Richard Stupart

It was a gentle sort of love affair. Not the wild, passionate, love-at-first-sight sort of thing. More like that feeling that gently creeps up on you when you discover something underneath a friendship, usually far too late to do anything about it. But I digress. These stories have to start at the point where we are still strangers. Me waking up in the nicest, softest, mosquito net-est bed (nod to the word-maker-upper-in-chief) and deciding to visit some fifteenth century Islamic ruins in Bagamoyo. Not, in fact, Dar es Salaam at all.

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After on and off storms chasing my activities at Livingstone, it was an African-blue sky that watched over the hours-long bus ride from Livingstone to Lusaka. Lusaka would not be my destination today though. A tiny dot of a town – nay, a village – called Chisekesi would be my final hop off point. “Are you sure this is where you want to be?”, asked the conductor nervously as the bus stopped and I stood up to climb off.

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The flame trees outside the Dar es Salaam train station are some of the most beautiful plants i’ve seen in days – more so as their orange flowers lick the deep blue of the sky, cloudless. It’s hardly fitting that here, in this loud and beautiful contrast of colours, our family must come to an end.

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I have been neglectful in posting stories, but have pages and pages filled with thoughts and images of the things I have seen and am absolutely bursting to share. Tomorrow is a train ride from Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia, which ends on Friday in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. There will be rest and a chance to compose the stories I cannot wait to share in a manner that will do them a little bit of the beautiful justice they deserve. These fingers have been busy, and their tales I will spin into this blog as soon as I arrive in Dar.

Love for your patience in my wandering absence.

- Rich

For the abysmal failure at a-post-a-day, I apologise. Partly finding Internet is not so easy (what was I thinking), but its also been perfectionism on my part at not being able to really tell the stories as what they mean, more than simple narrative. I realise now that the reflective stuff on what it all means is impossible to determine now. That will only come in hindsight. So, instead I present an extract from the large and growing moleskine journaliing of days’ events that I have been updating religiously. It’s the foundation story of the learning to come, but in its raw form (and it is a bit rough – big eyes), this is a partial account of arriving in Livingstone this morning.

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Boarded the Greyhound to Bulawayo at 20h30 last night, arriving in Bulawayo just after 10am this morning. The bus trip has been largely uneventful, except for watching the occasionally entertaining antics of Eric and Lucky, the bus drivers.
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As I go, I go. Landscape to greyscape to the inky-black unknown clacks past. Like the disjointed, rumbling machinery of some large clock in whose bowels I sleep out my delicious dreams and find these words anew. Tomorrow not only born another day, but a destination,a leg complete. Bringing with it the reward of a closer Cairo. Even now, it draws near, clack by clackity clack, the wheels of dharma turning as they must on rails that can lead to nowhere else. Propelled through the dark night of the world-is-not-a-world beyond the cold cabin glass.
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Packed, boarded the plane and now in Cape Town. Catching the overnight train back to Johannesburg tomorrow morning, to make one large and redundant loop – but if you are going to travel from Cape to Cairo, then one should really start in the Cape, no?

So just a short note to say that things are now in  motion. Thank you so much to absolutely everyone who emailed, phoned, commented or otherwise tracked me down and wished me well. I love that I can take your wishes with me in the days ahead.

Love and excitement. So very much of both.

- Rich

One of the questions most frequently asked in the last few days has been whether I will be traveling alone on this trip, or whether I will be joined in the end with any intrepid traveling folk. For a time, Audrey was going to be exploring with me, but life, love and really big, snowy mountains called – and so I will be doing the trip solo. Sort of.

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Four days left. Witty day-significance mathematics now escapes me. Four days is significant because, well… its four days until it all begins. Which seems like a good enough reason right now. Yesterday my bed left. And it took the children. Or at least all my clothes, wall hangings, books and pretty much everything else I own (with the exception of the computer I am typing this on and enough clothes to last me until Thursday). So this post is being blogged from my little nest on the floor of the white box that was once my room.

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One day less and you can expect more or less daily updates from this point forward. The madness of waiting has started to make my fingers dance in an increasingly manic fashion, faster with each passing day until departure. I’ve never quite experienced anticipation like this. It’s difficult to concentrate on the things that need to be done in the short time left. What were once butterflies in my stomach have now been compressed to the point that they have become a sweeping sense of nausea that comes and goes. If I could leave tomorrow, I would.

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