Chapter 2
Angola.
There’s a massive, massive mob out front of the Immigration building, which, apparently, won’t open till nine o’clock.
No bother; I don’t have to crush a massive distance today. It'd be handy, but I don't have to.
At nine there’s a mad scramble to get into the Immigration building the moment the doors open. One of the officials spots me out in the crowd and comes and grabs my passport and drags me in.
Not sure why I should get special treatment - I was well back in the crowd - but I’m not about to refuse it.
Straightaway the language barrier is a nightmare. Border crossings in French are hard enough, but at least I can make myself understood.
Portuguese? Forget about it. I thought I had enough of the basics under my belt after spending a few days doing audio lessons.
Nope.
I can’t explain shit.
It takes a while of frustrated charades from both sides to finally get some progress.
I get my passport thrown onto the pile, and from there it's just a question of watching and waiting.
It’s a slow grind.
Even though all anyone's doing is picking up a passport, finding a page and stamping it, it all seems to happen in slow motion.
A fair whack of dead time passes before I’ve finally got my stamp and we can move on to Customs.
Customs doesn’t exist...
At least, I can't find it.
It’s driving me nuts.
Each person I talk to sends me off somewhere new, somewhere newly wrong.
After a lot of frustrated asking around in butchered Portuguese I’m ready to throw in the towel and roll the dice for Angola just like I did for DRC.
Some guy comes over to me and tells me to follow him, and we head into an office where all the furniture is still covered in plastic, like they just moved in.
He asks for my carnet; that god-like document for the bike that's sort of like a passport that I should have but I don't.
I’ve no idea how to do this dance in Portuguese...
Passavant. Laissez-passer. Temporary import permit. All the usual work-arounds. I say all of them. The guy's got no idea what I’m talking about. He wants to see my carnet...
We go around and around and around in circles. He wants to help me - I can tell - but he can’t. He only seems to understand carnets, and doesn’t seem to understand how I’ve come all this way without one.
He’s looking at my rego papers with his pen like he’s trying to find the part of it that he writes in and stamps...
I pull my other Congo “passavant” out of my bag to give him an example of what I’m talking about.
He scrutinises it and doesn’t look pleased. Says something in Portuguese that sounded a bit like “Sorry, haven’t got any of these...”
He flips it over onto the blank side and starts writing something on it.
Scribbles a signature.
Whacks a wet stamp onto it.
Solemnly hands it back to me.
Hilarious.
Full marks for effort, I guess...
It'll do.
I've no idea what he's written on that paper, but, whatever it is, I'm sure I can talk my way around it.
In any case, it’s better than nothing.
Righto then. It’s already past eleven o'clock. I don’t know where those two hours evaporated off to.
But I don’t care.
I’m in.
Africa Africa is finally done.
It’s the beginning of the end.
What a relief.
I peel off down the shitty border road.
I pass a shitty border town.
The road for some reason gets shittier rather than better.
It's gone rocky and bouncy and there's fuck all out here.
I laugh.
I guess Africa Africa wasn't done with me just yet.
I have some fun with it, as I bounce and zigzag all over the narrow rock hop.
The last hurrah...
Coming around each new bend I’m leaning out to the side to try to catch my first glimpses of the good tarmac with a grin on my face.
Can’t be long now.
I pass a tiny village that looks dirt poor. No corner shops or any semblance of modernity whatsoever. Just village people in a handful of thatched mud huts along the roadside. They're just taking the air - there's nothing else for them to do.
It’s way sub-par, even for Africa.
I’m chompin for the tarmac. I can’t wait. Hankering badly for it.
I make a trickling progress.
It's one of the worst roads I’ve been on in the whole trip... Hard. Technical. So bouncy.
Just a mess with nothing but reedy scrub lining the road and the occasional tree.
Is this a “Savannah"? Could be...
I pass another dirt poor village.
And then another.
No traffic, very few people.
It all feels half-way abandoned.
I go and I go and I go, and it’s still dirty, bouncy, tricky rock track.
Where’s the tarmac??
Two hours pass. Two hours.
Not even a sniff of tarmac.
Piss on this. I’ve had enough.
I’m far enough from the border now, right? There’s been enough villages gone past to warrant a proper road now. Surely.
My expectation of getting in a couple of hundred easy clicks before the end of the day has been shat all over.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Nothing like this.
Every man and his dog has told me that the roads in Angola are good enough to eat off.
I'm not prepared for this...
I light up the GPS.
I’ve made no progress. None.
