What does it take to drive nearly eight thousand miles the length of Africa — without GPS, cell phones, or modern safety nets?

In this powerful episode of Spirits and Stories, Donald Dunn sits down with adventurer, journalist, and memoirist Barry Maughan, who recounts his extraordinary journey from Alexandria, Egypt to Cape Agulhas, South Africa — alongside his wife and their one-year-old son.

Long before digital maps and electronic “tethers,” Barry navigated jungle washouts, desert crossings, political coups, malaria, mechanical breakdowns, and life-changing encounters across fifteen African countries. His journey wasn’t about bravado — it was about preparation, humility, and meeting people with respect.

In this episode, we explore:

1. What Africa was like before modern travel technology
2. How serendipity shaped a life-changing expedition
3. Lessons in courage, resilience, and human connection
4. Covering political upheaval and drought as a foreign correspondent
5. The “oneness of love” moment that defined the entire journey
6. Why travel reduces fear and builds understanding

Barry shares how this experience shaped his children’s worldview, his journalism career with Voice of America, and ultimately his memoir Beneath the African Sun.

This conversation is not just about travel.

It’s about perspective.

It’s about humanity.

It’s about what happens when you step beyond fear.

If you’ve ever wondered:

1. Is Africa safe to travel?
2. What was overland travel like before GPS?
3. How does extreme travel change a family?
4. What life lessons come from long-distance adventure?

This episode answers those questions — and more.

Listen in, feel the journey, and discover why Barry says Africa gave him more than he ever expected.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. barrymaughan.com

Find top podcasts at https://barracksmedia.com/network

Mentioned in this episode:

Listen on Apple

Welcome to Spirits and Stories, a place where we slow things down and talk about the moments that shaped us.

The stories behind the scars, the victories, the lessons.

Every guest brings a journey.

So settle in.

This one's meant to be felt.

Hey, welcome to the show, Barry.

How you doing?

I'm doing great.

Great to be here with you, Donald.

Can I, may I call you Donald or I call you Don or Donald?

Donald is fine.

Okay.

As my late mom said, call me anything except late for dinner.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Well, let me, let me take this moment and introduce you to all of our listeners and let them know for the treat that they are into.

Barry Magin is a adventurer, a memorist who drove nearly 8,000 miles the length of Africa from Alexandria, Egypt to Cape, Alas, South Africa.

Long before gps, cell phones or modern travel travel safety nets existed.

Accompanied by his wife Susan, and remarkably, their one year old son, Barry experienced the raw, unfiltered Africa few outsiders have ever seen.

He captures this once in a lifetime journey in his memoir Beneath the African Sun.

A story of courage, culture, connection and the kind of travel that transforms you forever.

Welcome to the show, Barry.

How you doing?

I'm doing great.

Did I actually do that?

I mean, are you making that up?

Boy, I tell you, that sounds pretty harrowing to me.

Me too.

Yeah, I spent, I spent 20 years in the military and some of those parts I don't think I would be fit to go, so.

Yeah, well, fools venture in where angels fear to tread.

Right?

I never heard that before, but yeah, absolutely.

Well, why don't we start with a little bit of background?

What, what brought you into covering sports and, and journalism in, in Africa?

Well, going way, way back, my dad was a radio broadcaster in Australia.

And not to be self effacing, but I grew up knowing that's the only thing I could do.

Don't ask me to drive a nail into a board or I hurt my thumb.

So I just knew that I had the gift of gab and I liked talking to people and I always wanted to do this.

So via a radio, television school and then Boston University with a BA and Oklahoma State University with an MA in Advertising and Journalism.

Then it was off to start at 250 watt dust to Dawn.

Dawn to Dust radio stations where you really learn the business and work my way up to advertising with Benton and Bowles in New York, not a very satisfying career.

And my wife and I, who had in a similar job that she didn't like, decided well, let's, let's do something different.

We haven't had children at the time.

And we upped and sailed across the Atlantic and landed in Germany and bought a Volkswagen Combi bus and tour around Europe.

