The Terrible Cafe Lemsid

 Excerpt from Chapter 7 of my forthcoming book ---Travels with My Hat, 85,000 words 8 pages pictures.         Chapters on Ethiopia, the Royal Tour of Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen. Pictured is the terrible                      Cafe Lemsid in the Western Sahara, from the final chapter on Morocco.

                                                                

...I’ve often thought I’d found the middle of nowhere on my travels, only to realise that I was on the edge of somewhere, but the Café Lemsid was definitely in the middle of nowhere. Caramel and raspberry red, it resembled a giant lolly that had fallen off a desert transport and surrounding it lay the detritus of local civilisation: burst tyres, perished fan-belts, broken lobster-traps and empty port-a-gas cylinders. A rug was stuffed in a hole in the wall to keep out wind-blown sand, and among items stacked behind its counter were boxes of Gunpowder tea, flour, candles, packets of “Tide”, balls of string and inevitably— tinned sardines.  It’s owner said fresh fish arrived daily from Boujdour, so that even in this god-forsaken place I was able to sit down at a broken table for lunch (grilled dorade).  A lame, fish-eating chicken hopped about for scraps: it would never be killed and eaten, I decided; it was much too horrible. As I settled my bill, a grand-taxi pulled up and I half expected it to disgorge a host of characters from a Fellini  film—dwarfs, transvestites and dancing bears—but they were merely crushed passengers from Dakhla, relieved for the chance to stretch their legs on their long journey up to Agadir...

EPIC WALK - GREAT READ

SAHARA: by Paula Constant

It is with regret that I have reached the end of SAHARA, the account by Australian writer Paula Constant of her epic walk across the Western Sahara, to Mali and ‘not quite’ Niger where authorities forbade her to continue across this volatile belt of Africa with on-going Tuareg dissent and latterly, an active al-Qaeda cell.

Indeed God knows what might have happened had she continued her journey. While courageous, the plan must be seen as politically naïve considering the events, sometimes tragic, that have befallen travellers in this desperate part of Africa.

SAHARA is long — almost 400 pages, but I found it gripping from beginning to end, and while I hold the above view, I found it a rivetting read.

Though haunted by a failing marriage (the least interesting part of the book) and plagued by difficult guides, perpetual interest in herself — as a lone white woman walking with camels — burrs catching in her clothes and a urinary tract infection about which she is brutally frank—Paula still managed to write a diary after walking an average 25kms a day, from well to desert well.

Her writing is achingly descriptive of a landscape that often has little to describe. And it is never repetitive. We encounter the nomad tea-making ritual on a dozen occasions, but something colourful is always included to make it different to the last one.

Her character comes across as tough, honest and determined, and her writing flows easily from page to page, like the great dunes she crosses with her camels.

I particularly loved the part where on hearing the evocative music of the Saharoui, she and her two guides jump up, stamping out a rhythmic dance on the desert sand. “Madani and I dance with our arms up and out to the sides ..he stamps his feet and cocks his hand over his head…I hold my arms out and turn my hands, my hips roll and twist beneath my melekhva.” ( the sari-like dress worn by Saharoui women).

Paula Constant is one cool head and one helluva writer and I feel her publisher—Bantam— might have done her better in the choice of paper, and a cover that does not buckle up.

And while the writing can stand alone in this powerful account of ‘love, loss and survival’ it begs for pictures of the splendid and maddening people she met en route. Especially her nomad guides— M’Barak, Madani, Mohammed, Ali and Ibrahim.

Bantam 2009— ISBN: 978-1-74166-929-9

Images of the Western Sahara: www.copix.co.uk

Visit to the Ogaden: Excerpt from Chapter 1 Ticket to Addis Ababa

..Only the political correspondents were invited to the evening banquet in Menelik’s old Imperial Palace in Addis Ababa. Back at the hotel, I added my name to the list of journalists wanting to visit the famine belt, and next morning, escorted by Ethiopia’s portly Minister for Relief, we took off for Gode in a chartered DC3.

Gode lies in the Ogaden, a vast tract of south-east Ethiopia bordered by Kenya and Djibouti, and sharing a historically disputed frontier with Somalia. A semi-desert region, it supports only scraggy shrubs and trees, but the Webi Shebelle River crosses it before flowing into the Indian Ocean, more than 1,000 kilometres (500m) from its source in the Ethiopian highlands.

‘We’ve had no response to our appeal for medical teams,’ Shimalis told us in the Gode refugee camp where one skinny doctor, two tired nurses and three overworked dressers were attempting to care for 12,000 starving victims of the famine.

‘She will die,’ murmured the doctor of a wasted mite whose arms were no thicker than my fingers. ‘There have to be mass graves before anyone wants to help, and once you find fresh graves, we have lost our battle against the drought.’ He sighed deeply.

Times are never normal, or good in this god-forsaken corner of Africa, where Somali nomads roam in a perpetual search for sustenance. Both for themselves and their herds.

Shimalis frowned. ‘They are a primitive people who eat food on the hoof, using a special curved knife to slice steaks off the living animal, then packing the wound with mud.’

Hammered by the sun and buffeted by sand-laden winds, it had been five years since the Ogaden had received a drop of rain. Wherever I looked, sun-bleached bones punctured the desert landscape. Even the hardy camel herds were dying. Walking away from my colleagues, I came upon a small group moaning softly around a dried up water hole. One was a mother with two young whose hump had shrunk to a flab of skin.

She salivated, rolling her tongue, as the twins butted her udder in frustration. As I watched, she sank to her knees and rested her chin on the sand. A buzzard took off from a twisted acacia, then another and looking up, I saw other scavengers circling in the washed out sky. I had encountered many unpleasant situations on my travels when I’d tried not to cry, but conditions in Gode brought on tears... ..

www.travelswithmyhat.com
Images: http://www.copix.co.uk/

THOUGHTS ON FRANKINCENSE TRAILS 2

' I entered a world unchanged since the frankincense trade,' said Kate Humble, the engaging presenter, of the desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia. To wit, the iconic tower in Riyadh owned by Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal who made million dollar deals, on his mobile, while chatting to her..

The appellation 'His Royal Highness' has long annoyed me for addressing eminent sheikhs. Can someone put me right with the Arabic equivalent?

I would dispute the veracity of a script claiming that incense caravans took only two weeks to cross the 'Empty Quarter' a 225,000 square mile sand sea occupying central Arabia.

Miss Humble cried in the first programme, when she put on a niqab in Sana'a. In last evening's programme, her tears were flowing on hearing the prayer-call in Jeddah. Does she cry at the sound of church bells, I had to wonder?

At one point she told us 'you must advance certain causes that you believe in.' but we were never told what they were.

Behind the glamour of Frankincense Trails 2, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia remains, the most misogynist regime in the Middle East.

Miss Humble had the opportunity to rant about inequality, but the remark by her humourless guide, 'I don`t believe in women playing sport` (of women playing netball) said it all.

But it was an attractive film and no doubt divers will eat their heart out for the pristine wreck of a ship carrying frankincense, embedded on a Red Sea reef.

C.Christine Osborne

Images: www.copix.co.uk