The following is a condensed version of chapter one of Ann Jones's book about a transcontinental African journey: LOOKING FOR LOVEDU: Days and Nights in Africa, published in January 2001 by Alfred A. Knopf. This is the start of an odyssey that takes Jones and her companions through Morocco, the Sahara, West Africa, the Congo and central Africa, to Uganda and Kenya. The journey continues southward--Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe--to the land of the Lovedu in South Africa. Yes, the "Diane" of chapter one is African Portfolio's own Diane Ebzery, an intrepid African traveler in her own right.

The Queen was an afterthought. Long before we heard of her, we hatched the scheme in the middle of Africa -- in Zimbabwe, on the Zambezi, in a canoe. In the long white afternoon, the intensity of the sun propelled us light-headed into a reedy little backwater to rest. We drew the four canoes together and Dave, our guide, opened a cooler and pitched us bottles of warm Coke. I dipped my bandana in the river, wrapped it around my eyes smarting from the glint of sun on water, and lay back against the thwart, half dozing, embraced by my friends' banter. Images of the African morning played upon the inside of my eyelids: elephants showering in the shallows at the river's edge. Crocodiles lying like logs against the banks, innocent and sinister. A flight of carmine bee eaters darting from their nests in the river bank, flinging themselves like rubies over the bright water. Now as the heat of the long slow African afternoon enveloped us, pressing our bodies as a lover might, everything grew still as all that had gone before and all that was to come converged upon this single suspended moment that was both dream and reality: Africa.

Of course we couldn't bear perfection. Who first pitched dream trips into the silence I can't recall, but my companions leaped upon the subject, describing half a dozen places that might be better -- more beautiful, more exciting, more perfect than this. It's the subject that always comes up among travelers: where do you really want to go? Someone spoke of Timbuktu: of camels and drifting coppery dunes, and blue-robed masked men slim as swords. Another spoke of rainforests along the Congo: of furtive okapis and tiny pygmies hunting with nets, and women who make houses out of leaves. Someone spoke of the Skeleton Coast: of ships flung inland among desert elephants, and lions prowling among seals on the beach. And then a British voice was saying: "I've always been keen to drive all the way through Africa." This was Kevin Muggleton, a photographer from pastoral Wiltshire. He spoke offhandedly with an easy tantalizing laugh. Not even Muggleton could seriously make this proposition: to drive from one end of Africa to the other. But his voice carried a decidedly un British edge of enthusiasm that drew me out of this moment -- relaxed and contemplative in a green canoe on a blue river in the heart of Africa -- and flung me by the sheer force of its vitality into an uncertain and adventurous future. "It's classic," Muggleton said. "You know, the old Cape to Cairo' sort of thing." That's all it took. Later I stumbled upon the Queen and used her as a good excuse, but in fact I decided everything in that moment.

I lifted my bandana and squinted up at Muggleton in the next canoe. He was young, big, tall, lean. He'd grown up in Hong Kong, a military brat, gone to boarding school in England, and after Sandhurst done a stint as an officer in the British equivalent of the green berets. Later he'd started a video business in Victoria Falls and once, for the hell of it, he walked through South America. If ever a man was qualified to go any where, Muggleton was it. He had the right attitude for the job too, perhaps because he was one of the last known male descendants of Prophet Muggleton, the seventeenth century English sectarian who taught that "God takes no notice of us." That notion left the younger Muggleton self-reliant and endlessly amused by the human comedy, if also somewhat slack in his moral scruples.

"Me too," I said.

Muggleton grinned.

"Great news," he said. And then he asked me: "Do you want to take a little ride?"

Everybody laughed. I laughed. We went on down the river, side by side in our canoes, and by the time we returned to Vic Falls, we had reached an understanding. We would go.

A couple of months later Muggleton, Dave, and Diane showed up at my New York apartment and we walked over to Soho for breakfast. Diane, who runs her travel business out of New York and Harare, had brought Dave to the States to publicize Zimbabwe at an adventure-travel conference. Muggleton, who had a near-fatal crush on Diane, had appeared uninvited for a visit. We talked over vehicles and routes for our trans-African expedition and points along the way where Dave or Diane might join us. Anything seemed possible.

