Fever

Always carry a first aid kit.

A small group of us have driven Land Cruisers over deeply furrowed roads, kicking up blinding sheets of fine brown dust that circumvent the vehicle's seals, to the Omo River valley in the far south of Ethiopia near the South Sudanese and Kenyan borders, hours from civilisation, on a photographic expedition to shoot the traditional African tribes of the Omo. It is remote.

There are more ways to fall ill in remote Africa than there are ways to avoid it. There is malaria, of course. There is bilharzia, cholera and Rift Valley fever. Diphtheria, giardiasis, yellow fever, sleeping sickness and dysentery. Never drink the tap water. Don't eat fresh fruit unless you peel it yourself. And don't touch your face after you've held a baby, shaken hands with the tribal chief, or handled the consistently filthy money. Sterilise your soap. Tie a plastic bag around your head when you shower. Set fire to your clothes before you put them on.

Something seemed slightly amiss to me when I sat on the toilet with a rumbling belly and it quickly became a scene from a Danny Boyle film. It was like throwing open a faucet.

Within hours I was struck down with fever. It was 38 degrees out and 39 within. The group, encamped with the Kara in the tribal village of Korcho on a high bluff overlooking a grand bend in the Omo River, hastily assembled a cot in one of the wooden huts, divested me of shirt and shoes and wrapped me in a wet towel. Diagnosis: amoebic dysentery.

Here's a handy tip: travel with a nurse. My retired nurse friend Joan, who invited me on this trip, was immense help in administering medication. I knew what I needed but was so weak I couldn't elevate my voice. Paracetamol for the fever. Immodium for the diarrhoea. Electrolytes, medicinal charcoal and antibiotics. We ravaged my first aid kit.

Slowly the fever receded. I found enough strength to get myself up so I could lay down again. I crashed on a cot in one of our army tents, but when the fever stubbornly returned an hour later with renewed vigor I was too weak to call out for help and could only stretch out my hand pleadingly in the hope someone would walk by. All I got was plenty of goats. They would stop and stare into the tent and think, "Oh, man, that guy looks like crap," and move on. This isn't working terribly well, I thought. I tried collapsing onto the ground and remaining motionless. Still nothing. So, with whatever strength I could muster, I dragged myself to the threshold of the tent and managed my best impression of Clint Eastwood being taunted with a water canteen after three days in relentless desert sun. It was a dramatic performance. I was quickly swarmed with people.

They crammed some more paracetamol into me and the fever backed off. Piper, the tour leader, appeared insistent on a medical evacuation by helicopter, but I didn't want to miss the remaining tribes and struck a deal with her: since I was still conscious and sensible and responding to medication, we would give it 24 hours and then make another assessment. But I said she should immediately med-evac me if I became delirious.

And I told her to pass on the message to the goat king.

Superhuman

There is a kind of pleasant, dreamy delirium to vaulting across timezones and wandering through airports. 

As the world operates around me I drift through it, outside of time, liberated from the tyranny of temporal physics imposed on other mortals. When tired clerks shutter shops and cafe staff mop midnight floors I am piercingly lucid. Between punctuated catnaps and confined three-hour sleeps my invisible body, released from the demands of time's agenda, orbits through spinning clouds of passengers, yawning zombie-like. 

It is the transiting circuit through the living of ghosts and mythical beings.

Saudia reviewed

To my delight, I must have scared everybody off Saudia Airlines with my previous comments. Not only were both flights in and out of Saudi Arabia very comfortable with full service and full meals every few hours – even for transiting passengers during the layover in Riyadh – but I practically had both the modern-equipped planes (an Airbus A320 and a Boeing 777) to myself. An entire division of elegant air hostesses served a couple dozen passengers. And I didn't think any airlines still gave away those little comfort kits of eye masks and toothbrushes.

All this for $300 from Africa to Singapore?

This is what airlines used to be like before the industry became a bankrupting proposition. I guess Saudi Arabia has so much oil money that throwing a wad of it at the national carrier is pocket change.

In an Ethiopian home

We doff our shoes and enter the one-room Harari house. My guide, Sisay, has invited me to the family home of his girlfriend for coffee, Ethiopian style. Ethiopia is the home of coffee, and the traditional way it is served throughout the country is dubbed a ceremony, such is its deep infusion in the culture.

Sisay's pretty girlfriend welcomes me at the door. As soon as I enter, however, I am floored by her sister. She is stunning: a handsome woman in her forties with orange-painted nails against dark chocolate skin and dyed henna corn-braids. She wears a full-length yellow and black deria, the light cotton traditional dress of the Harari women, and bronze, silver and metallic blue peacock feather earrings. My inner photographer wants to expel everyone else from the room, including her husband, and do a complete shoot just with her.

I regain my senses in time to collapse onto the floor. The protocol of making oneself at home in Harar is to stretch out on a rug and prop oneself on one arm on a pile of cushions. I do as I am told.

Sisay's girlfriend prepares the coffee. She rinses some pale green coffee beans, locally-grown and organic, and tosses them onto a tin charcoal stove to roast. With what looks like a small woven basket lid she fans the glowing coals with one hand, then shifts some of them to a bowl-shaped burner and sprinkles incense over them, disseminating the smoke with a little tin can-like chimney. Sisay plucks and passes me a handful of chat leaves.

Chat, or khat, is a controlled substance in many countries but is legal in Ethiopia. It is a plant with an amphetamine-like stimulant that produces a mild euphoria when chewed and makes one more talkative. It also purportedly aids digestion.

Chat has been a social ingredient in the horn of Africa for centuries. The World Health Organisation considers it a drug of psychological dependency – though less so, and less harmful, than tobacco, marijuana or alcohol – and the bustle in the local chat markets from first thing in the morning appears to confirm this. Still, it seems the worst that can be said of chat, apart from the inelegant clamour for it, is that it competes as a crop with coffee and staples such as sorghum and millet, and farmers are switching to the more water-intensive crop because they can make a greater profit exporting it to countries like Yemen.

