by Joe Cawley
Three flights later, Joy and I were dozing on the lawned departure area of Nanyuki airstrip, waiting for a Cessna for the last leg across Kenya’s Rift Valley and our weekend safari. Minutes after lurching off the runway, we saw our first wildlife. Dozens of giraffes strolled gracefully across the plains less than a thousand feet below us. A family of zebras trotted towards a grove of acacia trees, leaving behind a jet stream of flattened red oat grass.
Waiting to whisk us off in a Land Rover when we landed was Gabriel, a Samburu warrior dressed in a red skirt and festooned with green and yellow beads. He was the head guide at our lodge. I was impressed not only by his bold fashion sense but also by his multi-tasking. He managed to avoid every crater in the dirt track while pointing out wildlife hiding behind thorny bushes hundreds of yards away, and there were plenty of both.
Our accommodation was one of five open-fronted cottages on the edge of a ravine through which twisted the Ewaso Nyiro. As with many things in that unforgiving land, a recent drought had reduced the river’s strength and drained its spirit. Exhausted from the travel, I immediately spied a herd of scatter cushions and had clear intentions of getting amongst them. But as Joy quite rightly reminded me, on a trip like that, every minute counted when you only had forty-eight hours’ worth.
Back in the high-vaulted main building, Gabriel appeared, ready to lead us into the bush. He was still dressed in red robes and sandals. The only concession to safari gear was a rifle slung over his shoulder.
We trudged, head down, in the boiler-room heat. Underfoot, opaque lumps of quartz dotted the red earth like crazy paving. Every few minutes Gabriel stopped, scanned the landscape for danger, and asked, ‘Sawa, sawa?’ (Okay, fine?), to which we were instructed to reply ‘Sawa.’ After two hours of walking, Joy’s ‘sawas’ were getting less convincing.
‘Another two hours and we’ll be there,’ said Gabriel, sensing her weariness. Her face dropped. If you remember from her Peru training days, she’s not a walker. Gabriel flashed an incandescent smile. ‘Just joking. We’re here.’
We clambered onto a slab of smooth rock rising above the savanna like a giant anvil. The view made me feel like crying. Groups of zebra, kudu, impala, baboons and water buffalo grazed in the silent green valley below. A red dust spiral danced a slow samba between clumps of foliage before vanishing in the soft breeze. In the distance, the pale silhouette of Mount Kenya was crowned white with snow, a literal icing on the cake of this perfect canvas. It was another moment to savour, albeit one that had involved over 5,000 miles of back-to-back flights.
The following day our itinerary involved ‘comfortable camping’. ‘No such thing,’ moaned Joy. ‘Why rough it in a tent when we’ve got a perfectly good four-poster here?’
The camp had already been set up at a bend in the river, where smooth sandbanks and shiny black boulders provided a ‘bush beach’ complete with natural diving platforms. Our arrival displaced a party of baboons who were enjoying the late afternoon in an amorous manner that’s best left unscripted.
Under a glory of fiery red, we were served a three-course meal with wine and spirits and listened to the croaking of dozens of humongous toads. Eventually, the hypnotic dancing of the campfire flames induced an almighty weariness and we took to our tent with all its luxuries, including a five-inch-deep mattress, crisp sheets and fluffy towels.
At 6am we were woken by shuffling feet outside. Joy said that she’d had the most peaceful sleep, save for the odd camel grunt, baboon yell, hyena laugh, toad croak and insect chirp. Our nocturnal intrusions in Tejina paled in comparison.
A breakfast table appeared outside our tent. The moon was still out, adding a silver glow to the patchwork of pink clouds. While we slurped coffee and munched homemade oatmeal biscuits, the Samburu packed camels and dismantled the previous night’s riverside dining table for two.
Two nights proved not nearly enough time for that oh-my-God-I’m-in-Africa feeling to fully sink in, but being able to share the treats of travel writing with Joy was priceless.
