My Walkabout - The Way It Was

By Glen Filmer

In 1966, after working as a high school teacher for three years, Glen and another high school teacher set out to see the world. Not the well worn tourist track, but a hitchhiking adventure to 54 countries, lasting three years.
Aboard ship, coming home, she met her future husband, Duncan. Later returning to Zimbabwe, Africa, where they married, he continued cotton farming, and their two oldest children were born.
Foreseeing a politically unstable future, they immigrated to the Outback of Australia, where undeveloped land was cheap, and pioneered cotton growing in that isolated and inhospitable region. They survived floods, drought, wild pigs, primitive living conditions, and desert temperatures. Their two younger children were born there.
Later they started a church and school in the small Outback town of Bourke. When these were established, Duncan felt they should relocate, with their four children, to New York City to start a church and school. Selling their home and most of their possessions, they moved to New York to adapt to apartment living, learning to be street wise, and driving on the other side of the road. All previous unknowns!
The church was located in a downtown area of Yonkers, where anything and everything happened on the street. Duncan started a family business, which enabled the children to pay their way through college and develop a strong work ethic. They experienced the agony of 9/11 in a fear gripped city.
When the four children were established in careers, Glen and Duncan did a transcontinental move to California, where they started a church, built a home, and are at present helping needy families.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781543945263

Book preview

1

In The Beginning

So where’s the beginning? When does life begin? I’m not talking about biological life. That’s easy; it started with a twinkle in your father’s eye. No, I’m thinking about something far more complicated than that. Where did I begin? What began to shape me and make me? Is what I can remember, even subconsciously, what made me? Was it all those early experiences? Did the meanness, or the doting love bestowed on me, make me, or is it all about the DNA pool? I don’t know, but I do wish I’d asked a lot more questions of the dear ones that have already passed on. I have pictures of many early experiences in my head, but like window shopping, none of the stores have the same displays or sell the same goods.

I was born in the nice eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, during WWII. My father was away at the war for four years and was wounded while fighting in Egypt, so he returned to Australia and had the opportunity to have a weekend with my mother in a small rural town somewhere in northern Victoria. Nine months later, there I was. I’m sure about that because as a child if we ever drove through this insignificant little country town, my parents would look at each other in a very gooey way. The post-war baby boom didn’t begin until after 1945, but I was born in 1943.

After the war, my father purchased a poultry farm on the outskirts of Melbourne, at a place called Ringwood. My mother created the farm’s name, Glenmarjon, the combined names of their three children: Glenys, Margaret, and John. Glenmarjon was painted on a large sign attached to the wide farm gate. I can remember the old farmhouse kitchen, all the single-pane windows covered in frost, me in a highchair, a bowl of hot water on the tray, and my cold hands dabbling in its welcome warmth. I remember the jinker, a strange two-wheeled wagon that my Dad loaded with buckets of runny mash and pulled to row after row of chicken pens. I was poked between the buckets, riding in my glory, then toddling into the chicken pens behind Dad as he emptied the mashed-up brew into the hen’s long feeder troughs.

There was a huge annual event: the Melbourne Royal Agricultural Show. My Dad prepared the hens and roosters for the poultry judging, which was far more important to him than any family occasion. I remember our farm assistant washing hens and roosters in our bathtub, standing them on the bathroom cabinet, and rubbing their feathers with olive oil, then poking them with a small stick to get them used to the judge’s prodding inspection. Hopefully, when they were under his keen eye, they wouldn’t have a fit, unpreen all their feathers, and look unprizeworthy. Years later when we sold the farm and moved closer to the city, my father heard that his entire prize Rhode Island Red and Leghorn poultry had been sent to the killing floors for human consumption, thus ending all his fine breeding stock. This event was spoken about in very hushed tones if he was present.

During our last year in Ringwood, I attended kindergarten at a small private school called Winnington Grammar, where my older brother and sister were in higher grades. My only learning memory was the discovery I made that if I scratched extremely hard on the kindergarten tables, I could remove paint. I relished the thought that my scratchy round-tummy, stick figures would remain on the furniture forever. I think at four years of age, I traveled both ways to school on a public bus. Kids were smart in those days and did all sorts of amazing lone feats. My mother felt quite comfortable with me traveling this way. One time when the bus accelerated with a sudden jolt, I went sprawling the length of the bus aisle. Many loving hands helped me up, but I was mortified by the childish spectacle I had caused.

