It’s just three miles and a lifetime’s journey from the South Side of Chicago to Grant Park, and I can remember every step.

How marvellous it was that the US election race this year should find its long-awaited finish line at the same spot as the Chicago Marathon — one of many high points I’ve shared with this incredible country through a relationship that stretches right across my adult life.

I entered the United States late one August night in 1981. Seventeen hours out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, we drove across a bridge and into Maine. Next morning, six hours and a brief stop in Portland later, I stepped wearily off the bus in downtown Boston — completing my journey from England to New England, where the history of this great nation had started.

That visit took me down the east coast to New York and Washington, in an arc via Pittsburgh to Niagara, and then back into Canada for a return flight home.

My memories of America from that trip? Coin-fed TV sets in lonely Greyhound bus stations. The wind on Cape Cod. Looking across the Charles River on a long walk out to Cambridge.

The view from the Empire State Building. The sound of dusk on Broadway. The New Jersey Turnpike. The Smithsonian. The Capitol.

A quote carved into the Washington pavement –
‘One of these days this will be a very great city, if nothing happens to it’ (Henry Adams).

My love affair with America had begun.

* * * * *

Another journey, a year later and half a world away. A different bridge towards the sunset, this time across the mighty Orange River. Dusk is falling as I pull up at a roadstop to find some food. I’m about to go inside when my colleague shakes his head and walks past the door to a different window.

I can’t go in there, Baas, he whispers, unbelievably. And so I take my food outside, and we eat together in the truck. South Africa — the apartheid years.

Politics had meant nothing to me until that day when a lifetime’s perspectives were transformed inside a moment. I was twentyone years old.

* * * * *

The years since then have shown me a little more of America. South Florida to San Francisco, via three thousand miles of heartland in between.

The Everglades and El Capitan. The Cascades, Tahoe and Yosemite. Great cities. Small towns. Reservations. Freeways. Skyscrapers. Corals, Keys and canyons. Mountains and volcanoes. A blue Nevada sky. The Golden Gate. Malls, motels and convention centres. Deserts, bayous, beaches.

Along the way I’ve met thousands of people — friendly, welcoming Americans, of every different persuasion and complexion.

I’d come to look for America. And yet on all my journeys since that night in Maine, I’ve only scratched the surface. There’s so much left to see.

Through that time, four Presidents have come and gone, but some things never seemed to change that much. The cities grew, and the downtowns were reclaimed. But take the wrong turning off the freeway, and the world always looked very different. There were places to visit, and Places You Did Not Go.

In 2002 and two days before I ran the Chicago Marathon, I set off for McCormick Place to pick up my race packet. The Metra was closed, and I lost my way on foot. Nightfall, alone, in unfamiliar territory on the South Side of Chicago — as a foreigner and a stranger that wasn’t somewhere I felt safe to be.

Even now, forty years after racial segregation ended, any regular visitor to America knows that for far too long, a different kind of separation has endured.

Economic barriers define racial tensions in cities and nations everywhere, and Britain is no exception. Yet in America, perhaps the visitor witnesses the economic divide more starkly simply because the gap between rich and poor, like everything about this country, is on such a larger scale.

* * * * *

From Chicago’s finish line, I flew to Houston, to renew my acquaintance with the wilds of Texas, and Mexico beyond. And then, just a few months later, America and I had a difference of opinion. If truth be told, the seeds were sown in a retreat from Baghdad in 1991, from the hanging chads of Florida some nine years later, and during Tony Blair’s visit to Camp David in 2002.

2000 was just another election year, we thought. America chose another President, albeit very narrowly. Some things would go well, some not so well. That’s how life is. But this time was different. The world faced new problems.

Somehow, we, the USA and Britain, contrived to take a different view from everyone around us. We distorted the facts. We let our standards slip. Finally, in March 2003 — and I can still recall the moment — we took a unilateral view.

We saw trouble at the gates of freedom, and we looked in upon ourselves to find the answer. We took freedom away, whilst proclaiming an iron will to restore it.

* * * * *

I’m sad to say that my love affair with America has fallen sour, these past few years. It’s been hard to discuss with you when you’ve really not been listening. And frankly, I’ve been cross enough with my own country, through most of that time, to worry too much about criticising yours.

I never lost faith in America or her people, but I’ve felt no affinity with her actions, no faith in her priorities, since George W Bush was elected.

Looking back, eight more years lost in the battle for the environment of this planet, the divisions we’ve sown amongst the brotherhood of nations and the thousands of lives lost — these are missed opportunities we won’t forget.

That’s all history now — that was yesterday, when all was night. And it’s clear that somewhere back along the road, a glimmer of new light began to show. Slowly, through most of last year the flame grew, unseen. In the snows of Iowa, and in the deepest chill of New Hampshire last winter, that fire dared to flicker.

Since last summer, and all through this autumn, beyond America’s shores — we sensed the opportunity for your country, and for our wider world beyond.

Barack Obama had set out the scope for change, but would America really dare to embrace a new world vision, when she’d chosen isolationism for so long?

This morning I woke my kids to tell them that America has a new President. And so the darkest hour really did precede the dawn.

At last the arc of history has bent her bow. The marathon of this election is over, and those few short but eternally long miles from the South Side of Chicago to Grant Park have finally brought their man to reach the finish.

Divided by an ocean we are no more. We stand together again, united in a future. And fresh in the certain knowledge that tomorrow begins today.

One day soon, I’ll come to look for America again. We’ve been apart too long.