As the commissions kept rolling in, I made the decision to leave Island Connections. I say, ‘leave’, perhaps ‘was encouraged’ is a better way to put it. Frequent requests for time off to travel the world were understandably met with increasing resistance and I was told a decision would have to be made as to whether I gave up the local paper or gave up the trips.
I thought long and hard about it… for around half a second.
Ten days later, I was sitting in a potting-shed-on-legs deep in the southern Carpathian Mountains in Romania’s Transylvania. I had been shifting my weight from buttock to buttock for over an hour, stubbornly determined to see a bear.
My brief encounters with wildlife in Africa had left me wanting more. More adventure, more travelling, and more wildlife. There was not much to be found in Tenerife – at least not on land, and I could hardly write a feature on our biting-lizard escapades. So, to satisfy my yearning for more wildlife encounters, and continuing the theme of safaris, I’d looked further afield and had come up with the concept of ‘European Safaris’. The editors loved the idea. Joy didn’t. Having had a taste of the travel-writing life (and perks), she was now beginning to show the first signs of resentment at being left home alone yet again. However, I was now committed. Several days later, I was being paraded through the dusty streets of Zărneşti in a hay cart.
Romania was a surprise and provided the jolt that all travel writers need to produce their best copy. Visually I’d expected monochrome architecture from the seventies, gypsies begging outside scantily stocked shops and the smog of industry choking the towns with dull grey. I was completely wrong. Imagine Switzerland gone bankrupt. You got the orchid-painted meadows, acutely slanting roofs and distant white peaks – only served with a large helping of humility and poverty.
After clearing the ramshackle edge of town, we switched on to a dirt track. Dabs of yellow broom and violet gentian seasoned the flat green pastures between the steep banks of fir and spruce. A stream provided the playground for a pair of storks, while a raven followed our creaky progress all the way to the cabin.
Inside, I was urged to remain silent, but the need to sneeze was as compelling as a fit of giggles during morning Mass. Time plodded on. Then, about a hundred feet away, a dark shadow shifted. Squinting in the failing light, I could just make out the snout of a brown bear sniffing the air for signs of a snack. The huge, slow-moving mass looked as unthreatening as anything in a fur coat with teddy-bear ears could. But then so did Fugly.
Small black eyes locked onto the shed. With head bowed low, it swaggered forward on four huge pads. My mouth grew dry as adrenaline charged through me. Although the timber structure was sturdy, a six-hundred-pound bear could reduce it to matchsticks within a matter of minutes. Fortunately, this bear was only curious, not craving human flesh. I would live to write again.
The trip had been a fantastic experience and was followed by the thrill of seeing my name in a national publication again. Joy’s excitement had certainly waned though. Our relationship had become a succession of periods of absence, with me seeing the world and her seeing little more than the back of my head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
That summer in Tejina was particularly long and scorching. The calimas winds were still blowing in dust and extreme heat from the Sahara in September and October. Temperatures in the hills were hitting the high forties and the standing fans we’d bought merely circulated the hot air. There was little we could do but endure the lethargy it produced, and we both yearned for cooler days, missing having the El Beril communal pool and the ocean on our doorstep.
Wanting to banish the blistering heat from my mind, I had pitched a feature on adventurous activities in the Arctic Circle.
‘Splendid,’ said the editor.
‘Blimey,’ I responded. Again. It all now seemed too easy.
Aptly, the Talking Heads song ‘Road to Nowhere’ was playing in my earphones as the plane touched down at Kiruna, 125 miles north
of the Arctic Circle. The runway and surrounding area certainly looked like a road to nowhere. The terminal was half buried under drifting snow and all around lay a frozen wasteland spiked with nothing but naked trees.
At the hotel, we were invited to the bar to meet the tour guide and our fellow adventurers. As is the fashion when British travellers meet for the same holiday, conversation turned to how much each of us had paid for the trip.
‘Err… I didn’t,’ I mumbled over a pint of beer when it was my turn for disclosure. ‘I’m a travel writer. I’m writing about this trip for one of the UK papers.’ In normal holiday circles, the person who paid the least is treated with the same disdain as a person who trumps in a lift. In my case, having paid absolutely nothing, I was treated like a person who had not only trumped in a lift but emptied my bowels and then sung a jolly song about it. I was swiftly ostracised.
