Shots Across the Water, page 22
First published in the UK in November 2024 by
Journey Books, an imprint of Bradt Travel Guides Ltd
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Text copyright © Patrick Nash
Edited by Samantha Cook
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ISBN: 9781784779818
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Every time I have done something good in my life I have been fortunate to be surrounded by wonderful people. This was the same for this book, so thank you all so much.
My wife Amanda Stone encouraged me to write the book and helped me every step of the way – particularly when I got stuck.
I wrote most of this book at Urban Writers’ Retreat in Devon, Gladstone’s Library in Hawarden, Flintshire, and the Garsdale Retreat in Cumbria.
The book was produced by the great team at Bradt Guides. Thanks to Claire Strange, Anna Moores, Samantha Cook, Ian Spick and David McCutcheon.
My daughters Miriam Nash, Evie Nash and Treya Nash have enjoyed hearing some of my stories and encouraged me to write them down. And thanks to my parents Norman and Mary Nash, who were supportive of their 22-year-old son undertaking what to them must have seemed like a dangerous journey.
If a copy of this book ever makes it to Rob Evans, please get in touch.
Finally, I must thank all the people who helped me on my journey. I hope that I have suitably acknowledged them in the story. There were so many people who were kind, generous and helpful. I particularly want to thank Michael, the Regional Director of UNICEF in Bouar, Central African Republic. Without the support of Michael and his family during a time of sickness, I expect I would have become much more seriously ill – or worse.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After leaving school in 1975, Patrick Nash worked his passage on a cargo ship from Liverpool to Melbourne, Australia. Arriving with £50 in cash and a cousin who put him up, he spent the next nine months travelling around most of the country and working in factories in Melbourne and Sydney to finance his travels and the journey home.
After graduating with an economics degree in 1980 he set off on his own on a journey around North and Central Africa, walking and hitchhiking over 14,000 miles.
When he returned, after more than nine months, he became part of the team that set up one of the UK’s largest vegetarian food wholesale co-operatives. He went on to lead on the development of an eco-village in the north of Scotland. In 1999, Patrick set up the largest workplace counselling service in the UK, Teacherline, along with charities and social enterprises that worked in education to promote healthy working environments.
In 2005, while setting up a contact centre enterprise, he decided to relocate to the Welsh Valleys, an area of high unemployment, in order to create jobs and growth opportunities. Connect Assist now employs more than 500 staff, providing 24/7 support to many thousands of people who face challenging circumstances including mental health issues, poverty and debt, asylum seeking and more.
His first book, telling the story of his career, Creating Social Enterprise, My story and what I learned, was published in 2023.
Shots over the Water is his second book.
CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
1 Israel, Gaza and Egypt
2 Sudan
3 Uganda
4 Kenya and Uganda again
5 Zaire
6 Central African Republic, Cameroon and Nigeria
7 Niger
8 Algeria
9 Morocco
10 Europe
PREFACE
It was our last day in Zaire and we were heading towards the border. We needed to get there soon, as our visas expired that day. As we got closer the forest started thinning out and we could see small grassy hillocks, fields and signs of agriculture. We eventually arrived at Zongo on the Ubangi River, the border between Zaire and Central African Republic. It was a tiny place, with a few shacks and a run-down immigration building with the roof falling in. It was quite chaotic. On the shore were a number of dugout canoes which were the only means of transportation across the river to the modern city of Bangui that we could see in the distance.
We were very relaxed going into immigration, our passports were fine and we got our exit stamps. The problem came when we reached the customs office, which was a tent on the shoreline. The customs official looked at our passports and then asked for our currency declaration forms. No problem, as we had got these signed at the bank in Goma where we had changed dollars into zaires, the currency. We handed the forms over.
‘You have not spent enough,’ he said. Rob, who spoke the best French, explained how we had travelled and that we had not spent very much money. This didn’t work and the customs official became angry. He demanded that we pay a lot more, basically all the money we had. This sounded like a demand for a bribe. Luckily he had not taken our passports, which were back in our passport bags around our necks and under our shirts.
The customs tent was right by the dugout canoes and we had the exit stamps that we would need to enter CAR. The official went outside and walked to the immigration building. This could get very complicated. Rob said, ‘Let’s get in this dugout.’
There was one moored a few feet away and we ran in and told the ferryman to set off immediately. He got going at some speed. We were halfway across the river, which was fairly wide at that point, when we saw lots of activity on the Zairean side. Men were shouting and waving at us. Then a shot was fired.
We looked back and saw more shots hitting the water and only just missing our dugout canoe.