Sisay gives me a handful of peanuts with the chat. The peanuts help to grind the leaves and mask the slight bitterness. I pack the mix into my cheek and chew as the coffee beans, now fragrantly roasted to a dark brown, are scraped off the stove into a mortar and pounded with a pestle. Our young host places an earthen coffee pot, called a jebenna, onto the stove, pours the ground beans in with a cupped hand, and tops the pot up with water. Everyone else indulges in the chat. I still don't notice any effect so work through a second, and then a third, handful.

Yet another beautiful girl enters. What is going on? She is the neighbour, come to join us for coffee. She lounges on some cushions on the opposite side of the room. Drugs, incense, beautiful women... I think I'm enjoying this.

Sisay packs a shisha bowl with apple tobacco and passes me the snaking pipe. Shishas, or hookahs, the glass water pipes for smoking tobacco, are actually banned in Ethiopia, but the ancient historical trading junction of Harar has gained semi-autonomy in recognition of its cultural identity, and the local administration allows shishas as a cultural Muslim practice. Which I'm happy about. I love it. The smoke is sweet and smooth, inducing not the slightest inclination to cough, with a flavour reminiscent of anise that slightly numbs the tongue.

The aroma from the coffee as it is poured into small cups is not bold or harsh but gentle, the subtlety best appreciated from the lip of the cup. I sip. It is smooth, and velvety like dark chocolate. The consistency is more akin to cocoa, as the finely pulverised grounds are part of the brew, than to a filtered espresso. It is served with or without sugar, and if sugar is taken it may be stirred or not. I opt for sugar unstirred, which allows a layer to develop in the bottom of the cup and each sip to get progressively sweeter.

Smoke from the charcoal, incense and tobacco fills the air. The home is warm and cosy. I start to feel mildly relaxed and happy from the chat, though I continue to chew as the effect seems short-lived. This might account for why the Harari chew chat steadily for hours. In any case, part of the effect is that it stimulates chewing, as I was to discover hours afterwards when I was still, to my annoyance, working my tongue uncontrollably.

The Ethiopian coffee ceremony consists of three servings: the first is called abul, the second tona, and the third is berakha. Typically the grounds in the bottom of the pot are not replenished, so the third serving is the weakest. It is usually for children. Sisay fires up another shisha, which I eagerly await. Videos of traditional music play on the Ethiopian equivalent of MTV as we all lounge and sip our way through the coffee ceremony.

To finish we have ashara, a tea made from the roasted husks of the coffee beans. This is not part of the ceremony, but simply a nice treat. It is unexpectedly delicious, and florally aromatic in a familiar way that infuriates me until I finally pinpoint what it reminds me of: jasmine.
I am drunk with stimulants. Coffee. Ashara. Tobacco. And a countless amount of chat. I think I've had too much. I feel a bit anxious as we get up to leave. Ethiopians are not big on long goodbyes, so I thank them, take a last appreciative look at my beautiful hosts, and disappear unceremoniously out the door.

Saudia

I'm flying home from Africa now – a 38-hour journey, involving two 9-hour layovers in Riyadh and Singapore. There are better timed routes than this, but flying Saudi Airlines and the Singapore Airlines-owned budget carrier Scoot, I can accomplish an Addis Ababa to Sydney fare for less than A$600.

Saudi Airlines is so cheap that it beats the nearest-priced competitor on the route from Addis to Singapore, the reasonably-priced Ethiopian Airlines, by a factor of three. Enticing, but suspicious. Why is it so cheap?

Reviews of Saudia are seriously mixed, and there is no fence-sitting. International routes seem to receive better appraisals than domestic. Some passengers prepared to forgo certain conveniences, such as being able to transit Saudi Arabia as an unaccompanied woman (disallowed), praise the prices. I think these passengers are men. Others vow never again, recounting experiences of rude staff, neglect of safety procedures, and aisles full of passengers, luggage and oxen.

The Aviation Safety Network details the airline's record. In 2008 one of the engines of a Boeing 747 caught fire after landing. Dramatic, and the plane was written off, but all passengers and crew were evacuated safely. In 2000 and 2002 there were hijacking attempts in Iraq and Sudan – frightening, but hardly the airline's fault, and dangerous destinations anyway.

It would seem that Saudi Arabian Airlines does, however, hold a dubious attainment of featuring twice in the top ten most deadly air disasters. A fire on the plane at Riyadh airport in 1980 killed all 301 aboard. And a mid-air collision with a Kazakhstan Airlines flight in 1996 killed 349.

Hm.

Well, I'm already booked.

Harar

An hour's flight east of Addis Ababa, and another hour by road, is Harar. A major trading junction between Ethiopia and Somalia for centuries, the people speak their own language, Hadarenya, and are majority Muslim in a predominantly Orthodox Christian country.

The Harari are friendly in a different way than the people in Uganda. Ugandans are enthusiastic and expansive. The Harari are laid back and a bit more reticent, though I am readily welcomed by strangers many times with handshakes.

The children are often excited at the "farango", the local word for foreigner ("ferengi" in Ethiopian Amharic). One little girl runs up and hugs my legs. Others call out, "farango! Photo, photo!" eager to pose and see the result on the camera. Even the adults are at complete ease with being shot. This is a vast difference from the Ugandan villagers who, considering it a social intrusion, get extremely angry if you take their photo. The men will point menacingly at you and shout, "You! Fuck off!"

Jugol, the hilly walled section and heart of ancient Harar, is the oldest part of the city and is as lively, lived-in and bustling today as it was in the middle ages. Lonely Planet says to be mindful of your wallet in the Jugol, especially in the market, and my guide, Sisay, tells me the same thing. But the people are welcoming and friendly and I never feel anything but safe.

