EIGHTEEN
THE INTERRUPTED JOURNEY
Just as the expedition prepared to leave Massangena, Walter decided that Aloha should accompany van Staaden to Umtali, Rhodesia, ostensibly to buy more supplies, but in all likelihood because she was already showing signs of the illness that would soon overtake her.
Aloha and van Staaden set out at dawn for the two-day trek and by the time their caravan had reached Umtali, Aloha had passed out with fatigue. She awoke to see a real town with broad shaded streets and a hotel.
I was so tired, only half conscious, the manager personally escorted me to a garden bedroom, sent tea and a newspaper. I couldn’t believe my eyes: “American Flies Pacific — Art Goebel reaches Hawaii. Wins Dole Race. $25,000. San Francisco to Honolulu 2089 miles in 26 hours in the single engine Travelair, ‘Woolaroc’ . . . Seven pilots are missing . . . search on . . . Goebel participating.”1
In second place was Martin Jensen flying his Breese-Wilde monoplane named, of all things, Aloha. There were, however, no other winners. Of the eleven competing planes, two made it to Hawaii, two disappeared, and the rest crashed.2 Ten people died in the attempt to be the first fixed-wing aircraft to fly from the North American mainland to the islands of Hawaii.
Aloha, meanwhile, was falling seriously ill. What had started as fatigue passed into quaking chills followed by a severe fever. When she next regained consciousness she was in hospital, blinded by the most intensely painful headache she had ever experienced. She had malaria, and by the time she had reached Umtali, she had probably been infected for several weeks or longer.
During a feverish episode Aloha asked the doctors about Walter and the crew — how were they doing, did they know she was sick, were they okay? She was told, “The Captain died of blackwater fever in Macèquece.” In the fit of anguish that followed Aloha, had another vision, “I could see him riding a mammoth steam locomotive, waving to me, laughing, shouting, ‘I’m coming. See, I’m coming to you!’”3
In fact, the captain was alive, as was everyone else, although most of them had also been flattened by malaria, especially Miki.
After a week, Aloha began to regain her strength. “Calm, returning to life, I had strong thoughts: the road, wind, campfire. I wanted to live!”4 Owen, the only crew member not felled by malaria, stopped by for a visit and, after reassuring Aloha that everyone was fine and that the expedition would resume when she was ready, delivered the news that both Theron and Miller were quitting.
Gone out of our lives — just like that.
It is sad to lose a crew, that bond. You work, strive together months on end. Fire and flame in early enthusiasm, eventually just what we basically strive to infuse, a stronger pull . . . for more freedom, selection of career, expansion of companionship. Over the years I have missed them all.5
*
It was late September before the expedition resumed. The original plan was to follow the Sabi River east, but given that they were now more than 150 miles north of Massengena, they decided instead to head north around Lake Malawi’s western shore into Tanganyika. Crossing into the former German territory was like passing into a wholly different continent. Well-defined wagon trails made navigation easy, and there was “stacked fuel at trading posts fifty or so miles apart.” At the town of Kilosa they were able to replenish their supplies of food and fuel before looping through the hilly countryside to the town Aloha called Dodomo, where they hired a Scotsman called McRae.
After Dodomo, it took weeks to round Mount Kilimanjaro, driving through a surprisingly frigid terrain, staying with Maasai where possible and losing the trail almost every day. After so many miles of rough terrain, marauding animals, blistering skies, bedbugs, joint-snapping labour, and lack of fuel, water, sleep, and the countless unforeseen calamities — any of which might have maimed or killed them — they should have been closer to their goal. But they were not even halfway.
Trying to make up time, the expedition turned northeast towards the Uganda Railway line, which they could follow to Nairobi. Near the rail lines, the ground was almost always better and the cars could make use of railway bridges for water crossings. They made excellent time, travelling nearly 65 miles northeast before stopping for the night near a water tower, where an Indian watchman and his wife insisted they overnight in one of their storehouses. There were lions, they said, Tsavo lions, more dangerous than any in Africa. During construction of the railway just two lions had eaten 135 men.
