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Emmanuel : Stories : The Return To Tanganyika (1945)
The Return To Tanganyika (1945)
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During a lull in the battles of the Greek civil war in 1945, Grandmother Irini G. Emmanuel was able to get lasaiz-passez passes (passes valid only for one journey) for herself and her three sons on one of the first ships to leave Greece for Egypt. It was critical that the sons leave immediately, as Constantine (Costas) Emmanuel’s age group had already been called up for service in the newly formed Greek National Guard to fight against the communist-led guerrilla forces. Essentially penniless, Grandmother and her sons left Athens sometime in August 1945 on a cargo ship crammed with civilians bound for Alexandria, Egypt.
From Alexandria they took the train to Cairo where they met Andonis Christofis, to whom Grandfather had sent money for Grandmother's onward journey. Andonis was the son of Grandfather Gregory Emmanuel's silent partner in Tanganyika, Nikos Christofis. They spent a few days in Cairo where they visited the museum and the pyramids, while Grandmother went from one place to the next trying to arrange their onward journey to Tanganyika. Finally she booked the only way possible at that time, which was through Thomas Cook, the well-known travel company. Their journey would take them south, down the Nile, and then swing east to Kenya and Tanganyika.
The
first stage of their journey was by train from
Cairo to Shellal, where they boarded a paddle steamer. They sailed past the town of Korosko
and continued south to Wadi Halfa, where they crossed the border into Sudan.
At Wadi Halfa the 2nd
cataracts blocked the course of the Nile so the Emmanuels boarded a Sudan Railways
The family continued south from Khartoum
in a Sudan Railways steamer
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For a few days they stayed in a miserable town called Kosti (apparently named after a Greek) in a dirty, hot and humid hotel maintained by the Sudan Railways. They then continued on to Kaka, where the boat stocked up on firewood (the steamer towed three lighters of firewood for its boilers). Here a bearded white man and his African women (wives or concubines) came aboard. The Emmanuels were thoroughly amused to find out that he was Greek, and in search of a Greek newspaper!
After Kaka they went past Kodok and stopped at Malakal, described by Costas as “a miserable place, where men and women walked around naked, only the women wore something like a short tail tied around their waist and hanging between their buttocks."
Then came the worst part of the whole journey, along a section of the White Nile called Bahr-el-Zeraf, which flowed through the vast swamps of the Upper Nile, the Sud. The papyrus towered high and hemmed in the steamer on all sides, choking off any breeze. As this was the dry season and the water level was low, the navigable channel would disappear and the steamer was frequently grounded in the mud. Then the crew would have to pole the steamer back to deeper water. For days they had no view of the horizon and were plagued by sweltering heat, high humidity, and clouds of mosquitoes and other insects.
The steamer sailed past Bor and Mongalla, along the Bahr-el-Jebel (the northern section of the White Nile), and arrived at Juba, the largest town in the south of Sudan. Here they got into taxis and drove to Nimule, on the border with Uganda.
At Nimule they boarded the large steamer Coryndon and sailed down the Albert Nile and through Lake Albert to the town of Butiaba on the lake's eastern shore. During this stage they saw large amounts of game, especially elephants and crocodiles. Costas remembers that they crossed Lake Albert in a violent windstorm with huge waves and crashing whitecaps. He also remembers that the ship's captain would shoot any crocodile he saw, mounting his rifle on a tripod just outside the wheelhouse.
From Butiaba their journey changed direction, bearing sharply east towards Kenya. They traveled by bus past Masindi to Masindi Port, on the eastern shore of Lake Kyoga. After crossing the lake by steamer, they arrived at Namasagali.
The rest of their journey was
on an East African Railways train
At
Nairobi they switched to another East African Railways train, which went
past Makindu and Kibwezi and arrived at Voi, the last stop in Kenya. From
Voi the train swung sharply to the west for the final stretch into
Tanganyika.
Makindu: in 1945 the British maintained a refugee camp
The Emmanuels arrived at Moshi, where Grandfather met them at the station. The family had last been together eight years before (in 1937), during Grandfather's brief visit to Greece. The whole trip from Alexandria to Moshi took about a month and traversed approximately 3,500 miles, across Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika. When Costas left Tanganyika in 1933 he was 10 years old; on his return in 1945 he was 22. The railway station, built by the Germans just before World War I, is still in perfect condition and continues to serve as Moshi’s train station.
Costa's sister, Eleni Lekanidou, left Greece for Tanganyika with her own family in 1946, during a particularly bloody phase of the civil war. She followed the same route (through Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanganyika) as the one taken by her mother and brothers the previous year. She said that what impressed her most about Alexandria was the amount and variety of food that was readily available. Everywhere there were shops filled with goods, restaurants and street vendors selling all kinds of food, and she remembers that in the cafes white-jacketed waiters served three pastries to a serving; she gorged on them!
On the steamer were many other Greeks also returning or emigrating to Tanganyika, and among them was Nikos Zannetos, a distant cousin. Eleni had a wonderful time as they sailed down the Nile and the whole journey is one of her fondest memories. Rena, her daughter, had just started to walk and keeping track of her on the riverboat was a tedious business. So they would put Rena in a metal hoop which was originally meant to hold a fire bucket and secure it to the deck near the stern. As long as she was in there, Rena was quite content to gaze happily around her holding on to the metal rim.
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