: : : : : : : : : :

Related articles:
4. GO British ! Chicago Marathon 2002
From Scratch: A letter from London
What history looks like
8. Lakeshore reflections – Chicago Marathon review
173. Lines from the New Hampshire primary
110. The hands that built America – Houston skylines
174. The hidden history of Texas – on Buffalo Bayou, Houston, USA

My visit last summer left me with a whole lot to say about the country, about Africa, and our attitudes to the continent and her people. I sat down to write, and the project found life of its own. Today I’ll outline some highlights, final thoughts and reflections.

This journey opens where it ends, on The road to Mombasa. When we look at Africa from within our daily lives, we see it always from a safe distance, on television or in the newspapers. That remoteness prevents understanding. From the comfort of our own familiar existence, we simply can’t comprehend the reality of the different world which exists there.

That’s why, right from the start, I want to take you there, into the heart of an African night. I want to place you deep within the dark continent, as the day is slowly dawning.

From here, we can focus not on the remoteness of Africa, but rather on the sensation of looking back at our own lives in Europe and America from another viewpoint entirely.

Travel offers us the unique facility of reversal through the mirror, as we reflect on lives lived another way.

Can you imagine yourself as a Kenyan woman walking down the broken tarmac of the East African coastal Highway at 4 am, in the rain, with a bright yellow water carrier balanced on your head? Can you see yourself, and your own work, through the hollowed eyes of the emaciated man wearing a muslim headdress, earning a slim living carrying tourist bags through the airport?

In The dusk behind the beach, I greet you in the safe enclaves of little America and little Europe, in that thin beachside strip of land cooled by the ocean breeze, and I run with you to find Africa beyond. Four hundred metres is all that it takes to enter the equatorial girdle of this continent, stretching deep and green and humid for four thousand kilometres.

It’s a mix of cultures here, both imported and indigenous. The crippled beggar in the Arsenal shirt rubbing shoulders with the burkha-wearing women and young couple in student shorts and tee-shirts. ‘Jambo sana’ (Hello, very much) call the shopkeepers as I pass, their friendly smiles welcoming the stranger. Further along the road, I pass houses – mud hovels – and shops – pathetic tin shacks.

Let’s consider the reality of living in a country with no infrastructure, no services, and not enough food either. Women fetching the water for their families before the pitch black of bedtime. Children going to bed on the earthen floor with no mattress or mosquito net and not enough to eat. How can we ever complain about our lives back home, as we routinely eat ourselves to death?

Can these half-starving millions forgive us? Do they? Should they? The dusk falls as I return to the hotel, the night air thick with the smell of woodsmoke, of insufficient food cooking on an open fire.

Masai Mara – the last wilderness opens as dawn rises on the great plains – daybreak over one of the last wildernesses on the planet. I marvel at the richness of the wildlife here, the drama of the kill, the peril of the chase, the wonder of the wildebeest migration across the landscape and the drama of the river crossing.

And increasingly, as the morning wears on, I ponder that the whole tableau is witnessed by a curious cavalcade of Land Rovers and minibuses, each bearing half a dozen long Canon lenses, poised for the shoot. It’s no desolate endless plain here, but a managed tourist bonanza extending across just a tiny fraction of the continent.

We visit a Masai village, to witness the warm welcome of these people, and their hard business sense. Kicked off their land to accommodate mere elephants, this elegant race now depends on tourism to survive – both exploiting and exploited within the final zoo on Earth.

Back on the coast, I ponder on an orphanage and the disaster of African AIDS. We set up a visit to deliver some old clothes, shoes and toys. By chance, a new orphanage has just opened, run by a British woman who has sold up her house near the town where we live. She’s given her life to the welfare of the children of Kenya, and has braved bureaucracy and intimidation (even deportation) to accomplish her dream.

The children in the orphanage are in many respects the lucky ones, sharing shelter and proper food, sleeping beneath mosquito nets and in safety.

But their happy smiles hide the hardships and family tragedies which have brought them here, and the wider disaster of AIDS which reaches into the lives of every community in Africa.

With no money for the purchase of paracetamol, let alone expensive retroviral drugs, one third of Kenya’s 34 million population will be dead inside a decade.

The situation in Kenya grew dramatically worse in late December 2007 with the outbreak of violence across much of the country following a struggle for the Presidency. In On corruption and a crooked election I describe some basic economic realities of corruption, and how it evolves through the Darwinian struggle to survive.

In 2006, Kenya was the 155th country in the United Nations table of economic prosperity, and that was before its economy was devastated by the outbreak of near civil war and the overnight collapse of international tourism.

The country had previously been targeted in 2003 Al-Qaida attacks near Mombasa, and the tourist trade had only recently recovered when violence broke out.

The eradication of corruption? That will depend on the establishment of a stable government and a dramatic improvement in the economic scene across the country. This will be hard to achieve without sustained foreign support. The country has no real funds of its own – and amongst the many western companies presently doing business in Kenya, the majority pay no tax in the country at all.

That observation leads to a far bigger question: Africa – how can we help? The fact is that the scale of the problems is massive, but every bit helps.

Tourists visiting the country can do much to assist on a small scale, by engaging the services of local tour companies rather than lining the pockets of western hotel owners.

They can inject cash directly by tipping thoughtfully where appropriate, and by donating both to institutions and to people in need.

The shocking truth is that although this part of Africa lies in neither a famine nor a war zone, almost everyone here has real need of charity. Those in employment suffer low and unreliable wages. Those in jobs have to support the many who aren’t, and the majority of the people are, if not starving, then painfully thin.

A vivid debate broke out in the comments here. The point was made that individual tourists had no power to bring change, and that the most constructive action for Africa would be to donate your entire holiday fund to Oxfam.

Criticism also centred on the ecological cost of our visit, in terms of the carbon budget to travel there. And did writing about Africa from a tourist’s perspective run the risk of insulting the country and my readers by imparting an incomplete view?