The Wanderwell crew was numb to danger by this point. Owen declared he would like to hunt one of the famous man-eaters, and sometime during the night he did hear a noise at the nearby watering hole. He fired into the darkness and then, torch in hand, crept out to see if he’d managed to kill something. “It was his first and only leopard.”
Later on, they told the story to some colonials who gaped with incredulity. “How do you Americans manage to keep alive in this country? You seem to get away with everything one is supposed not to do. There were probably ten lions about that isolated water last night when your Mr. Owen lugged in his kill.”6
But if expedition members now felt they could ignore local advice, they were about to be corrected. Time and again locals had warned that the trail ahead would be too much for their cars, and they were soon to discover that the “road” consisted of steep grades with slab rock ridges, each 12–15 inches high — too tall for the cars’ undercarriage clearance. They had to drive the front tires up the natural curb and then use jacks to raise the back of the car and rush it forward by hand. Inch by inch and foot by foot, they nudged the grudging cars up the brittle hillside, often jacking both the front and back tires over a rocky lip, or hauling shale for makeshift ramps high enough to free some length of undercarriage suspended on rock. “After three hours the ratchet of only one jack held. If it toppled, its foundations crashed [and] we leapt.”7 Aloha later reminisced that she spent the balance of the day wishing for an airplane.
*
The Wanderwell Expedition drove down Nairobi’s wide, sunny streets. They had come through — tattered, dusty, and tired, but alive and with the cars in one piece. Along the town’s main thoroughfare Aloha marvelled at the abrupt confusion of architectural styles: imposing stone façade structures nestled beside tin-roofed government offices, which sat alongside dilapidated bazaar shacks. The most welcome sight of all, however, were the white columns framing the entrance to the Norfolk Hotel, “prideful emblem of British Colonial civilization, synonymous with good taste, dressing for dinner, the pukkah Sahib and the Mem.”8
The Norfolk Hotel was easily the most famous business in Nairobi. In 1907 it had hosted Winston Churchill. And in 1909 it had welcomed Theodore Roosevelt.9 By 1927 the hotel had lost some of its former glory, but its famous verandah — the place for afternoon drinks — was a fine spot to host eager reporters.
Theatre bookings and advertising contracts came easily (the Kenya Tyre Company painted its slogan on the sides of both cars: “Fit Dunlop and be Satisfied”) and the press were robustly obliging.10
Mail was waiting for them at the central post office. Among the usual fan mail and updates from other Wanderwell units was a letter from Margaret in Australia mentioning the loss of the Tank to a fire and the arrest of two former expedition members who had stolen piles of pamphlets and sold them on their own. Aloha also received a letter from Helen Roberts detailing the sad outcome of the Dole Air Race, a contest which Aloha would describe as “the horror I missed.”11
*
The rush and whirr of publicity and performance wound down on the evening of October 13, 1927. Unknown to Aloha, Miki and Walter had planned a birthday celebration in the posh restaurant of the Norfolk Hotel. It was precisely the kind of high-class indulgence that tickled Aloha’s fancy, including “linens embellished by delicate green fern fronds . . . [and] roses gracefully arranged by the khidmatgar under Miki’s supervision.” It was also a rarity for Walter to spend so much money. This was, after all, the man who refused to spend money in cafés, sipping water while others drank tea or ate cake. On this evening, however, Aloha’s taste for extravagance was indulged. Miki had arranged for a dessert of apple pie and whipped cream while, to everyone’s astonishment, the captain ordered champagne and made a heartfelt toast, “To the mother of my children on her 21st anniversary and her triumphant drive to the source of the Nile. Cheers!”
It was always a revelation to me that others were so unaware of Cap’s sentimental side. True, his attention-getting voice, his condescending but bumptious stance, never allowed members to be really close. He took outrageous risks sometimes resulting in a jail night whenever police had cause to demand “Who gave you the right?” His insouciance was often taken for gall — it vexed authorities. But to me, my husband was a friend, a stanchion, marvellous raconteur. I read him by his eyes — how else to know a man? We both loved the challenging life — always the clever twist.12
*
The Wanderwell Expedition was running out of time. The heavy rains were approaching, after which travel by car would be virtually impossible. As Beryl Markham put it, the roads north of Nairobi had, “after a mild rain, an adhesive quality equal to that of the most prized black treacle.”13 Everyone wanted to press on, and yet it seemed absurd to not visit Lake Victoria — the famous source of the Nile. The decision, perhaps a birthday gift, was left to Aloha. Would it be north to Abyssinia or northwest into Uganda?