The market is colourfully packed with lanes of orange and yellow sacks of spices and brown and pink-painted porcelain coffee pots. Incense fills the alleys outside tiny mosques squeezed into corners. The smell of charcoal stoves wafts from inside the walls of homes painted white, salmon, chocolate or aqua, the latter reserved for those who have completed the Hajj to Mecca. We walk up a cobbled street for tailors, all sitting at tables sewing with Singers in front of shops piled with bolts of cloth, and down another street for butchers, who carve meat from hung slabs peppered with flies.

Sisay is under instruction to show me the city as a photographer, not as a tourist. I don't want to see the museums. I want to see how the locals live. Sisay is one of them, and he shows me. In fact, he is a hobby photographer himself and understands the photographer's sensibility. He doesn't own a camera yet but he is saving for one with his work as a guide.

To show me the life of a local family, he invites me to his girlfriend's family's house for a traditional coffee ceremony. Of course, I jump at the offer. It turns out as one of my favourite experiences on the entire trip.

~ ~ ~

I hired Sisay through Teddy Belay, a Harar guide who specialises in catering for photographers. Teddy also arranged the transport into Harar from the airport in Dire Dewa. Teddy can be contacted by email on teddyharar@gmail.com. Sisay can be contacted on +251 913 450 433. I recommend them both.

Ethiopia time

Ethiopia operates on the Julian calendar, not the Gregorian used by the majority of the world. It has 12 months of 30 days, followed by a short 13th month of five days (six in leap years). The year begins in Gregorian September. It is presently 2006.

The day begins at sunrise: our clock starts in the twelve o'clock position at midnight; theirs starts in this position at our 6am. So a clock running Ethiopia time always appears six hours fast. Or slow. Though initially confusing, this actually seems sensible – why begin the day in the middle of the night?

This could all be horribly confusing if the Ethiopians were not entirely prepared to use Western time with tourists. They essentially run two systems.

I think it's a shame the world didn't settle on the International Fixed Calendar: it has 13 months of 28 days, which operates much more closely to the 28½-day lunar month on which the entire concept of a month is based in the first place. Each month has exactly four weeks of seven days, meaning that the dates of each month fall on the same day of the week as the next month – the first always falls on a Monday, the second on a Tuesday, and the twelfth on a Friday. This accounts for 364 days in the solar year, leaving one monthless day (or two in leap years) as global holidays – Year Day and Leap Year Day.

The idea never got much traction. Religious groups objected that these extra days interfered with the pattern of the seventh day of rest. Strangely, the only institution that ever adopted it was not a country but a business. Kodak. The film company. It was their official calendar until 1989.

Getting around Addis Ababa

After the fiasco of my flight out of Rwanda I arrived in Addis Ababa three hours late for the Meskel eve celebrations. It was frustrating, given the effort I had gone to so I could see it, but such things happen. Travel is full of unplanned events.

The mood in Addis was still celebratory. Music was playing and people sat drinking with groups of friends in their courtyards while the smell and white haze of smoke from innumerable bonfires blanketed the sprawling city. I got just a taste of it. My friendly driver from the great little Addis Regency Hotel, J.J., who picked me up from the airport, was sympathetic with my frustration. On the way to the Regency we swung by Meskel Square, the site of the central celebrations and major bonfire, where we located the ashes and, per tradition, drew a cross on our foreheads, as the Catholics do on Ash Wednesday. I'm not religious but was happy to participate in the festival in even a small way.

The following day was a public holiday, so the usually frenetic roads were quiet and the typically chaotic traffic subdued. It was a nice but false introduction to Addis. It isn't usually so easy to get around.

The cheapest mode of transport in the city is on the public transit system of orange and yellow buses, but I was warned off them. They are crammed with pickpockets. Violence against tourists in Addis is almost completely unheard of (would-be perpetrators fear too much the consequences: if caught by the police, they could be beaten to death in front of you. Since the oppressive regime of the Derg in the latter 20th-century there remains a healthy fear of the police, though this has abated somewhat in recent years). Pickpockets, however, abound. Common sense and an air of confidence, though, with a few phrases in Amharic to sound like a local, will dissuade them.

The better transport option is the private licensed blue and white minibuses. These are found all over Africa. An independent traveller could actually cross the continent in them, provided you can understand the destination the conductor shouts out the window. In Addis the prices are fixed, and they won't cheat you.

For the beaten up blue Peugeot taxis and the little blue three-wheeled tuk-tuks with white canvas roofs called bajat, prices need to be negotiated. A short trip shouldn't cost more than 100 birr, about AU$6. And when you tell the driver where you're going, forget about street addresses. They are meaningless. Locals don't use them, or even know the street names. As is the way in old cities, navigation is by landmarks and districts: you tell the driver, "Take me to the Itegua Taitu Hotel in Piazza."

Now, Ethiopia...

Ethiopia: ancient Abyssinia, land of Sheba, Ras Tafari, home of coffee and mother of modern humankind. Itinerary: visit the tribes of the south, explore the ancient history of the north.

The Rwandan genocide

I quit the Ugandan safari early, after the gorillas, to get to Addis Ababa in time to see the Meskel eve celebrations (which I missed in the end due to a flight cancellation – see earlier post). The fastest way to Ethiopia was via Kigali, capital of Rwanda. I had half a day to kill in Kigali, so I stopped into the Rwandan Genocide Museum.

It is terrible. The museum is powerful, awful, wracking and affecting. Beginning with the simple precursory history of how the Belgian colonisation sowed the seeds of division between the socio-economic classes of Hutu and Tutsi, it builds in a crescendo to the horror of the 1994 genocide that exploded beneath the impotent supervision of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR).

Priests collaborated with the armed extremist genocidaires, the interahamwe, to kill their own congregants sheltering in their churches. Family members were forced to kill family members. Parents were forced to kill their children before they were themselves killed. Woman and children were specifically targeted to prevent a new generation of Tutsis. Victims were thrown down deep latrines on top of one another until they smothered to death.