These criticisms are well taken. Oxfam is the worthiest of causes, and Africa certainly one of the most deserving of her targets.

It’s true that my view of Kenya, and of this continent, only scratches the surface. But I’ve travelled to Africa throughout my professional career, and my work has afforded me the (not always comfortable) opportunity to witness more of Africa than many people can.

Kenya is a large and diverse country, with many more natural wonders and hardships to see. I read about the wild lakeshores, the bandits and flamingoes of the northwest of the country. The wonders of the Rift Valley, and the serenity of the Tsavo East National Park.

Even before our visit, I knew something of the desperate conditions in Kibera – the slums of Nairobi, and last winter’s violence has shown us much more of the conditions there on the television news.

But we’re back to that problem of remoteness again. In this series, I wanted to describe something of what I saw, on the ground, and to share my experiences in visiting just a small fraction of Kenya.

To provide a full account of the whole of a country would require much more time, yet my intention here was never completeness. You can check Wikipedia for that.

If this series has made us think, just a little, then it’s been well worth the effort. In the nine months since I returned, 5,000 people have read these articles, and I hope many more will continue to do so in the future.

Travel offers a different perspective. Reversing through the mirror, and looking at lives lived another way.

Africa has so much to teach us, and she deserves so much more of our support.

: : : : : : : : : :

Kenya articles:
161. Kenya 1: The road to Mombasa
164. Kenya 2: The dusk behind the beach
166. Kenya 3: Masai Mara – the last wilderness
168. Kenya 4: on the orphanage, and AIDS
172. Kenya 5: on corruption and a crooked election
179. Kenya 6: Africa – how can we help?

Related articles on Africa:
124. Exploring Africa with Bono
103. Atlas shrugged – in the mountains of Morocco
25. Ghana
102. Moroccan red – Marrakech
92. Live from London – Live8

Should we visit, as tourists? Is it enlightenment, or voyeurism, when tour companies arrange sightseeing trips to the ghettoes of Nairobi?

The problems are so massive that it’s easy to admit defeat – to assume that if governments can’t sort the problems, then aid agencies and individuals don’t stand a chance.

I don’t share that view. There’s a lot we can do, and here are some suggestions.

Visit Africa, if the opportunity arises.
Take an open mind with you. In world terms, we are fantastically wealthy. And wealth carries with it the responsibility to help others less fortunate than ourselves. It’s too easy to cite safety and convenience as reasons for shying away – if a billion people are living in desperate poverty across an entire continent, surely the least you can do is make yourself aware of it ?

By visiting, you will be investing some of your own money into the local economy, and that’s a very good start. Once there, I guarantee you’ll see things differently. You wouldn’t be human if the sight of hardship, starvation and disease didn’t change you into a more thoughtful person.

When you go to Africa, get out of your hotel.
There’s just no point in travelling halfway across the world to see Africa, and then remaining closeted inside little Europe or little America. Hire a driver, and take a tour of the local surroundings. See how people live. Talk to them. Listen. Smile. Be friendly. You’ll learn.

Take your old clothes and shoes with you.
Rather than junking them at home, or giving to the charity shop, it’s easy to pack your old clothes into an extra case, and take them to Africa. Leave them at the orphanage, or give them to needy people that you meet.

Anything you can take yourself will get through directly, without any commissions or administration costs. You can take quite a lot – as a family, we travelled out with seven suitcases, and came back with three.

Children’s clothes and shoes are especially needed, and don’t take up much space. Just amongst our stash we counted 35 pairs of outgrown children’s shoes.

Take unwanted toys.
Many African children have no toys at all. Electronic goods, or those needing batteries will be of limited use, but basics like dolls, card games, and toy cars and figures can bring happiness to a poor child, anywhere.

Take books, pens and pencils.
We had millions of old kids’ books at home, and stacks of odd crayons and pens, too. They all went in the suitcase, and came out at the orphanage. I read four novels on the beach, and gave them to the orphanage staff. All those books will be well-read now, and the kids will be scribbling for years more to come.

Take unused and unwanted medicines.
You shouldn’t travel with restricted drugs, but most family medicine cabinets contain a few packs of basic analgesics, anti-biotic creams, insect sprays, bandages and plasters which are incomplete or close to expiry. Don’t throw them out – take them with you to Africa. Supplies like these make a huge difference.

Give good tips to thin people.
At home, you’d tip $20 or £10 with a meal. The guidebooks will suggest you tip a quarter of this in Africa. But by tipping on a western scale, you’ll be injecting real cash, and helping an African family buy food for a week, or even a month. Tip those who serve you, in shops, hotels and on buses. It costs very little, it makes a big difference, and it’s rewarding to give.

Book local services, wherever you can.
Most hotels offer trips to local attractions, and arrange safaris and flights, too. They take a huge cut, then send the profits back to their foreign owners.

Just outside the hotel, local companies and taxi drivers offer the same services at lower rates. Your money will be employing local people rather than stuffing the pockets of western tycoons.

You have to exercise rudimentary caution, but if a local company has a good reputation, make the effort to use it.

The best trip of all that we did ? A dhow journey around the bay, arranged through a friend of our waiter. Three unforgettable hours for the whole family, and it cost $20. With a $20 tip, it was a win-win all round.

Recycle your packing.
Two days before we travelled, I ditched the entire contents of my suitcase. I left my new summer clothes and shoes behind, instead taking half-worn stuff. At the end of the holiday, I washed everything out, and gave T-shirts to the waiters and my gym shoes to the pool man. They wore them the next day. I travelled home in my beach sandals. That cost nothing at all.

Give spare food and toiletries.
If you have useful items left at the end of your stay – packets of biscuits, half-used hotel shampoos and soaps – don’t throw them away, give them to someone who can use them. They’ll really appreciate it.