I comforted myself with the thought that I wasn’t there to make friends, I was there to work and do battle with the elements, my own comfort zone and, unbeknownst to me, a rebellious husky named Ranger.
Apparently, Ranger was a bit of a lady’s dog – the Hugh Hefner of Alaskan huskies – intent on making sudden amorous advances towards anything in four legs and a fur coat. This was fine in his own time but not conducive when working as part of a team pulling a slightly overweight journalist across the icy nothingness of Swedish Lapland. The last thing that a slightly overweight journalist needed was to be tipped from his sled onto a frozen lake in front of a group of holidaymakers who had decided that this was the very thing I deserved – even if it was in the name of canine romance.
As it was, Ranger and the other eleven huskies careered off, tails wagging, as my guide, Mats, yelled ‘Hike!’ to start them pulling. I had quietly hoped for ‘Mush!’, but you have to go with the flow.
We cut through dog-deep snowdrifts, the eerie silence broken by the sounds of Arctic transport: the clinking of dog-leads, the creaking of birch wood as the sled curved over powdery contours, the crunching of snow under the six-foot-long runners, and the occasional shouts at Ranger to pull his weight. We were the only moving objects in an otherwise inanimate world of faded colour, far removed from the sharp, technicolour wash of Tenerife. Evergreens were dulled with a platinum frosting and the sky, though clear, was a watered-down blue, as half-hearted as the low-lying sun.
With the sled travelling at around ten miles per hour, the wind-chill factor could easily drag the temperature down from minus twenty-four to minus thirty-four, and as Mats cheerfully noted while stuffing another wad of tobacco under his top lip, ‘For exposed skin, frostbite is more than just a possibility.’
Back in Kiruna, I defrosted my limbs in the hotel sauna – alone. I briefly flirted with the idea of joining the others in that crazy Scandinavian tradition of snow rolling, but whereas they would be laughing together as a group, I would be enduring the self-torture alone, as an outcast.
Following months of journeying jubilation, this was the first deep-felt unhappiness of my new career, being the object of other travellers’ animosity. Although the negative realities of this solitary profession had been apparent to Joy since early on, full realisation had only just set in for me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Shortly after my return to Tenerife, Joy and I made an executive decision. It was time to start a family.
Like many childless couples, our pet was supposed to fill the void. If Fugly had been a child, however, she’d have long since been carted off to a juvenile delinquents’ centre to test her feline vitriol on those with much sterner attitudes.
Months passed, during which time I accepted travel-writing commissions to Seville, Nicaragua, Croatia, Madeira, Las Vegas and all the other Canary Islands. But while words were produced aplenty, embryonic production continued to be a non-starter.
Tests were taken, results analysed and verdicts given. Namely that there didn’t appear to be any sound reason why children weren’t forthcoming. After ever more invasive tests, our brilliant GP put a stop to further investigations with the words, ‘Sometimes these things happen.’
Over the next twelve months we had many tearful discussions. We decided that adoption might be the best alternative and began to research how to get the ball rolling. Dealings with paper-shufflers during our bar days had prepared us and we had no illusions. If it was near impossible to obtain permission to own a new gas bottle in Tenerife, wow, was it going to be a challenge getting rubber-stamped to adopt a child!
A group of friends were going skiing in Andorra. To cheer ourselves up before the inevitable onslaught of forms, applications and nonsensical interviews, we decided to go with them.
While I struggled with the basics, unable to spend more than a few seconds upright on either the flat or the nursery slopes, Joy skied like she lived – carefree, with great childlike delight and little concern for the consequences. ‘Control and balance,’ the ski instructor hollered yet again as Joy disappeared down the slopes of Pas de la Casa at full pelt, shrieking, laughing and screaming words of warning to those in her way. I got used to her frequent spills, the orange bobble of her ski hat poking from yet another off-piste drift.