In one room, a montage of interviews with survivors was playing. One young woman, distressed at recalling the gentle happiness she shared with her husband before the genocide, spoke with a tremulous voice. "We lived a simple life," she said. Her hand gestured in futility before returning to cradle her head. "He was a carpenter. He made doors and tables." Tears were exhausted years ago but the pain of reliving her loss was visible in her eyes. Short sentences were all she could muster. "He was always looking for something to do. He wasn't lazy. He was a noble man."

It was too much. I turned away and wept quietly.

In another section called the Children's Room, profiles of child victims are lamented with a sentiment that they should have been the country's future. Here is David. Age: 10. Enjoyed making people laugh. Dream: becoming a doctor. Last words: "UNAMIR will come for us." Fate: tortured to death.

Rwanda today is a phenomenon. No one is anymore considered Hutu or Tutsi; everyone is Rwandan. After the undulating dirt roads of the Ugandan countryside and the sooty chaos of Kampala, Kigali was patently prosperous. Modern buildings were common. Roads were clean and in excellent condition. The government has instituted a series of grass-roots programmes rooted in cultural practices, such as Umuganda Day. On the last Saturday of each month a half day of community service is a public obligation, like jury duty. Everyone – everyone – contributes to the public good, cleaning streets, repairing roads and building schools. Rwandans have created their own pride in their small nation. It is a remarkable turnaround from a country that was completely destabilised and moribund just twenty years ago.

The silverback

We ascend on steep and muddy roads, rising into the twilight mist of the lush volcanic jungle, the truck undulating up the terraced mountainside. Above us hangs Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. That's where the gorillas are.

This densely populated area jeopardises the very existence of the gorillas. One of their greatest threats is destruction of their forest habitat through subsistence farming, like the tiers of green beans and cabbage we see from village to rural village. Bwindi is one of the parks that have been established as a preserve for the apes – there are only 700 or so left – and where the farmlands end we enter.

Nine gorilla families have been habituated to humans. Eight of us are tracking the Busingye family, led by four guides. The lead guide briefs us on a few things. Don't eat in front of them; they'll want some, and will come take it. Move gently. What to do in case they charge. Charge? What I will do is shit my pants. These are big, strong, wild animals. But charging is a bluff, just to say, "back off." Correct protocol is to fall on the ground as though you're injured. Like fainting. Sounds instinctive enough.

The hike begins at 2500 metres. Olympic distance runners train at this altitude. After a long march on a narrow trail fording puddles of mud over stones awkwardly spattered across the muck, we begin the climb up the mountainside. The forest is dense, but the guides cut through the foliage with these razor hand sickles that slice through branches like linguine.

Down a steep ravine we descend. At my habitual sea level I'm reasonably fit but in this thinner atmosphere I struggle to keep the pace. Up the other side of the hill through tangled wet vines I plant my walking stick into the slick humus, dragging myself up the vertical face with burning lungs, slipping on the clay and begging the guide to let me take a break. The porter in front of me hears and reaches down. He grabs my hand in an arm wrestle grip and hauls me up into the green cloud. He doesn't let me go, and we keep going up, up, up. It's like the strong hand of God. I am so grateful.

I look up. We've all stopped. Everyone is tightly assembled in a small clearing. "The gorillas are there," the lead guide indicates to one side with a nod. "Leave everything here but your cameras."

The apes are eating and resting, so they are dispersed across the hillside. We inch around a muddy ridge and encounter a female nestled in the bushes, watching us timidly through a window of leaves. She seems a bit apprehensive as we whisper to each other and excitedly snap shot after shot of the docile, gentle creature. She quietly abides us, but seems as if she'd rather we move on, and after a time we do – the guide tells us that the family's alpha male, the big silverback, is nearby.

Ducking through grasping branches we come across the head male lounging on his back, scratching his arse. It's not exactly the image of the powerful giant ape of David Attenborough fame. One of the guides gets too close trying to clear the view for our cameras, invading the space of the silverback, and he rolls up onto all fours and charges forward a few knuckle-steps. He rears upright with teeth bared like stalactites in a blood red cave, throws apart titanic black arms, and roars with a devastating ferocity that flattens trees and curdles mud. Each of us goes utterly to water, collapsing like our spines have been plucked out our heads and cowering like subdued monkeys. When the blast passes over us and we meekly emerge from the shielding of our arms, the silverback has returned to scratching himself. The four guides remain unmoved through the event. "Don't worry," one of them says blithely. "Just take pictures."

Just take pictures. Sure. Every one of us missed the money shot.

Looking for lions

The top of the Land Cruiser pops up and the six of us peer out like meerkats at the bok on the grassy savannah. This is the best place to look for lions. They prey on the herds of bok here.

These tough old safari Land Cruisers are exceptional vehicles, purpose-built for the African terrain. Six of us in the back of this diesel engine on wheels have been bounced across potholes on the pink scar of red clay roads that rive the jungle green, hauled up into the volcanic mountains where the soil changes colour to a richly fertile muddy chocolate as black as the skin of the farmers who work it, and ratcheted back down into the expanses of sallow grassland. Some stretches on the road have been eight hours long. It's not a trip for those prone to car sickness, particularly with the diesel fumes in the cabin. So it's nice to periscope ourselves out the top of the vehicle and breathe the fresh air.

"Oh, look at this!" we shout and point and chatter like monkeys when we abruptly uncover a large, curved-horned waterbuck behind a clump of brush barely three metres away. We spook the shy creature with our excited cries and it bolts, leaving us holding cameras half-cocked and looking like stunned children left out of the game.

We blow a great shot. "We are such humans!" Magda laments comically, and we concur to shut up. It's our first lesson of the day.

The truck joins a small convoy of three other vehicles and we leapfrog between sighting wild boar and elephants. But the real quarry today is the lions. By nature furtive creatures, they're not easy to spot. Six heads pan and sweep, watching for indications like scattering bok, but we come up with nothing. The drivers work together, from time to time stopping and conferring in Lugandan, then spreading out in a net to scour the archipelago of dense green thickets dotting the savannah. Suddenly the vehicles congregate. One of the guides has spotted a pride lying in the long grass with a freshly killed water buffalo. Found them!

