a wheel we were pulled along the cable to the other side

They tried to intimidate me: 5 of them; unfriendly. They didn’t acknowledge my greetings in English, Islamic salutations, or French. They wanted me to empty my backpack and electronics bag on the dry dirt floor and I realized there was some real danger here of a huge bribe or other hassle. I got shitty, growled – fuck this shit, having already deflected the same nonsense minutes earlier at customs and so said loudly and slowly each item. I got out my towel and mentioned its name – like a teacher – and demonstrated drying myself. Then I got our my tooth brush and brushed, my book and I read … trying to delay the search of my valuables – a Nikon SLR D80 with expensive lenses, Sony video camera, lightweight powerful laptop with extra hard drives, MP3 player, etc, etc … I got out my toilet paper – “here’s my toilet paper, this is for wiping my butt” – and held it high and started to wipe my arse – and they cracked up! That was it, I could pack my pack, and out … they asked my nationality and were pleased to meet me – although I’m sure they knew nothing of where I was from. Even the mention of Australia washed over them – but no more search. No money paid; nothing lost.

The next stage was much easier: but no vehicles were going from this deserted border post to the next deserted border post. There was only one other traveler. A guy from a Guinea, as the others in our shared taxi had raced off into a waiting friend’s 4WD, and that left us with 10 seats to fill; just 2 people and not a person or vehicle coming within hours to complete the journey and so I offered to pay the bulk of the distance: 45 km = over 1 hour of rutted track to get us to the next village and there next shared taxi probably awaiting passengers – as maybe you don’t know: but taxis, cars, buses in Africa don’t leave until full: there is never a timetable for departure – just when a vehicle is full, which by my previous experiences of Africa can mean mercifully just 30 minutes or even less but usually up to several hours waiting … so I paid nearly-the-complete taxi fare which, in this case was nothing – $10, but often it can be too much, as in 10 x $10 +/-. 

When we arrived at the Guinean border – about 1 km away – I hopped over the wire that stops traffic – like there’s any – and the soldier go shitty, didn’t understand what he was saying but realized I had to go around the now limp wire down on the dirt – Not over it, like I was walking on the flag or something! Got to the Immigration shack where lines of tired Africans were waiting and was stamped immediately, without fuss. Wow.  Thank you. Then as our taxi was rearing on – the Customs guy on the other side was calling to the driver to stop – but he could not hear – as we were walking on to the next post – I also ignored him while urging the local with me to stop shouting to the driver to stop … and so we cleared Customs by ignoring them.

Truck on the road in the mountains of Fouta Djalon, Guinea

The next soldier post was gentle. And that was it, across more broken mud tracks – too easy, with seats to ourselves – for an hour towards the town of Saréboido.  And then it was back to cramming – should have paid a few bucks extra to avoid this but … got in the back – as in 3 people crammed in over the rear wheel for another hour of banging heads, crammed legs room, scarping shins.

And so I arrived in Guinea, in the sleepy town of my chosen stay in Koundara, found a “hotel” and gotten laid within minutes of arrival, had endured hours of cramped spaces over rough roads, had defused greedy soldiers and gotten drinking with deluded others to realize that indeed it was a lucky day; a relatively easy journey.

(PS: in Part 2: Leaving Guinea to Sierra Leone was just as crazy – soldiers, bribes and bad roads abound.)

On a bus with the smell from hell – CHILE

Thought I’d woken to someone shitting on my face; my sleep interrupted by a fuckin – truly, fuckin’ – horrendous stench while travelling the dull bus journey back to Chile from southern Argentina.

Others – the few foreigners around me at the rear of the bus were pulling the most-ugly faces and near vomiting, truly, as I realised the smell was coming from the on-bus toilet, opposite me.

Jokes were exchanged – including the dead rat one – to the point of despair, for the smell was terrifying. One young Brit stated it was now the 6th flush of the toilet we’d heard as he struggled to open the unopenable-locked, A/C bus window as his girlfriend gagged beneath her scarf as the smell of shit absorbed our entire world. SMELL FROM HELL; never have I encountered such an evil sensory commotion.

Absolute panic and disgust as a German guy punched open the roof-top vent to – as he said – “help inhalation”. Crowd anticipation mounted for the smelly fucker to exit and show himself … come on ya cunt … Die … then it happened. And we burst into hysterics – exiting out of the bog was a slim, beautiful, blond Latina.