Haven’t even put a dent in the line I wanted to chart today. The last two hours of hard work have been for close to nought.
At this pace, on this fucking road, I might be able to get - maximum - another hundred clicks before it’s dark. Maximum.
And if something goes tits up? If I go tits up? Well. Fucked then, I guess.
A deep heat starts in the middle of my sternum and it quickly invades my whole chest, spreading outwards all over, crawling all over. It runs up my neck, tightening up, strangling me. Choked.
I’m ready to pull over the bike and bawl my eyes out.
I want to. But it won’t happen for me. For some reason it all just stays bottled there. It won't spill over the edge and be let out.
I don’t know why. I wish it would.
Self-preservation?
I don't know.
I don't skip a beat, and keep bouncing on.
I was finished with dirt.
I think that’s what’s worse. I’d finished it. Celebrated. Danced a jig. I was expecting a cakewalk and I’ve got a grind. It’s blindsided me. Oblivious.
I haven’t got any food with me. Not a bite.
I’m running pretty low on water. A smidgen swishing around the bottom of my bottle.
I need tarmac and I need proper villages with food and water. I need them soon.
Another hour.
I'm desperate.
Zig-zagging, up and down, bouncing, grinding, rocky, first gear crawl.
I hit a village.
Actually, calling it a "village" would be kind... It’s a handful of buildings. One’s got bricks - which is a first. Promising, even. The rest are all small huts.
The joint looks deserted. Though there’s one bloke that I can see, and no one else.
The moment I pull to a stop I’m drenched in sweat.
It won't evaporate and just pools everywhere, the air's so stale.
It’s fucking warm.
It’s those thick, dark clouds overhead that are doing it...
I start up a conversation with the last man alive. I get the pleasantries out of the way and skip the small talk altogether and get down to business – my Portuguese isn’t hot enough for chat, and trying it on in English or French would be worse...
On to charades.
I gesture my fingers near my mouth like an expressive Italian: Food?
Shake of the head from last man standing: No.
Shit.
I tilt an invisible can of coke into my mouth: Water?
Shake of the head and even a wag of the finger this time: Nope.
Fuck.
I can go without food, and go hungry, but water? Well, no... Not in these conditions.
Shrug of the shoulders from me with hands up near the shoulders like an Egyptian carrying invisible turds: Where?
He points down the road the way I’m going.
“Quanto?” from me, which is about as eloquent as I’m going to get for "how much?" in Portuguese.
“Quanto? Mmmmmm… bar bar bar bar noventa queelometros”
"Noventa!?" Did he just say noventa?
Noventa sounds a lot like the Italian "nove". Nove is nine...
Ninety then? Ninety?
Better fucking not be.
Ninety clicks will have me there, at this rate, by dusk tonight. And that’s not going to work. Clearly.
I point at the ground and stamp on it with my boots, and do a flat hand dance from the 80's: Tarmac? I take a punt at the Portuguese, “Tarmaco? Bitumeno? Ashphalto?”
Zombie apocalypse survivor perks up.
“Assfallto?”
Ha! Who said language was hard? "Si! Assfallto? Quanto?"
I Am Legend points again, down the road. “Assfallto bar bar bar Noventa.”
Fuck. Off.
This is a fucking ordeal now...
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
I make like a guy taking a standing nap on prayer hands: Somewhere to sleep?
“Bar bar bar bar bar bar, Noventa. Noventa.”
Oh god.
Four questions, four answers. Ninety kilometres. Ninety. With nothing between.
I’m fucked.
“Nomay de villa?” Name of the village?
“Nome? Tom-boco”
Tomboco. I’ve got to make it to Tomboco. Fast.
“Obrigado sinyor”
I vault onto the Shrike and ride on.
Like a man possessed.
I’m freaking out.
My head’s a blur of maths; divisions to calculate arrival time.
What's not taken up by that is completely dedicated to shit your pants “what if” scenarios.
The seemingly endless deal breakers that the Shrike could throw up.
Or I could throw up...
My concern for the tyres is bordering on a deranged phobia. The knobs on the tyres have been whittled over the thousands of kilometres down to a nub.
I’m keenly aware of the quality of inner tubes that I’ve got in both wheels: Chinese wrapping paper.
And this road is Punctureville.
And there’s no traffic out here. None. If something does go balls up, it’s going to be a long walk or a long wait, and, even after the long walk or wait, there’s still no food, no water.
What if my body decides to crap out and have another “episode”, another swoon. What if I can't stop it and it won't go away? What then?
As my head churns and I think it can't get any worse, the track deteriorates.
