IF YOU LOOK DOWN FROM AN aeroplane flying over Africa, you can see this road that looks like a silver ribbon and you think to yourself, I wonder what it’s like? Well, let me tell you: you get on it and you don’t ever want to get off it – even with all the trucks, road blockages and stops. You could just drive forever and ever.”
Sitting in her living room, Julia Albu, 81, roared with laughter as she related how, after deciding to drive from Cape Town to Cairo in her trusted old Toyota, she was advised by experienced overland travellers in Africa, to “follow the Great North Road”.
“I am clueless, I can’t read a map or a GPS garmin. I have no idea. They told me to just stay on the road and not get off it.
“I’d never heard of this road, but actually you can’t miss it, you get on it and drive and you’re so free, it’s such an escape! Anybody can do it and everybody should do it.”
We met at Albu’s home in the Jakkalsfontein Nature Reserve on the Cape West Coast. To get there, you drive along dust roads, with acres of fynbos on either side. You might see a mother ostrich dashing into the bush with a flock of chicks behind her.
On arrival at her house, the first thing I spotted was Tracy, Albu’s very unassuming 1997, 1600 Toyota Conquest, standing in the garage, covered in sponsors’ stickers.
Sitting in her living room overlooking a wild West Coast sea, Albu reminisced like an old Africa hand about her months exploring the continent.
“The roads out of Addis Ababa make Uganda’s potholed tracks look like top-notch highways; between Francistown and Nata the potholes were the size of swimming pools; the local Ethiopian injera made out of the staple teff flour looks and tastes like a blanket…”
Denne historien er fra January 2020-utgaven av Noseweek.
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Denne historien er fra January 2020-utgaven av Noseweek.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Lennie The Liquidator Faces R500,000 Defamation Suit
After losing his cool when his fees were questioned
Panel Beater De Luxe
Danmar Autobody and its erstwhile directors get a serious panel beating in court papers. Corruption and theft are said to have destroyed the firm chaired by Nelson Mandela’s eldest daughter, leaving 200 workers destitute and threatening to kill.
Meet Covid Diarist Ronald Wohlman
Ronald Wohlman – EX SOUTH African copywriter, author, and actor – never dreamt that his lockdown diaries, written on Facebook and followed by people all over the world – would become his “life’s work”.
A Picture Of Peace?
Beware: Appearances can be deceptive
Flogging A (Battery-Driven) Dead Horse
Why plug-in vehicles are not all they’re cracked up to be– and, likely, never will be
Everybody Drinks Corona
I am hesitant to go Into the pub today. Not because it’s illegal, but there is a crème colored 1985 Mercedes 300D parked behind the pine tree. This means the devil is inside; that’s what we call Dr. De Villiers. You don’t know whether you will encounter the good doctor with the charming bedside manner or the violent, bipolar bully. The problem is, most of the time, you can never be sure which it is, so it’s best to always keep a social distance.
Never Take A Hypochondriac To A Pandemic
From Ronald Wohlman’s New York Corona Diary
The money train
Transnet in court battle with liquidators of Gupta-linked audit firm over R57m in ‘corrupt’ payments and invoices
‘He's no pharmaceutical genius, he's a vulture'
Pharma con seeks prison release to ‘help find Covid cure’
Bush school – A memoir
OUR SCHOOL WAS IN THE MIDDLE of the bush, ten miles from the nearest town in the harsh beauty of the Zimbabwean highveld. It started life in World War II as No 26 EFTS Guinea Fowl, a Royal Air Force elementary flying training school and I arrived there in 1954, just seven years after it became an all-white co-ed state boarding school.