We surround and close in around a particular bush like cats on a kill, clustering in a tight group, jockeying for vantage, but we can't get any closer than about 200 metres – it isn't permitted to go off-road in the national park (rangers will impose a US$100 fine, a significant penalty on Ugandan wages).

There are eight vehicles, now, with people peering out roofs through binoculars or standing on top with telephoto lenses.

"There! There's one!"

"Where?"

Inadequate descriptions of coordinates follow, referencing bushes and trees... no, not that bush... the sort of triangular-shaped one... in line with that tree... to the right of the tall one.... And then there is the swish of a tail. There's a head, with the outline of the ears. A lion gets up and prowls around the bush and we fire off some shots, straining over the distance.

One tiny lion in the expansive landscape. It's as good as the humans today are going to get.

Dead Zone

Internet access is hard to come by in the deserts of Ethiopia's far south, and I am well behind in blog posts. Now returning to Addis Ababa and the north, stories should return to a regular frequency.

Still to come: gorilla tracking in volcano country, the Rwanda genocide, chewing chat, drinking goat's blood, flirting with fifteen-year-old girls, amoebic dysentery and jumping bulls.

Breaking update: flight cancelled

Meskel is one of the significant cultural events on the Ethiopian calendar. In this deeply Christian country it celebrates the finding of the true cross, purportedly in the country's hills. On Meskel eve a great bonfire is lit, and the priests and participants dress in full regalia. The largest celebration is in Addis Ababa and is a colourful and vibrant affair, touted as the best place to be in the country. It's the kind of thing travel photographers look for.

However, I was scheduled to still be on my Ugandan safari. So I cut short the safari, abandoning plans to meet with a  friend upon the tour's return to Kampala, and instead headed to Uganda's southern border. The Rwandan capital of Kigali was half a day closer to me by road than Kampala, and I could catch a flight from there to Addis Ababa on the morning of Meskel eve.

Visas can be issued at Rwanda's land borders, but a letter of facility from the immigration department is required. You must request it online, and the letter is emailed. I waited nearly a week longer than the advised response time and finally tracked down the department on Twitter and obtained the letter. I caught a taxi to the border, walked across, got a 3-day transit visa, and piled into a packed minibus with 15 other people for the three-hour journey to the capital.

The only practicable flight was scheduled for 2am, which meant an eleven-hour wait at the airport. At least I am told at check-in that the De Havilland Dash twin prop has only eight passengers scheduled, so it should be a comfortable flight. But at 1am I'm advised that the plane, coming from Entebbe, has a flat tyre and will be thirty minutes late. Or not, as it may not arrive at all. At 2.30am it's confirmed that it isn't coming. Ethiopian Airlines may instead try to divert another flight to pick us up. But at 4am it's revealed this won't happen, and that we'll be put up in a hotel instead.

There is another flight at 3.30pm. However, it is fully booked. The following flight is at 11pm – well after the end of Meskel eve. I tell the guy from the airline, who is doing his reasonable best, that I'm a journalist on assignment to cover the festival and that I must be on the 3.30pm flight to reach it in time, as even that is cutting it extremely fine. For a little persuasion I pass him my travel writer business card, hoping the airline wants to avoid any negative travel press.

The hotel is reasonably nice, but fails to avoid complaint by a lack of hot water. Perhaps they knew a cold shower after just four-and-a-half hours sleep would wake me well up.

It turns out that I do get booked onto the 3.30pm flight and am waiting now in the same lounge I was twelve hours ago. Boarding time is in half an hour.

Purportedly.

The chimpanzees of Kibale Forest

Harriet blazes a trail through the forest, and we follow as close as we can. "Let me know if I'm walking too fast," our guide says, "and I'll slow down." But we have it easy. The morning group had to chase the chimpanzees, who were feeding and on the move, at near full pelt. Inge, who competes in triathlons, later said that after several hours she didn't think she could make it.

But the apes tired themselves out, too, and this afternoon they are resting. I was ready for a bit of a run, but as we move from an open patch to a copse of trees we are suddenly and unexpectedly upon one barely three metres away. It seems to me that we are too close, but the ape lolls in the grass on his back and regards us with complete nonchalance. He seems so gentle that I want to touch him. Magda echoes my thoughts: "I want to touch him," she says. Of course, the moment any of us encroached on his personal space we would see just how much a wild animal he is. A chimpanzee is four times as powerful as an adult human, and has fearsome teeth – as is evident when the great ape yawns.

We move on and find the alpha male grooming his first lieutenant. Grooming between males forms bonds which are vital for maintaining troupe hierarchy, as one male alone can not maintain dominance without key backers. The two trade positions, groom some more. Then they lay down and doze in the quiet forest.

The peace is sharply broken when out of sight in the trees a chimp gripes and, with an unsettling volume, the two in front of us scream and hoot in response. Apparently, one of their senior males was complaining that another was giving him grief, and the two bosses were saying, "leave him alone! If we have to get up there's going to be trouble!" A little while later a junior chimp makes a similar sound and the apes below do nothing. Chimpanzees social politics.

Neighbouring chimp communities are often hostile to one another. Chimpanzees are the only animal apart from humans to declare war on a neighbour and take over territory. The researchers in Kibale have watched it happen. It is brutal. If they trap a male from another group they will beat him with sticks to kill him. When his body is inert, a nominated member from the community will act as doctor, listening for a heartbeat. If he indicates the victim is still alive, they continue beating him. Harriet says she has seen the alpha male finish off the wounded by cracking his ribs and jumping on him so that the bones pierce the organs. Chimpanzees are ruthless.