‘Plus vite, plus vite!’ Rob shouted at the ferryman.
INTRODUCTION
An intrepid traveller would now be hard-pressed to traverse the African continent at its widest point, passing from the Red Sea to near the Atlantic, while staying within a country that is not being torn apart by a civil war or recovering from one, has not suffered a military coup since 2021 or is not a failed state occupied by a toxic mix of rapacious politicians, militia and Russian mercenaries.
The traveller’s undoubtedly inadvisable route would take them from the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray, at war until last year, then across Sudan, where an internal power struggle within a repressive regime has metastasised into general violence, and into the Central African Republic, now seen by many analysts as the best example on the continent of the worst that can befall a nation.
After this comes a difficult choice. A northern route could go via Chad, ruled by a 39-year-old soldier who seized power in 2021 when his father was killed in battle after three decades in power, and Mali, racked by multiple insurgencies, Islamic extremists and more Russian mercenaries hired by the second military ruler to take power in recent years. Another itinerary could take in Cameroon, convulsed by a lengthy civil war, and Burkina Faso, which suffered two military coups in 2022 alone.
Either way, our traveller would need – along with some very expensive insurance and much luck – the means to cross the keystone state of Niger, which has become the latest country to fall prey to what now appears to be endemic instability.
Extract from ‘Niger’s coup adds to chaos in the Sahel, but it may also offer some hope’, Jason Burke, The Guardian, August 2023 In the spring of 1979 I was in my last year studying economics at Bristol University and finally knuckling down to revising for the final exams. Over a drink one night I was sitting with my friends Ann and Keith and the conversation drifted to what we planned to do once we had completed our degrees.
‘We are going to Swaziland for a year with Voluntary Service Overseas,’ said Ann1. ‘We are really excited to be going, probably in November.’
‘I’m thinking of doing a journey across Africa,’ I found myself saying. I had been thinking about this, but it was currently only a vague idea rather than a serious plan.
‘Where are you planning to go?’ asked Keith.
‘I’m not sure really,’ I replied. ‘Maybe I’ll get to Egypt and just head south.’
‘Well, if you keep going south you’ll get to Swaziland, so why don’t you come and stay with us when you get there?’ Ann asked.
I know now that I’ve made most of the significant decisions of my life very quickly and often based on a chance conversation, a seemingly random thought or a mo
In January 1980 I set off on a journey that would define my life, crossing what are now some of the most dangerous regions in the world, especially as a young, naïve white man who lacked confidence. If you look at the Foreign Office travel advice today you would be clearly advised not to do this trip. All but one country I travelled through have significant areas showing Advice against all travel (shaded red) with much of the rest being Advice against all but essential travel (shaded yellow). If one of my daughters suggested they wanted to do this journey, I would do everything I could to dissuade them.
And yet I survived a trip that took in Gaza, Egypt, Sudan (including what is now South Sudan), Uganda, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo (then named Zaire), Central African Republic, Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger, Algeria and Morocco. There were moments that were dangerous, periods of illness, times when I felt despairing and many times when I thought I could not carry on.
Why did I go?
When I left school in 1975 I was desperate to travel. Although shy and socially awkward, I built up some confidence travelling to Australia working my passage on a cargo ship, then working and travelling by coach around that large country. After nine months I returned home and went to university for three years. One summer I hitchhiked to Greece and slept rough on the beaches. I funded this by working 12-hour night shifts in pickled onion factories and camping in fields in the Netherlands. I once slept a night under a bush next to the Colosseum in Rome. I had some travel experience.
After three years at university I still had itchy feet. I finished my studies in 1979 but could not face the prospect of a career. Almost all the students around me were interviewing for banks, accountancy firms and the civil service. All were my idea of hell.
I had heard lots about the overland route to India and met a few people that had done it. It was appealing. Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India excited me as countries to visit. Then in early 1979 the Shah of Iran was overthrown and later that year the US Embassy was seized along with 66 Americans, the majority of whom were held as hostages for over a year. A month later the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan. Suddenly this wasn’t such a feasible overland travel route.
The conversation with Ann and Keith turned a vague idea into a sort of plan. As I thought about it I soon realised that I knew very little about the continent. I had a rough idea of the geography, I had studied the history of ancient Egypt at school and I had read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. That was pretty much the sum total of my knowledge.
