Tim Baily is greater than only a safari operator, he’s a person with a passionate love for his native Africa — and with some justification he also can declare to be an professional on the extra violent facet of African politics.
For previously eight years Tim, in his efforts to get his trans-Africa safari firm established, has frequently discovered himself slap in the course of whichever juicy African battle appears to be simmering at that specific second.
Tim led the primary expedition to get via the Congo safely after the Simba Battle, and when his convoy of battered Land Rovers arrived on the Oubangui river which separates the Congo from the Central African Republic they discovered each banks swarming with trigger-happy African troops. The 2 international locations have been all set for struggle over a sudden disagreement on the long run form of “African Unity.”
Tim’s information of Swahili saved them right here. He borrowed a local canoe, paddled throughout the river to confront the astounded Congolese troops, and diplomatically persuaded them to permit the ferry throughout the river to gather the remaining or his convoy.
In the present day the Siafu Safari Firm is a thriving enterprise. It’s named after the Siafu ant which stops for nothing. If it can not go spherical, over or beneath an impediment it’s going to merely eat its means via it. The unique 4 battered Land Rovers at the moment are changed by complete fleets of shiny new automobiles, and the routes between London and Nairobi are fastidiously deliberate. In the present day the Siafu expeditions crossing Africa know that they’ll attain their locations, however this was not all the time so.
Tim was born and raised on his father’s farm in Kenya till independence compelled him to immigrate to South Africa. Seven years in the past, with automobile salesman Peter Hooper and one quick wheel base Land Rover, Tim left Durban on the beginning of what was to develop into a 20,000 mile journey via a turbulent new Africa. The journey was to take sixteen painful and harmful months, and to fill Tim’s thoughts with the wild thought of working overland safaris on a business foundation.
To move via the newly impartial international locations of Libya, Tanzania and Kenya, Tim and Peter needed to examine each merchandise of their tools and clothes and take away all traces of South African origin.
Their actual difficulties started once they tried to go away Kenya. The principle roads into Ethiopia had all been closed as a consequence of bandits raiding throughout the border, the southern Sudan was additionally closed, and to the west the Congo was nonetheless a bloody battlefield contested by mercenaries and Simba rebels.
Lastly they managed to search out one border publish into Ethiopia that was open at Kalem, close to Lake Rudolph. From right here it took them 42 days of grueling, sweating, back-breaking work to cowl 170 miles of the foulest roads in Africa. They unloaded their Land Rover a thousand instances to haul it via mud holes as massive because the car itself, or labored like slaves to widen tracks that had been meant for nothing bigger than camels.
In Addis Ababa they have been refused visas to cross the Sudan: however reasonably than make a return journey over these terrible Ethiopian roads they selected to proceed north with out visas. They left Ethiopia, by-passed the Sudanese border publish by driving via the desert, after which made a frantic continuous sprint alongside the Crimson Beach for Egypt.
They nearly made it, however their outdated map had misplaced the place of the northern frontier by ten important miles.
They arrived on the Sudanese exit publish believing that they’d gained their gamble and have been in Egypt — and have been promptly arrested as they realized their mistake.
Happily they weren’t too carefully guarded, and whereas the Sudanese officer in cost radioed Khartoum to ask what ought to be executed with them they succeeded in stealing again their passports and making a frantic evening escape into Egypt.
Virtually instantly they have been arrested once more. Their Egyptian visas, which they’d believed to be legitimate for 3 months, have been legitimate for one month solely, and already they’d expired.
Wryly the 2 vacationers defined that neither of them might learn Arabic. They have been taken beneath escort to Port Suez and held there in jail for 2 nights earlier than their plea was lastly accepted.
From there they crossed the deserts of North Africa to finish their journey to Europe.
For many males these sixteen months would have been filled with sufficient journey to final a lifetime, however not for Tim Baily.
“My ambition,” Tim says, “was to run expeditions for younger folks, providing them real journey mingled with the romance of journey to the Africa I do know so nicely. I wished to indicate others the fascinating peoples and locations I’ve seen, and provides them the identical alternatives to share within the expertise: and excitements which have been my very own.”