Think about what you’ve seen.
When you arrive home, try to keep an interest in Africa. It’s easy to forget everything too quickly, but try to retain some of the new perspectives you’ve gained. Talk to your friends, and tell them about life in Africa.

Next time the TV news talks about starvation or disease in Africa, don’t switch off – stay and listen, take note of the telephone number and think about making a £10 or $20 donation. If everybody does it, we can make a real difference.

Speak up for Africa.
Many people will tell you that as Africans, these folk must expect less. They’ll say that it’s the African countries’ fault, and we can do nothing to help. So tell them they’re wrong. Explain how you spoke to local people when you were in Africa, and they they’re just like you and me. They don’t deserve their plight, and we should do all we can to help them.

Buy Fair Trade products, wherever you see them.
The system isn’t perfect, but it’s there for a reason, and African workers get a better deal for their labours.

Ask questions of the companies you use.
Enquire with your hotel operator how much tax they pay locally. Most likely, it’s nothing – the byzantine tax structures of western companies are designed to avoid paying. Look at the roads and medical services, and you’ll see the effect.

When you buy imported Kenyan flowers from Marks and Spencer, drop the chairman an e-mail, and ask how much tax the company paid in Kenya last year. You don’t need to push too hard – just asking the question is making a point.

Convince your politicians to make a difference, too.
Have a look at the candidates standing in your next national election. Chances are, one of them will be in favour of cutting your taxes, sending back immigrants and invading a few foreign countries, whilst the other will speak up for people who have much less than you, both at home and abroad. Think about that, just a little, and make the right choice.

Well, that’s a long list. If you have more ideas, I’ll be delighted to hear them.

And if it seems too much effort, then please remember this: the poor of Africa have only problems on their plate, whilst we have so much more than we need.

We owe it to Africa to do all that we can.

: : : : : : : : : :

Related articles:
168. Kenya 4: on the orphanage, and AIDS
164. Kenya 2: The dusk behind the beach
161. Kenya 1: The road to Mombasa
124. Exploring Africa with Bono
172. Kenya 5: on corruption and a crooked election

Kenya’s president from 1978 to 2002, Daniel arap Moi, was widely detested for corruption and political oppression. During his term, Kenya slipped from the 133rd to the 155th country in the world in economic prosperity. There might not be that many more countries.

Moi’s successor, Mwai Kibaki, was elected on an anti-corruption ticket – hence the badge campaign in Mombasa. But when I asked Kenyans during our visit what they thought of Kibaki – they were unanimous. ‘He’s the same as all the others,’ they said. ‘Corrupt, just like the rest of them.’

Yesterday’s declaration of Kibaki as victor in the Kenyan elections, despite a string of exit polls indicating firmly that he had lost to Raila Odinga, serves only to confirm that view.

Corruption. It might be Africa’s biggest problem. Certainly it’s the one trotted out by people who don’t want to help the continent. ‘There’s no point giving money, or aid,’ they say. ‘It’s unlikely to end up with those who need it.’

But this trip, I began to understand corruption, just a little. Not the kind of barefaced electoral swindle which threatens the whole practice of democracy, but rather the day-to-day variety. The siphoning off the top of just a little, and then more and more goods and money, so that finally they don’t arrive at all.

Why do people do it, and how can they so mindlessly deprive the needy ? That’s something I’d never come close to comprehending before.

It started soon after we arrived at our hotel. We started making enquiries to find an orphanage in the area. ‘We’ve brought some things for the children there,’ we explained. ‘And we’d like to take our children, to see for themselves.’

The news got around. Guests in the hotel who had things to give away. A quiet word from the waiter. A tactful suggestion from the lady at the pool. An outright request from the taxi driver, when we arranged our ride to the orphanage.

‘If you’ve brought some things with you, then please give them to me. Because my kids are starving.’

At first I found it shocking. Cynical. Appalling, even. Just imagine, if you were taking a bag of old clothes and toys to the charity shop at home, and someone asked you if they could rifle through it first. It would simply never happen.

But the more I dissected it, the more I realised that’s just how it was. Yes, these people had jobs, but they didn’t earn much. The hotel didn’t always pay them on time, and sometimes it didn’t pay at all. They dared not complain, for fear of being sacked on the spot. Such is the labour market, when there are millions unemployed and millions more starving. The hotel staff were all desperately thin, and desperately doing their best to feed their families on very little. The whole village was living from hand to mouth, and from day to day.

For the taxi driver, it was harder still. He came from Malindi, half an hour up the coast, and he had three kids of his own to look after, and two more he’d taken in from sick relatives, too. He had absolutely no money – I had to pay him at the start of every journey, so that he could buy petrol on the way out of town. His financial arrangements didn’t even run to purchasing fuel for his taxi.

And when he asked for our help, it wasn’t that easy to decline. Because those kids in the orphanage – in material terms, they were luckier than most. They had food on the table, and a roof over their heads. They had health care, and schooling, and clean water, and beds and mosquito nets. They wanted for little, except a parent of their own.

So we gave our taxi driver a few children’s clothes from our cache. And we found toys for the twin girls of the lady by the pool, too – it was no trouble to us, since we weren’t taking any of those things home.

But that series of events – it set me thinking. It wasn’t the existence of such poverty. It was the nature of it, and the scale.

Slowly it dawned that the social rules that we live by – well, they might not work here. When everyone around you is starving, the niceties of tact are irrelevant. Because, yes, the orphanage kids need assistance, but you might need it more.

And in a second, I could see life here quite differently. European or American values didn’t apply so straightforwardly where existence was a raw and Darwinian struggle for survival. You had to ask for what you could get, and you had to get it somehow.

