Hidden treasure, by Mike Unwin
It’s just a small, brown bird – nothing to get the pulse racing – but it’s working harder to grab my attention than any Big Five A-lister. Clearly I’m required to follow, so I continue cautiously up the old elephant trail as my avian escort flits from branch to branch ahead, twittering insistently all the while. At the foot of a granite outcrop I pause in search of the path – driving the bird into a shrill frenzy of impatience – then pick my way over the exfoliating surface, sending rainbow skinks scuttling for the crevices, until I’m standing at the base of a baobab.

The bird has fallen silent, perched in quiet anticipation on a low branch. Adjacent to it, punched into the swollen face of the baobab’s trunk, is a dark hole. The muted drone of insects emanates from within. Craning my neck, I can see one or two buzzing around its entrance.

And suddenly I realise what’s going on. The bird is a greater honeyguide, the insects are bees, and inside the hole is the golden prize: a honeycomb, packed with sticky sweetness and juicy grubs. I am now supposed to shin up the trunk and scoop out the goodies, whereupon the bird will join me to share the spoils. It’s a time-honoured contract – and one that works perfectly well with honey badgers.

I look around. I’m somewhere deep in the immensity of Kafue National Park, Zambia’s largest. The bush rolls away on all sides into seamless wilderness. Yet, at this moment, all its mysteries seem to funnel into this one hole in a tree.

It’s moments like these that have made my every venture into the African outdoors something new. Not the big game encounters that top the agenda – thrilling as they are – but the unexpected revelations that are scattered like clues to hidden treasure. The python lying among the leaf litter of a Zululand forest, for instance, trusting so completely to its camouflage that it had not shifted until my unsuspecting foot came down inches from its gleaming coils. Or the crocodile that had risen to snap an oxpecker from the back of a hippo with a gun-shot clap of its jaws, then slipped back beneath the waters of the Luangwa as the great herbivores milled around in panic. I swear the canny reptile had tipped me a wink.

This time the treasure is there for the taking. But I’m no honey badger: there’s no way I’m going stick my hand in that hole and risk the wrath of the swarm. The honeyguide vents its frustration in a fury of chirrups as I step away from the tree and continue on my way. Next time, according to African folklore, it will lead me to a black mamba. I’ll be ready. 

The golden hour, by Emma Gregg
Is there anything more sublime than that longed-for last hour of the African afternoon, when the light softens before your eyes? Shadows grow longer and deeper. Colours melt. Everyone and everything is bathed in a delicious honey-gold glow. It’s nature’s answer to candlelight, an incorrigible flatterer.

With the sinking of the sun comes relief from the heat of the day. Birds fuss and forage; soon they will be heading off to roost. Village kids, recharged, fizz with energy while their parents relax – the stew is cooked, the work is done. Safari guides round off a perfect day of wildlife watching by pulling up at a favourite viewpoint, just before the sun begins to nuzzle the horizon.

In June 2010, the eyes of the world will focus on the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Some say the tournament will be the continent’s golden hour. But why wait until June? In Africa, you can dip your fingers in gold any afternoon you choose.

Dance of the Dogon, by Philip Briggs
A drum rhythm reverberates below the burnished cliffs. Following the beat, we ascend a steep flight of stone steps through the Dogon village of Ireli, a hobbit-warren of curvaceous dwellings and conical granaries, mushrooming from boulder-strewn slopes.

Stepping into a vast sandstone amphitheatre, we’re greeted by an other-worldly scene. Dogon dancers, flamboyant in cowrie-shell bodices and elaborate kanaga masks, are re-enacting key episodes in their tribal history. Rotating their masks around their bodies then using them to strike the ground, they bound in and out of the crowd of excited children and colourfully dressed women. Gigantic figures on stilts lurch and wobble above, sporting bold wooden breasts and wild hairstyles to mimic the Fulana slave raiders who tormented the Dogon in the 15th century.

The dancers’ kanaga masks comprise an animal face topped by a double-barred wooden cross. The Dogon of central Mali are among West Africa’s most celebrated animists and the kanaga, like most of their creations, is loaded with meaning: the lower bar of the cross symbolises the earth or material world and the upper bar the air or spiritual world.

What we are witnessing is a rare Dama Festival, held in most Dogon villages once every five to 15 years. It is one of the most arresting and euphoric events I have been privileged to attend in Africa, with a physicality that bombards every sense. It’s made all the more poignant by its breathtaking setting below the Bandiagara Escarpment, from which the ancestral spirits watch unseen.

These 300m-high cliffs are pockmarked with partially sealed caves, excavated by the Tellem who formerly inhabited the escarpment. Some caves are now the burial place for generations of Dogon dead, hoisted there using thick ropes made from baobab fibres.