Later, when I could read, another window shows me traveling alone to visit an aunt who lived in the Dandenong Mountains, a 50-minute train ride from my home train station. My mother would put me on the train at our local station with a written list of all the stations between home and Ferntree Gully, which was the terminus of the railway line. I’d check off the stations on the list, get off the train at the last station and find a public bus in the railway parking area that had Belgrave on its visa. I’d board the bus, and after a half-hour ride, and just as the bus driver yelled, Hazel Grove! I would spot my aunt waiting for me at the bus stop. I’d scramble down the bus steps into the loving arms of my dear Aunt Bertha.

We moved to the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, and Dad took a desk job, as the heavy work on the farm played havoc with his war injury. During that era, we played outside unless it was raining, spending hours after school each day practicing standing on our head, trying to do backflips and handstands. A neighbor had parallel bars in her yard; we loved hanging upside down and somersaulting off them and getting dirty. We didn’t sit at home watching television, which was unknown in Australia during those years or spend hours coveting advertised products or watching violence. Sometimes I’d curl up in a living room chair with a book, and almost always I was allowed to read in bed for 15 minutes before lights out. It was the era of radiograms or record players. We had one that you could stack with ten records at a time, and it would play them all one after the other. My favorites were Ravel’s Bolero, Bizet’s Carmen, and of course, Peter and the Wolf. I would lie on the living room carpet and indulge myself in every note the orchestra played.

I think we were hyper much of the time, but the jumping and yelling were done outside. So it didn’t aggravate anyone. Our noise told parents where we were, and everyone knew each other’s kids. My playtime ended when my mother stepped outside our front door and sang in her beautiful soprano voice, Glenys. I’d yell goodbye over my shoulder and take off at a run in her direction. It was a safer time for children because we had very definite boundaries. Everyone in the neighborhood had similar values, and no one was afraid to correct a delinquent child; it was expected.

In primary school, I took pride in being the drum and fife bandleader, which meant I played the fife and piccolo better than anyone else, and this won me the title of Captain. As Captain, I stood in front of the band and called out the next song we’d play while the students marched in silent rows of three from the assembly area to their classrooms at the beginning of every school day. When the quadrangle was empty, I popped up my right arm, indicating this was the last song; the drums would do their drum roll, and music would cease. I’d call band dismissed, and we’d all go to class. I thought it was the best job ever. Unfortunately, not all my experiences at that time were positive. The accusation of a male fifth-grade teacher that I had lied about a situation, then slapping me across the face in front of my class for something I hadn’t done haunted me for years. I was humiliated, hurt, and ashamed, and didn’t even tell my parents, who I felt sure would support the adult’s point of view. I was forced to apologize to the other student publicly for my lie. Those were the strange old days when children never contradicted a grown-up.

I remember the dreaded window of music exams, taken every October. At that stage, my mother was working as a kindergarten teacher, so my strict, stiff, and unsmiling grandmother would accompany me to the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. My Dad would drive us there on his way to work. Nana would wait patiently for as many hours as the exams took: theory exams lasted one to three hours, and the practical only 30 minutes. The instrumental test was far more stressful for me, as I never seemed to be able to do enough preparation. For many years I learned three musical instruments: piano because I wanted to; violin because my father thought I would one day be good at it; and the clarinet because I heard someone play it and loved the sound. I mastered none, which I later deeply regretted.

The upside of music examinations was that later in the day, with all the tests finished, my Dad would meet Nana and me and take us to the Royal Melbourne Agricultural Show where there were sideshows, animal judging, and sheepdog trials: to see which dog could pen a number of sheep in the shortest possible time. I especially loved this event. So, there was the carrot to ensure I performed well during the music examinations. Nana always prepared a delicious assortment of food, so every hour or so we’d find a plank seat and delve into the tucks bag. My Dad would pick us up at a prearranged exit later in the day and take us home, exhausted but incredibly happy.

My father was a great believer in the outdoors and taught the family to be avid campers. Every school vacation, we went somewhere: to the mountains, beach, or someplace of educational interest. Shipbuilding yards, mines, and cemeteries where famous people I’d never heard of were buried. We climbed to trig points at the top of remote mountain ranges, which some early explorer had claimed for God and country, explored derelict railway stations, and Gold Rush ghost towns. You name it if my Dad had read about it, he determined that we should see it. The reason we were able to travel so extensively was that we’d been raised camping. We didn’t think it was strange to shower and toilet in a camp ground’s communal bathroom. We’d grown up doing it all our lives, and I think my mother loved the no-housework break.

