Kingsley Holgate - Cape to Cairo: One familys adventures along the waterways of Africa

For many years after the expedition, my old leather-bound journal, sweat stained and tatty, lay buried in the cupboard as other exciting expeditions took pride of place. Then Ross and his girlfriend Geraldine gave us our first grandchild, Tristan Kingsley. His African name is Kalungwishi, the name of the beautiful river that flows over the Lumangwa Falls in northern Zambia. I dedicate this humble account of our family adventure to our little Kalungwishi, in the hope that soon he will adventure in his grandparents footsteps.

Induna Ngema and Thandeka blessing Kalungwishi (aged four weeks) in the Great Hut in Shakaland.

Dear Friend
Sawubona

The pages of this book are simply a copy of the handwritten descriptions, sketches, scribblings and ramblings in my original leather-bound expedition journal. It was the first one that I ever kept, and in it I attempted to keep a humble record of our family journey in open boats and four-wheel-drive vehicles across the African continent. Sometimes sweat from a malaria-fevered brow blotched the ink, and on some occasions I was simply too weary to write, and have had to go back and fill in the gaps as best I could.

Our 1993 crossing of Africa was a turning point in our lives. For South Africans the first wind of change was blowing across the continent, and we were blessed to be a part of it a South African expedition heading across Africa armed only with a Zulu calabash of Cape Point seawater and a scroll of peace and goodwill.

When we departed from Cape Town, Mozambique was still smouldering from its long and bloody civil war; the tension in the Great Lakes was soon to explode; banditry was rife in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia; and the civil war raged on in southern Sudan. Ethiopia was closed to overland travellers, and there was virtually no overland traffic between Sudan and Egypt. But at least there was an opening up of the African continent to us South Africans, and so there we were, our own little diplomatic corps, about to set out into the great unknown.

The key ingredients to our expedition recipe seemed to be blind faith, determination, humour, courage and a liberal measure of good fortune. It was an expedition that we as a family will remember forever. It opened our souls to Mama Afrika and made us citizens of this great continent. Its success was the start of many other great family adventures - but for us this early expedition will always be our great first love.

Please understand that Im really just an ordinary sort of fellow, blessed with an extraordinary passion for Africa. You probably share that passion, so I guess were kindred spirits.

Siyabonga and best wishes

PS The pages of this journal are best read by the light of an old paraffin lantern. Settle the legs of your favourite canvas camping chair into the Kalahari sand, smell the hardwood burning as it sparks into the starlit sky. The blackened camp kettle hisses on the coals, and you refill your old dented enamel mug with Renoster coffee laced with Captain Morgan rum. By the light of the fire you can make out the familiar shape of the Land Rover, the tent, and the old wooden camp box that Dad used. A simba roars in the distance, as you pull your chair closer to the fire and add another twisted log. Fortunately, theres a cool breeze blowing, so no mozzies tonight. I wish you safari njema as you journey with us across Africa.

The drought had broken. The dance of the Rain Queen had opened up the African skies. Tropical rain poured down in buckets onto the roof of the unpainted corrugated-iron church set among massive hardwood trees trees that had witnessed the passage of droughts, wars and slavery, the arrival of the white man and, now, whispers of liberation and revolution. Patchwork goats and long-legged chickens, straggly and wet, found shelter under the thatched eaves that overlapped the terracotta mud walls in the isolated little village in the far south of the Belgian Congos Shaba Province.

I was only six years old and shared the rickety church bench with my mother Ivy May and my brothers Mervyn and Donald. I was the baby of the family, and my velskoened feet did not reach the mud floor of the church. So I was not affected by the ever-increasing flow of floodwater that ran through the building forming a large pool at the feet of my father, the Rev. Arthur Holgate. Despite the help of an interpreter who Africanized the contents of the sermon and beefed up the lyrics of the hymns, he was fighting a losing battle against the noise of the deluge on the corrugated-iron roof. It was impossible for him to keep the attention of the congregation, who were overjoyed at the coming of the first rains.

My father, a schoolmaster and lay preacher, believed that this was a good way for us to spend the school holidays. We had travelled 3,000 kilometres up from Natal in South Africa to stay with missionary friends.

On our way back through Northern and Southern Rhodesia, the rains continued and we were often forced to camp on river banks while we waited for the raging torrents to subside. Rivers that for most of the year ran dry now roared down towards Mozambique, the swirling brown waters taking dead livestock, floating pumpkins and the occasional thatched roof with them to the Indian Ocean.

My father would push long, sharpened sticks into the mud of the brown eddies on the river bank, against which he made hourly observations to see if the water level was falling. Once the family Nilometer had indicated a drop, we would all bundle into the brown 1946 Chevy. With a loud hoot of the chromium hooter-ring and the crash of the column shift, we would hit the muddy torrent armed, not only with several tons of Detroit steel, but also with a massive dose of the good Lords providence, which my father had ensured with a lengthy prayer prior to the plunge.

I dont know when my bond with Africa first began. It might have been on those early missionary journeys through the subcontinent. Or maybe when, much to my parents consternation, I was abducted by my Zulu nanny who, after a drinking bout, decided to take me off to her Zulu home. What I do know, however, is that from an early age I became fascinated with things African and, while as a young man I chose to travel the world, I could never wait to return to Africas shores.

It was not surprising therefore that my wife Gillian and I began a successful trading business dealing in traditional African artefacts which enabled us to travel the wilds of southern Africa. However, owing to the shortsightedness of the South African government and its unacceptable apartheid policy, our world was shrinking. On my passport, how could I possibly continue to adventure? I even subscribed to an informative publication that explained how one could buy, bribe or even marry to obtain a foreign passport. But my wife, though adventurous, decided that bigamy was too high a price to pay.