Suddenly, the whole issue of corruption began to make more sense. Which is the more important human right ? A man’s right to property, or his neighbour’s to life ? In our world, that choice rarely arises. But in vast parts of Africa, it’s a question of life or death every day. If a man has money which he can live without, and which you need to survive, then the reasons for taking it become much clearer to see.

I’d never condone it, but I could begin to understand it, for the very first time.

To keep body and soul together, then at a certain level, any ruse will do. And if you do survive, even then there are no guarantees that will continue. You have to keep on eating, and keep on acquiring, to distance yourself further from the abyss. And so corruption and theft continues long after it’s a mortal question.

In that world and in that culture, that’s just what people do, and how the moral realities apply. And for ministers and government officials, with the status and financial benefits which are offered to them, the temptation to hang on to power and the wealth that goes with it might be even more compelling.

In Africa, that adage is true. The man stole the money, but society was to blame.

To change that culture, Africa needs much more than anti-corruption laws and enforcement. We have to alleviate the hardship and suffering which lie at the root of this crime in the first place. Money is even more desperately needed if it might not all get through. Because in the long run, kindness is the only cure.

And whilst that struggle for survival continues, there’ll be no lasting salvation for those people, and that society will always hang on the brink of decay.

Into dicatorship, anarchy and bloodshed. Exactly as we’ve seen in Kenya today.

: : : : : : : : : :

Related articles:
168. Kenya 4: on the orphanage, and AIDS
164. Kenya 2: The dusk behind the beach
161. Kenya 1: The road to Mombasa
124. Exploring Africa with Bono
166. Kenya 3: Masai Mara – the last wilderness

At home, it happens rarely. But in Kenya, it happens a whole lot more.

The reasons ? Simple enough. There isn’t enough food to go round. There’s little medical care to speak of. Just about everyone has to battle with malaria, and malnutrition. Sickness and diarrhoea from unclean water dispatch thousands more, every year.

But that’s only the surface of the problem. Because there’s a huge medical problem in Africa. AIDS. It’s killing millions here.

Not officially, since few families dare acknowledge AIDS as the cause of death. The Kenyan government still won’t freely recognise the problem – because that would mean admitting failure, of a kind. But practically, AIDS is creating thousands of new orphans here, every single day.

In the North, we have retroviral drugs. They can’t cure the disease, but they can arrest its development. HIV is not the death sentence that once it was.

But in Africa, millions can’t afford aspirin, or penicillin. There’s no money. No health insurance. How can they buy outrageously expensive AIDS medicines ?

They can’t, and so the sick must die. You could argue about the reasons, and our complicity in it, but the reality would remain unchanged. A country of thirtyfour million people, where ten million will be dead inside a decade. That’s shocking.

Unhelped, orphans face a bleak future. Relatives and friends will do the best they can, as anywhere, but when there’s not enough to feed your own kids, it’s desperately hard to take on more. So boys are doomed to a life of sickness and starvation, whilst girls face survival through prostitution.

* * * * *

A new orphanage has opened, near the hotel. We take a few old toys and clothes we’ve brought here with us. It’s no effort – just an hour or two of our holiday.

That’s nothing, compared to the resolve it took to plan and build this orphanage. The decision to sell up a house in England, to abandon a comfortable life, and give that life to Africa. To fight bureaucracy, and prejudice, and corruption, and face deportation for speaking out and doing something along the way.

That’s commitment and courage on an unlikely scale, and despite the evidence in front of us now, it’s hard to believe that’s how this place was built. Not through any gifts of government, or Oxfam, or UNICEF, or a church, or any organisation at all, in fact. But through one woman’s wildest dream.

It can only make you humble, when you see just how much a person can achieve. Because no matter how hard I work, or how honestly I strive in business, I’ll never save a life. Let alone forty at a time.

And yet, pathetic as it is, this short visit of ours might make a tiny difference. Today will shade our kids’ lives in another light in future. That’s guaranteed, since these few hours will leave an impression on us all. For ever.

Not because of the conditions here, or the poverty, or even the emotional suffering that these children face. Because, in many ways, these are the lucky ones. For all of the terrible loss they’ve suffered, these kids will want for nothing now. They’ll have food to eat, and dinner on the table. They’ll get schooling. They’ll be loved, and cared for, and sleep safe in their beds at night.

But the simple fact is that in ten years’ time, these children smiling now beside me will nearly all be dead.

In the North, we know how to prevent AIDS from being passed on at birth. And here, they don’t. Because it’s still an unspoken, shameful problem. Because there’s little education. Because there’s no money or resources or will to treat it. These kids were born to sick parents – and so they die.

You’re right, of course, to tell me that perspectives on most things are bound to look different in this orphanage from how they ever do at home. You’d be right to say that all of this will seem more safely distant once I’m back in England. That’s true enough.

You’ll point out, too, that maybe Africa is her own worst enemy, with so much corruption, warfare and bureaucracy, just doomed to bring her down.

But I’ll dare you to look in these children’s eyes today, and tell me that they deserve their fate. Or that we should tolerate this, any longer. Not when we all have the power and wealth and freedom as individuals to make a difference.

It doesn’t take much. A few cents and pence a week, from the thousands of pounds and dollars we earn. That would help.

It would help far more if only we could stand back and look more closely at this world which lies around us. If we opened our eyes, then this could never happen.

We’d never accept it at home. But in East Africa, the cradle of our species – the place where human life began – life is ending here, in these faces all around me.

It can’t go on. And yet it surely will, until we stop it.

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166. Kenya 3: Masai Mara – the last wilderness

Cool grey skies hang their high curtain above the savannah this morning. Scarcely any flash of colour. Just pale grassland, reaching as far as the eye can see, the horizon broken only by the gentle rise of distant hills and the lonely spread of a guardian acacia tree.