They are naturally fearful of people, but this group is habituated to humans. In fact, they are habituated specifically to black people in khaki greens (the researchers) and to white people (the tourists). They remain wary of local villagers. In fact, there could be something of a symbiotic relationship here. These chimps may consider us recruits to dissuade attacks from competitors. Neighbouring chimpanzee communities appear to wonder, "who are these strange upright chimpanzee mercenaries?"

The Ugandan village people

"Howareyou? Howareyou?"

The children chant whenever the Land Cruiser full of mzungu bounces past them. They scream and run joyfully to the roadside, waving. "Helloooo!" It has become a game for us to spot them and wave back. No one ever tires of it.

People are everywhere. Everywhere. There is never a stretch of road, no matter how rural, that isn't flanked by a trail of villagers or by bicycles laden broad with bundles of sticks for firewood. The adults stare at us, all of them, not in impertinence but passive novelty.

We pass markets with chickens stacked in cages and meat hanging unrefrigerated in the open air. It is freshly slaughtered, and tomorrow there will be a new kill. Women in brightly patterned layers sit before enormous bunches of green bananas for making matoke, a starchy savoury mash, or carry away broad bowls of sweet yellow bananas on their heads.

On the Sunday we see village women in their best dresses and beautiful jewellery going to church. These are farmers and the rural poor, but they are not pitiful. Nor are they out of touch with the modern world; just as I slip into a stereotyped perception, someone pulls out a mobile phone. Even in these remote villages are signs on huts selling airtime with Ugandan telcos.

Murder in the airport lounge

I can put up with a lot travelling. Stinking bodies packed into a minibus. Questionable food and stomach cramps. Roiling potholed roads for hours on end.

But there are people in this world whom I shall throttle if I am only permitted a moment alone with them in a closed room: those people who discover a song they like and play it over and over. When it finishes they start it again. They like it so much. Isn't this a great song? Let's play it again. Oh, it's over so soon. I'll start it again. I could listen to this all day. Let's do that.

I have nearly twelve hours to kill in Kigali International Airport, Rwanda. There is one cafe, I am in it, and they are driving me out of it with this same bloody song. Here we go again, for the... thirteenth time? Fourteenth?

Tour groups

It's a gamble with tour groups. You can end up stuck for days on end with whingers who complain that the food is better at home and the hotels are dirty, or endless orators missing their mobile phones who have to keep their heads aloft with jabbering mouths lest they collapse from the vacuum therein.

Of course, you don't have to do a tour. Uganda can be travelled independently, but it takes time, patience and pluck. Once you get out of Kampala, finding guides requires research or local knowledge, and accommodation in villages can be an eye-opening experience in poverty and sanitation. So for most travellers, including the independent-minded Solonaut, a tour group is wise. The Association of Ugandan Tour Operators credits umpteen dozen, and after researching opinions and comparing costs I settled on Gorilla Tours.

The upside of tour groups, of course, is the best part of travel: meeting people and, even more, befriending them. I've been lucky with my tour groups around the world, and lucky again in Uganda. I've hooked up with four Dutch and a Pole (my second time of this unlikely combination; and what is with all the Dutchmen everywhere? We repeatedly run into them; it's become a standing joke). They're good spirits. We have a lot of laughs.

Kampala by boda-boda

The real way to see Kampala is from the back of a boda-boda. I came intending to do just this, and was lucky to find Walter's Boda-boda Tours rather than gambling with any random rider off the street. Walter runs a professional local outfit with about fifteen trained staff, providing passengers with helmets and safe riders who "obey the road rules" (there are road rules?)

One of Walter's senior riders, Michael, collects me at my hotel. He will in time reveal himself to be highly knowledgeable. Aboard his motorcycle we first climb Kololo Hill to where the embassies and the homes of ambassadors and dignitaries are located. Everywhere in Kampala there are people and traffic, except here. The only locals seen walking the paved roads among the manicured lawns are gardeners, walkers of dogs, and dogs. "This is how the wealthy live in Kampala," he says. "To live in those houses you would have to pay three thousand US dollars a month!" I respond instinctively with "wow" and then immediately realise that's the average rent in Sydney.

We descend the hill into the slum of Kamocha. Rolling dirt hummocks plough through corrugated iron shacks, and women cook on charcoal fire pits between puddles of fetid water. This is where all the people are. Hundreds of them. But this is just a fifth of the slum's population, Michael tells me, as everyone is at work in the city. "Come here during the morning commute," he says. "People fill the road. You can hardly get through." There is much poverty in Africa. Life is a struggle, and not only for the poor.

Up another hill to the peaceful gardens of the only Bah'àí temple in Africa (where I begin to suspect indoctrination when we linger too long under a lengthy explanation of the Bah'àí faith), past the once-great Makerere University, and down Col. Muammar Gaddafi Road to the 360-degree views from the minaret of the Gaddafi Mosque. The place was funded by the Libyan dictator after the grand mosque project of his friend Idi Amin was abandoned half complete for twenty years following his overthrow. Amin himself overthrew Milton Obote, the man with whom he had orchestrated the overthrow of King Mutesa. It seems there was a lot of this going on.

Idi Amin tortured and executed Obote supporters in a concrete bunker on the grounds of the King's palace. Obote used it as well. Nearly a hundred people at a time would be crammed into each of five square rooms without sanitation, many suffocating, all dying in the electrified moat that penned them in. Thirty-five thousand of them. It's a bare and rather unremarkable place but for a few things: the haunting muddy handprints on the walls from people tortured in the water with shocks; an attestation on a wall that a subsequent visitor would never forget that her husband was killed here; and a message in charcoal from a victim: "Obote you have killed me but what about my children?"

Downtown Kampala

I amble among the throng of people over the undulating urban terrain of cracked concrete and muddy bricks, intending half-heartedly to find a certain tourist sight and not really caring if I find it. I am here to be in it, to experience the city life as the locals live it.