Our favorite place was a wild ocean beach, and small-town along the Great Ocean Road in southern Victoria called Airey’s Inlet. It’s still our first love in shoreline 75 years later, although we no longer own the land where we used to camp. Two hundred and fifty-foot cliffs rose vertically from the edge of the sand. If you wanted to swim, you had to climb rugged un-stepped tracks down the cliffs and surf at your own risk, as there was no such thing as a lifeguard or coast guard for 20 miles in either direction. We lived by our knowledge of the sea, calculating which beaches we could walk to along the rugged shore by where the tide was in its lunar cycle, and which promontory of rocky outcrops we could navigate around to swim at our favorite coves. There was no local freshwater supply, only a well for drinking water which was always in short supply during summer, so for weeks we never washed our hair or bodies other than our morning and afternoon swim in seawater. The saltiness was never an issue. For hours every day, we walked the shores finding all kinds of shells and marine life. When it rained, we walked around in bathers, and if it was cold, we wore a raincoat as well. When there was a heavy rainstorm, the clay cliffs would become slippery gullies, ideal for sliding down on your backside. The mud ran down the cliffs staining the water in orange-clay stripes that spread out to sea. As children, we loved those muddy days.

Every afternoon my mother produced a thermos of tea and cake or biscuits, which she always carried in a picnic basket to the beach. The basket was like a handbag on her arm, and from it, she produced tasty goodies. We welcomed her treats after swimming in the cold southern ocean all afternoon.

My life during these early years was happy and unchallenging: I had no idea that life was difficult for many people because I had no contact with them. Right up to the end of my tertiary education, I don’t remember studying very hard. My father had stipulated that none of his children could leave school until they were a qualified something. You could make up your mind what that piece of paper might have written on it or qualify you for, but Dad said life was sometimes tough, so you had to be able to do at least one thing well. Teaching had been in my mother’s family genes for generations, and I loved the idea of long summer holidays, so I ended up with a secondary school teacher’s qualification. The education department paid all my college fees and gave me a small weekly allowance during those years. This contract required that after I’d completed my studies, I would teach for three years as reimbursement for my years of education. As a qualified high school teacher, my first teaching appointment was to a small dairy farming community 150 miles from Melbourne. I loved teaching, always favoring the dramatic approach with my students, and took no nonsense from them. I believed in consistency and fairness when at school and enjoyed the social life in a small country town, but as soon as my three-year contract finished, I made plans to travel as world-wide as possible.

During my three working years, I saved and budgeted, didn’t buy a car, and sewed all my clothes. Each summer another teacher and I had flown, hitch-hiked, or traveled by train, to very remote places in Australia. Whatever it took to have a good look at central Australia across to the northeast coast. It didn’t make sense to go to Europe if I wasn’t familiar with large chunks of my homeland. Another summer we took a train across the Nullabor Plain to Kalgoolie, hitchhiking north through the sparsely populated coast of Western Australia. I think the only places tougher to travel than these isolated areas of Western Australia were across North Africa and the Middle East.

Those were the years where I formed a lot of my opinions. I’d been raised in a Christian home and was expected to go to church with the family, which wasn’t a problem as most other people I knew did too, but I had no passionate convictions about anything. I didn’t particularly want to be good, but was ignorant of how I could be anything else; my upbringing had sheltered me. There was no emotion, passion, or conviction attached to my thinking. I developed my philosophy that Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, and Muslims were all headed in the same direction, which would come to a common junction somewhere down the line. At university, I chose to befriend International students, endeavoring to find out what made them tick. I found that their religion and cultural backgrounds hadn’t done anything more for their hearts than Christianity had done for mine. Three years later, when I returned home from my travels, I still didn’t have any grand philosophy. I was extremely disappointed not to have found the answers. I would love to have told my Dad, Yes, narrow is the way, but finally the highway opens out, and we’re all going to the same place. It’s just that our backgrounds and cultures lead us via different routes. My journeys brought no relief, except that I was very grateful for the home that I was raised in, being a female in other cultures looked far less attractive.

CHAPTER 2

My Overseas Wanderings

I started my overseas wanderings in Singapore and Malaya, then finally spent a year teaching English in a college in Bangkok. One of the other female teachers at the college was from the north-eastern states of Burma and had been given political asylum in Thailand. I had no idea about her origins, and only discovered them when I took her to meet the Thai family where I was living. They told me that she used a different vocabulary: the royal form. I often asked her who the guy was that was always following us. She’d shrugged her shoulders and said he was her bodyguard. I thought she was joking and never questioned her further. When visiting her elderly relatives, she’d insisted that I wear some of her valuable jewelry. It was only later that I found out it was because her family would be perplexed to meet a farang, who only wore a cotton shift and bore no signs of wealth. Didn’t everyone believe that all Caucasian foreigners in Asia had lots of money? Of course, and I did my part to keep up the image so that they wouldn’t have to change their faulty thinking.