I let out a few comments that got others laughing: “Fuck, that chick’s got one dangerous arse … Man, lucky, her boyfriend’s a sensitive, caring guy”.

The bus attendant – urged by gasping passengers – entered the hazard zone – hell-of-a brave guy – and sprayed some cheap scent, on which I commented “Great, the smell of roses and shit,”.

That wasn’t enough to quell the stench. So he returned with bleach to extinguish the rotting-pig - the wafting ammonia fumes stinging our eyes and nose.

Following that nasty adventure I made it to the Torres Del Paine National Park, stunning for its horned peaks, turquoise lakes and glaciers, where finally, I could inhale deeply …

> photos of Chile

Letter from Papua #2 – INDONESIA

LETTER HOME:  

Hot, humid. A tropical port town with dozens of islands offshore, palm-fringed. Kinda like Nigeria meets Samoa maybe, in its appearance and ambience. Very friendly, with a million “Hello misters”. Absolutely no tourists.

 

Sunset from “our” beach in Sarong

Basic town stretched along coast with few ‘real’ shops buts lots of shacks kiosks, rustic housing, taxi vans and taxi motorbikes as the public transport, wild and colourful markets, tropical trees: bananas, coconut and sago palms, salaks (fruit: brown snakeskin-peel sheltering pear/apple tasting segments), papaya, pineapples, sirsak (soft green spiky skin, fruit big as a loaf of bread, tasting mushie, lemony, melting in your mouth incredible taste and texture).

First stayed some days with Erica’s sister’s family. Small shabby house of five rooms. Polished concrete floor. Jesus pics on wall. Few wooden tribal souvenirs, Chinese vases and flowers. Few things beyond beds, sofas, kitchen table, kitchenware, TV and radio. Cooking by gas or fire in the yard out the back. Washing by bucket – mandi – in a bathroom, as is the traditional Indonesian way. Hens and dogs and cats roaming. Crabs and frogs in the pond. Neighbours young children wandering in and out.

Then we stayed at the beach at Grandparents. Amazingly quiet beach and the view. Wicked sunset island sky. Horizon of palm islands – the nearest 500 metres away, which we reach by paddling to in an outrigger canoe. Basic shack right on sand. (Reminds me of Goa, India). Coconut palms and banana trees. Fishermen in canoes. Swimming warm waters but watch for deadly sea snakes. Coral reefs. Crabs that carry shells on their backs as their mobile homes and other crabs that burrow holes everywhere around the yard, with is the beach and sea.

It’s only 5 metres from our mattress to the water at high tide. Pack of family dogs yelping at nightfall. Family piglet in stilted pen, fattening up above the water, next to the outhouse mandi and toilet, washing water from nearby well. Cooking in a nearby kitchen shack of fire places and gas burner, kitchen bench and pots and utensils hanging in rack outside, beside a small fruit and vege garden.

Had a big beer sess of 52 large bottles one day, with relatives and onlookers; I paid for everything.

Been eating fruit and various BBQ fish, some exotic vege dishes, tempe – slabs of fermented soybeans fried, chilli, and rice. Coffee, fried egg and bread for breakfast. Food luxuries included processed cheese, chocolate chip cookies, beer, tinned sausages.

The beach days were stoned, restful, idyllic; paradise.

Anyway, it was a 12 hour boat trip from Sorong to Fakfak (pronounced fuck fuck!) on our way south to here in Marauke.

Travelled on a large passenger liner that carries thousands: five passenger decks – packed, all cabins booked, all economy benches crammed, and floors, corridors, stairwells – we slept on the covered wooden deck at the rear of the boat, behind the mosque, with scores of others around us.
 
Spent 4 days in Fakfak, awaiting another ship to Merauke, which took 4 days. Quite a journey. Every class cabin booked. Packed boat beyond belief. Thousands camped out on mats with food containers, washing hanging, babies, sleeping women, guitar playing youths, across floors and decks and corridors and on the stairs and even in the lifeboats!  Like a ship of refugees.