Kampala has the same population as the whole of Australia. Ugandans are very friendly, polite people who will often greet you in the street. "Hello", and always "how are you?" and sometimes "how is your family?" All of them look at me – mzungu can't help but stand out – in curiosity and mild surprise but without staring. I feel quite safe. The hundreds of boda-boda riders chatting in groups parked at the roadside regularly ask me if I need a ride. Boda-bodas are pillion-passenger motorcycle taxis, so named because they emerged to ferry travellers across the sometime long distances between no-man's-land between border checkpoints – border to border. They are notoriously dangerous. By one account there averages five fatalities in Kampala a day.

It's just shy of 30 degrees today and the constant smell of vehicle exhaust is briefly dispersed by heaven-sent bursts of cool, humid air. I turn off the congested main road at a major intersection and down an even more congested side road towards Old Kampala. I'm not far from Nasser Road, where you can get any kind of forgery that you want: university certificates, passports, you name it. But all my documents are in order. I'm heading to the Old Taxi Park, the "organised chaos" of the blue-and-white private minibuses (called taxis) which are the heart of the Kampala transport system. No part of Kampala can be called inauthentic, but this is truly the local experience.

Past the cluttered shops of mobile phones and shoes with people sat on stoops the crowd grows ever more dense. We pass the poor who sit and beg silently with open hands. Rolling footpaths give way to broken tracks like trench ramparts and, as the cramped shops yield to dusty market stalls selling cloth and second-hand clothes from the banks that pen in the crowds, I finally enter the taxi park. The ubiquitous taxis press between full-sized buses discharging cross-country passengers and their luggage into the morass of people as boda-bodas squeeze into any vacant crevice. This section of road is less like a thoroughfare than a choked evacuation. The street ingests and constricts and engorges the lot, passing the vehicles and people in an urbanological peristalsis until it expels them at the other end to rejoin the circulation of the city.

At last I reach the mouth of the street at the top of a hill. Kampala is all hills. The road curls around the Ugandan Muslim Supreme Council Headquarters, a mosque-like structure from what I can discern outside the barbed-wire-crowned walls. I sit on the grass embankment to rest a bit, pulling from my pack a bottle of water and a fig to munch. The only others who sit on these banks are the poor and the beggars. The steady stream of staring locals must all surely be thinking: "What the hell is mzungu doing HERE?" After a short while a few young men walk past with a look less curious and more menacing than the others and I think, right, time to move on.

It is easy to accomplish an instant getaway. I look up, wave to one of the boda-boda drivers in the constant stream who all watch me with Pavlovian interest, briefly negotiate a 4,000 Ugandan shilling trip to the city centre (A$1.65; mzungu fare, probably double what it should be but I don't quibble over it), and in seconds I'm hurtling off into the chaos.

Kampala

"Mzungu!"

I am mzungu . White man. They call to me in friendly tones and smile, and I wave back. As far as I can see, across all the bobbing black heads, I am the only mzungu in Kampala.

People are walking everywhere on the variously intact and broken footpaths that line the mud-rendered traffic-packed asphalt, yet the hotel staff thought it was strange that I wanted to walk into town.

"Bad idea", one of them said. She was likely concerned that I would be pickpocketed rather than mugged. Kampala isn't Nairobi. Violent crime is rare. I have read. So, blissfully confident in this, I sauntered past the "No guns" signs in the foyer and marched out the hotel gate, bidding adieu to the guards checking with mirrors under cars for bombs.

I pass by the Electoral Council of Uganda, a minor fortress with police in fatigues wielding shotguns posted outside long, whitewashed, razor-wired walls. The whitewash is wonderfully glazed with informational paintings and bold instructions on the democratic process: "Participate in elections by organising democratic rallies"; "You must be registered to vote." I approach one of the gun-toting officers and, extending my journalism credentials, ask him if I can shoot the building. (Okay, I said "photograph the building".) He tells me to go inside to ask permission, but the guards want me to leave my backpack at the gate until they can verify that I am who I say I am, and not someone simply wanting to get into the Electoral Commission of Uganda with a backpack full of C4. I'm not too keen on leaving it unattended as it actually contains expensive camera equipment, so I decline and move on.

As it turns out, I don't shoot Kampala at all. Though everything is in a constant state of deterioration, incompletion and perpetual repair, the city is utilised and occupied, and I want to capture its dirty, bustling life. But Kampala's sole mzungu flashing around his fancy Canon is not a good look.

Flying stinks

I carry Vicks Vapo Rub to put under my nose à la CSI autopsies (a myth, by the way; coroners do no such thing) to mitigate potentially noxious in-flight odours. There is no shortage of miasmic menace on a plane – smelly feet, body odour, Lynx aerosol deodorant, halitosis, farts, last night's garlic, turbulence-induced vomit (speaking of which, where's my sick bag? Have budget airlines done away with them to save a few cents? Somebody is one day going to be sorry).

Fortunately, the air is inoffensive on the Sydney to Singapore leg of the voyage. Next will be from steamy Singapore to baking Dubai, and then onto tropical Uganda.

Stay seated until the aircraft is full

I read an article on LinkedIn written by an airline CEO titled "A Common Sense Solution to Slow Airplane Boarding". When I read the title, I thought he had it. But he didn't. He completely missed the point. He wrote about the efforts of the airline industry to improve boarding times using creative algorithms and fee incentives. That might be business, but it isn't commen sense. It's common sense just to wait.

Get on last. Let the crowd thin. Guess what, passengers? The plane is not going anywhere without you. Haven't you wondered about all those imploring announcements urging various names to get on the damn plane so they don't have to hunt down luggage in the hold and remove it? No, people, you can relax. While everyone else jostles, sit with a magazine at the gate on a chair comparatively more comfortable than your cramped seat on the plane. You're going to have to wait in one of them.

There are two caveats to this advice: 1) if you're flying business class then what are you waiting for? But you're not; you board first, anyway; 2) I'm assuming your seat is allocated. If you're flying a budget carrier with unreserved seating, like RyanAir, then scramble, shove, and shiv your way to the front.

