The Bonus Round

Power cut. Cold shower. No Wi-Fi.

As warm embraces go, Mama Africa might have tried a little harder when welcoming me back to her bosom, particularly after twenty hours of travel, two entirely sleepless flights and a 6am layover from hell in the zombie wasteland ghetto fleapit masquerading as Addis Ababa International Airport. But I am so excited to be here that I smile contentedly and sip the warm beer I am offered. Hello Rwanda, you are as sweet as you are unexpected.

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go astray, or so the saying goes. My quest to traverse the entire African continent from south to north will still go ahead as originally intended, but an emergency return to the UK and unalterable commitment to pre-booked intercontinental flights for the North Korean marathon mean that the itinerary order has had to change. Having completed the first segment of Southern Africa to the Mozambique border but needing to be in Dar es Salaam on April 6, I have decided to reverse the order of the middle and final segments and head northwards from Tanzania after my most random Asian interlude, to the geographical finish line on Egypt's Mediterranean coast. I will then return to Mozambique to complete the missing middle piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

Whilst this new arrangement may make little logistical sense, it has the invaluable attraction of creating a travel vacuum of seventeen days before it requires me to be in Dar es Salaam; a vacuum that can be gleefully filled with destinations that had hitherto been dismissed as unrealistic on this journey. With Burundi currently experiencing machete-inspired lawlessness and a PhD in advanced piracy required for a Somali visa, the list of potential East African candidate countries is soon whittled down to the two eventual winners: the rhyming neighbours of Rwanda and Uganda.

With little time to research my first port of call, there is a rare and very welcome element of travel surprise about my first taste of Rwanda. And what a surprise this gem of a country is. Sprawling spectacularly over enough undulating hills to make Rome seem as flat as a Dutch pancake, Kigali is the most appealing African capital I have encountered. It is modern, it is clean, it is ordered. It feels as safe on the back of a homicidal moto-taxi's second hand Yamaha as it does walking around its streets after nightfall. Impressively and sensibly rebuilt with the international community's guilt money following one hundred harrowing days of genocide in 1994, the city rapidly smashes all my preconceptions of bullet-riddled buildings and urban desolation.

If the capital impresses instantly, the rest of the country quickly follows suit. Not only does the bus to Kibuye on Lake Kivu have an actual departure time, a minor African miracle, but it even leaves on the dot. After a quite enchantingly circuitous journey through the lush jungle hills of this tiny landlocked country, we plunge towards the fjord-like shoreline of the lake and its isolated resort town. A short walk from the bus terminal later, I find myself on the spectacular terrace of the region's only hostel. There is no-one else around as I absorb this incredible view and pause for a second to reflect.

A mere five days into my second leg of this African odyssey, there can be no doubt that I am back in my natural habitat. I wake up every morning to the sound of Japanese, German and Canadian flatulence, as well as my own. The food is so diabolically unappealing that I would currently elevate JD Wetherspoon's chicken burger and chips to triple Michelin star status. My poor ankles spell the complete works of William Shakespeare in braille, so bumpy with mosquito bites are they. I have not studied chemistry since 1993 but recognise the scent of nostril-stinging ammonia in its purest form in every sanitation facility I visit.

I am in heaven.

For less than the cost of a Starbucks Grande Cappuccino, I have clean, safe accommodation with stunning views over a lake of such pristine and unspoiled beauty that I am unable to contemplate writing until night has fallen. I stare at each island, inlet and spit in turn from my privileged vantage point and pause with each successive silent gasp to truly appreciate my fortune. I genuinely don't know how to convey this sense of awe. Or maybe I do. It feels great to be back.

 £2.80 room with a view...

 Oh no, not another stunning sunset...

 Gratuitous banana cliché photo

 A bored bean counter

 The only way to cross a lake...

The real banana boat

Mood music: Help I'm Alive - Metric

Mood food: bad spaghetti, bad pizza, bad skewers, bad everything...

Like Father, Like Son

Some of my earliest and fondest memories are of my grandparents' apartment in Switzerland, and the hive of activity that could be found there on any given evening. As well as the uncles, aunts, cousins and other assorted random distant relatives I would be certain to encounter, there would also be a steady procession of neighbours, friends, local tradesmen and lion tamers of many nationalities coming in and out of the flat for some gossip, an espresso or a slice of cake - often all three. Whilst French was the de facto language in this excitingly vibrant environment, a minimum of three others would typically be bouncing around the airwaves. I vividly recall lapping up this atmosphere and energy with great delight.

I particularly remember realising early on that my family background was somewhat unusual. It seemed as though every dinner would uncover another city or region of the world that was somehow connected to our genealogy. I suspect that being born in Ghana of an English mother and Swiss father, himself born in Lebanon to a Sicilian Italian mother and Swiss French father, and with third generation ancestry in the former Prussian city of Königsberg, the modern-day Russian Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad, was always going to have some influence on my view of the world and the insatiable desire I have to explore its every corner.

And at the centre of it all was my father. As the eldest of four brothers in the middle of the three generations present, he was both the family and linguistic linchpin. After chastising me in English for unsuccessfully attempting to steal a third Kinder egg from my grandmother's cupboard, he would respectfully reply to his father's question about his work day in French before discussing the latest Italian football results with his mother - in Arabic. Growing up speaking four different languages in one day was not abnormal to me; I was only doing what my father was doing.

Although never officially a contest, I could not help but measure myself and compete against him linguistically: what a benchmark to measure oneself against, after all. He had me in Italian, I edged him in German and English, and we probably shared the honours in French. But the Arabic, the Arabic! Even in later years, as I learnt Spanish to an adequate level and pretended to have equalled the same magic number of languages as my father, I knew deep down that similarly to away goals in European football, the language of Islam counted double, at the very least.

And this is where my favourite entertainment was to be found: in the Middle Eastern roots of our Western European family. As a child, I would never tire of asking him to write in Arabic, watching enthralled as his hand would move unnaturally from right to left; or teach me words that to this day would get my tongue cut out or a good old-fashioned stoning in most of the Levant; most enjoyable for my mother and I, however, would be seeing the stunned face of a waiter in a Lebanese restaurant as the white infidel would order a three course family meal in faultless North Beiruti dialect.

Whilst my father may have questioned until his very last breath why his only child had secured neither partner, offspring, house ownership, pension plan or pet Labrador by the grand middle age of 41, choosing instead to spend every disposable pence, cent or piastre on such frivolous a pursuit as global exploration, I like to think that he understood the reason to my madness. From the look on his face, and his response as I announced that I was resigning from my job of fourteen years, I know he did.

And so I find myself about to return to Africa, to continue my quest to conquer the continent of my birth. Only I will be doing so with a heavy heart, knowing that my father will be following my adventures from even further away than when they first began at the end of January. But with each new backpacker I meet, and every opportunity I am given to share selected slices of our extraordinary family history, Dad's memory will live on throughout my travels. With every year that passes, I realise there is a little bit more of my father in me than  I previously thought, and of that I am proud.

Great-grandfather Paul-Otto Knoll, officer in the Prussian Army (Königsberg, Prussia - 1914)

My paternal great-grandparents taking the family pets for a walk... (Cairo, Egypt - 1919)

Pre-Mum ladykiller in action (Beirut, Lebanon - 1960)

Father and son at home... (Accra, Ghana - 1975) 

Mood song: Jailhouse Rock - Elvis Presley
Mood food: Lebanese mezze