I owe Africa an apology. To date I have kicked a cripple, rear-ended a truck, forced an oncoming taxi off the road and unceremoniously put a barefooted Egyptian footballer on his head.
No intent or malice in these actions. I am merely a ham-fisted boob. Fortunately for Mama Africa there are less prone participants ensuring this project’s progress. Football Africa has managed to travel over 7000 miles from Twickenham to Ethiopia just under 4 weeks, negotiating 10 countries in en route.
To put this in context it’s the equivalent of us driving from Manchester to London everyday for a month, which in itself might not sound overly impressive. However, driving conditions here don’t exactly conform to BMSA standards. Progress is slow and journeys are long. On a driving day we typically put in a good 8 or 9 hr shift.
Your average speed is 45mph. For the most part you sit battered in dust and deep frying in temperatures pushing 40 degrees (we hit 50+ in the Nubian Desert , Sudan). With a stream of kamikaze drivers, or ‘bumper ticks’, pulsing past either side of you in a desperate race to meet Allah, your concentration is constantly jacked.
In general however the ‘Isphalti roads’ are alright although the pot holes would certainly fill the Albert Hall. For some long sections, as in Northern Sudan and parts of Ethiopia tarmac vanishes. It is then you encounter clumsy approximations, childish impressions of roads hewn from unwilling rock reluctant to submit to industrial diggers or traveller’s convenience. Just as reluctant are our shock absorbers to acquiesce to the indignant cobble protrusions and rolling corrugations which make’s driving these stretches a shuddering war of attrition.
Ha, I am getting carried away. Basically it’s hot, dusty and at times the roads are for shit. We are almost through the worst of it, soon to hit asphalt that takes us all the way to Cape Town. We still face Moyale to Marsa Bit though, a notoriously bad stretch etched deep into the faces of northbound overlanders when they refer to the ‘Kenya bit’.
Inshallah we will overcome.
Ed
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