On one occasion, when visiting the compound where she lived, as the taxi drew up outside the metal gates and broken glass topped high wall, I noticed that the entire area was in total darkness. A servant met me at the main gate and told me that there was an electrical blackout throughout the whole compound. Would I come through the entrance quietly? Later I learned that marksmen from an opposing underground guerilla group were taking potshots into their grounds. It was all somewhat surreal for me and not at all scary. I’d write home all the details to my parents, and it was they who had a fit. My Dad would write, advising me not to get involved in local politics. As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t. I’d just made a rather exciting friend, even if she did hide a tiny loaded revolver in her handbag. Often when we traveled together, I’d ask if I could carry the gun, as I felt safer that way.

I lived with Hindu and Buddhist families for 15 months throughout South East Asia, then traveled through Muslim communities from Calcutta to Istanbul. In the ’60s it was safe to travel by local bus; these stopped religiously three times a day, all the male passengers disembarked, and kneeling on prayer mats in the middle of the road, went through a long liturgy of prayers. Their wives, dressed in a burqa: a thick black cloak that covered them from the top of their head to the soles of their feet, usually stayed on the bus or walked a considerable distance away to pee. That’s when vast voluminous robes are an advantage as there was no such thing as a public toilet in these places. Jan and I wore layers of form covering clothes. Layers started with jeans, a long ankle-length dress, a huge mid-calf man’s shirt, with a shawl draped over our head and shoulders. When we needed to pee, we always chose to walk just a little further from the bus than the Arab women; our coveralls didn’t do nearly as good a job as the black, top of the head to toes capes. We always positioned ourselves in the direction the bus was going so that we didn’t get left behind. No bus driver would have imagined us to be valuable cargo. We always had to be ready to run and yell, so that hopefully the distraction would save us. One time while we were walking along a street in a small town, males took up stones and began throwing them at us, our layered garments were not sufficiently modest: you could see our ankles.

Jan, my companion, was the same friend I had traveled with the two previous summers in Australia. Like me, she had an insatiable thirst to see what we all knew only from history books, movies, and photos. Overseas we traveled with American traveler’s checks and a small amount of US cash, and from India to Turkey, we exchanged our money on the black market. Looking back, we weren’t brave, merely ignorant. Australia has no international borders, so we had no concept of the seriousness of our actions. Of course, the locals who plied this banking trade could pick us a mile off. They’d walk alongside us, whisper an exchange rate, continue to the end of the block, turn around, and as both parties passed each other again, we’d whisper something more to our advantage. This bargaining might continue a couple of times. If neither party thought it was going to be to their advantage, both parties would continue on their way. But if both parties saw some personal gain, we’d slip down a side alley, sign our American traveler’s checks, and make a quick exchange: traveler’s checks for local currency. At the same time, casting furtive glances in all directions while attempting to appear normal. Often we added 50 percent to our savings. How we survived I don’t know? Safety didn’t enter our heads; our only thought was that the better we bargained, the longer we could travel. That was it!

By this stage, we’d traveled across Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. I’d been fascinated to see Mount Ararat on a distant peak, but there was no chance of obtaining permits to get closer. From Trabzon in northern Turkey, we sailed down the Black Sea and Bosphorus to Istanbul, looking forward to the ease of traveling in European countries where we would be more easily understood. We hitch-hiked around Europe, crisscrossing it, going as far north as Hammerfest, in Lapland, inside the Arctic Circle, to see the land of the midnight sun. Then tracked down through the Eastern block to Czechoslovakia, Poland, East and West Berlin, Germany, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece, the Greek Islands, and across North Africa, from Morocco to Tunisia.

Purchasing a bus or train ticket in a foreign currency, to a destination that you can’t pronounce intelligibly, and no local can read on a map, was a challenge. On one of these imagined non-stop trips between tiny towns in southern Turkey, the bus came to a grinding halt at a remote wayside stop. With wild gesticulations, the driver made us understand we would stay here overnight. The other passengers were collecting their luggage, and it was evident that there was no public lodging anywhere. During the day, we had given tissues to parents who had a child that was sick. The tissues were to wipe the runny mucus around the child’s eyes and nose that the flies were so enjoying. We were last off the bus, and it was obvious that we had nowhere to stay; the sick child’s father indicated that we should follow him. Having no other alternative, we did. They took us to their adobe, one-room home, where we met the grandmother and four more of their children.

