Tim Baily is more than just a safari operator, he is a man with a passionate love for his native Africa and, with some justification, can also claim to be an expert on the more violent side of African politics.
Over the past eight years, Tim, in his efforts to establish his trans-African safari company, has continually found himself in the midst of whatever juicy African conflict seems to be boiling over at that particular moment.
Tim led the first expedition to traverse the Congo safely after Simba’s war, and when his battered Land Rover convoy reached the Oubangui River, which separates the Congo from the Central African Republic, they found both banks teeming with African trigger troops. easy. The two countries were ready for war over a sudden disagreement over the future form of “African Unity.”
Tim’s knowledge of Swahili saved them here. He borrowed a native canoe, paddled across the river to confront the astonished Congolese troops, and diplomatically persuaded them to allow the ferry across the river to pick up the rest or their convoy.
Today, Siafu Safari Company is a thriving business. It is named after the ant Siafu who stops for nothing. If you can’t get around, over, or under an obstacle, you’ll just fight your way through it. The original four battered Land Rovers are now replaced by entire fleets of shiny new vehicles, and routes between London and Nairobi are carefully planned. Today the Siafu expeditions that cross Africa know that they will reach their destinations, but this was not always the case.
Tim was born and raised on his father’s farm in Kenya until independence forced him to emigrate to South Africa. Seven years ago, with car salesman Peter Hooper and a short-wheelbase Land Rover, Tim left Durban at the beginning of what would become a 20,000-mile journey through a turbulent new Africa. The journey would last sixteen painful and dangerous months, and it would fill Tim’s mind with the crazy idea of going on commercial land safaris.
To pass through the newly independent countries of Libya, Tanzania, and Kenya, Tim and Peter had to go through every item of their gear and clothing and remove all traces of South African origin.
Their real difficulties began when they tried to leave Kenya. The main roads into Ethiopia had been closed due to bandit raids across the border, southern Sudan was also closed, and to the west, the Congo remained a bloody battlefield contested by mercenaries and Simba rebels.
They finally managed to find a border post in Ethiopia that was open in Kalem, near Lake Rudolph. From here, it took them 42 days of grueling, sweaty and grueling work to cover 170 miles of the dirtiest roads in Africa. They unloaded their Land Rover a thousand times to haul it through mud holes as large as the vehicle itself, or they worked as slaves to widen tracks that weren’t meant for anything bigger than camels.
In Addis Ababa they were denied a visa to cross the Sudan, but instead of making a return trip down those horrible Ethiopian roads, they chose to continue north without a visa. They left Ethiopia, bypassed the Sudanese border post by driving through the desert, and then made a frantic non-stop race along the Red Sea coast towards Egypt.
They almost succeeded, but their outdated map had lost the position of the northern boundary by ten vital miles.
They arrived at the Sudan starting post believing they had won their bet and were in Egypt, and were immediately arrested upon realizing their mistake.
Fortunately, they were not heavily guarded, and while the Sudanese officer in charge radioed Khartoum to ask what should be done with them, they managed to steal their passports and make a frenzy at night to Egypt.
Almost immediately they were arrested again. Their Egyptian visas, which they believed were valid for three months, were valid for only one month and had already expired.
Ironically, the two travelers explained that neither of them could read Arabic. They were escorted to Port Suez and held there in jail for two nights before their statement was finally accepted.
From there they crossed the deserts of North Africa to complete their journey to Europe.
For most men, those sixteen months would have been filled with enough adventure to last a lifetime, but not for Tim Baily.
“My ambition”, says Tim, “was to organize expeditions for young people, offering them authentic adventures mixed with the romance of traveling to the Africa that I know so well. I wanted to show others the fascinating towns and places that I have seen, and give them the same opportunities to share the experience and the emotions that I have had. “
In England, Tim Baily worked for a year with the South African immigrant organization, and was in line to prepare for a high-level position when he again bet on his future. He felt that he had learned enough about office administration and his next step was to learn the trade of travel. So he took a big pay cut to work as a tour operator. After eight months, he resigned again and then rebuilt his finances with six months of hard work to excavate the underground tunnel for London’s new Victoria line. Then he was ready for the biggest gamble of all: the purchase of four second-hand Land Rovers and his return to Africa.
“My friends and family thought I was crazy,” he recalls. “Only a fool, they said, would risk his career in this way. I tried to explain that not all of us yearn for the reassurances of modern life, and that for me there was a much greater sense of satisfaction in the kind of life I was planning. I also believed. that there must be a great number of young people bored with safety and routine who might feel the same way, and who would be grateful and eager for the opportunity or to shed the shackles of civilization for a few months in Africa. ” .
“I tried to explain the camaraderie of a campfire at night, the majesty of a male elephant with open ears ready to charge, the dusty splendor of an African sunset, or the sounds or native music floating through the night bushes. The uncertainty of Africa makes every moment a new experience. Africa, I told them, is like no other place on earth, and I must see every corner and help others to see it, before it goes away, because sadly, he’s leaving. “
Then, in November 1968, Tim Baily launched that first Siafu expedition across Africa; 50 young men and women driving six Land Rovers, for two private vehicles, had also joined his convoy. The Sudan remained a visa hurdle, as its route passed through the Algerian Sahara and the Hoggar massif, heading south through black iron stone hills, wild red mountains and vast yellow sands. . On this pioneering journey, the task of keeping his vintage vehicles running put all of his mechanical skills combined to the test, but Tim Baily was learning invaluable lessons in bush mechanics.
South of the Sahara, this was a period of violence and turmoil. The Siafu group avoided the Biafra conflict, but as they passed through northern Nigeria, they encountered military checkpoints everywhere along the route and repeatedly the Land Rovers were stopped and searched by rude soldiers who dropped off members of the the expedition to repack. The delays were endless. Upon entering Chad, they encountered more war tension. The last remnants of the French Foreign Legion were waging a little-known war against rebellious tribesmen in the former colony of France and the northern part of Chad was a mess of raiding bandits.
Then came that dramatic crossing of the Obangui River into the Congo. The most recent waves of bloodshed in that unhappy land had been controlled only a few months before, and at any moment it could explode again. The entire country was still nervous and ready to shoot, and the expedition had reason to sweat a dozen times during the 1,300 miles of troop-infested mud and jungle roads before they finally crossed safely into Uganda.
In East Africa they were finally able to relax, visit the great playgrounds, navigate the Victoria Nile to Murchison Falls, and simply rest and swim off the Kenyan coast – activities that remain an important feature of all Siafu. safari. As they continued south, they encountered an angry political atmosphere as they crossed from Libya to Rhodesia, but it was their last tense moment. Four and a half months after leaving London, the first Siafu Expedition triumphantly entered the South African city or Johannesburg.
Since that original spooky journey, there have been a dozen more successful Siafu safaris, and the Siafu ant emblem painted on the white door of a Land Rover is fast becoming a familiar sight on the desert and jungle roads of Africa. , the most difficult continent. of all of them for overland travel.
Today Africa has settled into an uneasy peace, if coups here and there are overlooked. But as Tim Baily warns all his clients, “With a lifetime or experience in Africa, I think there is little doubt that I can get them to their destination, but I won’t guarantee it. Without an element of risk associated with it?”
NOTE: This article was written in 1971 when the author made the journey through Africa with one of Tim Siafu’s land expeditions.