Keep on Walking

Fabulous Jomo en route Kenya 

Recently I’ve had the urge to walk out of my life and just keep on walking. To take a soul stroll, step by step, breath by breath, actualising Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu’s saying that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Just because.

And then bing bada boom I met a man who did exactly that. So now I can stay at home with Johnny Walker and live by proxy through the fabulous Jomo from New York who simply upped and left his life. He was en route Cape to Kili - from the fascinating foothills of Cape Town’s flat-topped Table Mountain to Arusha, beneath Tanzania's snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro. He was eight months into his 5000-km-plus journey, he had a stick, a small back pack, a tent, an ipod and an old-fashioned fold out paper map. He was averaging around 35 clicks a day, had no specific time of arrival in Kenya, and was debating a route change to avoid the Beira Corridor due to rumours of war, and instead walk through Zambia, which would add on another thousand kilometres... then he was going to climb Kili haha, and fly back to NYC.

My friend, delightful Debbie encountered him on Aqua Lane in Tzaneen. He was such eye candy, she admits, she felt compelled to pull over at once and speak to him. Being Debbie and delightful, she suggested he put his feet up for the weekend and arranged him a spot in the soul mountains of Magoebaskloof . Jomo agreed, being tired and skittish after a nasty incident with a racist white farmer in Mpumalanga. Jomo was born of Jamaican parents who immigrated to the USA when he was a kid.

Since he obviously didn’t have a car, it was arranged that I drive him up the mountain from Tzaneen. I picked him up at my rellies’ home in the Nut Village, Macadamia retirement home, where he sat, a bit startled, as the black housekeeper brought the tea in on a silver tray and my Alzheimer’s uncle uttered surreal comments.

“Man, this is the first car I been in for a while”, he said as we drove off. He told me he grew up in Brooklyn, became a doctor, felt essentially unfulfilled and decided to walk out and just keep on walking.  Because he could. And he wanted to. He just needed a very long walk all by himself. A very long one.

I dropped him off at Zwakala Retreat where he relaxed by going on a few hikes, and then he was returned to Tzaneen where he waved goodbye and began walking to Mussina. He planned to cross by foot, over Beit Bridge border post, southern Africa’s busiest and craziest, into Zimbabwe.

“You made these last days in South Africa really great”, was the last email he sent Debbie. “I’ve had such a wonderful time in Limpopo, a province that I was formerly dreading.  You can imagine my surprise when two English cyclists bumped into me on the N1 south of Louis Trichardt and said they had heard of me. I figured you had to be behind it. It’s awesome to think by how thin a margin I ran into them. Had I taken a slightly longer lunch break yesterday, I would have missed them altogether.  These small fortunate occurrences and the beauty in the kindness of strangers have been the highlight of my travel experience. So last night, we all laughed, ate, drank too much wine and generally were merry. Truly a wonderful night.  As it stands I am about three days walk away from the the Zimbabwe border. I’m excited but nervous. Even with all its ups and downs I have gotten used to South Africa and figured out both what to expect and how to survive.  Now I enter into the unknown”.

Both Debbie and I emailed him this weekend but we haven’t yet heard back.  Drop us a line Jomo, and keep on walking, brother.

The road to Vhutuwangadzebu

Clever people will see the mystery d 

You may be forced to answer some soul searching questions when traveling deep in Vhembe, the land of legend. Such as should you take the road to Vutuwangadzebu or the road to Vhutuwangazebu? Both left and right led to the same place it seemed. “Do you think all roads out here lead to Vhutuwangadzebu?” I asked my traveling girlfriend. “Or is it a circular drive?

Her attentions were focused on the enormous surreal baobab tree ahead of us. “When you see a fork in the road”, she replied wisely, “take it”. So being the driver and from the Robert Frost School of Roads Less Traveled By (read his famous poem The Road Not Taken) I decided to turn right to Vhutuwangadzebu, and as Frost himself would have said, that has made all the difference.

The road to Vutuwangadzebu 

It led into the heart of soul country, a long way away from the cellphone-e-mail-Internet merry-go-round, into remotest rural Venda, past brilliant green tea estates, ancient ruins, sacred lakes and holy forests. The road to Vhutuwangadzebu led us on a slow sexy drive into the cool green heights of upper, upper Tshixwadza, past hillside villages that cling onto the mountainsides, where the schoolchildren waved and the tinkle of cowbells delighted our ears.

We had spent the previous night at a thoroughly charming place called Madi a Thavha, in the foothills of the Soutpansberg mountains, south of Louis Trichardt. The Soutpansberg or Tha vhani ya muno (mountain of salt) gets its name from the salt pans here which have been spicing up life here for centuries. Madi a Thavha is a guesthouse and gallery dedicated to promoting traditional arts & crafts; and having given us a night of warm hospitality, they then gave us a divine breakfast and a map of the Artists Route, a self-drive route which takes you to the studios and workshops of various potters, sculptors, weavers and fabric makers.

Makhambani tea estate

But being artists ourselves, and magicians and storytellers, we ended up instead on the road to Vhutuwangadzebu, immersing ourselves in the names of the places around us, those with a different soul and psyche: Mufungudi, Mutshindudi. Phananani. Phiphidi. Fondwe. Fundudzi. Tshamanthatshe. We ended up knee deep in amazement in the heart of bright green tea estates, delighting in the sheer spectacle of it all. I photographed the reflection of tea slopes in silver dams, from a million angles, and the baobabs that stud the mountainsides.

Change your relaxing style 

 We bought Zamaleks from the Speakeasy Bar (Don’t change your lifestyle, said the billboard outside, change your relaxing style!) and we drove on and up into the land where the pythons still dance and the drums still beat under the water in the pools at Mashovhela and the holy forest is protected by Nthathe the supernatural lion. Yes people, the road to Vhutuwangadzebu took us far, far away from this wearisome global village… And knowing how way leads onto way, I doubted if we should ever come back. 

I doubted if we should ever come back