Africa: This is Africa

Each of the four times we checked into accommodation during our African overland adventure we were greeted by a tinkling ‘running’ toilet. And this was in a continent which boasts the world’s oldest desert - the Namib. After travelling through part of its 2000km long and 120km wide expanse, we were overjoyed to wash out sand and sleep in real beds at Swakopmund.

We scored beds for 12 of our 51 nights - at Cape Town, South Africa; Windhoek and Swakopmund, Namibia and Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.

The irony with the dribbling loos says so much about Africa: one upward flick of the handle made them behave, but only at one place did a stern sign say: Lift the handle after flushing!

By our holiday’s end we were familiar with the expression, TIA - This is Africa. It helped us laugh when things didn’t work as they should.

At one smart camping ground, which had a 50m swimming pool, only one of the four women’s showers worked. At another, a fancy Government-owned camp where we stayed after climbing to a plateau where a wild animal breeding programme is underway, a handful of us adjourned to a gorgeous bar complete with glittering chandellier. The building had been the police station during a war with the Germans in the early 1900s.

The peculiarities here were fabulous facilities for so few visitors and exceptionally wide toilet cubicles. The equally wide doors, when opened, almost hit the toilets, thus getting in was a tight squeeze - just when you didn’t need it.

At Chobe National Park, when one shower was turned on the others dried up. One witchy woman spent so long washing we wondered if she’d died. A couple of blokes had a low-grade altercation.

In Tanzania and Kenya, we met squat toilets. The floors are always wet. Yik! An Internet search confirmed they’re the most common loos in the world, and revealed this tip in a nine-point how-to-go guide: the best way to keep your clothes dry is to remove your trou or skirt and hang it over the door.

In Karen, Nairobi’s smartest suburb, the camping ground had a shower block, a toilet block, another unisex loo - but only one handbasin and it was outside, tacked onto a wall.

Having traversed Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya, we reached Nairobi airport after a perfect holiday: no illness, injury or threats.

But when we checked in, the woman looked puzzled. “I’m sorry,” she said eventually, “we have no record of your booking.”

While I was thinking, ‘Disaster!’, the farmer was thinking, “Upgrade!” But after relieving us of some US dollars for a mystery tax, we were soon in cattle class.

TIA, we said as we charged our glasses: ‘This is Africa’.