It’s an absolute dog’s breakfast.
The ruts are so deep, and the wheel tracks so completely all over the place. I’m convinced that this is impossible on anything with more than two wheels. Maybe two might be too many; it'd be hard to do this on foot...
One mistake - one lapse of attention on this skinny track - and we’ll slide off the road into a trench on the roadside as deep as I am tall.
Fucked.
This road is supposed to be modern and fucking tarmac.
I pass a group of kids and they all freak the fuck out and run off screaming, terrified.
Never seen that before...
Some of them throw themselves into the bushes in a way that looks like it’s bloody painful. All to get away from me and the Shrike...
It's remote out here...
At the next "village" there’s a sign for a restaurant.
Hallelujah.
Deliverance. I can fill up to my gills with water and chow.
I poke my head in, it's empty...
I ask around the village about the restaurant. They point me down the road, “Tomboco”.
I insist again. Surely there must be some food. What’s everybody else eating?
Finally, someone brings me some bananas.
That's a start.
I try to charade water. But something's getting lost in translation.
After a lot of confusion I cog that they’re telling me that they could go and get me some water from a well... The only thing worse than the current situation would be the current situation with me blowing chunks of that greasy omelette breakfast out my mouth, or otherwise shitting it through the eye of a needle.
"Non, obrigado sinyor".
Another hour.
I slide past a woman on the track who looks absolutely petrified. As I go by she lets off a screaming, sabre-rattling, spear-shaking war cry right in my face.
“YEEEEAAAAAAH-AH-AH-AH-AH!!”
Bet I look just as freaked out as she does...
It’s not like I fucking snuck up on her; you can hear the Shrike from a mile down the road.
What the fuck is all this about then? First the screaming, terrified kids, and now this woman's shrieking in my face.
She must think I’m one of the riders of the apocalypse.
Lunatics.
It starts to rain.
To pass the time, I start to sing “Why does it always rain on me?”
I feel like I’m going to have a mental breakdown.
I’m not sure if I can take anymore...
Every village I pass I stop in and ask the same questions; food, water, shelter, tarmac.
“Tomboco”.
It’s getting on... Despite it not being terribly late on the clock, the heavy cloud has made it feel twilight-ish.
The day is slowly starting to wrap up.
I light up the GPS.
I’m still nowhere near where I need to be; not even close.
After a while the rain stops.
The rear tyre... It’s gone. I can feel the sag.
Horror.
I twist around, and there it is, wallowing and flapping away under the weight.
No.
No I can’t...
In an instant, making it to Tomboco before dark has gone from unlikely to impossible.
My brain turns off. I become something mechanical. A robot.
A tyre changing robot.
I pull over the bike and go through the steps.
I’ve got the wheel off and onto the ground, lying flat.
It doesn’t matter how much I jump on the tyre wall, how much I dig my boot heels into it, the tyre is glued to the rim. Without making space between the two, there’s nowhere to fit my tyre irons.
Without creating space I can do nothing...
Sweat’s flying everywhere as I stomp and jump and stomp.
It’s not working, so I stop.
Standing there, getting my breath back, sweat dripping off the nose, thirst biting in the back of my throat, I realise there’s nothing else I can do. No alternative.
Fucked at the first hurdle.
Guess I’ll keep stomping and jumping, then.
What else am I going to do?
My shirt's already saturated through, and that’s a problem. Maybe my biggest problem; I drank my last drop of water a fair while back... There's nothing left and there hasn't been for quite some time.
Maybe I should stop and wait? Avoid dehydrating myself further if the tyre's not going to unstick anyway?
But then, who's coming? There's zero traffic. Zero.
Why does it always have to be impossible?
Despair comes hot on the heels of defeat...
I throw my toys, accept my fate.
I give it another jumping stomp.
The tyre and rim separate all at once and I nearly go arse over tit with the unexpected giving out of the tyre.
I'm not even happy about it.
Back to robot mode.
I change the tube with (relative) ease; the new tyre irons made from re-bar that I got gifted in the last puncture nightmare have saved me this time around.
Out comes the punctured tube, and with it comes a random big chunk of rubber. I'm not sure what that does...
In goes the battered and bruised, twice punctured and twice patched veteran tube of thirty thousand of the hardest kilometres.
"God help me."
I’m shitting my pants.
Just like the last time, the fat fucker is tricky to squeeze in between the rim and the tyre.
Just like the last time this is my only spare.
It all seems so familiar.
