Cape to Cairo
In life, there are a few people we meet who change our lives forever.
Karl Langdon is one of those people.
I met Karl in South Africa where he’s a game ranger at Ulusaba; Richard Branson’s private game reserve. This is where he told me about a trip he took – from Cape Town to Cairo.
On foot.
Karl Langdon’s twenty-five. Within his tissue culture lives volumes of National Geographic. In his…younger days, he served as a body guard to an army general. Today, he holds his rifle with the same relaxed grace as the doorman at the Waldorf holds his umbrella. He’s wiry and tough, wise and gentle. I once saw him pick up a cobra by the neck and place it off the road so we wouldn’t drive over it. In this walk, Karl had one mission: to fill a black film canister with the sands from Clifton Beach in Cape Town and another from the Alexandria Beaches north of Cairo.
Like many of man’s greatest desires, this one bloomed under the auspices of red wine.
Maudlin and romantic Karl Langdon sat sipping on something from the Stellenbosch vineyards looking into the eyes of his good mate Bruce.
“We should walk from Cape Town to Cairo.” Karl said.
“I’m going to need a couple more before I say yes to that.” Bruce said.
“I’m serious, man. Karl said, There’s a guy who traveled the west coast on camel back, with vehicle support.”
“We don’t need vehicle support.” Bruce said.
“Yeah, you’re in?” Karl asked.
“Why not.”
And a ting rang from the two glasses kissing over the table.
Then Monday came. Bruce called Karl at work and said, “Look, about the walk, are you serious? Karl thought a moment, staring under the fluorescent wash of his office. “Let me call you back in five seconds.”
Honest truth, I took a coin out from my pocket, flipped it and said heads I go, tails I don’t and it was heads. I got up, walked into my boss’s office handed in my resignation, told him I was going to walk Africa and said “thank you very much.”
Karl wrote Mandela informing him of the trip and asking for support. Mandela replied with a handwritten letter on official stationary biding luck and praise and hopeful indemnity through their travels. As the months passed, possessions were liquidated and the coals of their souls were stoked by tribal, botanical, navigational and political research.
Soon after, they took their first step.
On the evening of the third day they decided it was too much. Burned by the sun and beat by the walk they decided to quit. In the morning, they awoke without speaking.
And continued.
Every day they awoke with the sun. Twenty kilometers in the morning with the fist of the sun at a distance. Then another ten in the afternoon. From small town to small town. Eventually the soreness subsided as the muscles matured. The mind was growing sharper. But there was still money for food and drinking water from the tap.
Three months going and they made their way over the Tropic of Capricorn and soon thereafter, walked into Zimbabwe. Through the Zimbabwean bush calluses thickened and beards grew.
Three months became eight months and they entered Mozambique where the aromas of a twenty year civil war lingered. They found themselves within the nefarious confines of the Tete Corridor, a mine bracketed strip connecting Zimbabwe to Malawi; also referred to as ‘the bone yard stretch’. A place where, just a few years earlier, navigating the stretch would mean a great chance of being robbed or murdered. Or both. Now the chance was just fair. They found a place to spend the night. The grey of the evening shed gravely upon the twisted and skeletal limbs of Transvaal Gardenia trees. Night was falling.
“We saw an abandoned house shot up with bullet holes everywhere, but nobody was around so we decided to stay. In the middle of the night, there was a lot of noise, in and around the area. We realized it was people. People shouting, people moving all around the building. We really thought this is it. This is the end.”
The coals from their fire were still smoldering. A car came down the dirt road. It passed the house. Stopped. And turned around. People came out of the car, one holding a spotlight. The suffused light danced and bobbed with each step. Karl and Bruce squatted under the window sweaty-palmed, watching the shadows flash upon the bullet-pocked wall. The light came up to the house and passed on. In time the voices faded into the inky blackness as the nocturnal insect choral resumed their symphony. In the end nothing happened.
“It was here we first realized the negative potential of our minds. We had been warned repeatedly about this pass and kept nurturing a fear that that had little reason for being.”
The next evening, they came upon a small village. The children wore rags but they laughed. The adults were missing teeth, but they smiled. They owned nothing but their lives. The rain began to fall as they pitched the tent. An elderly man with skin cured thick by sun and stretched low by gravity, walked toward Karl and told him to bring their sleeping bags into his house. They kindly declined. An hour later the man returned with a tray of twenty hard boiled eggs he collected from other villagers. The next morning the whole family was there when they awoke. They brought water for tea. Filled up their jugs and sent them on their way. The villagers stood behind waving hands until the boys disappeared into the bush.
