THE AFRICA Virus

With a daunting trek ahead of us, the petrol problem had to be solved. Our bus was quite thirsty on tarred roads, and we expected it to be worse on unpaved terrain. Then, on a Volvo truck in a scrapyard, we found a tank with a capacity of 120 litres. The only possible place for this was on the self-constructed roof rack, and the fact that the bus was now pretty top-heavy didn’t worry us too much.

We also needed to decide on the exact route to take. The shortest route to Zaire led across Uganda, but the rule of the infamous Idi Amin made that far too risky. The Kenyan newspapers contained reports of his terror regime, and it must be remembered that President Kenyatta did not really lead his country democratically either! To reach Rwanda, we had to go back to Tanzania and take the shortest route through the Masai Mara and the Serengeti Park. With a cat and a dog? Let’s do it.

Tanzania - Rwanda

In our youthful arrogance, we were confident that we would somehow be able to travel through the Masai Mara and the Serengeti with our pets. And, as a matter of fact, there was no control of the interior either in the parks or at the border crossing of Kenya-Tanzania. We locked the cat in the cat’s basket, and the dog stayed well on the ground when we ordered it. This was quite amazing for a former street cobbler who was only about half-a-year old.

We had a litter box for the cat, but the dog had to be let out at times. We did this from time to time, somewhere in the open plains when no other vehicle was to be seen. We drove the whole route through the two parks in one shift. We also saw some animals, and very often such large herds of wildebeest as I had never seen before or since then.

At the Rwandan border, the customs officer (who was obviously drunk) wanted to have a look at the roof