Except there’s even less traffic on this road, not to mention less daylight to play with, less water, less everything.
Angola really has pulled my pants down and caught me unawares...
I take time that I don't have, and gently get the tube in.
I lever the tyre back in with absolute care.
The moment of truth: I pump it up.
I pump it up as much as I dare, unscrew the valve and listen...
Nothing.
It’s holding air, I think...
I rub my ear along the whole length of tyre wall, wide-eyed, and I can’t hear a sound. It’s a good start.
Nothing else for it but to put it all together and cross the fingers that it continues to hold, not to mention praying that I don’t get another puncture, which would, well, I don’t want to think about another puncture with no spare tube or puncture kit out here...
I’m still committed to getting to Tomboco, no matter how far I have to ride in the dark on this hell road; I have no alternative.
Back on the Shrike.
My nerves are shot to pieces.
I’ve lost all confidence in the tyres and the tubes and I’m way beyond hypochondria. Every time there’s a wiggle in the bike, or something just doesn’t "feel right", or that there’s a sound that is a little different, or that the bike bounced a little too softly off that rock I’m certain that the tyres are gone and that I’m fucked. Doomed.
I’m having to pull over constantly to satisfy my OCD and see how they’re doing.
The tyre change, despite being relatively straight forward, has still taken it’s time, and its toll.
I’m fucking exhausted.
My brain is going a bit fogged and demented with it all.
Everything turns into a dogged haze of just riding on and getting it done.
I have a quick look at the GPS.
Allegedly, I’ve done eighty since the start of the day. Eighty. In a full day of riding.
According to the GPS, there’s still forty clicks to go to Tomboco.
I'm not even within cooee of jogging it out. Not today...
Forty is going to take me at least a couple of hours, and well into the dark. Things are getting more gloomy by the minute...
The idea of the dark, riding in it, and - if I’m lucky - making it to an unknown village at the finish line is scaring the shit out of me.
This bouncy rock hop is tricky enough when I can see where I’m going in full light. In pitch black with a manic headlight it's going to be, well, interesting.
And even if the bike can handle it, I’m not sure how I’m going to. A week ago I couldn’t get out of bed without feeling like I’m going to die. And now this?
There are red flags everywhere.
But what else can I do?
Thirty clicks to go.
I’m so tuckered out.
Having to change the tyre tube really took it out of me. The closer I get to Tomboco the further away it feels, the kilometres and time ahead seem to dilate and stretch the more knackered I get.
I've never felt so far away from Tomboco.
I’m so thirsty...
I think I’ve stopped sweating... Which, I don’t know, seems to be a bad thing right now; like I’ve just run out of the stuff.
I don’t know where my brain is finding the energy to think. But it’s mostly negative, and I can’t get away from it. It’s so defeatist, but my exhaustion and solitude is dominating my ability to keep a positive attitude, or even something close to neutral. It’s chewing me up.
Something sounds weird... What is that...?
The front tyre??
Nah. Nah don’t...
There’s a weird noise coming from the front of the bike somewhere. Unusual. And the only thing out the front is that bloody tyre...
Shit no. Please no.
I snap my head around the handlebars to get a look. I can’t see well enough without risking binning it off a bad bounce.
For the umpteenth time I pull over to take a look.
The nobs of the tyre should be spread out like a well cut mango. But they’re squashing together just a bit more than normal.
Oh fuck no. Jesus please no. No no no...
I vault off the bike and attack the wheel with my thumbs.
"FUCK!"
Puncture. Small one, early signs. But a puncture.
My brain dumps what it’s got left of the “oh fuck we’re fucked!” chemicals into the bloodstream for the last hurrah.
I’m ready to cry. Again.
Again, I can’t.
Why is this happening? I’m supposed to be two hundred clicks further down the tarmac road by now!
My head’s a blinded mess from the adrenaline, I can’t think it out. I can't think out the scenarios.
It’s all just rubbish and the word “FUCK” on a loop...
I breathe. Try to push back the already rampant panic.
But the horse has bolted.
How far back was that last village?
Or do I ride on to the next one?
Ride on?
Tomboco?
Can I ride on and just pump it up when it needs it??
For an hour and a half? In the dark? Are you retarded?
Water. It cuts through the mess.
All that matters is getting water. The rest is, really, just details.
How far back was that last village??
Dunno.
Can’t be more than ten clicks... Maximum. Maybe?
I could head back to that last village and get someone to boil me up some of their water from the well, cross my fingers, and sleep on the floor of someone’s hut.
Suboptimal.
But I should make out.
What else?