They had walked twenty-six hundred kilometers when they crossed the famed Zambezi river and shortly thereafter made it to their fourth country: Malawi.
‘I was totally, totally reliant on myself. I was pushing my body to the extreme. Most every night I’d go to sleep in tears, but every morning I’d wake up and my body had recovered. It was quite amazing. It was a profound realization. You realized who you were. Not just mentally, but you found yourself. You figured out what we’re all about and how strong our survival instinct is.’
They navigated north along Lake Malawi, sleeping on the beach. As they fell asleep the big African moon rose and sprinkled itself across the glassy water. The fire cracked as a flurry of sparks twisted and disappeared into the night. During the day’s walk, the villagers would smile and talk to them. The children would touch their skin and pull the hair on their arms. None had ever seen a white man before.
The beauty that glistened off the lake reflected in its people. Not an evening passed in Malawi where they weren’t invited into somebody’s home. Every night they’d pitch a tent and every night someone would approach them and say, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Pitching a tent.’
‘No, no. I can not let you do that. You must stay with us.’
They moved the kids out of their house and welcomed Karl and Bruce and gave them a bucket to take outside and wash up. Ritual. From the same continent, but from seemingly different planets, they sat, cross-legged on the floor eating with their hands, talking. Both the South Africans and the Malawians hugely curious about the foreign elements of the other. ‘Teach me this,’ they’d say. ‘Teach me your language. What are your games?’ The children would cordon off the South Africans, dig holes in the sand, place four seeds in each hole and together they’d play Mancala.
So it went. Every passing day different tribes were experienced: The brightly colored beadworks of the Zulu, The pure white dress of the Amhara, the Samburu herders, the bejeweled Maasai warriors adorned with neck ornaments like the rings of Saturn, huge spears and red cloaks. All eating different foods, playing different games, speaking different languages. A submergence into the most beautiful and uninfluenced cultures in the world.
They’ve got their family, their culture, their religion, their beliefs and it’s so simple. Most countries have lost their culture. You look at the States, the UK and the culture is slowly diminishing. But you go to rural Africa and you see culture is everything. That’s their life force, that’s what they are. The more we traveled, the more we saw it.
Every boarder crossing would yield a three month visa. And every month they’d overstay it and be forced to approach the government offices. The most dangerous places on the continent. At the crossing from Malawi to Tanzania Karl presented his visa to the official. He looked at it, then looked at Karl. His chest flexed and his eyes yellowed as he stated, “These are expired. You’re illegal in this country. I should arrest you.”
The boys explained the walk and Karl extended the letter from Mandela.
“I don’t give a shit about that.” The official said, smacking Karl’s hand away from him. “If you don’t get out of my office now, I’m going to arrest you.” As they left the office and closed the door, they heard the man scream “You better get out of my country!”
They left the immigration office and headed to the South African embassy.
They walked in and explained the situation to the official. The official lent them his Series One Land Rover and told them of a little building off the road where they could renew their visas. And off they flew through the African bushvelt, dust whipping in their wake. Nothing but the occasional impala or dikdik galloping across the landscape. They came over a hill and slammed on the brakes skidding. To the right, just like the man said, was a shack. An old man with a newspaper bent over his face awoke and issued the visas. On the way back the Land Rover broke down and was rigged to run with shoe laces.
And then it began to rain.
And rain.
And rain.
For the next hundred and twenty days.
From northern Malawi into Tanzania, El Nino gripped the land like claw.
For four months it was terrible, it was the hardest thing ever. It rained day in day out. We’d pitch out tent in the rain. Our socks were wet, our feet were wet. We got terrible boils on our feet. Our backpacks chaffed our backs where there were already terrible welts. We decided this was ridiculous and the next time we’d get to a phone we ring up and say we’re coming home. This was a terrible idea. Then we got to the town. We didn’t even discuss it. We took off our backpacks, filled up some water. Kept going, didn’t even think about going back.
In time the skies allayed from an impenetrable slate to a mere thick soot. For the next month and a half, neither one talked to the other. Fending off dehydration and starvation they had fallen into a catatonic state. A realm of extreme introversion. There was nothing to say and nothing was said. Every night would be the same. They pitched the tent at dusk and Karl gathered wood. Both sat to the crack of the fire and the communications of nature. Bruce with his pencil and paper. Karl with his cigarette and thoughts.
The sun came back in a rage. As if making up for lost time, it hit the land like an anvil. The mud dried to dust and cracked. Dust filled the air. Mirages lifted from the streets. The tar began to melt.
