Julian Smith - Crossing the Heart of Africa: An Odyssey of Love and Adventure

An Odyssey of Love and Adventure

For Laura,
of course

There is no journey upon this earth that a man
may not make if he sets his heart to it. There is
nothing, Umbopa, that he cannot do, there are no
mountains he may not climb, there are no deserts he
cannot cross, save a mountain and a desert of which
you are spared the knowledge, if love leads him.

H. RIDER HAGGARD,

King Solomons MinesPrologue

T he Nile slides thick and silent beyond a grid of barbed wire. I slump in a plastic chair thats soft from the heat and watch a cloud of tiny silver fish leap from the water with a hiss like rain.

In the next chair, a young Sudanese woman holds a baby in her lap. She croons to it to the tune of Frre Jacques.

Bay-bee Jesus, Bay-bee Jesus, I love you. I love you. Yoo-hoo are my savior, yoo-hoo are my savior, every day, every day.

Clumps of vegetation the size of refrigerators drift downstream toward Cairo, seventeen hundred miles north. The air is like a wet wool blanket. My focus blurs, and I envision a boat that floated past this same spot, 108 years ago. At the helm is a twenty-five-year-old Cambridge University dropout named Ewart Grogan, a man whose story has taken over my life.

In the past two months, I have followed Grogans trail over four thousand miles through eight countries in Africa. My fixation has led me here, the city of Juba in the pseudo-state of Southern Sudan, one of the most desolate and impoverished places on the planet.

I had no idea this would happen when I first heard about him. It was an amazing story, for sure: after almost two years of unimaginable hardship, Grogan was close to becoming the first person to travel the length of Africa, south to north. Even more astonishing was that he had been virtually forgotten.

What really grabbed me, though, was that his true goal was even loftier. The five-thousand-mile trek was merely the means to an end. Grogan was in love. Her name was Gertrude, and she was waiting for him in London. She had long dark hair, a radiant smile, and a suspicious stepfather who wouldnt let her marry until her beloved had proved himself worthy.

Like Grogan, Im here because of a woman. Her name is Laura; shes my fiance and the love of my life. Shes also waiting for me on the other side of the world: Portland, Oregon, to be exact.

I am retracing Grogans journey to see how much this cross section of Africa has changedand how littlein the past century. Im also doing it because Laura and I are planning to marry less than a month after I get home, and as much as Im thrilled at the thought, it also scares the hell out of me. Her father has no problem with it; any hurdles are purely my own. I left home hoping to find some answers in Grogans footsteps, some kind of equanimity in the tangle of self-doubt and hesitation Ive woven in my head.

But Ive never felt this far away from home, or from Laura. And I dont know how much farther it makes sense to go.

Two hours in Juba and already its starting to look like the end of the line. To the north, native groups are fighting with machine guns left over from the countrys fifty-year civil war, and heavy flooding has closed the roads. Too dangerous, not enough time. It kills me to think of turning back so close to the finish.

Grogan kept going north, through trials that made his struggles up to this pointcharging elephants, hungry cannibalsseem like parlor games.

Should I? How far is it worth it to push?

The sun sags toward the forest on the far side of the river. Frogs start to chirp among the plastic bottles on the riverbank as the light turns amber.

Coarse electric melodies split the silence. The woman is holding a cell phone to her babys ear, pressing buttons to cycle through the different rings. The childs eyes are open wide.

Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering
inferno; it is a photographers paradise, a hunters
Valhalla, an escapists Utopia. It is what you
will, and it withstands all interpretations. It is
the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a
shiny new one. It is all these
things but one thingit is never dull.

Beryl Markham