Luckily, we found a space on the 7th deck cafe, outdoor, but roofed. Sat a table or on the bench for 48 hours, sleeping, eating, chatting, cramped, with nearly 60 others in a space the size of the lounge and your bedroom. When it rained it rained and everybody was flooded out by the rain-river sweeping along the length of the boat’s deck. Huge waterfalls and surges. Monsoonal. Luckily our luggage was on a bench at our table, otherwise my computer would be history. Families on mats on the steel deck had to evacuate their things off the floor before everything was wet, then stand for hours, or crouch, huddled with others until the deck dried off and they could get back to sleep again. Three times the nights were sodden.

Second night was amazing storm, rocked the liner – people wet, tired, and seasick (not us) – women hopelessly ill, as was her child. Floor awash with plastic papers, cig butts, rubbish, gob, baby piss and puke, to be swept away with the next storm. Sea and sky illuminated by lightning. Lightning. Rain blown into us. Distant red moving of up-and-down lights warning of land in the big black void.

Fortunately when the ship pulled into Timika, we moved to a better space on the second deck of economy benches – like a dormitory open with hundreds camped out, the most wretched toilets that failed to work, often lacking water, abrasive smell of pure ammonia that burnt your nostrils. Timika – because the boat was 6 hours late and we’d missed the tide – was never in view, as we arrived at 3 am, cruising up a river lined by thin, 10 metre trees, white bark glowing under moonlight. Maniacally driven, motorised dug-out canoes sped alongside us, and worn-out colonial riverboats and police launches all hovered around the ship, awaiting passengers down the steps to a barge-boat, others lumbering with luggage across boat decks – scene illuminated by ship floodlights – to the speedy canoes, that when full, zoomed off into the night, river churning, men with flashlights crouched at the front, acting as headlights on this dark river highway.

Meantime porters were chucking luggage and cargo from decks to boats below, others lowering stuff by rope. Then it rained again and the chaos of 25 boats and canoes amplified and passengers exposed, sought umbrellas, mats, plastic over their heads. It was like a jungle scene from a movie set on the Congo River, at night.

Now here in Marauke in southern Irian Jaya / Papua, for the past 4 days, staying with more relatives in a basic but comfortable house.

Cooler weather here, windy, often rainy.  Met up again with Erica’s bro, Lukey, 27, who we’d met with in Sorong and who’d left earlier headed for Marauke (- for boats only come here every fortnight). They have met their father for the first time – he’d separated from their mother when Erica was three, 27 years ago. Their mother died 5 years ago.

Her father was an Captain in the army, Indonesian intelligence. He has an incense – wood – business he wants Erica to help him with, and also a crocodile farm – I held a baby, 24-inch croc yesterday – with skins for export. Erica wants to work here for a few months with business visits to Bali, to make cash and then go to Holland to scatter her mother’s ashes, for she is half-Dutch half-Ambonese (from the Malaku: Spice Islands). And her dad is Irian (west Papua).

Who is Erica: I call her “Jungle girl.” She’s brown, slim, shapely, sexy, crazy, fun, caring, and a mother of three – met her 11-year-old son Felix in Sorong, presently living with her sister, other two kids living with her older German, ex-husband in Bali. I met Erica in Jakarta at a club. She was a high-class pro and has recently given up her speed – amphetamine – addiction (both activities a consequence of broken marriage and hard times). She is also an asthma sufferer and has had two very close calls – to hospital; one the other day here, and the other on the ship from Jakarta.

Now, amazing big bright green frogs sit on the porch at night, under the lights, awaiting insects. The frogs are cute, wide-eyed but their poisonous spit will blind you …

And the large brown ants with green backs, they build houses for their many thousands by climbing trees and twisting and weaving with their silk, living leaves together, to make elaborate nests in the branches of a tree next to the outhouse and shower, a small  enclosure open to the sky, shaded by the fingers of trees, sun warming us as we wash … in the morning.
 
Have been made very welcome by all – family, friends, strangers, even police …

> photos of Papua & Indonesia

Across the badlands of Baluchistan – PAKISTAN

He’d just locked the keys inside his truck. What a plonker! And what a hopeless position: parked as it was in front of the gate – which the guard had just unlocked and now the truck totally blocked the access point between Iran and Pakistan … cornered near Afghanistan. A high fence defined the frontier, mesh and barbed-wire running out and into the barren hills and cramped against the wire were Afghani refugees living in a dusty, iron-sheet, canvas and timber squalor.   