We rumble on, the tyres of the Land Rover clawing restlessly at the gravel. A shroud of pink is forming slowly in the east, where an invisible sun is lightening the underbelly of rippled cloud like some low energy lightbulb down a lonely corridor – weak and inept at first, then adding detail with every second.

Dawn on the Masai Mara – daybreak over one of the last wildernesses on Earth.

We stop. A pride of lions is lying languidly by the road, gorging on fresh red meat. One unlucky wildebeest, amongst the millions migrating across the plain this August, won’t live to see another day.

Two lionesses, cubs and a large male eat happily, unperturbed by the flood of vehicles that arrive to gawp beside us.

We edge forwards several times to gain a better view, but once three minibuses and two more all-terrain vehicles pull up, we leave the masses to their photo feast and follow another, narrower track across the plain for a mile or so.

Late last night, we watched a herd of elephants stroll by here, and then came across a leopard feeding in the rain – chewing on another wildebeest which he’d pulled whole and warm, halfway up a tree. He’s still there, with food for days to come. We wait a while, and we’re undisturbed.

It’s an amazing sight. And the sound as well – or lack of it, just silence, stretching out across the wind.

Far in the distance, I can see another gaggle of vehicles, closing and manoeuvring into place around another tree. A group of vultures is gazing down on all the Canons and movie cameras from the highest branches – and there’s an ironic symmetry to that scene which I somehow can’t ignore.

The skies are brightening now. On the horizon, four balloons are rising slowly. How marvellous it must be to look down upon this landscape, to see the herds of game parting before your shadow. But this is our last morning, and perhaps we can save that adventure for another trip.

We pause again outside the Masai village. The gnarly Chief with looping earlobes welcomes us, smiling broadly beneath his traditional blanket and ‘Jesus loves you’ baseball cap.

Young Nixon will guide us today, he says, and we’re taken inside a hut where a family and cattle sleep. We emerge thoughtfully to watch the village welcome dance.

Tall, lean and elegant young men dazzle with their flying leaps and forceful song. It’s a friendly and homely occasion, with no trace of discomfort on either side – the beaming brows and shining smiles soon put paid to that.

Ten minutes go by, and then the village girls gather, swaying and singing softly with a different tone entirely. Their children play happily all around us. At last, we’re shown the local workshop where I spy a pretty bowl, with a price of many shillings. Ah, yes – the exchange rate’s fallen lately, says Nixon astutely, running high speed mental maths like any City broker. Yes, Mama’ll take seventy dollars for that one. And the truth is I like it, but just not that much.

A few hours later, our driver meets us again with real excitement. Let’s go, he says – I think the moment’s come. Soon we’re weaving through a giant gathering herd of wildebeest, with scattered zebra milling here and there. We make our way slowly down to a bluff above the river. And prepare to wait.

Quite miraculously, it all happens just a minute later. The wildebeest have stopped their wandering, and turn around together. Then, one by one, the first few wander down to the bank, raise their noses cautiously, and slowly start to cross.

A line of hooves and manes and horns slides gently into the river, not fifty metres away. With leaps and bobs and a chaotic rhythm, one after another they reach the other bank. A group of zebra looks down, ponders the decision for a while, and then decides to join them – as faster runners they’re happy to stick safe beside the wildebeest, wherever they may roam.

The bounding procession continues with a stream of new animals seemingly ever renewing from far behind. And then, in a moment, it all stops. The bank falls silent, as the final few wildebeest turn sharply away. Twenty others are already committed, and continue furiously and frantically across. They don’t look back, but if they did they’d see what we see now – a lioness prowling threateningly around the bluff. With no success, this time.

In the afternoon, we pass an hour or four upon a lonely, dusty airstrip, waiting for our plane to fly us back to the beach. Across the open plain I can see half a dozen vehicles weaving silently, each looking for that perfect filming spot or wildlife scene.

And as we soar, much later, high above the savannah, I look down on the edges of the Masai Mara far below me. Beyond the reserve lie the scattered corrals and huts of a hundred Masai villages, the people booted off their land to make this wildlife park. Thin mangy cattle, and patchy grazing – it’s not much to live off, but there are recognisable fields here, of a kind. There’ll be game animals, too – there are, across the whole of Kenya, but this is a different landscape, where animals venture but can no longer truly find a home.

And it all spins together now, to make an impression I’d really rather miss. Those unbroken, endless expanses of African savannah are nowhere near that huge. Not any more. The Masai Mara covers just 1 510 km² – the size of Surrey, or half as big as Rhode Island. Inside a country twice as large as France, and a continent the size of Africa, it’s not that big, and not nearly big enough.

The Serengeti stretching across the Tanzanian border is on a vastly larger scale. Maybe there are rather fewer tourists there – fewer vehicles, fewer balloons, fewer new tracks dissecting the grassland.

Joined together, the two reserves cover 16 000 km², an area the size of Yorkshire, or Connecticut. And there are many other national parks – Tsavo East in Kenya is much larger than the Mara, too.

So don’t get me wrong – this is an amazing place, which offers fantastic gift to anyone who visits. We’ve seen elephants, and buffalo here, and topi, lions, warthogs, a cheetah, leopards, zebra, wildebeest … and many more. I can’t enthuse enough about the joys of seeing wildlife in this way.

And yet, there’s a nagging anxiety, deep within my heart. An unwelcome vision forming which won’t easily fade, not now I’ve seen it, lurking in that darkly deepest future which comes nearer every day.

Because I’m afraid.

Afraid that I’ve spent three days watching wildlife, in the final zoo on Earth.

