In Stanleys Padded Slippers

"Dr Livingston, I presume?" Words immortalised as much for their meaning as for their smugness. Dr David Livingston - arguably Africas greatest explorer wearing inarguably its greatest moustache - was sent into Africas heart one final time to solve a riddle apparently very important to the tea-swillers of nineteenth century England: where was the source of the Nile? He didnt find it. What he did find was malaria. And dysentery. So he holed up with a motley crew of Arab slavers in the town of Ujiji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, taken for dead by most of the outside world. The editor of the New York Herald sniffed a great story and sent a new and cock-sure journalist to try find him in the off chance of landing an exclusive - possibly even one with a punchy catch-phrase. This journalist was Henry Morton Stanley. He wound his way across the wild interior of modern day Tanzania, found Livingston and no doubt botched the delivery of his most famous line. Or maybe even made it up later, as an after thought.

Our journey across Tanzania followed the reverse footsteps of Stanleys famous journey. With only a few small differences. While those haughty gentlemen favoured this method of transport:

We were forced into other less romantic kinds:
Sea ferry which has spent more time under the sea than Sebastian the Crab.

Train with all the breathing space of a Turkish sauna.

Ninety nine year old steamboat. It has sunk twice and seems on the cusp of a third.

Lake taxi where the only thing in shorter supply than life-jackets was horse-power.

Land taxis where the only thing in greater supply than the people riding inside were the people riding outside.

And our end-point, while it probably wont coin its own catch-phrase, was still no less enticing...

 Stanley, Shmanley.



The Shameless MV Liemba

The MV Liemba cannot be trusted. Kinglsey Holgate told me, and who am I to argue? A 99 year old ship with a history as chequered as hers needs to be watched very carefully. She has many faces. Not all of them pretty. Her true colours were belatedly shown to us - but by that stage it was too late.

She came from inauspicious beginnings. A humble upbringing in the blue-collar factories of Munich, she sailed in pieces to Dar es Salaam, took a third class carriage across to Lake Tanganyika where she found employment for her efficient and timeous German employers gayfully ferrying sauerkraut and brockhorst from port to port. With the advent of World War One she signed up for military service, her ride was pimped with some serious heavy artillery and she became the thorn in the side of the Allies dreams of arbitrarily controlling the lake at Africas heart. No one was more bleak than the Congolese, who were forcefully made to lug tons of dismantled ship through their sweaty jungles to reassemble into the vessels to rival the mighty Liemba. They did rival her, and she was scuppered to the bottom of the lake where she tried her hand at being an aquarium for eight rusty years. She then flipped allegiance - resurrected by the British after they were given German East Africa as their spoils of war - she shamelessly did their bidding. Two-faced. And smug.

Her flag was changed at Independence; she relocated entire villages as part of Nyereres disaterous socialist experiments; she embraced capitalism - ferrying tons of Tanganyikas dried and smelly gold (Kapenta fish), distributing it to the hoards of tiny vessels that swarm around her like bees too 99 year old honey. She even tried her hand at humanitarian work - skuttling around the refugees of the areas interminable conflicts.

The side we saw of her, however, was a very different one. It began with a rendezvous with Kingsley Holgate - an explorer as famous for blazing trails through Africas hinterland as for felling a litre of Captain Morgans in under 30 minutes. It was the last of these two attributes that the Liemba introduced us to. To the point where, arm on shoulder, I was begging him for the secret as just how his beard has so much body. Tough Guy, meanwhile, was brainstorming with him about starting a Royal Geographic Society of South Africa. He recommended himself as President. Kingsley could be his MD. My sister Claire forms the backdrop to all this - sprawled out bizarrely over three different backpacks. A empty bottle of rum clinking around at her feet.

So it was the next day that we saw the Liembas true colours. Keeling from side to nauseating side she is, first and foremost, an emetic. Shamelessly. I knew from the start she couldnt be trusted.

A Taste of Burundi

Rows of French baguettes. Perfectly soft custard puffs. Black-and-white-chequered floor. Credence Clearwater Revival. Creaky overhead fans. Wafts of fresh roasted coffee. Burundi. Sure.

The country does seem like the fat  kid never invited to the party. The ugly third sibling of Uganda and Rwanda - East Africas triplets of micro-states. Ridiculed. Ignored. This may be due to its ongoing ethnic tensions and low-level civil war. Or it may because a tourist visa is harder to come by than a whiff of Bob Mugabes underpants. Three days is all we were granted. Enough for just the tiniest taste. And most of it was spent doing just that: tasting. A patissorial explosion of baked treats - as far removed from the deep-fried sop of its neighbours as it's military is from allowing real democracy. The last country in East Africa with a lingering Franco-Belgian legacy, it sometimes feels like the abandoned movie set of a French silent movie. And then a mattress-laden cyclist, towed by a petrol tanker, careens suicidally past at 80km/hr just to remind you it isn't. A croissant on a Normandie-like beachfront. Followed by a military patrol hurtling by in vicious pursuit of nothing in particular.

With hints of French, whiffs of African and a pervasive texture of craziness, a taste of Burundi was a tiny but intense sensory experience. And like all great tasters, it only whet the appetite for more.