From Iringa

I rest up in Tukuyu for a couple of days after leaving hospital. In the mornings I go with Luka to the little market at Kibisi village to buy food for the day. Chickens run across the dusty path and young guys with dreadlocks and massive sunglasses come up and ask if I’m feeling better. We stop at a little stall selling vegetables and dried fish. An old woman, wearing a bright sarong printed with Barack Obama’s face amidst a sea of Stars and Stripes, sits behind the low wooden table and we pick out tomatoes, peas, and potatoes from little wicker bowls. Off the main path kids run around in the dirt sucking on sugar cane and chasing crickets, which they pick up with tiny hands and stuff into little plastic bottles.

After two days here I ride north through the Mbeya Mountains. A dense grey fog clings to the hilltops, smothering the forest in cloud, and leaving tiny water droplets on the hairs of my arms and legs. The cloud thickens as I get higher and a chilly mountain breeze flows swiftly against me on the steep ascent. The road descends dramatically out of the mist and after a few minutes free-wheeling the air is clear and the sun bathes the rolling valley fields before me in bright light.

I check into a motel in Mbeya and have a hot shower for the first time in weeks. A call to prayer from the nearby mosque makes its way across the little motel courtyard as I head into town to get some food. I sit outside a little Indian cafe and order some rice. While I eat a shadow falls on the white plastic table in front of me and I look up at a tall white guy with a neat brown moustache, smiling down on me. He is wearing a faded denim shirt and jeans and there is a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. He grins and asks me what I am doing here in a thick American accent and I think I see him twitch slightly. He nods knowingly when I tell him and laughs and lights a second cigarette with the dying end of the last. He is standing with one hand resting on a chair and starts to talk, as if addressing a large crowd:

“Me, well, I started in South America. Went to twelve countries. Yes! Didn’t visit the other four: cause there’s nothing fucking there.” He hits the table with a flat palm and laughs and his head jerks back awkwardly. “Well, everybody tells me: Paul, you gonna have trouble Paul. Watch your back Paul. It’s not like home Paul! – I ain’t had so much a sniff a trouble. Only this one time, down in Panama, you know. Guys tried to jump me. Little Bastards! Nothing to me though – I’m a federal marine. Yes! Showed em where to go. You bet.” He jumps around like a jack-in-the-box and his moustache jerks involuntarily to the left. “You know South America’s great for a good time. And I like to have a good time me. Paul sure likes to have a gooooood time. Yes! The cocaine – you know?” He bends over and presses his forefinger against his nostril and snorts elaborately just above the table, before jolting back to an upright position. “Well, where was I? Oh yeah. I got bit by a spider the other day. You see here?” He points to a mark on his neck. “Blew up like a fucking balloon. So I go to the local doc. He tells me a fly bit an infected cow, the spider ate the fly, and then bit me, and I got the cow infection. Yes! I tore my room apart when I got back, found three of the little bastards. Squashed em all. Yes!” He slams the table again and I laugh and he starts laughing and sways slightly. My food is cold now and I get up to leave, wondering if there are other guys washed up in dusty end-of the-world towns all over, living off military pensions in empty motels.

I leave very early the next morning and ride 190km to Makambako. It heats up as I come down from the highlands and the thick green forests thin; the trees fading gradually into swaying yellow grasses and the lush green leaves browning as I ride into the stumpy autumnal scrub of the lowland slopes. There is a faint breeze and when I stop I can hear the light orange leaves crinkle softly under the deep blue sky.

From Makambako I ride over rounded hills to a small farm just past Mafinga. The wind blows heavily towards me, whipping rain into my face and weighing me down as I churn the pedals through the swirling air. Ahead a cluster of black crows peck at an enormous python that lies severed on the wet asphalt. They scatter as I ride past, clumsily beating their wings as they hop awkwardly into flight. I get a room at the farm and Mark, who runs the place, gives me a huge chicken curry for lunch. He tells me he used to work on the railways in Buckinghamshire, but has been here for ten years now. He speaks softly about his life in Tanzania and his eyes sparkle gently when I tell him about my ride. As we talk his past journeys gradually unfold. He tells me quietly about the time he walked coast to coast across Canada, the length of New Zealand a few years later, and from Norway to Gibraltar. He tells me he plans to walk the coast of Great Britain next year. He says he has lost touch with England. How last time he was back it was all Jade Goody and X Factor. He says he needs to reconnect with home. He says England is there somewhere. It has to be. He knows he’ll find it: in the little fishing villages and the windy Cumbrian hillsides.

After supper Mark asks if I want to watch the football. It is the Champions League final and it’s good to watch the game on a sofa with a cold beer, huddled between some of the guesthouse workers. I have a cooked breakfast with a pot of tea when I get up and enjoy the short ride to Iringa in the morning sunshine.