It Took an Exceptional Woman

Anyone who was familiar with Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs,” the most basic of human requirements which are food, water and rest, would never have contemplated riding through Africa on a motorcycle and sleeping in a tent, in its deserts, villages and jungles.  To do that, you had to be willing to take risks, have an ability to adapt to unusual situations, and not push the panic button in an emergency.

 Kersti was already a seasoned traveler when we started out on our long trip through Africa. She had backpacked through India and then sailed on a pilgrim steamer from Bombay to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa. While on the boat, she slept below deck where the ship rats were as numerous as the faithful who were on the way to Mecca.

From Dibouti she traveled overland back to Europe, via the mountains and deserts of Eritrea and Sudan. She rode on local trains and busses through the Nubian Desert to Khartoum, and then by boat up the Nile River to Cairo. It was a little taste of the journey through sand, steppe and jungle that lay ahead. Most days our motorcycle odyssey through Africa put us in circumstances where we were continually being forced out of our comfort zones and into situations where we had to deal with the unforeseen challenges of our spartan life.

If you want to get to know who a person really is, travel with them and live with them in a tent month after month. In those close quarters, you can either form a durable relationship with a person or never want to see them again. Kersti and I functioned together like the parts of a smooth-running machine. Not only could we make decisions without any discussion or fuss, we could unpack the motorcycle, set up camp, pump up our Primus stove and cook dinner in a matter of minutes. The same went for breaking camp and packing.

Everything about living in a tent was difficult and inconvenient, from finding a safe place to camp, going to the toilet, cooking and bathing. Those things were hardships but it wouldn’t have been an adventure without them. We found something undeniably satisfying about our nomadic life. Even if we traveled with only the essentials, there was an existential freedom in being able to fit all of our belongings in a small bag.

A Broken Tooth on the Trail toTamanrsset

Bagatelles didn’t concern Kersti. When she broke a tooth on a hardened crust of bread 600 kilometers south of Algiers, and I was worried that she was in pain and offered to turn back so she could get it repaired, she said “Not a chance! That’s the wrong direction.” 

Scorpions in the Cooking Pots in the sSahel

We tried not to imagine what could be lurking outside of the tent, or crawling through the thick underbrush in the dark. Good advice: never put your hand someplace where you couldn’t see. There were thirty varieties of scorpions in the Sahara. I heard that a sting probably wouldn’t kill you, just make you feel like you wanted to die. To relieve the pain, you could put ice on the wound, kind of a paradox in the desert where there wasn’t a town or freezer within a thousand kilometers and the temperature was a 100 degrees F.

We set up camp in a clearing in the Sahel in northern Nigeria and agreed after dinner that we would wash the pots and our two tin plates in the morning and left them on the ground outside of the tent.  Maybe it was because we had a lack of water or maybe by the time we were finished unpacking, putting up the tent and cooking dinner, it was dark and we were tired. 

At dawn as usual I opened the tent flaps, slid into a pair of flipflops and went to find a convenient bush. I stopped short when I saw half a dozen, pale yellow scorpions, called “death stalkers,” the most venomous of the thirty indigenous varieties, crawling in and over the unwashed pots probably attracted by the smell and scraps of the sardines that we had fried in them the night before. 

When Kersti saw the scorpions, she said evenly, “I think that we ‘d better be a little more careful with the pots. “ 

A Snake in the Grass at the Cameroon Border

It didn’t matter what poisonous snake you were bitten by, far from help it usually meant certain death. Mambas are Africa’s deadliest snakes. They are extremely short tempered and aggressive. A drop of their neurotoxins will cripple a person’s breathing and kill them in an hour. 

We had gotten the necessary stamps in our passports and answered the standard question of “Do you have any Dollars” with a no. The road after the border station between the Congo and Cameroon was as usual, just a widened footpath.  I was maneuvering through and around ruts and potholes and rode up on the grassy shoulder to avoid a deep crevice.

The noise and vibration startled a green mamba that was hidden in the cover of the lush undergrowth. As if from out of nowhere, it reared up to half its length, a few inches from Kersti ready to strike. I saw it out of the corner of my eye, instinctively opened the throttle and the bike lurched forward out of the snake’s reach, and it was only afterward that I realized what a close call we had. 

"Did you see that" I asked? Without losing her composure or showing any sign of stress, she answered as though that two-meter-long viper was a harmless rabbit that jumped up out of the bush, “Yeah it was pretty close.”

Kersti knew as well as I did that we were cut off from the outside world. That the mamba was one of those unseen risks that were a reminder of what was silently slinking around in the bush. Leaving the mesh door of the tent unzipped or getting out of it at night to go to the toilet was not advisable.  If we were injured, bitten by a snake or scorpion, there wasn’t a hospital that could treat us or antivenom that could save our lives.

Slipping back in time 

Camels were not only a practical currency because of their value as a form of transport, but also for their milk and meat and were the accepted form of payment for a bride. How many camels was a beautiful Swedish woman worth in Niger? The value of a woman was determined by her looks and a lithe, light-haired Scandinavian woman was high on the list.

