The Boiling of the Bones

20. Africa

I slowed down and turned to head back to the road following an arc in a wide berth around the lions. I drove a few miles and stopped on a hilltop with open views all the way around me for miles in all directions where I could visually see I was safe. My heart was still pumping like crazy, and I had to get off the bike for a moment to calm down.

I couldn't believe I'd just been stalked and hunted by lions, but when I replayed the events in my mind, I realized I'd inadvertently stopped near an animal carcass the lions were feeding on. They were defending their kill. I had to be more careful. I was in the wild. It was a sobering experience.

I stopped in Livingston to see Victoria Falls—the most impressive waterfall on Earth. It was known by the locals as Mosi-oa-Tunya, which translates to, the smoke that thunders. I love Niagara Falls—I'd been their tons of times. In high school, Rob and I ditched school a few times and drove there. But it didn't hold a candle to this. It was stunning. The hike along the trail was swirling in mist and crossed bridges spanning the gorge to the most amazing view.

I stayed at a really nice tourist lodge perched on the bank of the river and a group from London invited me to join their guided tour of the falls the next morning. All I can say is, what we did was nuts. We crossed by boat to Livingston Island and stood in the very spot from which the explorer David Livingston first discovered the falls.

Then our local guides brought us to a spot called the Devil's pool. We actually jumped into the water and swam right to the edge of a three-hundred-foot drop on a shallow, eight-inch-deep rocky lip called the Devil's Armchair.

The next day, I continued north through Tanzania along Lake Tanganyika to Lake Victoria and Kenya. I headed around the lake, veering west across continent through South Sudan, Central African Republic and Cameroon.

I loved passing through the small villages. The little black children always waved enthusiastically with big smiles on their faces.

In one village they were drilling a well. I stopped and helped carry locally made mud bricks they were using to mortar together to build a school with running water which would save them from hiking a half mile to the river and back every day.

The villagers immediately adopted me. They let me use an empty hut and invited me to share their meals. For the first time in my life, I felt like part of a family. So, I stuck around for a while to help out. Days turned into weeks and then before I knew it, six months had gone by. Covid had most places on full lockdown, so I had nowhere else to go anyway.

Slowly, but surely, the school walls rose from the hard dirt floor and foundation. From working my construction job in New York, I kind of knew what to do and how to put it together. A religious charity group paid for steel roof trusses which were mortared into the tops of the walls. Finally, a metal roof was built over the top with a big opening around the edges to allow plenty of air circulation as there was no air conditioning.

When the school and well were completed, I said goodbye and moved on. I passed the sprawling Niger River Delta in Nigeria. I hugged the Gold Coast of West Africa passing through hot tropical jungles of Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire. In Liberia the coast turned north, and I passed through Sierra Leone, Guinea, Gambia and Senegal. Every place had a distinct cultural influence. As I headed north, the air became dry—or at least not hot and muggy and I left some of the mosquito swarms behind. In the jungle, the mosquitoes were terrible. I had planned to camp on the side of the road and simply throw up a jungle hammock with a built-in mosquito netting mesh canopy, but there were tons of ants and other biting insects that managed to get through.

Plus, the jungle was alive at night with tons of creepy noises. So as often as possible I tried to find a village where I could sleep in a mud or straw hut for the night. Or even just a more protected spot to hang my hammock.