I got started in Africa in 2004, in Tanzania. Now, 2026, I have never fully come home. Some snapshots:

Where Humanity Began, and Never Left

Thursday, 12 August 04 [flight to Inyonga, drive to Katavi National Park, Rungwa River Camp]

Serge and his Excel single-engine touches down at the dirt strip at Msembe Ranger Station at around 10:00. We load and take off. Through the prop drone and air dance, it is a desert below, wilderness, dry stream beds, kopjes [rock promontories], low trees, grey/greens, khaki flats, some ghost clouds, horizon lost in the blurring mix of air and dust. 10,420 feet above sea level and horizontal, headed W x N, 29 degrees, 135 knots over the ground.

We land an hour-plus west at Inyonga. Serge comes around the strip 300 meters off the deck. Several kids are waving at us from the tamped down yards of rectangular, mud-block huts, rich reddish-brown earth. As we come in for the approach, people are hurrying in from everywhere and nowhere to line-up on one side of the strip. By the time we reach the unloading zone, the area is massed, if not mobbed, with people.

All ages are here, mostly young, between 5 and 12 years, mostly boys, some in collared shirts, some in rags, wide eyes, curious; the crowd buzzing. More people flood in from the adjoining blocks of town; no-one’s speaking any English, all in Swahili or whatever tribal language prevails. The townies are shoulder-to-shoulder, five or six deep to see the Westerners fall out of the plane. Last to exit, I give a big hello to the waiting front row of open-faced, belly-high boys. They absorb the greeting, no-one venturing to offer any motion back.

Now the kids press in closely, eight and ten thick. “Hello, jambo!” Their shy curiosity is broken quickly by the digital LCD displays on our cameras. I take a shot of them craning, waving and beaming into the camera and then instantly show the results. Unrestrained exhilaration rolls over the young in waves, jostling for the closest look and exchange with the white guy from the sky. They are like kids anywhere, seemingly let out of school and on a lark, the bold ones, the followers, the clowns, the show-offs. Daudi, in Swahili, has a tough time getting the boys to acknowledge they are skipping school, but it is clear they are educated by their easy ability to answer his math questions …

In town, Daudi points to the tall plum tree hard-by the main intersection. This is the service mark of the Arabic slave traders who established the East African routes for stolen humanity some 500 years ago. In their wake, most people of this area adopted and have passed-on Islam to this day.

Inyonga is loosely translated as “hanging tree” or “strangulation tree.” This city was an execution center when the Germans ran the show in the 1800s …

We leave to the southwest over a narrow track that Daudi classes as a high-quality Tanzanian roadway. A lot is thick sand, which he attacks at 40 mph or more; then axle-cracking ridges and shelves; then more sand; no road signs; mud-block huts and bare dirt front spaces with young kids, old women waving; more sand tracks which D wrestles through at high speed like he was bringing a bull to the ground; me in the rider’s front seat, thinking that if everything else around here is living on the edge, elemental life-and-death, why not me?; no windshield, no seat-belt, no side-door (just a low-lying piece of wood).

Of course, the sole safety feature of this hurdling mass is D’s driving skill. He plows through the straight stretches like there is no tomorrow, the thin miambo trees hugging in on the road, all young growth, not likely to kill, only to slow if we went off-kilter …

As we work our way on a slow stretch through the miambo, two guys approach, walking a bicycle. We stop. They are Sukuma tribe cowboys, dressed like Andre 3000 in the middle of absolute nowhere, one guy in a Cat-in-the-Hat knit cap, black and bright horizontal striping, luminescent gold and yellow scarf, overcoat, leggings and bright plastic rings of all colors stacked from ankle to mid-calf. The other guy was nearly his Big Boi equal, also gaily scarfed, swiping easily at the tse-tse as we talked. They had come nearly 100 k today and were headed well north of Inyonga.

The Sukuma are the largest of the 125 tribes in Tanzania, comprising some 6% of the total population, starting south of Lake Victoria and spreading throughout the nation. They have taken it upon themselves to dress in wild combos of traditional and “modern,” like Bob Marley hyperventilating. They have an annual fashion festival. Daudi describes one warrior who topped off his traditional battle dress with pink bra and panties.

The track gets no better as we come down from flat plateau, through the trees, among mountains and into the Katavi river system. Katavi, where “unimproved” would be an improvement.

The obscure track to camp leads off and down to the left from the “main roadway,” twin lines through the grass. Daudi has us walk the quarter mile to avoid getting hit by the thin filaments of the “upupu” pods, a pea-like sheath hanging from vines on each side of the trail. They are not painful, but produce a nearly unbearable discomfort, one that has driven D and his friends into waters infested with hippo and croc just to try and attain some relief. He is convinced that enough of this can drive a person insane.

It is dark shortly after arrival. The beer is very good, the rice and beef goulash welcome with D’s green three-alarm chili.

Toward bed, the hyena are evident, calling to each other up and down this dry rocky riverbed. Going back to tent, I keep spotting little glistenings among the leaves. These are eight-eyed spiders, one of them rather large, tarantula quality. The crew has placed a line of ash placed across the path leading from our tents to the river bed. The headlamp reveals the apparent motive, an intense line of ants, maybe three inches wide, moving right-to-left across the path, just the other side of the ash line.

The night passes quickly.

Tim Bowles
March 20, 2026