After a week of driving, they reached a guesthouse just outside the town of Jinja on Lake Victoria’s northern shore. The next morning they crept through the darkness to watch the sun rise over the modest Ripon Falls, then believed to be the source of the Nile. In a moment of comic understatement, Walter shook Aloha’s hand in congratulation. Even years later she seemed unsure how to convey her feelings at that moment. “We had reached the Nile. Dazzlement . . . The roar, colossal volume pouring through nature’s spillway . . . The earth trembled. We stood at its source at last. For me tears would have been too little.”14
*
From Kampala, the expedition motored north towards Sudan and Abyssinia, over a smooth landscape to the town of Mongalla in southern Sudan. “We assured ourselves Cairo was within sight. We drank in the luxuriant beauty of a smiling Africa, and counted only fifteen hundred more miles of swamp and desert land between us and the oriental city where I had joined the expedition more than four years before.”15 They had planned to stock up on supplies and ask about for the best way towards Egypt. The district commissioner, however, could bring them only bad news. Just that morning he had received a telegrammed warning that unusually fierce rains were bearing down from the north, and more troublingly, there were reports of a large Dinka uprising in British-Egyptian Sudan. Colonials and European tourists, it was said, had already been killed. For the first time in Aloha’s memory, the captain took the advice seriously and, even more surprisingly, told the crew to pack up immediately — they were done. They would leave for the coast in the morning.
Walter sent cables to Mombasa, looking for steamship passage to Europe. The messages were sent with replies directed to Nairobi. Another cable was sent to the post office in Nairobi, asking them to hold on to mail instead of forwarding it to Alexandria. It was a confusing mess, but no way around it. All they could do was drive and hope.
In Nairobi word came that their proposal to one of the steamship companies, the German East Africa Line, had been accepted. They would sail on December 17. They also received a stack of letters from the US and Australia. Dolly Reynolds, still acting as secretary at the Miami headquarters, said that No III and crew had not been heard of since Panama. “Their escort car’s pilot had committed suicide at Mexico City over a love affair.”16 Margaret sent more details about the loss of the Tank but, ever persevering, told how she had mounted a campaign in Sydney, soliciting advertisers and securing the donation of a new Ford chassis. Members of the expedition then “copied the WAWEC lines in sheet metal.” There was even a mention of the kids who were happy and healthy at a “loving nanny home.” Valri’s and Nile’s childhoods were fast becoming a carbon copy of Aloha’s own.
The expedition dashed to Mombasa to meet their ship — a 620-mile, tortuous two-week race through bogs and driving rain, innumerable breakdowns, hunger, illness, and difficulties finding fuel. Rolling to a stop in Mombasa on December 17, and hardly daring to turn off their engines, they parked the cars near the gate, pulled tarpaulins over both vehicles, crawled inside, and were asleep within minutes. They had spent the last seven days driving non-stop.
Their ship, it turned out, was twenty-four hours late — a fabulous ocean of time. They booked into a hotel where Aloha and Miki washed their hair, bought a pot of French face cream and some Pivear’s scented powder, while the men shaved, bathed, and had their uniforms pressed. Sitting on the hotel balcony, sipping tea and rereading the Nairobi mail, Aloha reflected that “to be exciting, life must be shot with coincidence.”17
*
In her later typewritten reminiscences, Aloha describes their discussion of what they should do next. Their attempt to cross Africa had failed, and a new plan needed to be made. South America was raised as an idea.
Yes, the New World to be conquered. The present passion, to spend. Not suddenly, just firmly, smiling, his eyes probing, he drew himself to me.18
That final sentence echoes her description of their first kiss, all those years ago in Nice — suggesting, perhaps, that something in their relationship had come full circle. Her exact meaning is opaque, but she did intend to suggest something. The very last sentence in Aloha’s typewritten account of her travels is a quote from Cicero: “certain signs came before certain events.”19