Why it is a bad idea to visit East Africa

Today I begin my malaria tablets.

I'm already shot up full of hepatitis and typhoid vaccines. Now I've come across warning that there's been a flare-up of meningococcal meningitis in the south Omo Valley of Ethiopia, my main destination where I will be shooting the southern tribes. I don't intend to French kiss them so meningitis is manageable. But the World Health Organisation also reported a recent outbreak of yellow fever, the mosquito-borne haemorrhagic disease, in the same area. They're on the ground containing it right now. Local mosquitoes French kissing me are considerably harder to avoid, so I got vaccinated two weeks ago. I had to if I wanted to come home. Australia won't let me back into the country without immunisation.

In fact, they don't even want me to go. The Australian government's "smart traveller" website says of Uganda: "Reconsider your need to travel to areas bordering the Democratic Republic of the Congo." The Bwindi Impenetrable Forest of Uganda, where I will be tracking the mountain gorillas, sits right on the border. The late Dian Fossey was based here. And murdered here.

From there I cross by road into Rwanda about 100km from Goma, the provincial capital seized from Congolese government forces last year by M23, the allegedly Rwanda-backed Tutsi rebels. Tutsi and Hutu militia have persisted since the Rwandan genocide of 1994. There was further fighting near Goma in July.

"Reconsider your need to travel" is the Australian government's second-highest security advice. The highest is what it says of Ethiopia: "Do Not Travel." Not actually for all of Ethiopia, but the border areas with Somalia, Sudan, Eritrea, Kenya... well, all the border areas. Harar, one of my first stops, is only about 120km in a straight line from the Somali border. Actually, it's the border of Somaliland, an unrecognised breakaway state which is reasonably stable. Aksum, on the other hand, is about 50km by road from the Eritrean border. The war with Eritrea formally ended 13 years ago and the border has been permanently closed since, though there have been skirmishes as recently as 2010. This is the region where five western tourists were killed and two kidnapped by gunmen last year. This is my destination in the north.

But not to worry. Yes, I'm a westerner travelling solo, but I will hire guides.

They carry rifles.

Airport layovers: from pods to luxury

Sydney to Uganda. It's not a straightforward affair. There are certainly no direct flights to Entebbe, or indeed to anywhere in East Africa. The busiest and easiest transit hub is Dubai, to which I'm flying via Singapore. I'm trying to keep the cost of this trip down (and failing spectacularly – African tours and safaris can be shockingly expensive) by flying on Singapore Airlines-owned budget carrier Scoot, then onto Dubai flying Emirates on points.

An eight-hour layover in Dubai before the next flight out to Uganda presents a small what-the-hell-do-I-do dilemma. Sleep seems the obvious answer. I figure finding somewhere to get properly horizontal will get me to Entebbe in better shape than turning foetal on airport seating, so what are the options?

Dubai International Airport has an in-terminal hotel for A$180 a night. Between disembarkation and flight check-in I'd get less than six hours' use of it. That certainly isn't frugal. A quirky alternative that appeals is the Snoozecube, a simple bunk in a fibreglass pod tackily plastered with vinyl murals of forests beneath fluffy-clouded blue skies. It is purely a private spot to doss, perfect for a brief layover. But at A$20 an hour it soon approaches the price of the fully appointed hotel room. Comparatively, it's even more expensive than a standard room with shared bathroom in the Ambassador Transit Hotel of Singapore's Changi Airport. Of course, Changi is one of the best airports in the world, featuring a luxury four-star hotel in the terminal as well, but I do wonder if the New Zealand-owned Snoozecube might find itself in more airports (Dubai is the only one) with a more reflective price. I'll be putting out for the hotel.

Warming up the engines...

After an extended hiatus, the Solonaut is preparing to crack Africa. Stand by for dangerous undertakings.

The Minefield

"Stick to the path or you will die. And you'll kill others."

The minefield in the forested hills is dense—about ten mines per square metre. We gingerly follow the leader along the snaking cleared path. I have never seen a more perfect conga line.

Ivan is a veteran of the siege of Sarajevo. A stocky and innocuous-looking father in his forties, he today runs a hostel in a 300-year-old house near the eclectic and lively Ottoman centre with its quaint cafes and wooden-shuttered shops. But he also takes his young guests on tours of the frontlines of the 1992-1995 blockade. He is keen to educate them; most are hardly older than the siege itself.

Earlier, Ivan picked me up at the East Sarajevo bus station, a cheerless place inside a fenced parking lot. He greeted me gruffly and lugged my backpack out of the foyer as I felt sullen eyes follow us out. The bus station is disconnected from the main Sarajevo bus depot by the division of the city between the Bosniak-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic, and it was not until we crossed the administrative line back into the Federation in his rattling Volkswagen that he relaxed.

"I'm not comfortable there," he said. "Those people know me."

Ivan was one of the civilians who armed themselves and established a frontline in the surrounding mountains to protect the city from the Serb Army when it shelled the population. In those days he alternated fighting with collecting wood for his family for the bitterly cold winters.

In these lush, silent mountains once popular with hikers, scores of plastic mines still exist, invisible to metal detectors. Clearing them is expensive and time-consuming. We walk the tightrope behind Ivan through the eerie wooded minefield that separated the two-kilometre-long frontlines. After a hushed few minutes we reach the other side and look back. The Bosniaks and Serbs were barely fifty metres apart.

Ivan had been stunned at how neighbours who spoke the same language suddenly hated each other over religion. He never saw it until the war. Since then the division has been even greater.

"To be a patriot is stupid," he tells us. "They all died in the first few months. I fought for my wife, my child, my sister, my mother. I fought for those who loved me."

He turns to the tour group with an earnest expression. They are his son's age. "If ever there is a problem in your country, just take your passport and leave," he says. "I made a mistake. I didn't think war would actually happen in Bosnia."