So it got a little cold in Norway.

Yeah, diving into rivers when it was getting cold was not what we wanted to do long term.

So we decided, let's find a place to winter over, maybe Spain or Portugal.

And then a friend said, morocco.

And we said, that sounds good, but we don't want to just go across the Straits of Gibraltar.

Let's do something different.

So we got Bridget, who we had named our Volkswagen Combi at the time, went on a tramp steamer around the Mediterranean littoral and eventually landed in Alexandria, Egypt.

And our goal was to drive across the North African littoral to through Libya and Tunisia, Algeria and into Morocco.

And there we'd winter.

But then a strange thing happened, and I'll let you take up the story because the aforementioned Muammar Gaddafi put a monkey wrench in all our plants.

Yeah.

You know, one, it is interesting to just find somebody that's willing to travel.

If you told somebody, hey, I want you to just go through the United States and go from here to New York, but leave your gps, leave all of the modern technology today at home and just get there.

Even if you gave them a paper map, they would struggle.

So the fact of what you guys did one is impressive, for sure.

Well, you have to.

As the book is dedicated to then wife Suzanne, you have to have a woman who's willing to do that.

You know, subsequently, I've asked possibly 100 women, would you do the same thing with me?

I said, are you crazy?

What are you smoking something?

Wacky tobacco?

I mean, come on, what's going on here?

No, no, no, no.

But I.

And I say this in all due deference that she was the heart and soul of the operation.

She had the logic, she knew how to.

This uncanny ability to find a way.

All I did was talk to people and sit behind the wheel and steer it in the direction she asked me to.

But, you know, so it's.

It was a journey of serendipity because as you probably read, Donald, that a day before we were ready to leave Egypt and head west into Libya, a group of military officers led by Muammar Gaddafi decided to stage a coup against King Idris and bar the entrance for any vehicle for the foreseeable future.

So there we were, and we were faced with a decision.

Do we hang tail and go back to Europe or do we find another option?

And we're not quitters, so we Decided, well, let's make the best of where we are.

But again, as I said, Donald, this was a journey of serendipity.

On board that cruise ship, I had met a chap by the name of Ibrahim El Tahawi and Ibrahim was a general.

But there are dime a dozen in that area of the world.

But we got to be fast friends and just talking, not politics or economics, just, just the usual things that a couple of guys get together.

He was a big fan of one of Egypt's leading soccer teams, El Ahli.

And I like Zamilik and they're big, big rivals over there.

So we used to go back and forth good naturedly on that.

But anyway, and a lot of other things and one thing led to another and he gave me his business card and it turned about Young Men's Muslim association president.

And I said, okay, just like the YMCA president here in the us.

Fair enough.

He said, when, if you're ever in Cairo, look me up.

Sure, that's a good way to end a conversation and a budding friendship.

So we decided after Muammar Gaddafi did his job then, well, look, the pyramids are down there.

Let's go down and take them on and take a look at those and maybe if we get to Cairo, we'll look up this Muammar Gaddafi.

Long story short, I looked the guy up.

He remembers me well, his palatial officers.

They're not just one secretary.

Back in the day they were called secretaries, but he had three or four.

And I'm saying, wow, this guy is maybe more than I thought he was going to be.

Yeah.

The door swings open and in I'm ushered into this palatial person and who, like.

First guy I meet is the Minister of War, Mahmoud Fouzi, and then I mean the Minister of Health and this minister, before it was over, I, I had shook hands and, and broken bread with the Egyptian cabinet.

Come to find out Ibrahim El Tahawi was the right hand man to Abdul Gamal Nasser, the President.

He was one of them that had staged the coup that had brought down the Egyptian monarchy.

So after that I tell them my plight.

Well, I need a place to store my camper and I'd like to see a few things in Cairo.

He picks up the phone and in Arabic says something and in walks Lieutenant Basri.

And he says, okay, name all the things you wanted to do.

You know, Cheops and the Sphinx and Cairo Museum and whatever.