In the early 1970´s change hadn’t come to the remote desert of Niger and the way of life there remained unaltered through the centuries. We were traveling there long before there was a superhighway of communication that could take a breath of the outside world even to these remote oases. The mud hut villages were unelectrified and the few implements I saw gave me the impression that we had somehow slipped back in time a thousand years.

In the isolated regions of the Sahara there wasn’t a legal system as we know it. Among the Sahara’s tribes and nomads, the village leader arbitrated disputes and transgressions according to Sharia law or local traditions and customs. He settled disputes, collected, taxes and registered births and deaths.

At the time Niger was a country where you weren’t permitted to drink alcohol, and eating in public places was not acceptable, but on the other hand, a man was allowed to have up to four wives and slavery was not uncommon. A person’s wealth and standing were measured in camels, wives, slaves and children.

The Camel Calculator:
Was Kersti Worth 20 Camels or 43?

Polygamy was a normal practice and the price of a bride was negotiable and often paid in livestock. It wasn’t just a rhetorical question when a village chief, after seeing Kersti when she climbed off the motorcycle, made an offer to buy her.

We had been struggling on a difficult stretch of desert south of Zinder and hadn’t encountered a village in almost a week. When we eventually came to a cluster of thatched huts and mud brick cottages, we stopped to stretch our legs, wash the dust from our mouths, and find a well where we could refill our water containers.

Strangers were a diversion that broke the hermetic life of these isolated villages. As usual when we stopped in one, we were a major attraction where the inhabitants gathered around to view the spectacle.A slender man in a flowing caftan with the swagger and bearing of a chief, strode out from a mud hut in the middle of the village. He wrapped a black turban in loose folds around his chin and protruding Adam’s apple. He covered his cheeks and then wrapped it over his head. He draped the rest of the cloth over his shoulders and back so that only his eyes and beaky nose were visible. His manor and the deferential way that our audience of villagers greeted him said that he was a person of importance and standing in the village.

Kersti climbed off the motorcycle and as soon as he saw her, it was as though she was what he had waited all his life for and I could guess, a woman that would be a status addition to his other wives. He didn’t say a word to her and instead turned to me, and without any social niceties, said in French “How much would you sell her for?” In as much as I was her male companion, he assumed that she was my possession. There were two problems.  The first was, he didn’t understand our culture. The second was, we didn’t understand his.  

“I will pay you twenty camels for her.” We declined his offer with a polite smile, thinking that it was just a form of compliment or unserious flattery.

The villagers moved in closer, surrounding us and our motorcycle. There was a sea of eyes waiting for our reaction as he persisted. I said again, this time with a little more conviction, that she wasn’t for sale, but when I declined his offer of twenty camels, he doubled it to forty.

Once again, I said no and he increased it to forty-three, a fortune for people who lived a minimal existence. I tried to convince him that his proposal was out of the question regardless of how many camels he was prepared to pay. His insistence and body language sent me warning signals. 

I learned the hard way that when explanations weren’t of any use, it was prudent to end a discussion. It was time to get back up on the bike and leave that village before what seemed like a somewhat absurd cultural encounter, turned into an unpleasant backstory to our Africa trip.

A Gold Mane

Congo Jungle

We were using a lot of fuel and we weren’t making any progress and had no idea of how the trail was farther along, or if there would be a village or even a cluster of huts ahead where we could rest and stock up on any provisions that might be available. We continued all morning. Up on the bike, off, drive a hundred meters, let the engine cool down. Start again and repeat the process half a dozen times for every kilometer.

The track we were following quickly deteriorated into two deep ruts of loose sand worn into the jungle floor. In comparison, the desert trails where I could plow through the drifted sand seemed like super highways. Our heavily loaded motorcycle was getting bogged down in the narrow ruts and the engine was overheating. On top of that, I could smell the clutch burning and it was starting to slip due to the strain. The struggle was physically and mentally draining and I was worried that the engine would seize. We needed to rest and let the engine cool.

Eventually we came to a village of mud huts with thatched roofs and as I had been doing all day, climbed off and walked alongside the bike pushing on the handlebar while I feathered the throttle to keep the drive wheel spinning just enough to keep us moving. We were both dripping with sweat from the thick heat and humidity. 

Kersti walked behind lifting the back to take the weight off of it and took off her helmet and fastened the chin strap around the luggage holder. Her hair was tied in a knot and she let it out so that it hung down her back in a thick golden flow that reached below her waist.  At first, I didn’t hear the commotion, but then I saw the girls and women surround Kersti giggling and chattering, stroking her hair and feeling shocks of it between their fingers as though it was the hair of some exotic being.

The men sat in the shade and drank palm wine and seemed more interested in the motorcycle. They waved me over and I left the bike standing hub deep in the sand and sat with them. A tin mug was filled from a calabash full of a milky liquid that had the putrid odor of rotting seaweed. I wasn’t quite sure of the vintage but it must have been at least three days old. When they passed it to me, I felt as though we were special guests, and I gulped the dank, half-fermented brew as though I was born to it, and was thankful for this gesture of hospitality and friendship. I asked about the condition of the road ahead and they promised that it would get better. And it did.

 To this day Kersti’s remarkable hair retains its red gold luster, and still elicits spontaneous compliments. Photo 50 years later.