Diary – 14 September 2002

I can’t imagine why people claim to enjoy camping. Before the trip – a six-week overland slog through southern Africa – I joked with friends about how impractical and ill-suited to the Outward Bound lifestyle I am; how I’m never knowingly more than six feet from a make-up bag, and am incapable of assembling, with full instructions, the contents of a Kinder egg (more general jocularity). But I wasn’t laughing as I wrestled, feeble-beamed torch wedged between jaw and shoulder, with unco-operative tent pegs in the pitch-black, improbably freezing African early mornings, with weak fingers and a weak will. Sleep deprivation made it worse. I averaged a few hours’ broken sleep a night, as it was more or less impossible to find a position that was comfortable for more than 15 minutes at a time: my sleeping mattress, bought in haste, turned out to be about half the length of my body, and my sleeping bag, although it makes extravagant claims to the contrary, provided little protection against the intense cold. Night after sleep-free night I lay swathed in up to six layers on the upper body, four on the legs and feet, and a hat and gloves. I wore so many clothes that I could hardly move, which enhanced the claustrophobia that I already felt whenever I was in the tent. Despite persistent efforts to find a level piece of ground, my tent was inevitably pitched at an angle so that the blood rushed to my head and I feared that, in the unlikely event of my ever getting to sleep, I might never wake up. And, once I’d actually managed to dismantle the tent every morning, there was the humiliation of having to carry it to the truck. The only way I could lift it was by accompanying the manoeuvre with a roar of exertion reminiscent of an Olympic weight-lifter.