Razor ridges on the road from the Iranian border into Baluchistan

The German had offered me a lift. But now, with his truck stuck, I was sure I would be catching the train to Quetta. (The capital of Baluchistan: the vast desert region of western Pakistan. Baluchistan is a rugged, arid land bordered by Iran in the west, Afghanistan to the north, the Arabian Sea in the south and the greener Sind province of Pakistan in the east.) I’d rushed to make the once-a-week train; I didn’t fancy waiting for the next departure. Or one of the old, agonising and infrequent buses which left the border.

I strolled through the gate and into Pakistan – the truck still blocking it. Other vehicles couldn’t pass. Fortunately, there were none waiting this early in the morning. I greeted the Pakistani police. They were friendly, smiling, asking questions as they shaded on the veranda of the customs hut.

Surrounded by dark-skinned police, in black uniforms and black berets (with red insigna), I felt elated to have reached the Subcontinent. Historically, I’d now entered India. But politically Hindustan, or land of the Hindus, was still 1500 km east. For the last two days dark-skinned people had been prevalent in Iran as I’d neared Pakistan. In Kerman, I’d given a woman – begging with her child – 1000 rials. However, this brought another woman with child, screeching and shrieking at my feet. These women made me wonder about the immense poverty I would encounter in India: What would I do when everyone wanted money? 

Now, stamped into Pakistan, I wandered back into the glaring sunlight. And no sooner had I, when the money changers rushed me–shouting and arguing for my attention.

“Change! Change!” “Dollar. You ‘ave dollar?” “Iran rial, I change.” “Good rate, I give best.”  “No mista, do not listen to this man – “  ” – How much, you say?” “I give more!”

I changed the last of my rials for Pakistani rupees. Meanwhile the truck remained stuck in Iran, inches from Pakistan. Still the German cursed. Confused Iranian guards ran round with wire and other objects that might open the door. The German pulled at the rubber lining the window. I offered my Swiss army knife. And suggested: Smash the window with a rock. But he wouldn’t hear of it. Eventually he stripped the rubber, opened the small triangular window, then pushed his arm through and unlocked the door. The borderguards were impressed – and I suspect, a little relieved to have the gate clear as other vehicles had arrived.

Dry flood plains of Baluchistan

I had a lift, again. We drove past the immigration shack to the custom’s building round the corner and stopped. Inside, they inspected my pack briefly. Then with our passports checked and stamped again, the official followed us back the to truck.

During the next hour customs checked the truck’s contents with the descriptions on the carnet, while scores of dust-coated cars (Ex-Kuwait like I’d seen at the Turkish/ Iranian border) arrived. A Mercedes 180 came strapped onto the roof of an old bus!

Returning guest-workers and their families waited for clearance. Customs took awhile. Killing time, doing essentials, young adults and children gathered with jerry cans and plastic bottles on the soaked soil round the water pump. One guy washed dust and grime from his arms, face and feet. Another scrubbed his sandals; others cleaned windscreens, checked tyres, ate and relaxed before the drive across the desert. A happy vibe bounced around the vehicle park. It said: We’re relieved to have nearly reached home.

I watched the activity while the customs man inspected the truck. First, everything inside the rear living-unit. One stove. Two fridges. Three spare wheels. A second engine, tool box … And then inside the cab.

The flat-nosed Mercedes freight truck had a green cab and the rear was dark-blue, with a flower painted and circling a lone plastic porthole. A black panther – like those kitsch 70s bedroom posters, sparkling eyes, mouth open and stalking – gazed from above the cab’s roof.

The driver, Kris, said he’d painted both pictures. He was a solid guy who tended to waddle, rather than walk; being top-heavy, like a body builder who’d neglected his lower half; his muscles were obvious in his faded black singlet. He looked like someone I’d met before: shaggy brown hair touching the his lower neck, blue eyes, sharp nose, whiskery face and moustache.

Kris said the first 160 km of road was a trail of tyre-grooved dust. Old tracks, piled stones and the skeletons of buses kept us on route. Otherwise, it was the perfect place to get lost. Imagine a flat and empty landscape halved into two colours: dust-grey sand and stones – like rough sandpaper and pale-blue sky.