The Dogon believe that the spirits of the most recently departed still roam the village, stirring an occasional spot of mischief to remind everybody of their presence. Their purgatorial state ends only when a Dama is held as a final farewell. It’s a kind of community cleansing ritual: the masked dancers lead any errant souls to eternal rest among the ancestors.

The Dama isn’t the most important event in the Dogon calendar. That honour falls upon the once-in-a-lifetime Sigi ceremony, which coincides with the appearance of the white dwarf star Sirius B every 60 years, and is next due in 2027. But like any traditional African festival – be it a Maasai initiation ceremony or Hamer bull-jumping rite, the joyous Meskal ceremony undertaken by Orthodox Ethiopians or the Akwasidee festival celebrated every sixth Sunday in the Ashanti capital of Kumasi – the Dama is not merely a thrilling experience, but a compelling reminder of the myriad different traditions and cultures that co-exist on this vast continent.  

Breaking the code, by Emma Gregg
It was a hot October afternoon and I had Christmas on my mind. I’d just discovered, to my surprise, that I could send a stack of Christmas cards all the way from remote, pre-email, up-country Gambia to the UK for considerably less than the cost of a batch of British first class stamps. Time to get cracking.

Late-ripening mangoes hung like baubles, red, green and gold, from the tree in my friend’s compound. Perfect. After a few false starts, my hand-drawn Christmas card design – a star-topped mango tree – just needed some kind of decorative frame. “Have a hunt through this,” said my friend, handing me a heavy hardback, its cover still cool from his library.

It was a book of traditional African symbols, and it fell open at a page of Akan goldweight designs. The ancients of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire were skilled at modelling these quirky little animals, birds and figures in wax, then casting them in bronze or brass. As well as having a practical use in measuring precise quantities of gold dust, each weight represented a proverb or metaphor. Most seemed rather cautionary. A bird with its head turned backwards stood for the value of hindsight, a tortoise with a fly on its back warned against attacking someone or something that’s out of your league and a ladder spoke of the inevitability of death.

I was gripped, and flipped over to a page of Akan Adinkra symbols – elegant curls, twists, loops and wheels signifying friendship, ingenuity, hope and harmony – and another of hieroglyphs decoded from 3000-year-old sheets of papyrus.

Finding the inspiration I needed to finish off my design was easy. But tearing myself away from that book was considerably harder. I pored over the shapes and patterns which comprise a silent but powerful counterpart to the continent’s rich oral culture.

Develop an interest in African iconography and you’ll feel the gravitational pull of every corner of the continent. Like me, you’ll be drawn to Cairo’s Egyptian Museum, which harbours priceless graphic treasures, from coins and scarabs to the sumptuous designs embellishing Tutankhamun’s gold-covered throne. You’ll want to explore the dusty streets of Marrakech and Fes, where geometric tiles in intricate star patterns symbolise life, wisdom and good health. You’ll acquire a taste for the abstract motifs printed, daubed or woven into classic African textiles: Malian bogolan, Ghanaian kente and Congolese kuba and indigo-dyed damask from Guinea. You’ll find yourself collecting Swahili kangas, delighting in Zulu bead patterns and sighing over San rock art. You may be lucky enough to witness a Zanzibari bride, her hands painted with swirls of henna, or bold enough to head deep into the Sahara where Tuareg silversmiths still fashion lost-wax pendants in the shape of the Cross of Agadez, totem of the nomad, its points indicating the four corners of the world.

The exhilaration of leafing through that old book of symbols has never left me. I felt I had unlocked something. Africa had shown me a little of its ancient language, and with that came the irresistible promise that it would continue to share its secrets.

Bite me, by Emma Gregg
Brian Jackman, one of Travel Africa’s long-term contributors, once wrote: “Everything in Africa bites, but the safari bug is worst of all.” The plucky tomato frog would probably agree – at least about the biting part. Its vivid red and gold coloration warns sharp-toothed aggressors not to try their luck.

Stumble across one of these endangered, nocturnal amphibians in the forests of northeast Madagascar and it’s unlikely to trouble you – unless, perhaps, you get too close and it mistakes your finger for one of its favourite snacks (locusts, cockroaches and worms).

As a rule, this colourful character opts for defence rather than attack. Adult frogs – which can grow up to 10.5cm long, bigger than a fist – deter predators by blowing up like a beef tomato and exuding a nasty, sticky skin secretion. Quite a mouthful.

The lure of big cat country, by Birian Jackman

Dawn comes up fast in the Masai Mara. On Rhino Ridge a cheetah stands atop a termite mound above the melting mist. Near a bend in the Talek River, a leopard climbs into a sausage tree to warm itself in the rising sun; and in the grasslands beyond Bila Shaka a solitary lioness moves her cub to a new place of safety.

