Saturday May 16, 2009
By Rose Yasmin KarimPhotos by Ghani Ishak & Alison Murugesu
Uprooting and jumping into the unknown is a huge deal, especially when you’re doing it as a family.
When do you know it’s a good time to take your little one out of his play pen and into the backseat of a 4x4 Nissan Patrol for an extended road trip?
For feisty couple Alison Murugesu, 38, and her husband, Ghani Ishak, 61, the answer is when he’s been potty-trained and is strong enough to handle a long journey.
Alison, Adrian and Ghani at the Western Colonnades in Jordan.Not wanting to deal with the fiasco that can be air travel today, the couple, who met in 1994 through a superbikers’ charity gathering in London, and their son Adrian, four, set off overland in May last year, traversing three continents and 43 countries in a specially rigged-out 4WD they christened Tuah.
They rented out their London flat to cover the trip’s expenses, sorted out the insurance, did all that was needful, said their goodbyes and hit the road.
“We have timed the expedition so that we will be back in Malaysia in time for Adrian to begin Primary One at a school here in 2011, the year he turns seven,” said Alison.
“People asked us, ‘How can you afford this? Did you win the lottery?’
“The truth is we saved our money for something that was important to us — travelling,” said former hotelier, Alison, at their home in Mont Kiara.
The family is on a three-week break before embarking on the next leg of their trip to North, Central and South America.
Little Adrian’s adventures took place on a grand scale, and he has benefited from it.
The trip has left him a couple of shades darker, but the boy became familiar with names like Nefertiti and Ramses, stalked rhinos in South Africa’s Kruger National Park and learnt pottery-making in Nkhotakota, Malawi.
“When we are on the road he does sums and practises his handwriting. Perhaps, when he’s all grown up, he too will inherit our free spirit and unconventional thinking,” Alison mused.
For the first leg of their five-part trip, the family covered Europe — a continent Ghani, a barrister-at-law and master mariner, knows well — and Morocco. On the second leg in November last year, they rolled into Africa, the second largest continent in the world, and home to 54 nations and nearly a billion people.
Adrian and Masai Tikka in Voi, Kenya. Here they encountered a moonscape of potholes, deserts and bribe-seeking men in uniform. It was unfamilar territory.
“Our African leg began in the UK on Nov 10, 2008 and took us through France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Swaziland,” said Alison.
“We had a satellite phone that we could use to SOS even in the most remotest places and stand-by medication: a First Aid kit, ant-malaria pills, mosquito repellent and ointments,” Ghani chipped in.
“Road signs stating ‘Crime Area, Do Not Stop’ did unnerve us. Once Alison was stocking up on groceries when I was approached by a glue-sniffing man who demanded money,” disclosed Ghani.
“I told him I had nothing, and he reacted by warning me to go and not come back as otherwise I would never leave the car park. I just ignored him and got inside Tuah and locked the doors. After a while he gave up talking to me and walked away.”
Africa has given them so many stories to tell.
“In the sand dunes of Wadi Rum, Jordan, Tuah got bogged down because I made the mistake of slowing down at an incline. I had to use a shovel to free the tyres, but Tuah ended up getting bogged in even more when I tried to budge forward. Just as I was about to turn to the last resort of getting the high-lift jack out, Alison spotted a 4x4 truck, and we waved it down.
“The Bedouins said they would help us out for 100 dinars (RM500). There was no room for arguing or bargaining as far as they were concerned, so, within half an hour, with our winch line hooked to their truck, we were out.
“Victoria Falls Park, a Unesco World Heritage Site on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, was breathtaking,” Alison remarked fondly.
“It was the wet season, which made it hard to see the falls clearly because of the water spray, but we could see what was called the ‘Boiling Pot’ at the bottom of the falls.”
The Khami Ruins, also a Unesco World Heritage sight, in Bulawayo, a city in Zimbabwe was, however, a let-down.
“We paid US$20 (RM71) and felt we had been conned because all that remained were some walls, most of them rebuilt by volunteers. We needn’t have paid as the same walls could be seen outside the main entrance to the ruins but we didn’t know that,” Alison said.