Driving this desolate stretch heading east, we crossed paths with six Baluchi’s going north. One man rode, while the others led laden camels–sacks and blankets. We stopped. They stopped. We smiled, shook hands and exchanged greetings. “Salaam akeikum” – ‘Peace be upon you.’  “Wa aleikum asalaam”, they replied.  ‘And peace be upon
you.’ Beaming in the eyes of both parties: the surpise of having encountered each another. Here two worlds collided. Them with Allah’s time-tested transport and us, with our recent man-made machine.

These men wore traditional garments – of a style perhaps unchanged since man’s creation? The bearded chief resembled a biblical prophet. He dressed in clean white robes and in turban with flowing tail. He held a sturdy wooden staff. The rest wore knee-length mostly grey–shirts and baggy trousers, with round-flat caps or loose turbans. Only Allah knows where their leader led them, so much space, so much sky.

Men of the desert

Speeding across the blank expanse our truck sent dust whirling. But the trail wasn’t good, and more often the pace was slow. Many ruts and holes. Kris had driven this route before and this was now his fourth time. And his last. He said, “I’m sick of it. Too much hassle and it is too lonely. When I saw you, I was very glad to see another foreigner–zat is why I ask if you want the ride.”

I asked Kris about the hassles involved with driving from Germany to Nepal. And he replied, “The police always stop me in Iran. Zey see a European truck and zey search for a long time and are always wanting things. I am sick of zis…” 

In Germany Kris (a mechanic) and friends brought old trucks, loading them with second hand appliances and setting them up as campers – to avoid custom’s restrictions. Later they sold the lot in Kathmandu. But it had been Kris who’d done all the travelling.

“Once,” he said, “a friend took the truck across Turkey but when he reached the Iran border, zey turn him back. So I had to fly from Germany to drive the truck for him.” “Did he have a visa?”  “Yes. He had a visa from the embassy in Germany.” “Why was he turned back then?”  “Zey gave no reason. But there was a diplomatic problem at the time between Germany and Iran, maybe zis was the reason. It did not matter anyhow, zey let me in. But I think it was because I had been to Iran before…”

Parking off the road for the night, we later slept. By mid-morning we’d reached the asphalt. It was pocked with holes. The slow and bumpy road stretched before us, weaving as the landscape became rugged.

It was weird, startling, even spooky. A rock-strewn plain patched by scrub and yellowish weeds. And breaking this mustard-and-grey carpet were mountains; rocky, razored and near-vertical from their base, forming in a series of serrated ridges, curling the land like dragons. The road passed between two spikes and beyond the nearest ridges, the distant peaks were misted in a blue-grey haze.

Later, in a panorama of gravel and barren sand-swamped hills, we stopped alongside two camels chomping on green thorny bush. Watching over them were two boys. One about ten and the other in his early-teens, both dressed in dejembas (knee-length shirt; with loose trousers). Kris gave them some stickers, demonstrating what they were by peeling one and fastening it to the windscreen. They invited us for chai, pointing to a mud-and-stone flat-roofed house nestled beside a hill. Kris declined.

The boys who liked their stickers

The landscape was silence and the road empty. But we did encounter the odd Kuwaiti car or Pakistani truck. The trucks were gypsy caravans on modern chassises. Some had cabins built of wood with ornate panels and tassles around the windscreen and doors. Heavily-decorated and brightly-painted Allah praises, murals and motifs ran around the high wagon-like cargo bins. Fairy lights, metallic stickers and chains clung from bumpers and tailboards. Signs were painted on the back of each truck: “Please use horn”. And like some warning, they thundered past us – we never overtook them. Their drivers drove fast and crazy. After several battles, it was always us who pulled over to let them pass. We stopped either for trucks or to stretch, or to refill our waterbottles from the rear tank.
   
Driving into Dalbandin around dusk, we halted for chai. At the tea stall we met a teacher. He showed us to a basic restaurant. They served mutton curry with rice – or the reality, sticky bits with spicey soup and bones. Anyway, it seemed like a meal after two days of biscuits. Before leaving I visited the outhouse, where I flicked a lighter to see where I was stepping. Of course, the long-drop reeked something horrible but at least turds didn’t cover the dirt. Around the pit, hundreds of cockroaches – 2 inches long – scuttled for cover as I squatted.

Before we departed Dalbandin the teacher reappeared with a lump of charas (hash). After two hours we turned off the road, careful not to park where the sand was too soft. Then without papers, Kris carefully loosened and emptied a cigarette, mixing tobacco with pinches of charas before repacking the cylinder.