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* * * * *

The sun is low in an African sky and my subcutaneous fat and I are running down the road.

The Indian Ocean lies behind me now, and with it the easy lifestyle of the North. The beach hotel. Comfort. Contentment. Ignorance.

And in front of me ? Adventure, uncertainty. Guilt. A touch of fear.

I’ve put this off for far too long. Why ? I’m not exactly sure. But I haven’t run for days, and I tied my shoes with strange reluctance this afternoon. A hundred excuses appeared to keep me by the pool, and worked hard to keep me there.

The truth is this: it’s hard to venture into the unknown. Too easy to bask lazily on the beach, gazing vacuously up at palm trees or the dreams inside your head. Too difficult, too risky ? No – just too uncomfortable to face the reality of another world around you.

A different world, not far away, on some television feature or rolling news where they show pictures from another planet. But here, right now, in front of you, outside the hotel gate.

That gate falls behind my steps, and Africa opens her arms out wide to greet me. I’m forgiven, for now, even if I don’t deserve to be.

* * * * *

Eager, thin men stand waiting outside the hotel, offering taxis and tours to anyone who wants one, and many who clearly don’t. Some might find that bothersome – but let’s just get real for a moment. This is Africa. That’s how it is.

There are crowds of people on the road. And not a single one of them is white. I’d like to kid myself, but it’s a strange inversion at first – just as unsettling and unfamiliar once again, although I’ve lived it many times before. I try to remember how I feel – conspicuous, edgy, out of place – to play it back whenever I see a lone foreigner back at home.

Rickety stalls and shacks stand in the mud beside the street, selling tourist knick-knacks for a dollar or two. Old men and women ease their worried looks and smile a commercial welcome as I pass.

‘Jambo sana. Hello, how are you ? Come and look inside my shop.’ I wave and smile, and carry on.

Beyond the beach – the Europeans’ narrow strip of pleasant land cooled by the ocean breeze – the equatorial girdle of this continent stretches four thousand kilometres, deep and green and humid in front of me.

But four hundred metres is all it takes to leave the Africa of the tourist brochure far behind. Outside Mama Lucy’s store, young men are wandering to and fro across the street.

A lad of twenty, wearing just one leg and a tattered Arsenal shirt, leans patiently on his crutches, waiting for a tourist slow enough to ask for cash. Battered taxis and an unlikely rickshaw weave dangerously through the crowd.

A little further on, I pass a group of black-cloaked young women, mysterious and austere behind their burkhas. A young couple in student shorts and tee-shirts, eyeing me with a puzzled glance. A tall businessman in suit and shiny black shoes, tripping lightly through the dust.

Just opposite, two mechanics are sitting on wooden stools beside a pile of bikes. They’re struggling fruitlessly with tyre levers as they try to fix a punctured wheel at an open air cycle shop, laid out beneath the spreading branches of a mimosa tree. They glance up as I raise a hand. ‘Jambo,’ I try, and they reward me with a smile.

By the time I reach the junction, with its scraggy petrol station of empty pumps and puddled yard, and the mosque and stumpy minaret just across the road, the thought is well-embedded. I’m surely running through an exotic travel documentary – about a safely distant world where life is completely different from the one I know.

But it’s the same world – it really is – just seen from a very different place.

A kilometre run. Sensed and lived. Experienced.

I turn left, and pick up my pace along the road. The evening fills with folk returning from work, and others heading into town. A policeman in smart white shirt and freshly pressed trousers stares blankly for a moment as I run by. A pair of cyclists pedal straight towards me, so I dodge hastily onto the stony verge.

Next comes a mother carrying a basket of watermelons on her head. Her six-year old daughter holds her hand, skipping joyfully in a pink and frilly dress.

A moment later, I pass a white-painted chapel behind a half-broken picket fence. Just beyond it lies a group of sketchily mud-walled houses, each with palm-thatched roofs. A man is leaning disconsolately against a tree, whilst his wife cooks their meal on an open fire. Barefoot, partly-clothed toddlers play happily close by.

A hundred similar shacks and hovels lie hidden amongst the woods, those nearest the road doubling as bars and shops. Customers are sifting through stacks of pineapples whilst a woman feeds her baby on a chair outside.

But don’t have any illusions. These aren’t houses – not as you or I would know them. No doors, or windows, no garden path. A slab of corrugated iron here, a scrap of chicken wire there. An earthen floor. No mosquito nets. No electricity either.

You’ll find no fridge, no washing machine, TV set or computer. No drains or sanitation. The only water comes in yellow plastic containers, fetched laboriously by hand or bike from the nearest working pump – which could be around the corner or half an hour’s walk away. Untreated water. And – let’s be crystal clear – not enough food.

Just remember for a moment that this is not a war zone, nor a famine-afflicted area, either. With its jobs in tourism, poorly-paid as they may be, this is a fairly prosperous village, by Kenyan standards. Yet nearly every Kenyan you’ll meet here is chair-leg thin.

Time to get real again. Let’s not flatter our expectations about the growing wealth of ‘developing’ countries. The gap between North and South splits ever wider. This is sub-Saharan Africa, and that’s simply how it is.

Half the world is struggling to eat at all, whilst we in Europe and America blithely eat ourselves to death.

Best keep that in mind, if ever you feel the need to complain about your life. Who really cares if the hotel buffet seems repetitive and unimaginative ? Because, let’s face it – there’s food for us to eat, and far too much at that.

Ahead of me, a minibus has stopped outside a clump of roadside stalls. Two men get off, and two more get on – whilst a third shins up to hang on outside the door. He waves cheerfully, and gives me a beaming smile as they pass. Then the bus driver toots and stops again, and the process repeats once more.

