Central East Africa

1988 – 1991

Our very first adventure  began as a three-week holiday, and evolved into a twenty-six-month attempt to cross the African continent using its internal waterways, hoping to become the first solo woman to do so, and be part of our collective history. Unfortunately, cholera and various wars prevented us from  crossing the Sahara Desert, and we ended up undertaking a large loop covering twelve countries. To quell my sense of failure at not being able to cross the continent overland, Afrika and I also flew to Egypt from Kenya, where we returned to resume the sub-Saharan adventure by hitchhiking back south along the East African coast.

Mozambique was engulfed in a fifteen-year war, and tourists were unknown. In the rest of Africa, backpacking tourism was in its infancy, most of it happening along a sort of tourist corridor linking Kenya to South Africa via Tanzania and Malawi. The Lonely Planet had just published its first guide about the continent, but I was unaware of its existence and followed a Michelin road map. Without a common guide to bring us together, until we reached Uganda we hardly ever saw another foreigner, living the experience as if I was an early explorer moving into the unknown.