Now lying in our sleeping bags on the truck’s roof – excessible by a skylight – we smoked, gazing at the stars.

Silence, except my walkman playing softly … But alarmingly half-way through the first smoke we thought we heard someone shouting. Looking down, we saw an armed soldier walking around the truck. He asked what we were doing? We told him: Just parked for the night. He said okay, and bid us good night.

And not until the morning did we realize in this total emptiness that there was a police post just across the road! It had been invisible last night.

Kris had checked the ground but still we managed to get stuck in the sand as we left that next morning. The rear wheels spun and dug in. He revved-hard and we wound deeper. After scooping sand from the tyres and placing some wood beneath the rubber, we tried again. We jolted forward. The small plank snapped. Sand sunk around the axel. Kris told me he’d nearly lost a truck in the sand before – it seemed we were to repeat the lesson.

Truck stuck ! (Kris on far-right)

It was looking ugly … Fortunately, a man from the station offered help. Within minutes we had seven men armed with a spade and two lengths of wood. They dug us out. Free; we thanked them. Kris gave out Western cigarettes and matches (which he carried to give as gifts).

For hours the road coiled across rugged hills as we began climbing towards Quetta. Mountains of rock devoid of trees. As we twisted towards the top of another range of boulders, tussock grass amid reefs of jagged rock – the corner ahead came into view. A crashed bus. It lay on its side on the slope, having punched through the stone wall flanking the road. Surprisingly it had stuck – not tumbled into the gorge.

The road wound hills and later followed a river, through steep cliffs of layered wave-thrashed rock. Pebbles and reeds lined the river. But further, the water dried-up as we drove alongside a wide floodplain dotted by shrubs; red-brown and green blotches reaching to rounded, gentle hills a mile off. T

Throughout the journey the scenery was desolate and barren. Stunning landscapes. But nature aside, the only sights were rail bridges and tracks occasionally following the road. At times the line burrowed into cliffs, travelling through tunnels built by the British early this century, and bove the entrances small stone forts (with crenellated walls and turrets like a Medieval castle). A hint of the troubled times had by the Brits in this wild corner of Empire.

Trucks rumbling beyond an old British railway fort

In Nushki (I think it was this place as it is only one of three towns on route to Quetta) we saw green trees and lush vegetation amid rundown brick and shanty buildings. Shoe-box-sized stalls and sack-and-timber shelters were crammed infront of old brick houses – looking half-finished or falling apart with paint fading and fragile timber lean-tos and awnings tacked on; rugs and clothes hanging from roofs and wires. Nuskhi was drying out. I think we’d missed a downpour. The roadside was muddy and swamped by large puddles, forming temporary lakes around houses, shops and cigarette stalls, causing donkeys and carts to circle round.

And when we stopped at a stall a crowd of 40-50 gathered. Males of all ages came to watch the foreigners and admire the truck. Men and boys. Some wore turbans. But most had round-flat caps with a wedge cut in the front, embroidered with motifs, flowers and studded with tiny mirrors.

The crowd …

After travelling 620 km – three days – across Baluchistan we entered Quetta that afternoon … The main street was thick with cars, trucks, packed buses, swerving bicycles, diesel-coughing rickshaws. The hustle and bustle like a photo I’d already pictured, like a scene I’d already visualised, and now finally India seemed within my reach …

> more photos of Baluchistan & Pakistan

Avoiding another accident, Tehran #1 – IRAN

Having been in a major bus accident on route to Tehran the prospect of another disaster was now looming straight ahead.

He drove like a maniac rushing home to rescue the oven fries he’d left baking by mistake, cutting lanes in an effort to get back before his house caught fire. And if this was the case he’d no worries about pulling the french fries out golden and crisp and not a minute overcooked. But being in Iran I guess this wasn’t the reason why he drove the way he did. I assumed french fries, hamburgers and Coke were no-no’s in Islamic Iran; believing Americana made the locals sick.

Downtown central Tehran

Over the years the media had created a bleak picture of Iran (usually the negative news – and it was this what stuck in my head): a closed society ruled by religion and hostile to the West, obsessed with martyrdom and wrecked by war. A land of crazies.