Another mimosa tree, and in its shade a guild of carpenters is hard at work, planing furniture from darkly sumptuous wood. What they’re making I’m not quite sure – a piano, a desk, or a coffin, maybe ?

At last I reach a bunch of shacks and stalls with waiting buses. I cross beside the newly-painted ‘Marks and Spencer’ sign, and turn around. Just three kilometres will bring me to the hotel – but I’ve seen enough to keep me thinking many miles more, and down a longer road than this.

How rich for me, and for you as well, that the world forgives us these lives we lead. But please don’t tell me – just don’t you dare – that we deserve it, by whatever twisted logic we construct. Or that we have neither the time nor means to solve the plight of Africa.

So many intractable, complex, frustrating problems, surely. But for heaven’s sake, we can’t escape the obligation to help our fellow man, however much we try to ease that moral failing in our minds.

The dusk is falling, and the fading light has sparked a hundred piles of glowing embers to flicker dimly beside the road.

The smell of woodsmoke hangs sickly sweet in the evening air. It’s the abiding, defining scent of sub-Saharan Africa. Insufficient food, cooking on an open fire.

I run faster now, back towards the beach. Before too long, the village voices fade into depths of blackness, and the cloak of night enwraps me before the hotel gate.

The darkness falls hard and quickly here. Because this is Africa, and that’s simply how it is.

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The night air presses hot and thick outside the windows. The ancient bus groans and heaves itself another mile along the road. It’s four a.m.

A slim throw of light weaves ahead, as we slalom around endless potholes, the creaking chassis of the bus vibrating stiffly with every bounce of broken shocks.

And beyond our beam, it’s only darkness. As black as pitch – there is no distant orange streetlight glow here; no twinkling, reassuring glimmer of a distant homestead to break the gloom.

The rain is falling softly now, sluicing insistently down the windscreen. There are no wipers on the bus. But after a while, the drops somehow reassemble a filmy view of the road in front, and it doesn’t matter any more.

This is the main East African coastal highway – but don’t imagine any shiny roadsigns to announce that fact. No white lines, nor other traffic, either. Just deeply pitted, decaying tarmac. Puddles and blackness stretching far ahead.

In the distance, our headlights pick out two women walking slowly with five yellow water containers and a bicycle between them. Where have they come from, at this unholy hour ? Where are they going to ? I just can’t say.

The black fingers of the night fold tighter, squeezing closer to the roadside. Behind us, to the north, lie Watamu, Malindi. Lamu. Beyond that, perhaps Somalia, somewhere far beyond. And ahead of us: the port city of Mombasa, and then – who knows ? Tanzania, a ship to Zanzibar, or Mozambique ?

But tropical Africa won’t stretch so far, this time. It’s the airport that’s in our sights. A journey home – this trip now slowly beginning to unwind itself, as they always do. A reversal through the mirror, reflecting on lives lived another way.

An hour past Kilifi, the first laconic light of dawn shrugs itself wearily into the sky. The trees of the rainforest are slowly thinning now. A few minutes later – a clearing. A house. More bush, and then a field or two. A village. A hotel. A hundred shacks of corrugated iron, mud and straw.

The day arrives to greet the outskirts of Mombasa. Roadside stalls. Shops. Huts. Hovels. People and cars, aimlessly wandering. And finally the city itself – no seaside beauty, this place, but it looks far more prosperous than when we drove the other way. A grimy, desperate shithole then, now it looks buzzing, more reasoned, enticing – faintly thriving, even.

It’s just perspective. Two weeks can change a man.

The rain falls more heavily now. As we pass the oil refineries, I see our driver’s knuckles tighten as he stares determinedly through the cloudburst. There’s no airconditioning or fan to clear the fog, so Moses jumps up to wipe the misting windscreen. It’s the twentieth time this morning.

Soon after, he rises slowly to his feet, just before the airport. He’d like to wish us all a safe and happy journey, and hopes to see us back here soon. We’ll be very welcome. ‘And please don’t forget us, here in Kenya.’ If we want to leave a tip of thanks, then he and William will be very grateful. Their families will be, too.

The woman in front of me sighs in sharp annoyance. ‘They’re never slow in coming forwards to ask for money, are they ?’ she moans.

I brace the politest of smiles across my face.

‘Yes, exactly. And my God, don’t they need it ? They’re starving half to death.’

I reach into my pocket, and from the disgustingly deep pile of notes I find there, unpeel a thousand shilling note. It’s hardly anything at all for bringing a whole family safely through the forests of the night. Just £7 – and, anyway, who am I kidding about generosity ? – I can’t change Kenyan currency back at home.

The Englishwoman falls silent. A flash of anger rises above the grimace on her brow. Then slowly, quietly, she reaches in her purse. Pulls a hundred shilling note, and puts it back. Replaces it with twice that much. Finally, decidedly, she cuts five hundred shillings from her pack, lays them down on the dashboard, and with a fleeting toss of highlights climbs off the bus.

A few moments later, I follow. But there’s no chance now to catch her eye – right here, beneath the steps, a thin, emaciated man with hollowed eyes, dirty clothes and a grubby muslim headdress demands my full attention. He stands and peers imploringly into my face. ‘Carry heavy bag, please ?’ he offers.

* * * *

An hour later, our last shillings safely spent on cake and croissants, we’re getting on the flight. I shuffle down the aisle, find my seat and fold myself to fit. A moment’s rest to close my tired eyes, and try to think about this trip. So much to say, but how could I ever find the way to start ?

Just then, I hear a teenage voice, three rows in front. ‘Aw, Mum,’ she whines. ‘It’s not half as good as Virgin. There’s no seatback videos on the bloody plane.’

And now I understand. That here’s as good a place as any for me to begin.

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