On the third day, however, while I zigzagged gingerly behind, she careered down a red run, hit a bump and completely lost control. As her right leg bounced off the snow, she threw her arms into the air to regain her balance but instead launched herself into a triple cartwheel, landed on her back in the middle of the piste, and then slid corpse-like for well over 500 feet.
A crowd had begun to form by the time I reached her, and I could see the flashing yellow light of an emergency skidoo already racing up from the ski station below. In the twenty seconds it took to get to her, my mind had already decided she had broken her back, her neck or indeed everything. How would we get her home? How would we tell her mum and dad? How would we cope in Rigsby’s house now she was paralysed? Would he help us adapt it?
I arrived at the same time as the skidoo medic. His face was set in stone: serious, concerned. It needn’t have been. The only thing stopping Joy from getting up was uncontrollable laughter.
‘If you’re not injured, you must get up straight away,’ scolded the medic.
Joy gave him a thumbs-up, still laughing. ‘Eeee, jiddy,’ she said, ‘that was fun!’
It was my turn for a big spill the following day, only I wasn’t laughing when it happened. Fresh snow was badly needed in the resort to cover the growing number of ice patches that had appeared. As I skied to a halt to join our crowd after dismounting a ski lift, my left leg stopped but my right didn’t.
Those accustomed to the sport will know that having both legs moving in the same direction is preferable to each limb going off and doing its own thing. While my left leg slowly came to a stop, the right found ice and suddenly raced off like a Formula 1 car coming out of the pits. All would have been well if my ski boot and ski had come off as they were designed to do in such situations, but they hadn’t. I felt a pop in my leg and fell to the ground in agony. I’d badly torn the muscle in my right calf.
Skiing was over for me. The remaining four days were spent learning how to negotiate frozen roads and pavements with crutches as I made my way to daily physio appointments and the local pharmacy. It was during one of my trips to the pharmacy that something steered me into adding a couple of extra items to my bundle of creams and potions. I gave them to Joy after she returned from the day’s skiing.
‘Try it,’ I said from the settee where I’d whiled away the hours reading and watching the slopes, waiting for her to get back. ‘I don’t know why, I just have a feeling.’
Joy emerged from the bathroom and we sat in silence watching the dots on the side of the pregnancy-test stick. Nothing. Then the colour changed.
‘Is that pink?’ said Joy.
I held it up. ‘I… I think so. Does it look pink to you?’ We exchanged shocked glances. ‘Could be the light in here.’
We went to the bathroom and held it under the fluoresc
ent shaving light. Still pink. I followed Joy out of the room and into the hotel corridor. Still pink.
‘What do you reckon?’ she said, still not convinced.
‘It’s pink. Try another.’ I pulled a second test kit from my pocket.
Joy returned to the bathroom. We sat on the bed and waited again, staring at the little stick. Pink again.
It’s at times like these when profound words should toast the beginning of the rest of your life. ‘Shit!’ was all I could manage. Hands went to mouths. Then the smiles came. Followed by the laughing, and a fist-pumping, goal-scoring, celebratory dance (just me). We were having a baby. I was having a baby. I wanted to be there for every minute, be an amazing dad both before its birth and as our child grew up.
We agreed not to tell any of the holiday crowd lest they try and stop Joy from skiing. On her part, Joy agreed to be a little less kamikaze in her alpine efforts.
My mum became a bawling mess when I told her over the phone. Joy’s was more practical in her response. ‘You’ll have to get rid of that cat now.’ We laughed off her comment, but it was a concern. How would Fugly react to a screaming stranger? We’d heard stories of cats less psychotic than Fugly smothering new-born babies out of jealousy. It was a decision we were going to have to ponder carefully over the next nine months.
Fugly was also to undergo something of a change. Strange at the best of times, she had added a new habit to her repertoire of erratic behaviour. One moment she would be lying quietly, plotting her next act of terrorism, the next she would leap off the settee and hare around the living room at full speed. During these sprints, she would stop in her tracks, sit, and seemingly listen for a second, before setting off on another lap of the room.