I felt this might be the case as the taxi driver grinned at me in his rearview mirror and said “Where you want?” Where do I want to go? Shit, he’s already asked me this twice. I realised – too late I’d taken the wrong taxi: the driver didn’t have a clue where I wanted to go. And he drove recklessly – not that I minded; I enjoyed the speed.

We cut lanes blindly, honking our way into gaps and tooting at anyone who did this to us.

Every second car around us was a Hillman Hunter with dented door panels or scratched and patched paintwork. This taxi was also a Hillman “Chariot” (as the Iranian versions are called). But it had no fancy extras -in fact, many were missing bits. Vital bits like bumpers. But at least this rattling wreck had a rear-view mirror – apparently not necessary as my driver used it only to maintain eye contact with me, and something from which to hang Koranic script and beads.

“Where you want mister?” “The Foreign Ministry!” He grinned in the mirror and said nothing. “Visa, you know?” I waved my passport in the air, stamping it with my fist.

From the taxi’s window came my first impressions of Tehran. A dusty-brown-concrete-block city, with L.A. style freeways clogged by cars. The motor-flow looped Tehran like mechanical spaghetti, strangling it like frayed rope. The city choked on its smog. And having arrived in late summer I could barely see the Elburz Mountains; they were hazy and lost, like my driver.

He pulled over and asked directions from a pedestrian for a second time, then we charged back into the traffic.

Iranian drivers displayed skills only seen in the West at demolition derbies. I wondered: Is there a road code here? Vehicles ran the gauntlet at intersections. Traffic lights didn’t work, nor were policemen present. Survival meant accelerate and swerve. And honk!

And continue honking. At one stage my driver got abused by a cyclist – who’d averted a crunching by fending-off our taxi with a hand-barge to the roof. At another intersection three cars circled a fallen cyclist, drivers holding up the flow as they bickered over the blame.

Potential accidents occurred every minute, often three within as many seconds. Scenes so chaotic that it is unimaginable to New Zealanders accustomed to orderly roads.

Motorists in Tehran practiced a road code that I’d seen in other developing nations, like some unwritten but respected motor hierarchy. The King-of-the-Road was the truck and everything
else gave way. Buses threatened cars and big cars fought smaller cars, while scooters – the greatest menace to the pedestrian tended to drive on both sides irrespective of direction, and also weaved along footpaths.

Accident scene abandoned (in Isfahan)

Later as a pedestrian in Tehran I was shown how to cross busy streets. After waiting for a break in the traffic – which never came, an old man grabbed my hand and led me. We dashed amongst the traffic, stopping mid-way as cars whizzed past, then hoping approaching cars would slow, we sprinted across before the gap closed.

After half-an-hour we’d found the Foreign Ministry. The driver left in a hurry as I strolled to the entrance. But a soldier greeted my cheerful “Hello!” with an expressionless, “No. Closed.”

His answer confused me: it was 10 a.m, mid-week. So I asked him again. “VISA, I need a visa extension.” “Closed. Tomorrow.” After some minutes of asking passers-by I found an English speaker. He said it was a public holiday. And whats-more I was at the wrong building – this was NOT the Foreign Ministry … I was lost in north Tehran and at least 5 cm off my out-of-date map.

At a bus stop I couldn’t read the Farsi destinations on the front of each bus. And it was only thanks to an elderly man’s help that I made my way by bus from north to central Tehran. I’d decided to get to Tubkani Square: it had been a struggle to board the crowded, battered surburban bus. And when this bus had arrived people rushed it like sharks to bleeding sailors. The old man grabbed my arm and we ploughed into a scrum of males squeezing through the rear door -three at once. You see, the front door was for women and the bus was segregated into two: women in black chadors in the front half and in the back, crammed the men.

As the bus drove down the tree-lined boulevand towards the concrete smear of central Tehran, the old man hardly spoke, just smiled. He told me when it was my stop. I thanked him, said good bye and disembarked from the crush and onto the hot, dusty streets.

I remember the old man’s words as we’d waited for the bus. “I am happy to be able to help you, he’d said, insisting on paying for my ticket. “I do not see many foreigners in Tehran. Before the Revolution many came here but since then I have seen only three Europeans. I hope your coming to Tehran is a sign that more Westerners will return …”

Insane first day – IRAQ, 1989

Extract from story - Hitching to Baghdad:

A cloudless sky overlaps the receding morning grey. On the streets of Rutbah the potholes are puddles and asphalt glossy as I stroll in a dream state: absorbing the very first impressions of my first day in Iraq.