Okay, he says.

Now, for the next 10 days, Lt. Basri will arrive at 8am each day in an Air conditioned limousine, and he will take you free of charge to everything you've ever wanted to see and do in Cairo.

And there'll be a place for you to stay at a exclusive tennis club on one of the islands on the Nile, the Gazeera Club.

And there'll be a place there, a guarded place for your camper.

So nothing will happen to that while you're away touring Cairo.

And it was a magical carpet ride for the next 10 days.

Wow.

And just moving forward just quickly.

That wasn't the end of my friendship with Ibrahim.

He then arranged for us to get down to aswan, which is 500 miles to the south, because at the time, the war of attrition, one of many wars that Egypt was fighting against the Israelis, was going on.

And they were parking MIGs out on the highway so they'd be less prone to being bombed by the Israelis.

And so we could only take one, one way down there.

So he got his first class tickets on, on the train, and then he put Bridget on the first freight train going down there, guarded all the way by a chap in an olive gray uniform sitting in front of it with an AK47.

And so we arrive in Aswan and one day, in comes Bridget, and he got us all the way.

So it was serendipitous.

I don't think we might not have even gone down as far as Aswan, though.

We had an offer from a good friend in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to, to visit if we ever got down there far.

It's one of those things, well, if you get my way, you know, that's a good way in the conversation.

But anyway, so we got to Aswan and we were into it.

We.

There was no turning back.

It was just one day at a time.

And I would say to people, you know, don't look at the.

If, if we had looked at 8,000 miles, we would have said, no way.

Yeah, but it's like the old African saying, how do you eat an elephant ear sandwich?

A bite at a time.

It was a day at a time.

Meeting folks, meeting Africans along the way that could do everything for us.

They loved helping for no and expecting nothing in return.

And my book is an homage not only to the African continent, but it's to the people that live there.

Yeah.

You know, I want to back up a little bit because some of our listeners, I'm sure they're not familiar, but that situation in Libya that you were referring to, you know, was not a small thing.

Us got involved with that situation as well.

I Remember, I was very young, but I do remember when all of that with Libya took off and.

And the threat of.

Of bombings and.

And attacks from the US all got involved as well.

So you were literally at doorstep of some history right there.

And then, you know, the fact that.

That this other gentleman just, I mean, gave you the first class treatment of.

Of all time to help you guys on with your journey is.

Is just an additional bonus to the story.

So.

Wow.

You know, what you had.

Had ran into is.

Is pretty impressive.

Well, I think not to pat myself on the back, but you have to be willing to say hello to people.

Yeah, hi, how you doing?

And look, 99 times out of 100, you get something good in return.

The one time out of 100, maybe that person's having a bad day or just doesn't feel like talking.

That's all right.

But if.

If I hadn't just walked by and said, hi, how you doing?

Oh, you're American.

Yeah.

Yeah, I am.

Hey, you want to sit down, have a drink?

Yeah, sure.

Okay.

And it all flowed out of that and not getting overawed by the situation.

Funny story, we arrive in Alexandria.

It took us a while for, as you see in one of the pictures, to get Bridget offloaded from the.

From the boat and then to pass all the.

All the regulations and rules and the kane de passage for Bridget.

Well, it was getting dark when we finally got to drive into Alexandria.

Well, I'd never been to Egypt or Africa before.

The smells and the sights and the sounds, and, you know, your first reaction is, oh, wow, maybe I got my bit off more than I could chew here.

But you get yourself in intact.

You learned to go to your strengths.

And so I said, okay, we need to go to a safe place where we can park for the night because there are no campgrounds in Alexandria.

So there was this one big square where it was all lit up.

This is.

This was the.

The epicenter of nightlife for Alexandria.

So I just pulled into an open parking spot and of course, was surrounded by people who were curious about what we were doing there.

And I, again, serendipitously, I happened upon this old gentleman who had a little English, I had a little Arabic, just enough to be dangerous.