By this stage in our travels, I had become quite adept at stick figure drawings and sketching world maps as mostly there was no common language. The international signs for feeling sick, needing a bathroom, and where can I find food, would never have passed at a tea party, but they worked fine for us. I found that people are always interested in meeting strangers if it’s in a non-threatening environment. So I began drawing stick figures, maps, kangaroos, plus anything else that the gathering crowd might connect with my Australian roots. The curious audience would turn the drawing around, viewing it from all angles, trying to make sense of it. They’d chat back and forth between themselves, hand signaling to us, arguing, making enthusiastic knowing nods, and agreeing within the crowd that they understood our verbal attempts at globalese. In a few minutes, I’d have a whole circle of new friends, who knew my nationality, my profession, the route I had taken to get there, and what kind of transportation I’d used. International cooperation at its grassroots, with everyone wanting and willing to give information and directions to the next place we wished to go.

By the time we met the grandmother and children at their home, we were no longer strangers, and as guests were offered the very best they had. The toilet was a hole in the ground in a niche on the outside wall of their house. Oh, to have a burqa, but thankfully it was dark! We returned inside the one-roomed home. The females had removed a layer of outer skirts and tops, the husband removed a rough jacket and lay down on a leather strapped platform bed, which had no mattress, and everyone else lay on the floor. What were we to do, everyone was watching? The issue was that they had changed into night attire without revealing an inch of skin. Very slowly, Jan and I removed our shawl and man’s shirt, trying to look very relaxed the whole time. We took sleeping bags out of our packs, rolled our towel into a pillow, and lay down. They deemed us ready for bed, so the father extinguished the little oil lamp.

Next morning there was the hustle and bustle of turning the single room from a super king-sized bed, minus mattress, to a living area, while one child ran an errand. Jan and I again used the outdoor niche toilet, much more self-consciously in daylight hours. The child sent on an errand returned, and the grandmother ushered us inside. In the middle of the living area, a beautiful Oriental carpet runner covered the dried mud floor. Father indicated that we should sit on it, opposite him. By now, everyone was wearing smiles of anticipation. The wife lovingly passed a bowl containing three eggs, first to her husband, then to Jan and me. We watched expectantly. The husband cracked the egg on the edge of the bowl, held the egg to his mouth, crushed the eggshell with his fingers, and let the raw egg drip into his mouth with an expression of great gastronomic pleasure. Now we had no alternative; words were useless; we could give no explanation or reason why we should not. So smiling confidently we did the same, swallowed hard, and hoped that the slimy brew would not regurgitate into our mouths. Then followed hot tea sipped through a lump of sugar held between our teeth. The whole family returned us to the bus stop with a parcel of honey dripping sweetmeats from a wayside stall. After much hand signing, we farewelled them, knowing that we had been honored far beyond what this family could afford, and beyond what two foreign roadside travelers could ever repay.

We bought train tickets from Southern Turkey to Baghdad. The railway line on the map seemed to indicate it was a simple, but long trip. We decided to share a dog-box sized train compartment with a young university student who was returning from Istanbul to his home in Baghdad. He spoke no English, but we found we could communicate via a few German sentences which both parties understood. Unfortunately, we had neglected to notice that the railroad track crossed a tiny corner of Syria. Nearing the border between Turkey and Syria, a conductor marched through the train inspecting passports. It was only at this point that this power-filled man, with unlimited authority concerning border regulations, drew our attention to the fact that we didn’t have a visa to cross this piece of no man’s land in Syria. We were hauled roughly off the train into a shed-like office. We didn’t understand one word of the fuming conversation that followed and was unmistakably directed towards us, except that we would not be getting back on the train without a visa. It was evident that we couldn’t obtain one where we were; the stop wasn’t even at a town or a station. One hour dragged by, the train didn’t move, we waited anxiously. Suddenly something changed this powerful man’s mind; he began pointing at the train and thrusting our passports into our hands. We jumped up, shook everyone’s hand, and ran to the train.