However, the mind was lithe. South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania – walking for weeks shy of a year. Six thousand kilometers in and they reached Arusha, in northern Tanzania. Not only had they reached the halfway point, but it was the only break they had allotted for. They hopped a two day, third class train to Dar es Salaam, where they were to rendezvous with their moms and Karl’s girlfriend, Llane. The guys arrived at the airport a few hours early, dirty as a baboons backside. Bruce had three breaks in his foot (as he had for the past thousand kilometers) and Karl was sick with malaria and dysentery.
Llane came out first, her head on a swivel. She walked within feet of Karl, looked at him and continued looking for her boyfriend. She darting around as Karl said ‘hey, hey – hey, it’s me.’ She saw Bruce and asked ‘where’s Karl.’ He pointed by his side to her sweet love who had gone from grape to raisin. Long hair and big beard. A bushman.
Karl and Bruce had organized a couple possible hotels. The women said they had taken care of it. They drove the car toward downtown Dar es Salaam and pulled up to the Hilton.
The Hilton had heard about the walk and sponsored everyone for the week. Karl and Bruce stood in the lobby as Karl saw a mirror for the first time in two seasons. At the onset of the walk he weighed a hundred sixty five pounds. The walk, the stress and the diseases left him threadbare at ninety-three pounds. And he was yellow.
He shaved and bathed half a dozen times. Each time the water looking less like vanilla extract.
With a down pillow under his head and Llane by his side, the steel wheels of the traveling train clenched. Karl had grown strong. Healthy. His skin smelled of the soft lemon and lavender fragrances of hotel soaps and rinses. And just as he slipped back into the amenities of civilization, it was time again for the bush.
It was the biggest mind-fuck. It was the hardest thing to get over. Having to say goodbye to her. Me in tears, and she in tears. How I’d love to go back with her, but how I can’t go back with her. I knew I couldn’t. I knew I had to complete my mission.
So they walked.
Into Kenya and over the equator. The mission became them. Over the months the moon waxed and waned like a celestial wink. But during the days the swords of the sun sliced gashes into the fallow land. The dehydration had grown worse. Urine the color of copper. Occasionally they ran into former lakes that had grown into fecal-rich swampy marshes. They drank whatever wetness they could gleam.
Of all the adversity we went through, drinking water like this, I believe, was the most harmful. When we eventually finished our walk and went to the doctors to get checked he said ‘from the way your stomach looks, I don’t know how you survived.’ I had five ulcers on my stomach lining.
Into Ethiopia and under the smothering sun. They pushed through thorned bushes as they ascended a mountain in their path. And in the moments of extreme adversity, they reached the mountain’s zenith and all the weight of the world was below them. In the distance, Lake Tana: The source of the Blue Nile. A breeze swept across the summit evaporating the sweat from their dusty flesh. They turned around and saw two hundred kilometers to the south where they had been at the beginning of the week. It was the most salient milestone of the trip.
They had tea.
A few more days and they were at the South African embassy. The ambassador had been expecting them. He invited them to his home. They indulged in food and shade. During the days, Karl and Bruce shared traversing tales to the ambassador’s children. On the third morning as they shared in tea with the family, the ambassador looked up from his cup and said “Look, I’m terribly sorry, I can’t let you go on.” The faces of the family members shared a single sadness.
Bruce looked at Karl, both with sort of smiles and Karl said ‘Don’t worry man, we’re fine. We’ve been through worse areas. We can handle it.’
The ambassador looked at Karl and said ‘You don’t understand. The choice is not yours no more. You, as a South African citizen and me as the government embassy here, we can’t let you continue. We’ve been told there’s a war starting up over the boarder. All the embassies are flying their citizens back to their countries. I’m sorry.’
They walked for two years across eight thousand five hundred kilometers of Africa. All they had to do was ride the Red Sea north to Cairo and the mission would be complete.
The ambassador didn’t think it would be much of a war and suggested the boys stay a while and see how it goes. They waited weeks and the conflict grew worse, until one evening Karl looked at Bruce and they knew it was over. It was time to go home.
The conflict lasted over two years between Eritrea and Ethiopia and wound up killing thirty thousand Eritrean soldiers.
And then we arrived home. It took us two years to walk there. It took us seven hours to fly back. We flew past Kilimanjaro, we walked passed Kilimanjaro half a year earlier. It took us minutes what took us days. And all of a sudden we were landing on the tarmac of Johannesburg International. And it snowballed.
As Karl finished his story, his eyes narrowed and pulled to where the bush met the sky. Perhaps he was searching for a lost part of his soul which still has a mission to complete.