In England Tim Baily labored for a yr with the South African immigrant group, and was in line for grooming for a senior publish when he gambled with hello s future as soon as once more. He felt that he had discovered sufficient about workplace administration and his subsequent step was to be taught the journey commerce. So he took a giant minimize in wage to work as a tour operator. After eight months he resigned once more after which rebuilt his funds with six months arduous labor digging out the underground tunnel for London s new Victoria Line. Then he was prepared for the most important gamble of all: the acquisition of 4 second-hand Land Rovers and his return to Africa.
“My associates and family members all thought I used to be insane,” he recollects. “Solely a idiot, they stated, would danger his profession this fashion. I attempted to clarify that not all of us crave for the securities of modern-day life, and that for me there was a far better sense of achievement in the kind of life that I used to be planning. I believed additionally that there should be an excellent quantity or different younger folks uninterested in safety and routine who would possibly really feel the identical means, and who could be grateful and longing for the chance or shedding the shackles of civilization for just a few months in Africa.”
“I attempted to clarify the comradeship of a camp hearth by evening, the majesty of a bull elephant with ears unfold able to cost, the dust-filled splendor of an African sundown, or the sounds or native music drifting throughout the evening bush. The very uncertainty of Africa makes each second a brand new expertise. Africa, I advised them, is like nowhere else on earth, and I need to see each nook of it, and assist others to see it, earlier than it goes — for sadly, it’s going.”
So, in November of 1968, Tim Baily launched that first Siafu expedition throughout Africa; 50 younger women and men driving six Land Rovers, for 2 non-public automobiles had additionally joined his convoy. The Sudan was nonetheless a stumbling block in regard to visas, and so their route lay via the Algerian Sahara and the Hoggar Massif, heading south via black iron-stone hills, wild crimson mountains, and the huge yellow sands. On this pioneer journey the duty of retaining their historic automobiles working taxed all their mixed mechanical expertise, however Tim Baily was studying invaluable classes in bush mechanics.
South of the Sahara this was a interval or violence and upheaval. The Siafu get together prevented the Biafra battle however as they handed via northern Nigeria they discovered army checkpoints in all places alongside the route and repeatedly the Land Rovers have been stopped and searched by rude soldiery who left the expedition members to repack. The delays have been limitless. On coming into Chad they discovered extra struggle rigidity. The final remnants of the French Overseas Legion have been preventing a little-known struggle in opposition to rebellious tribesmen in France’s former colony and the northern a part of Chad was a turmoil of raiding bandits.
Subsequent got here that dramatic crossing of the Obangui River into the Congo. The newest waves of bloodshed in that sad land had been introduced beneath management just a few months earlier than, and at any second it might explode once more. The entire nation was nonetheless nervous and trigger-happy, and the expedition had trigger to sweat a dozen instances over the 13 hundred miles of troop-infested mud and jungle roads earlier than they ultimately crossed safely into Uganda.
In East Africa they have been eventually in a position to calm down, to go to the nice recreation parks, to cruise up the Victoria Nile to the Murchison Falls, and to easily laze and swim on the Kenya coast — actions that are nonetheless a serious function of each Siafu safari. Once they continued south they encountered an indignant political ambiance as they crossed from Libya to Rhodesia, however it was their final second of rigidity. 4 and a half months after leaving London the primary Siafu Expedition drove triumphantly into the South African metropolis or Johannesburg.
Since that unique hair-raising journey there have been a dozen and extra profitable Siafu safaris, and the Siafu ant emblem painted on the white door of a Land Rover is quick turning into a well-recognized sight on the desert and jungle roads of Africa, the hardest continent of all of them for overland journey.
In the present day Africa has settled again into an uneasy peace, if you happen to overlook the odd coup d’ etat right here and there. However as Tim Baily warns all his shoppers, “With a lifetime or expertise in Africa I really feel there’s little doubt that I can get you thru to your vacation spot — however I can’t assure it. For in spite of everything, what good is an journey with out a component of danger connected?”
NOTE: This text was written in 1971 when the creator made the trans-Africa journey with considered one of Tim’s Siafu overland expeditions.