Before Rutbah: hitching the desert across Jordan and Iraq on a gasoline tanker, 1989

I, am, away with it. Still tired. And I don’t even notice the Nissan pick-up slow up beside me. But I soon accept a lift; he speaks no English but lets me out 400 metres later – in the slow centre of town.

I sip sweet black tea outside a basic café and dwell – so this is Iraq, it’s okay – yeah, quiet, people seem friendly, and super-curious for sure. Across from me rows of flat-roofed, sun-bleached, bland concrete buildings border the dusty asphalt mainstreet. Many have a half-completed look, with bricks and rusting steel exposed, awaiting an optimistic additional storey. A few people are out and about but it’s not busy. Shops display modern clothing, Adidas bags and other goods hanging from pinned-back steel doors, where wooden crates and heaped sacks clutter their entrances.

Basically a scene not worth writing about but to bring it alive suddenly – a man balancing a tray of tiny glasses on his fingertips says “You are welcome to Iraq. Most welcome!” “Thank you. It’s good to be here.” And I ask him how much I owe him. “No. This okay, no money.” “No money? Free?” “Yes free for you. You like more?” He replaces my empty glass with another fresh glass of tea then darts between tables, serving others while still shouting out questions at me: Which country you from? Your name is? You are tourist, yes? Where you go after here? How long you stay Iraq, friend?

During this tea talk a hell-of-a-noise emerges from down the mainstreet to be loads of schoolchildren marching and chanting. Three boys lead the crowd holding Saddam portraits. Followed by two lads with a large-scripted Arabic banner. Two girls in camouflage frocks carrying colorful bouquets. Two boys troop flags. The Iraqi national flag flutters limply in the light breeze as columns of school boys – flanked by unsmiling teachers – follow on mass. I see two lads giggle and jostle – to get scolded by a serious man.

I ask the guy standing beside me “What’s this for?” Another man replies “Holy-day” Well, it wasn’t Ramadan (the Muslim holy month), that I did know. I asked him again “A holiday for what?” “Our president, Saddam.” Really? Weird way to spend a holiday.

But I’m intrigued so I follow the parade – since I’m heading out of town to hitch, anyway. On traffic island a huge mural of Saddam’s head and shoulders – in military uniform and shades – dominates the passing kids. Several children call to me and I take their photo.

Pro-Saddam march by school kids in Rutbah, 1989

Soon the parade merges with adults gathered in a parched park shaded by Eucalyptus trees. There on a stage are wreaths of color, more presidential portraits, more Iraqi flags. In fact the entire stage is a parcel of Iraqi tri-colours – of red, white with green stars and black ribbons wrapping everything and everybody, adding an authorative splash of official color to the drab-suited dignitaries seated by the speaker’s podium.

Raspy, amplified Arabic shrieks over the crowd to reach across the street to where I stand watching; not wanting to be intrusive I purposely keep a distance because already I’ve been the reason for too many bewildered stares.

I’m crouched down rewinding my film, about to put a new one in the camera when I gaze up to see many faces staring and pointing over at me? At me !!!

A wildfire ignites before my eyes as Arabs whisper to one another as the murmuring spreads to crackling as more faces turn to stare at me.

The speaker is losing his audience – his words no longer of interest as 100s of Arabs now stare at me. Fuck. Shit. Feeling uncomfortable I leave but before a half-metre a guy in suit-and-tie is beside me, identifying himself as “Security.”

I forget about the million stares on me as he glares down and barks “You have no right to be here! No photos allowed! Why are you here?” “I’m a tourist.” “You have visa?” “Yeah.” “You have permission for camera?” “Whose permission?” “You must have a letter from from the Foreign Ministry in Baghdad” “But I haven’t reached Baghdad yet!”

He thrust his hand forward – “Give your film to me!” “No! I’m not losing my photos of Jordan.” And shoving my camera into my bag I walk away raving madly. “I’m a tourist! I’m a tourist! Tourists carry cameras!” To my surprise he leaves me alone.

The incident makes me uneasy. Time to leave town – quick.

I decide against hitching further and instead backtrack to the bus station where I join three Iraqis in a shared taxi to Ramadi …

In the backstreets of Baghdad, 1989

> travel photos of IRAQ ‘89