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.