Mwanza doesn’t seem like a bad place to live for two years. Back in January of this year, days before flying out of the UK, I applied for a job with the British Council in Tanzania. A friend who knew I was returning there brought the job to my attention.

On paper I was qualified for the post, but I imagined lots of people with far greater experience than me were applying. Besides, I wasn’t particularly serious about taking up a teacher-training job when my focus was to continue with the book I’d started. With that in mind I filled out the online application, obviously extolling how relevant two-and-a-half years cycling through Africa was to working in a government teacher training college. My hopes of hearing back weren’t very high.  Read more... (1189 words, 7 images, estimated 4:45 mins reading time)

“When travelling alone one can behave childishly without fear of derision” (Devla Murphy)

In reflection the bus journey was far more memorable than the cycling. On a November morning eleven years ago I travelled on what must surely have been the oldest bus pulling out of Dar es Salaam that day. The journey to Kilwa Masoko, some 350km to the south, took 2 days.  Read more... (1141 words, 17 images, estimated 4:34 mins reading time)

It would have been simpler, needless to say a whole lot safer to leave Zanzibar on one of the regular high-speed ferries that shuttle back and forth to Dar es Salaam. The moment one approaches the port there is no shortage of commission-hungry touts waiting to escort you to one of many ticket offices. Here the ticket price will be quoted in US dollars (double or several times the local resident price) and you will be whisked away in air-conditioned comfort on a boat that maintains a schedule. Travel in places where there are lots of tourists is sometimes just too easy.  Read more... (1087 words, 10 images, estimated 4:21 mins reading time)

Nowadays everything is kept secret from the Europeans, and even those who have spent most of their lives in the country have only now and then discovered hints of the wide, infinitely ramified cult which still flourishes below the surface. (Evelyn Waugh)

Not many people make it to Pemba, which is half the charm of this mountainous island. Arabic traders in former centuries referred to it as ‘Al khudra’ – the Green Island, and it’s easy to see why. It is as lush as a tropical destination at 4° degrees south of the equator could be.  Read more... (480 words, 12 images, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

“”there are certain places, surrounded by a halo of romance, to which the inevitable disillusionment which you must experience on seeing them gives a singular spice”. (Somerset Maugham)

The village of Kipumwe wasn’t marked on my map, but I was assured there were dhows sailing to Zanzibar from there. The plan had been to reach neighbouring Pemba first, but unless I was going pay a lot and charter a boat alone, this option wasn’t available.

Following the recent sinking of the overloaded MV Spice Islander, in which some 240 people died in the Zanzibar channel, I really ought to have been more careful in choosing what vessel I took to transport me over the sea.  Read more... (1559 words, 18 images, estimated 6:14 mins reading time)

“There are three things which if one does not know, one cannot live long in the world: what is too much for one, what is too little for one, and what is just right for one.” (Swahili proverb)

The sky is definitely bluer on the east African coast. Here the wind blows in off an ocean and not out of a desert, which is often the case throughout much of west Africa. Even as far south as Cameroon that Saharan wind – the harmattan, caused the mountains to become lost in a dust-filled haze and the sun to disappear long before it reached the horizon. Well not anymore. That cleansed azure sky should be over me all the way south, assuming I follow the coast into Mozambique and don’t encounter a rainy season. The wind direction might be more of a concern though.  Read more... (727 words, 13 images, estimated 2:54 mins reading time)

“I went out to Mount Kilimanjaro, which I thought was very beautiful, but there were a lot of people there”. (Ralph Fiennes)

One of those new Chinese roads provided my exit from Kenya. There are a lot of these in Africa. In fact there probably isn’t a country on the continent that hasn’t had some Sino-African road-building agreement signed. Well Africa needs better roads, and the Chinese do a good a job at providing them. I think you could travel most of the length of Africa if you wanted to on Chinese built roads, but dirt tracks are always more interesting.