During our 14-hour train trip, with hours of German exchange, the young student invited us to stay at his home in Baghdad with his parents and older siblings, one of whom was a teacher and spoke English. They were a Kurdish family, living in constant fear because of violent ethnic tensions between Arabs and Kurds in Iraq at that time. Every night they told us about their life-threatening experiences living in this unsympathetic society. We spent several days with them. They dressed us in their black cloaks and took us by donkey cart to the most amazing mosques and landmarks: the remains of the hanging gardens of Babylon and the convergence of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers where a unique group of people lived on floating reed rafts.

We’d hoped to be able to travel to Kuwait but learned that this would be impossible as we had no husbands or male relatives to accompany us. Fortunately, we were able to purchase a ticket on a Dutch cargo ship from Basrah, down the Shatt al-Arab River, through the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. It was an idyllic voyage: being able to communicate in English with the ship’s officers, have meals served to us three times a day, and be supervised by the captain. He watched over us like a hawk to ensure there was no hanky panky on his vessel, for which we were most grateful. Three weeks later we disembarked at Mombassa, Kenya, around July of 1968, transported from Europe’s winter freeze to the muggy tropics of East Africa. Everywhere seemed full of space, the open plains of the Great Rift Valley with its thorn trees, tall elephant grass, wild animals, and a fantastic variety of tribal cultures. From the bus, we’d see a herd of elephants dawdling along the road. Then there’d be a bus stop; women would disembark with babies tied on their backs, huge shopping bundles balanced on their heads, small children running at their side, and disappear into the tall elephant grass along a narrow walking path to their village compound. Somewhere amidst all this were the elephants!

We traveled as far west as Rwanda and Burundi on the Congo-Uganda border, visiting a German anthropologist, whose book on gorillas I’d read while living in London. He advised us on the most likely places we would encounter this shy animal. Later we realized he probably was sure we wouldn’t find them in the area he suggested. Ignorant of all that we climbed to 14,000 feet in the Mountains of the Moon, the Rwenzoris, hoping to see this elusive animal, but only found their nests. We also saw Pygmies dressed in Colobus monkey skins and carrying bows and arrows. Whether they had dressed up especially, hearing that tourists likely to pay money to take their photos were in the area, we never found out.

We’d heard about an area called the Karamoja, in north-eastern Uganda, stretching to the Ethiopian border, where during British Colonial rule no one had been allowed to travel. Consequently, the way of life lived by the indigenous people had been little affected by the colonizing regime. Here the Karamajong lived as they had for eons. The cruel change had come with a war fought in the north of the country, presently classified as a war zone. Being very curious, we decided to take the only form of public transport that connected this area to the world outside: a local African bus. At that time, traveling by local bus in Africa was a nightmare. The drivers would spin around the Rift Valley’s hairpin bends with the back wheels just touching the edge of the road and the rear of the bus cantilevered out in space. Less life-threatening was the fact that after I had been on an African bus for over four hours, my body went into a kind of short-term paralysis. We figured that it was a severe form of motion sickness, sometimes it took several minutes before I could stand. Alternatively, it could also have been some sort of road terror. We met other adventurers like ourselves, one very well-prepared fellow-traveler shared his car sickness pills with me, but it was little help. Despite this discomfort, we decided to go to the main central bus terminal in Nairobi, and find a bus headed in the direction of the Karamoja.

For the first half of the day, the trip was very ordinary. We were used to overcrowded humans and animals traveling closer than canned sardines, with reed woven baskets crammed full of chickens, goats and sheep with their four legs roped together wrestling on the bus floor bleating and baaing. Roosters crowed, passengers argued, and there was a double-decker load of passengers with their luggage on the roof. Now we experienced something different. As the day wore on, the less clothing the passengers were wearing. They separated into two groups: the sophisticated bus travelers who had been on a bus at least once before and were prepared for the horrible lurch when the bus stopped or started. Group two: the passengers for whom this ride was a maiden voyage, dressed only with a long stick clutched in their hands, toppled the full length of the bus as it departed, ending up in a most unbecoming heap against the last row of seats. That brought no end of amusement to the one-or-more-time bus travelers. They guffawed and preened themselves, hardly identifying themselves as the same race. The truth is they were all Karamajong!

We too decided to become more sophisticated with our traveling. Fascinated by this area, which at this point was so unaffected by modern civilization, we determined to go as far north as we could on whatever local transport we could find. Eventually, we were picked up by the Ugandan army as we were in an area where the Christian and Muslims had been fighting near the Ethiopian-Ugandan border. News had spread that two Aussie girls wanted to travel to the north. By coincidence, the secretary-general of the Karamoja was