GABORONE - HARARE - KIGALI - DJEDDAH - KARNAK

Africa: final report

Botswana is the best place to observe Haley's Comet. A group of tourists and a guitarist therefore flock to the capital, Gaborone. The municipal government has taken advantage of this phenomenon to implement the country's first traffic light. However, the purpose of these traffic light hasn't yet registered with the Bushmen who normally only use the trails of the Kakahari. One of them crashes into me at an intersection. The only red light which they respect and understand is the setting sun.

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Harare, the capital of the now independent Zimbabwe, is every bit as flourishing as when I had crossed it, while it was still called Salisbury, capital of Rhodesia. The climate there is ideal, the housing luxurious, and the lifestyle blissfully peaceful and calm. The Africans opted not to copy their neighbour 's apartheid system; consequently, Harare was and continues to be a safe haven for whites.

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In Malawi, a French paediatrician is tugged between the nature of his profession of saving children from illness, and the cruel realities of excess population. On average, women give birth to seven children. And there are already 8 million people living in this tiny land. Each life saved therefore paradoxically plunges this beautiful country further into misery and abject poverty.

*******

- I guarantee you, this plane will land!

The Ethiopian Airlines employee is peremptory. I therefore thank Rwanda's Minister of Health for having delayed the departure of his own plane in order to get me out of the Kigali's foggy airport. Several hours later, the same employee, staring at the floor, tells me that the captain decided to fly right over the airport, preferring to go straight to Addis Ababa. And the next flight is in a week! Unfortunately, my concert in Ethiopia's capital city is scheduled for tomorrow.

- Come now, surely I can get there via Nairobi, Entebbe, or Johannesburg?

- Come back in two days, there will be a Sabena flight to Jeddah !

I spend this forced and unexpected stopover informing the various organizers of what has happened. Sabena's first-rate flight, in reality, only leaves 13 hours later than the stated time.

*******

When I arrive in Jeddah, I miss the connecting flight to Khartoum, where my Sudanese audience is waiting for me.

- Are you really going to spend the entire night here?, the only other passenger asks me, horrified.
Yes, and then the whole day after that! It's 20.00, and the next flight to Khartoum is at 17.00. Since I don't have a visa, I'm not even allowed to stay at the airport's hotel. I'll just have to rot on the benches which have been carefully designed so as to prevent anyone from lying down in them, in the company of "jihads" who have come from the all over the world. Some of them are lavishly dressed, while others are almost naked. Odd-looking people are seated next to briefcase-wielding businessmen. A large rug provides all of these people with a place to pray.
I spend the night chatting with the different people passing through. An English pilot, for instance, has just spend a week in prison, in the company of ruthless and sinister scoundrels- and during Ramadan to boot, which means no food or drink during daylight. The "toilet" consists of a hole in the ground. All of this hardship and mistreatment, simply because he allegedly failed to stop at a red light (Botswana should hire Saudi counsellors to increase their awareness of road signs). Seeing as he trains Saudi fighter pilots, his connections were able to get him out of prison relatively quickly. Needless to say, he doesn't waste any time in leaving the area as fast as he can.

A Frenchwoman who arrived from Paris the day before, and who will be taking the next flight back there, explains to me that European women are subjected to the locals' lecherous impulses. Should a European woman happen to pass near Mecca during the hour of prayer, for instance, the men's focus and energies seem to change radically and instantly. Once, this woman was chased through the streets, forcing her to take shelter beneath a parked lorry for an entire night. She has come back to have her vengeance for the three years of hell which she endured in this country. After having bought a pig 's tail in a Parisian butcher shop, she took a plane to Jeddah, with the object hidden in her undergarments. There, she threw it over the wall surrounding a mosque adjacent to the area where she suffered for so long.

At 5 in the morning, an Air France representative, intrigued by my dazed and vacant countenance, aggravates matters::

- You know, your flight to Khartoum has yet to be confirmed, and it's not even certain that it would take off tonight, because of the riots currently taking place there. If you like, although my airplane is full, I'll find a spot- a tiny little spot- for you so that you can return to Paris.

Maybe that's not such a bad idea...

*******

The organizers, whom I have momentarily abandoned, are furious. As soon as I arrive in Paris, I have to hop on the first plane to Khartoum.

I'm quite taken aback by the concert's triumphant success. Here too, the guitar is thought of as an instrument conducive to exploration and experimenting. There are many women present in the gigantic theatre. Westerners are indeed a source of curiosity, and, in some cases, pleasure, despite the mutilation which everyone has heard of, in this reluctantly Muslim country.

With its 70 languages and 200 dialects, Ethiopia is a cultural and musical mosaic. There is a multitude of instruments to be found here: flutes, horns, and lyres of all sizes. They accompany "azmaris"- polyglot and poly-musical troubadours who hail from many different cultures, and talk about their homelands in the bars of Addis Ababa. Conversations about the country's political upheavals, however, remain taboo, and are therefore held discreetly or not at all. More than in other countries, external influences have led to considerable disarray among entire populations- particularly in Eritrea, of course. However, unlike the inhabitants of Khartoum, in Sudan, Ethiopians are not overly impressed by or interested in the west. They are proud of their ancestral culture, which nothing could ever replace. The guitar is merely a source of good-natured curiosity.

*******

In Karnak, painting, sculpture, and architecture are indicative of what music could be. Judging from the performances held there, bands were often led by conductors who, through their hand signals, not only provided instructions in terms of rhythm and tempo, but harmony as well. Many musicians happened to be blind, and therefore had to find other methods of harmonization.

French scholars in the process of restoring temples offer to take me on a series of guided tours of these grandiose and historic sites, each of these tours being centred on my guides' individual areas of expertise.

When it comes around to the geometrician 's turn, he leads me to a huge hypostyle room, which is currently giving him problems. The base of the columns does not form a perfect circle. Consequently, it is slightly off-centre. The Egyptians, of course, were familiar with the notion of a circle. Therefore, how can this phenomenon be explained? I think I can offer him part of the answer. For as I was strolling through the souk, I observed the construction of pillars which were to support workshops. The mason would insert a stake into the ground, carrying a string with a piece of wood attached on the edge. With this simple device, tracing a perfect circle is child's play: one merely needs to rotate the piece of wood around the stake. And yet, as the string makes its way around the stake, the line inevitably becomes more spiral-shaped than circular. In order to prevent this, the mason switches direction halfway through the circle, therefore creating two matching half-spirals..