With its flat-topped trees and rolling grasslands, the Mara has come to represent the archetypal African wildlife park. But what lifts it out of the ordinary is the presence of the big cats – the trinity of top predators – lion, leopard and cheetah.

Revered for their beauty, held in awe for their role as natural born hunters, they have a universal appeal that transcends all barriers. Long since perfected in evolutionary terms, these magnificent carnivores inhabit a parallel universe far older than ours, but one that we can experience whenever we enter their world on safari.

Sharing their wild domain is an entire cavalcade of other animals, from six-tonne elephants to tiny dik-dik no bigger than a hare. But it is the cats that everyone most wants to see.

Who can fail to be moved by their hypnotic presence? Even in repose they exude an aura of imminent drama, of latent poser barely suppressed beneath their gorgeous coats, and the certainty of unimaginable violence never far away. You don’t even have to see them to feel the tingling tension in the air. All it needs are fresh pugmarks in the dust to set the nerves jangling with excitement.

In big cat country the eye is never still. One is constantly on the lookout for the silhouette of a leopard sprawled along a bough, the flick of an ear in the grass that might betray a cheetah, or the way in which prey animals sometimes give away the hidden presence of a lion.

Often, following the Musiara pride in the Mara, I would try to imagine what it must feel like to be a lion. Like me, they would have smelled the grass and heard the sad cries of wood doves drifting up from the dry riverbeds. Did we not feel the same sense of pleasure when the sun warmed us on a cold morning? Thirst, hunger, aggression, fear; there were many sensations we must have shared; but what else went on behind those inscrutable eyes will forever remain a mystery.

To subscribe or buy back issues, click here 

Urban spirit, by Emma Gregg

Bamako’s Marché des Fétiches – the fetish market – is not for the squeamish. I once went there on the suggestion of a visiting friend, an African American. It was his second day in Africa. As we browsed the rickety stalls, I did my best to appear both respectful and disapproving. His eyes were out on stalks.

Dessicated monkey heads, complete with fur and teeth, gawped at us. Dried chameleons lay as stiff as toys, their tails a perfect spiral. Cowrie shells spilled out of sacks alongside kola nuts, weaverbird feathers, porcupine quills, snakeskins and the snouts of crocodiles. All were for sale. For makers of remedies and potions, this alien-looking assemblage was a ticket to the supernatural.

Whistlestop tourists who are whisked around the Marché des Fétiches and the Centre Artisanal before being beckoned back to their buses may, perhaps, leave Bamako satisfied that they have experienced the essence of a West African capital. But over many visits to many African cities, I’ve come to appreciate the everyday facets of urban Africa just as much as the pockets of absolute otherness found in some sub-Saharan towns.

Urban adventures are key to any independent exploration of West Africa. If you’re travelling by public transport, you become intimately acquainted with the intricate workings of bush taxi garages and the teeming commercial districts around them. In many of the towns I’ve visited, terminus and market blur into one: you’re assailed by the powerful scent of spices, warm fruit, fresh fritters and cheap soap as you shoulder your way towards your stop to face the onslaught of the taxi touts.

Near the market stalls, tailors bend over their sewing machines, stitching coils of gold embroidery around the necks of Muslim kaftans, and shopkeepers unload fresh stock or check through handwritten accounts. You can watch working relationships play out – colleagues exchange lengthy greetings, hands are offered and held – and perhaps strike up a transaction of your own.

In many African cities, everyday life is lived outdoors. Women swap banter in the streets, men pause in the shade to shuffle seeds around a board and kids play their own games with improvised toys – wire cars, tatty footballs, bicycle tyres. They’re free to roam, but having the means to travel is another matter: urbanites who live within a hundred miles of a game reserve may never have had the opportunity to see an elephant.

Come nightfall, the after-dark scene cracks open; if you’re in one of Africa’s live music hubs – Bamako, Dakar, Johannesburg or, for the fearless, Lagos – it’s time to check out whoever’s in town. Just as wine tastes best at source, there’s nothing quite like hearing a great African band play to a home crowd.

South Africans have a particularly keen understanding of the fascination of inner cities. But the first time I visited Khayelitsha with one of Cape Town’s township tour companies, I caught myself staring out of the minibus window into the rigid gaze of a row of sheep’s heads, barbecuing beside the road. With a jolt, I realised I felt as voyeuristic as a tourist at the Marché des Fétiches.

When the tour was over, I was desperate to immerse myself in the ordinary – so I checked into a simple township B&B. My host plied me with home-cooked food and friendly conversation, and made me feel as welcome as a long-lost daughter. It was the perfect urban experience.