"What do you think it will cost?" Dave asked.

Muggleton shrugged. "We'll get sponsors," he said. "They'll pay us."

"Why?" Dave asked. "What for?"

"For making the bloody expedition," Muggleton said. "Why not?"

"No offense, Mate," Dave said, "but we drive around Africa all the time. Nobody pays us for it. We live there. If you want to call your trip an expedition, don't you have to have a mission or something?"

"Right," Muggleton said. "A mission." He turned to me. "A bloody mission."

That very afternoon we found one at the Museum of Natural History. We took the subway uptown, hoping that in the African sections of the great Museum we would find inspiration. There, in one of the cavernous halls of African animals, some drummers and dancers from East Africa were performing. I stood among the little crowd, mostly schoolchildren with their teachers, and let the boom, boom, booming of the drums carry me away. The dancing women, wrapped in red, shuffled and swayed as if blown about by the rise and fall of a great, hot wind. Behind them lions prowled in the yellow grass of a diorama.

After the dance I traipsed after Muggleton who was wandering slowly through the hall of African Peoples. And there I came upon a glass case containing a display of artifacts associated with the lives of Bantu women: pots, pandanus mats, beer strainers woven of grass. Reading a caption neatly lettered on a card affixed to the case, I was struck suddenly by a tiny dependent clause buried deep in the middle of the paragraph. Somehow I'd missed this sentence on previous visits to the Museum, but now it stopped me.

"Except for a few tribes like the Lovedu, where women rule, they seem unimportant

in political life."

Did some mad feminist lurk in the back rooms of the Museum, writing subversive signs? Or could it be true? Women, perhaps, like the dancers I'd seen. Tall. Serene. Splendid. Could there be such a place?

I dragged Muggleton over to the exhibit. "Read that!" I said. "There's our purpose." I felt inspired. Triumphant. "We'll go looking for Lovedu. We'll find the tribe where women rule. We'll pay homage to the queen. There must be a queen."

Muggleton read the caption again, his forehead creased with concern. "This queen business," he said. "You're not looking for some ancient matriarchy, are you? Some feminist la-la-land?"

I hesitated only a moment, pondering the tenderness of the masculine ego. "Well, yes and no," I said. "I don't have an axe to grind, if that's what you mean. But I admit I'm very curious to see a land where women rule.' Wouldn't you find it interesting to hear from the Queen?"

"I have a Queen," he said. "And Mrs. Thatcher."

"Point taken."

Muggleton studied the grass mats in the display case as if he might find a clue encoded in the woven designs. "Can we visit some other tribes as well?" he said. "Pygmies perhaps? Or Masai? Or Ndebele?"

"Of course," I said. Why was he suddenly so serious? So hesitant?

"I'd rather like to visit some tribes where men still have something to say."

"No problem," I said. "How can we miss them? Men always have something to say."

Muggleton didn't smile. What had become of his irrepressible sense of humor?

"You're not going to go all wobbly on me, are you?" he said. "You're not going to wind yourself up for that mystical hoo-ha?"

"What are you talking about?"

"All that new age born again life-changing nonsense you bloody Americans are always going on about. You know. Spiritual growth."

"No, no, Muggleton. I promise. I never grow."

"You're sure you're not going in search of your true self?

"I am my true self!" I said.

"Exactly," Muggleton said. "So let's just make an expedition."

"C'mon, Muggleton," I coaxed. "You heard Dave. We've got to come up with an official purpose to justify the journey. And what could be better than this? Looking for Lovedu." I pronounced it "love-dew," making it sound like some kind of romantic elixir. (It was months before we learned to say correctly: "low-BAY-doo.")

"Looking for Love-Due," Muggleton echoed. "It does have a certain ring."

He grinned. We shook hands on it. Our mission was agreed.

26 November, 2005 19:33