The family almost missed Swaziland, which Ghani described as being nothing short of spectacular.
“Alison said that she thought I didn’t want to go. But I only told her that the king was looking for his 14th wife and asked whether she dared to go . . . and risk the king taking a fancy to her!” said Ghani.
In Dumazulu Village, South Africa, Ghani was kitted out as a Zulu warrior but fortunately was allowed to keep his pants on.
“The Zulu men can marry as many women as they wish as long as they can afford it; the cost for each wife is 11 cows.
“Traditionally the man with many wives would have his hut built in the middle, surrounded by each of the wives’ huts. He would call the wife he wanted for the night and she would go to sleep on the opposite side of his tent until he touched her with a stick, and then only would she go to his side. By early morning she would leave his tent,” he divulged.
“Adrian had a grand time in a place called Scratch Patch in Cape Town. He was given an empty cup and entered an area like a big sand pit that was filled with little coloured stones. He filled his cup and took it home and even got a little card which showed the different types of stones he had collected,” said Alison.
The couple also saw how coming face to face with poverty affected Adrian.
“Schools in Ethiopia were worse off than in Africa, generally. There was no water, no electricity and children Adrian’s age were balancing heavy water buckets on their heads. Along the way, kids and adults had their hands out asking to be given something, anything and they kept chanting: ‘You, you, money, money, money’,” she said.
“A kid even tried to take the shoes off my feet, and some got nasty and threw stones after the car. You could see 200 faces pressed to our window,” recalled Ghani.
Wanting to teach Adrian generosity but not wanting the locals to continue expecting things from foreigners, the family gave away pens to schools.
On more than one occasion, Adrian also got to enjoy the generosity of new-found friends. At Mikumi National Park, Tanzania, he was given a shedded snake skin, which now sits rolled up in a box on top of the DVD player at home.
Adrian took the opportunity to show me his “music melon”, a gift from a lady friend named Andrea.
“It’s a melon that’s been left in the sun for many weeks until it dries up. The seeds inside make a sound like a maracas,” explained his mother.
Adrian’s other keepsakes include a black dessert stone, an orange water pistol and a wonderful goody bag of pewter and stone animal figures given to him by a curio shop owner in Cape Town.
“In Sudan, we stopped by Holiday Villa thinking perhaps we could get directions to the embassy for an introduction letter for our Ethiopian visa application. The general manager, Hossam Suwailem, who had heard of our expedition, greeted us and, to our surprise, immediately offered us not only a room, but a suite compliments of Holiday Villa!” said Alison.
The adventurers became fast friends with many people they met along the way.
“In Sudan and Ethiopia, we were hosted to dinner by several Petronas representatives, and in Nairobi we met up with a Mr Dunstan, a Malaysian living there,” said Ghani.
“He read about us in The Star last year and we had been in touch ever since. In Jordan we met another Malaysian, Hanim and her French husband Karim and their kids, Louisa and Rayan, who were living in Qatar.
“We also ran across a young couple, Sulaiman, a Spaniard, and his Indonesian wife, Galuh, who were cycling back to Indonesia from Tunisia via Yemen and Oman. They wanted to do the journey before having children and while they were still fit.
“And then there was this Japanese lady named Yuki who had been on the road for the last seven months, on her 250cc Suzuki, making her way through Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan, heading down the same route as us to Cape Town.
“From Egypt to Sudan we shared a ferry with a Dutch couple, Jan and Yvonne, and later shared their company when we camped in the desert in Nairobi. In Malawi, we met two American teachers working as volunteers in the villages, teaching English in the day schools,” Ghani added.
“People would tell us how lucky we were and how they wished they could do something similar,” said Alison.
“Go for it, we would reply. It’s the best education you can give your child. You and your child can experience the way of life, culture and traditions of the many different people and tribes.
“The interactions Adrian has had have definitely made him a very confident child. You just need to be willing to step out of your box, your comfort zone and take some risks,” Alison concluded.
