Emma Selig Jones – författare

When Emma and Ted loaded their 150 BSA motorcycle on the Italian Trans-Mediterranean ship sailing for Tunisia, North Africa their plan was to spend four months touring and camping through Tunisia. Due to language problems they boarded the ship without the proper papers and/or tickets.Arrival in the port of Tunis presented a cultural shock in addition to the information that camping would be impossible, as the English-speaking Arab agent explained, We are having a war just now because of the French Ocupation Forces.

After establishing their base camp at the Hostel in Bir el Bey ten miles from Tunis a series of adventures over the following four months enfolded. On a journey to the remote island of Djerba in southern Tunisia the small, over-loaded ferry, caught in a sudden squall nearly capsized.

During a trip into the northern Sahara, south of the Oasis of Gabes they were caught in a life threatening sandstorm in the Sahara and a Locust Plague in the Gabes Oasis on the return journey north.

An Arab named Habib added the element of intrigue. He assisted Ted in securing photographs of Bedouin Nomads. His basic motive was to secure the favors of Teds wife Emma. When he began to resort to life-threatening tactics the assistance of the American Counsulate was required. With the cooperation of the French Occupation Forces Habib was restrained until safe passage could be secured from Tunis to Marsaille, France.

Emma and I most cordially invite you to accompany us as our special arm-chair guest on an overland journey through the most exciting continent on the Planet Earth.

We shall begin our journey in Cape Town, South Africa in the fall of 1964. During the following ten months we will travel and camp along Africas Great North Road. A variety of recently created nations and peoples, a few still struggling to be free, will be visited, among them, South Africa, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and the Congo.

There are, at present, more than 700 separate tribes living south of the Great Sahara Desert. Obviously all of them cannot be included. However, we will visit and camp-out with the typical African where he lives, whether it be an Afrikaner living in one of the exclusive multi-level homes cut into the rock cliffs overlooking the Bay of Cape Town surrounded by twelve-foot walls capped with broken glass and razor wire or a Wanderobo tribesman dressed in a loincloth and carrying a bow and sheath of poisoned arrows met along a primitive dusty track running through the Bush country of Tanzania.

Our self-contained VW camper gave us the freedom to camp along the streets of any city or village or along the track where Native Africans were living much as they have for many hundreds of years. Please be prepared, watching people and so-called wild animals can take many hours and, in some instances, the supply of daylight runs out. Frequently camp was made along the track out in the Bush and was visited by elephants during the night or a pride of lions stopping by to sharpen their claws on our tires. In one instance several elephants stripped branches off a tree under which we were camped not one of them touched the camper!