The sound of solitude, by Hamilton Wende

A slender moon cast a pale light on the dry grass around the edge of our campsite. The sound of a plane echoed through the night. It seemed impossibly far away – something from another world.

Lines on a map had become a real place in the desert, a single clearing in the bush, the glow of a dying fire and the rustle of a hyena in the darkness.

We set off again early the next morning. The desert landscape was near-empty apart from a pair of zebras picking their way across the scrub. There were no tyre tracks to mark the way ahead; dry twigs lay unbroken across the sandy road. We drove alone for hours, the Land Rover floating over the soft surface. At times it felt like steering a boat. Occasionally we would see a gemsbok in the shade of a thorn tree, or an ostrich, dashing through the shimmering heat.

Towards the end of the day, we came to a crossroads. Our printed map was wildly inaccurate. “Users,” it said, “please note: possible errors. Deep sand.”

Heavy rain clouds were building on the horizon. We didn’t want to drive through deep sand in the rain so we stopped for the night.

The breeze roared in the distance like the waves of a sea. Thunder rumbled. As darkness descended distant flashes of lightning exploded in the cloud. A few drops fell, but somehow the rain passed south of us.

We cooked dinner and watched as lightning ignited two huge fires on the horizon. Under the low clouds a conflagration of smoke and fire raged. The wind was constantly changing direction; sometimes it brought the fire towards us. We felt helpless, exposed and alone. There was no one near us for at least 100km. If the fire came our way, our sat phone or GPS weren’t going to protect us.

At last, late at night, the fires died, the danger receded and our isolation once more became a precious moment of solitude.

Lying in awake in our tent, listening to the rare, gentle rainfall in the darkness, I realised that the fragile balance between beauty and danger is the secret of the allure of southern Africa’s great deserts. These are places where you can get truly lost, or into trouble, despite your maps, your GPS, your careful planning. In the vastness of the Kalahari, the Namib, the Karoo or the Etosha Basin, you experience the mingled sense of fear and fascination that is our most ancient response to the power of the world around us.

The knowledge that such wildernesses still exist on this crowded planet of ours nourishes my soul. The sadness lies in remembering how very few of them we have left.

Golden moments in Madagascar, by Hilary Bradt

How to choose one golden moment out of the chain of special experiences that link my visits to Madagascar? Each time I go – and it’s been at least 25 times, stretching back to 1976 – something remarkable happens. I can effortlessly bring to mind that picnic in Nosy Komba, when Madagascar and its inhabitants were new to me. I was sitting under the shade of a mango tree, rummaging in my rucksacks for bananas, when a rustle in the branches made me look up. I was staring straight into the golden eyes of my first lemur. Wow! More appeared, and I noted in my diary that there were two different types of lemur, black and chestnut brown. It was some time before I learned that these were male and female black lemurs, but my ignorance was no bar to delight.

Later discoveries have been golden because I knew the animal’s rarity. Like the twig-mimic snake found in the dry western forest, or the tiny brookesia chameleon, hardly bigger than my thumbnail, which I discovered in the leaf litter, or the helmet vanga, a bird with a crazy blue beak, sitting on its nest half way up a forested mountain.

Some of the animals that make Madagascar special are tiny, almost microscopic. I’ll never forget a night on Nosy Be when my group was staying in beach chalets. It was in the mid 1980s, there were very few other tourists and, before going to bed, I slipped down to the sea to go skinny-dipping under the cover of darkness. The Indian Ocean was as warm as bathwater after lapping at the hot sand all day, and full of phosphorescence; as I swam my lazy breaststroke I could see my arms outlined in a bluish light. I don’t need photos to remind me of these special times.

One truly golden moment came in Ranomafana National Park, soon after dawn on a rainy October morning. I can see and feel it now: raindrops drip from the tips of leaves, mud squelches underfoot, and the forest is still except for the happy chirruping frogs. Even the birds are silent, motionless in the shelter of the canopy.

Then the rain stops, the sun emerges, and the forest comes to life. A shaft of sunlight spotlights a stand of bamboo not far from the path, and I lag behind the rest of the group to admire the sharp lines and patterns of the green and yellow stems. Something moves. The leaves rustle, the stems sway and four lemurs burst into view. They are snapping off the smallest shoots and leaves and eating them daintily like asparagus. Bamboo lemurs! The eastern grey variety, presumably, as they’re most common species in the park. But as they move closer, I see their fur is a warm chestnut colour, almost orange. Surely it can’t be…? Our guide materialises at my side and his grin answers my unasked question. “Golden bamboo lemur,” he whispers. “We are very lucky!”