Anywhere But Here

I. Mozambique. Portuguese Prison.
Pinney arrives with travel companion Chickenhawk. Pinney is keen to travel to Rhodesia. Chickenhawk is not so keen. They departed friends but Pinney wrote that there was no way of knowing what became of him.

II. Rhodesia. The Tides of Happenchance.
“What was it I had said to Chickenhawk two months ago, or more? Something of the rigours of travel souring wine and women; and here I was on the way to anywhere with a women at my side. I glanced at her, walking jauntily beside me with an independent air, and chuckled”

III. Barotseland. Kings, Lions, and Princes.
A belligerent Afrikaner is unhappy with the travellers. He suspects them of being English. “Overmasehazewindhoornmolenpestpokken” says one of the travellers to the “old fool”

IV. Angola. “Butterflies are poisoned, and birds have lost their wings”
“Here in Luanda a journalist discovered us fishing on the waterfront, surrounded by citizens and heckled by police; and in return for some small story he became our host. Fernando was a long suffering Protestant to whom the Catholic colony of Angola appeared as a maelstrom of political and theocratic heresies betraying the land to the incestuous domination of Mother Portugal, and he was anxious lest two strangers should rush headlong into conflict with arbitrary idolatry and cant.”

V. Cabinda. Virgins For Sale.
Pinney is outraged at a local custom of selling virgins. He mused that the Mayombes loved their children but would then subject them to such a fate as selling them.

VI. French Equatorial Africa. Police, Swamps, and Witch-doctors.
“It was a saturated coast of brimming swamps and swollen streams where white man never went and natives lived in touch with the early death. It was, too, a land of strange contrasts, a devils wilderness of jungle flats and tidal creeks ribbed with occasional features of firm and fertile land reaching from the Crystal Mountains to the sea, so that one sometimes rose from lowland slough on almost imperceptible slopes with villages and gardens. It was a land half given to the sea and hammered by sudden rains, shunned alike by man and beast during monsoon season”

VII. Spanish Guinea. Forbidden Frontier.
Pinney tells a barman that he is in Africa to meet Africans. He was far from convinced as most whites were there for other purposes. Nothing said could convince him. The barmans confidence was required if the journey was to prosper. The plan was a little contraband to do business across the border.

VIII. Cameroons. The Village of the Living Dead.
“The village of lepers was a silent rabble of neglected huts hiding among a grove of squat oil-palms and tall wine-palms; one hundred and twenty five lepers lived in forty little hutches of bark and thatch. Men and women were sitting on the thresholds of huts, or lying in the morning sun as we approached. Only one man was active, and he was adzing a wooden bowl from a soft white block of wood: but when they saw us they began eagerly dragging themselves along the ground to greet us. Some could walk upright, some crawled on hands and knees of flopped sideways along the ground like stricken birds, mewing and whining.”

IX. Nigeria. Prophets of the Apocalypse.
Plenty of partying, food, drink and a parting of the way. Antelope stew and chicken and rice and chilli, any palm-wine along with your goats head? Beer will do.

X. Togoland. “Vraiment, monsieur, it is gold...”
“The Superintendent of police was a handsome Englishman with keen green eyes and briskly formal manner; he was called McCabe. It was almost 5 o'clock. He glanced briefly at the passport, stamped ‘Seen on Arrival' in the first space he found and said ‘I wondered who the devil was tramping along the road. Care for a spot of tea? Come home and meet my wife....'”

XI. Gold Coast. City of Charlatans.
Mammy-wagon stakes with such entries as Special Quiet Boy, My Bones Are Vexed, Meet Me In St Louis, and Psalm 69 Line 4. Pinney gets to ride in the “...undefeated challenger” into the Ashanti city of Kumasi.


XII. Ivory Coast. The Arab Horse-thief from Khartoum.
“”Have you ever been to Liberia?' I asked. ‘No. But I have met Mandingo traders who have been there: and it is worse than this place'”

XIII. Liberia. Leopards are Innocent.
Pinney gets to meet the President. He talks the President into financing a book on Liberian legends.
Someone is not that keen.
https://www.amazon.com/Legends-Liberia-Pinney-Peter/dp/1173143289

XIV. Sahara. Escape from Paradise.

“.....the road to Anywhere”

Outstanding.
Highly recommended to all who wish to be on the road to anywhere.