ABOUT
PHOTOS
SLIDESHOWS
About Origins
It began in Limbe, Cameroon. I was visiting my brother, Felix, who runs a primate project, rehabilitating chimpanzees and gorillas caught up in the bush meat trade. I too needed rehabilitating: my life had fallen apart and looming winter blues had driven me out of the UK to the place I always feel happy - Africa and its sun, its simplicity, its adventure.
I found Felix living in paradise: the “born free” life of the primate world, a house in equatorial botanic gardens, backing onto Limbe bay with its views of the mountain of Malabo out to sea and Mount Cameroon behind, the town of Limbe a clean, friendly, colourful fishing town; and a job to die for in chimpanzee and gorilla conservation.
This paradise was a welcome release from the stresses back home. The chimps and the gorillas were fascinating, the trekking up Mount Cameroon exhilarating, the equatorial sandy beaches and warm surf a sensual delight, the fresh fruit and veg and fish and meat more tasty and more “organic” than anything back home. And yet something was still missing.
I needed my Africa - the Africa of my travels, the Africa that is missing when you live with ex-pats, the Africa that tourism tends to see passing by the window of the 4x4 as it searches for the splendours of the natural world.
I needed the thing that makes Africa Africa, the thing that reflects back our origins, our human community, reminds us from where we come and who we are, I needed to just go and wander, I needed people and colour and vibrancy and life and to see where fate took me.
But where? I asked my friend Adela where she came from.
“Esu” she replied.
“And where is Esu?” I asked.
“In the northern highlands near Bamenda” I had heard about this area! An area of mountain kingdoms called “fongoms”, the cheif being the Fon.
“Show me on the map”.
Adela traced her finger across the map form Bamenda in the north west province, around the “ring road” - lined green on my map for “route of outstanding beauty” - and off on a spur road from Weh. Her finger stopped at Esu, where the road on the map stopped too. I could see it was a valley, and from Esu to the Nigerian border, still quite a space away, there was nothing.
I realised I’d never been anywhere where the road just stopped, ran out - no going forwards, left or right, this was it - from here you stayed or turned back.
To the bewilderment of Adela - “but they are just poor people, there is nothing”- off I went, to Esu, the kingdom at the end of the road.
And I found a beautiful fertile valley with a pleasant climate, a people warm and welcoming, a strong culture with a clear sense of itself - proud and open. I befriended the Cheif or Fon, who taught me their history, and I lived with Adela’s family.
“Have you come to help us” they asked?. “Not really“ I replied sheepishly - all the time thinking “I think you are more likely to be helping me!”
“What is your mission?”
“Well I don’t really have one...yet”
“ Do you know Pastor Felix from England - he was the last white man here 8 years ago”.
“Well I know Felix, but he ain’t no Pastor! In fact he was kicked out of the church choir!” (I didn’t tell them that.)
They took me in and made me one of their own, and when I left I felt at one with the world again, my perspective on life re-balanced, my priorities realigned.
I returned to my world to face the music of my life. The next couple of years were tough but always there with me on my shoulder was this other world - a more real world, a humble world, a proud and beautiful people in touch with their environment, secure in their identity and their community and, most strikingly, fundamentally happy. Esu and its people and the sure knowledge that I would return gave me a solace which I realised Africa had always given me throughout my life.
From Here 2 Timbuktu grew from the seed of a thought in Esu which was then developed over the next few years travelling west Africa. I sought out-of-the-way places where there is no tourism, other “kingdoms at the end of the road”. I want to take you to the places I know, and in so doing help in a small way some extraordinary communities.