Most maps of the world have a size bias towards the north. I didn’t think Africa looked that big! What a fool I was. The journey didn’t look that far, but needless to say I underestimated how long it takes to travel hundreds of miles of dirt tracks balanced on the top of old lorries. Or walking all day in a hot, humid climate. Or crossing the sand track of the world’s largest desert. I didn’t think about any of this. I look back at my 22-year-old self and don’t recognise how unprepared and frankly casual about this trip I was. To their considerable credit my parents were supportive.
Preparation
I turned 22 years old in October 1979. I was about five foot eight inches tall, skinny, with messy, scruffy blond hair and a beard and moustache. I wore thin round metal John Lennon glasses from the NHS. My skin turned brown easily and still does. I was a vegetarian and although I sometimes eat fish now, I don’t eat meat, having a lifelong hatred of the taste and texture, how it makes me feel and the politics of food. I gave no prior thought to what I would be able to eat on this journey.
I didn’t do much planning, but what little plan I had was first to fly to Israel and work as a volunteer on a kibbutz. I had developed an interest in communities and co-operatives while at university and this seemed like a great opportunity to experience this type of living before travelling to Egypt. The fact I could travel to Israel and enter Egypt from there was possible due to the Camp David Accords of 1978 followed by the Egypt-Israel peace treaty signed in 1979. As a result the normalisation of relations between Israel and Egypt would go into effect in January 1980, and the border between the two countries, in the middle of the Sinai Desert, would open.
I decided that I would need a second passport. Many of the countries that I would subsequently travel through would not let me enter if I had an Israeli stamp in my passport. I had no idea whether I would be able to get a second passport but in December 1979 I went to the Passport Office in Petty France, Westminster and waited in a queue for about an hour.
When I got to the desk I explained my situation.
The very helpful woman behind the desk said, ‘We typically issue these for business travellers and require a letter from your employer.’
‘I’m not a business traveller,’ I replied, ‘but a second passport would make a difference to my ambition to visit Israel and then travel across the new border to Egypt.’
She must have taken pity on me as she asked me to wait while she consulted with her superior. Another hour passed and eventually she returned with the manager. I was taken to a small room where I explained that I meant to travel from Israel to Egypt and from there south to Swaziland. They both took notes and then told me to leave my existing passport with them along with the two passport photos I had brought and come back the following week.
The following week the woman I had originally met presented me with my second passport along with my existing passport and wanted to know all about my travel plans. She was clearly interested and I think she may have swung a decision for them to agree to this. It is still possible to get a second UK passport but it’s not something the government shouts about.
I spent December getting a variety of inoculations – against cholera, hepatitis B, rabies, meningitis, polio, tetanus and more. I got a year’s supply of malaria tablets. I had the second gamma globulin shot (against hepatitis B) two days before Christmas and was ill for a week.
I bought a canvas rucksack about 13 inches square and 8 inches deep. It was small, but roomy enough for three light shirts, two pairs of light walking trousers, three pairs of socks and underpants and a light sweatshirt for the cold. I added a couple of books, a map of Africa, four small notebooks to write a diary, two pens, my year’s supply of malaria tablets, some plasters, a small sewing kit and a mosquito net. Tied to the base of the rucksack was a small one-person tent and sleeping bag. I packed a collection of postcards of famous London sights, as I’d read somewhere that it was good to have a gift to give to people along the route. I didn’t take a camera as I felt that this would create a distance between me and the people that I met along the way. I wore a wallet around my neck which held my passports and vaccination certificates and my trousers were held up by a money belt with a zip on the inside that contained £250 worth of carefully folded US dollars in cash, worth about £1,400 today. I hoped that would be enough.
In January 1980 I left my family home in south London. I didn’t have a job or a partner to come back to. I didn’t have a schedule or plan other than to fly to Israel, travel overland to Egypt and head south to Swaziland. I could have travelled on an organised tour in a lorry and with a group of people just like me. But I didn’t want that. I wanted to travel the same way that local people travelled.
This journey set me up for the rest of my life and career. If I had not done it, I don’t think I would have made the decisions that I subsequently made. I first got inspired by a business idea in the only backpacker hostel in Juba, South Sudan. This was a pivotal career moment, which of course I didn’t realise at the time.
About this book
The starting point for this book was a collection of handwritten diaries in small notebooks that I wrote on my journey. Because of this source material, much of the book reads in the voice of my 22-year-old self, although while drawing the text together I have been able to reflect somewhat. As I wrote, I remembered a lot more than was noted in my diaries, including some of the conversations that I had along the way.
For ease of reading almost all of the dialogue is in English, although much of it was spoken in French as well as some of the main trade languages 2 – Arabic, Swahili and Lingala. Temperatures are in degrees Celsius.