Camp here?
There’s nowhere to do that. It’s all thick, tall, reedy, stiff grass out here. As high as my head. And no water.
What else...?
Errrrr. Nope. Nothing.
The last village then...
Fuck it. Let’s do that.
I’ll ride back as far as I can before I shred the tyre or the bike becomes unrideable, I’ll walk the rest.
With luck, I’ll get close enough to be able to walk my stuff.
Go.
I vault on and peel out.
The bike’s still managing to perform, the handling is still there, still enough. I ride as hard as I can, as fast as the bike will let me.
Reckless.
Fuck staying calm. Calm left off a long way back...
I go dizzy, blurry.
I don't know what I'm doing anymore.
We made it.
Somehow...
It's weird. We shouldn't have...
The local mob look at me oddly while I feverishly inspect the front tyre. I don’t think they expected me to be coming back.
The tyre’s fine. Seems to be holding up, no problem.
It shouldn’t be able to hold pressure like this... Punctured tyres go flat, fast.
So what’s going on?
Am I jumping at shadows?
So. If nothing’s changed... can I keep going?
No. In that moment I saw the flat tyre I let go of Tomboco. I can’t get it back.
Mentally, I can't. The full reality of the consequences of having a puncture – at this time of day, with no water – was fully brought home to me.
I’m done.
Cooked.
I try to strike up a conversation with the locals who have slowly formed up around the Shrike.
“Bonjour! Sa va?”
They all look back at me like I just farted.
There’s some confused muttering...
Oh! Portuguese! Right! God damn it. Can I catch a fucking break!?
Engage the brain.
“Uh, bom, uuuh, bom dia! Uh... com esta?”
“Bar bar bar bar bar bar bar bar...”
Shit.
I can’t do this. I’m not nearly crisp enough for this.
“Uh... Saber, France-ay?”
“Neow”. No.
Shit.
Someone gives me the international hand sign for "one moment" and goes running off; hopefully they'll bring back someone who speaks French...
Charades for now.
I try to get across that the bike's fucked (not 100% true...) and that I need somewhere to sleep.
It takes a goddamn age; no one's picking up what I'm putting down.
The "one moment" person comes running back with a French speaker. Huzzah! I ask where I can stay the night and he say's we need to ask the village chief for permission.
That's a first...
We find the chief, sitting with some mates out the front of his hut. The French speaker goes in to bat on my behalf.
Big thumbs up from the chief. Excellent!
I figure from the chat and the gesturing that he wants me to stay with him and his family in his hut.
It's a really nice gesture. But I don't want to look like a dill because I'm putting up a mosquito net inside their house; there's something that seems wrong about that... But, by the same token, I also don't want to get eaten by mosquitoes and get malaria in the night - which would be just delightful out here. Either way, I'm in the shit.
I try to explain to the translator that that’s really super nice, and I’m very grateful and all, but I’ll be happy setting up the tent out the front of his hut.
The chief is unoffended and cool with it, thumbs up. Bonus.
Don't ask me why, but my desire to get my tent up overrides my crushing thirst. It makes no sense, but for some reason I can't move onto anything else before the tent is done.
I quickly get to work.
News spreads fast, and before long every kid in the village has shown up to watch me do my thing, and a fair few adults too. I don’t reckon they’d have ever seen anything of the likes of a tent before, or someone like me... so I make a bit of a song and dance of it.
The kids are simultaneously intrigued, fascinated and terrified of me all at once. Whenever I get close they all go scattering off, screaming, freaking out. Slowly they come back to watch again.
I don't blame them for being scared, I’m exhausted and filthy, must look like hell...
In the process of putting up the tent I meet the chief’s son, who kind of speaks French and is around my age and seems like a nice guy, so he takes up the mantle of being my makeshift translator. The mob are curious so it turns into something of an AMA while I work.
I finish the job and quickly get onto the water question with my new friend.
The communication breaks down a bit as we reach the limit of our shared French, and in the end he gives me the international hand sign for "follow me".
We walk all the way to the other side of the village.
Tucked in behind a couple of other huts is the world’s smallest corner store...
It’s just a couple of dusty shelves with some weathered and bashed knick-knacks from western civilisation. The son-of-chief and the proprietor have a conversation in Portuguese, and, like magic, the boss pulls a carton of six big, dusty, old bottles of water down from the top shelf.
Just like that - as I greedily slug down a whole bottle before I've even paid - the nightmare is in the books.
Water never tasted so good...
It's done.
Ancient history.
It’s going to be ok.