Worked out that he needed a job to watch Bridget, otherwise we'd wake up in the morning and have no tires and everything would be stripped.

So they had a system.

You lifted out one of the windshield wipers, and that told the crooks that you were paying someone to watch your vehicle.

And so we did that.

We arrived At a price, half an hour, half in the morning.

And we proceeded to go inside and not putting the top up as you could with the camper and just went.

Agent then went to sleep.

And he sat literally six or eight inches from our head on the back bumper, playing our blaring Arabic music the whole night.

But see here again, my wife didn't panic.

She was cool.

Very logical.

Hey, this is all right.

These people are friendly.

Because if you expect a certain thing from people, they generally give it to you.

Yeah.

But if you show fear, apprehension, or you try to play the big shot, it doesn't work.

Yeah.

So that was our introduction to the first.

Our first day in Africa, full first day in Africa.

And it just got better and better from that because we just.

We loved the journey.

We loved every day, the trials.

And I won't say there weren't tribulations along the way, but we just learned, hey, this too shall pass.

Keep our heads keep going forward, and all will be well.

Yeah.

You know, take us a moment where you realized that you were not home anymore.

Right.

What were some of the situations that came up that was just so different than what you're used to, but you were able to embrace and take it as a learning moment and help you move forward?

Well, let me give you one that's a little off course here, but it will show you the humanity of man, how we're all the same under the skin.

We might have different skin color.

It might have different ethnicity, culture, religion.

Subsequently, when I got to Ethiopia, where I was hired at a radio station there and subsequently covered the one of three journalists to cover the coup against Emperor Haile Selassie from beginning to end, and the devastating drought in Wallow Northern Province, where hundreds of thousands of people died.

And one of the pictures in the book shows a traumatic event that occurred there.

But anyway, I was out in the outback of Ethiopia, luckily this time with a translator.

I was on assignment, and we got to getting dark, and we were in Tukal, which is a round hut, a living quarters for an Ethiopian family.

And out most places we went, they would give you half of what they didn't have.

They're very, very generous.

We were probably eating food that would deprive them of sustenance the rest of the week.

But to turn it down was an anathema.

You just didn't do that.

Anyway, I got to talking through the translator, and I said to the mail, I said, what do you want out of life?

I want three square meals on the table for my family.

I Want a better life for my wife and family.

I want less government intrusion in my life, and I don't want my sons to be shipped off to some foreign war, possibly to die.

Hello.

Hello.

Reality check.

That's pretty much what we all want, right?

He may be poor, he may be so outwardly different than us, but he's basically the same.

Yeah.

And this is what we found.

As long as you meet people where they are and not play the big shot, you're gonna be.

You're gonna be all right.

Another time I have to tell you this story.

When crossed in from Uganda into Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Just a short, short journey.

I don't want it to make it sound too glamorous or whatever, but there was just one road, we had been told, and it was circular.

So we drive on that road and eventually come back to Uganda.

Anyway, we get in there and it was like.

And I don't want to sound like I'm getting into stereotypes.

It was the first real jungle that we had driven through.

Thousands of bugs to the point where we had to put the windshield wipers on, wipe away the bugs, and then the sounds, the smells and the animals that we never saw just out of range.

Monkeys and birds and, you know, all kinds of small deer and beautiful flowers just out of reach.

Anyway, so we're driving along, having a great all day, and suddenly we came to a washout.

Now, you may have seen washouts on roads.

You've never seen one like this.

The jungle came right up to the verge, so there was no getting around.

Was at least 6ft deep and about 4 or 5ft wide.

There was no getting around it and back up.

Forget it.

There was no wide space in the road for you to make a U turn or, you know, a K turn, whatever you want to do.

Anyway, serendipity.

Again.

Again, serendipity.

We're there scratching our heads.

That's why I have no hair.

And along comes this truck.

Well, he kind of just looks at us and he sees the pothole.

Well, he was obviously a regular on this road.

So he had these huge, thick planks that he got out, put across and drove the truck across and went to the other side and was about to get out, and I said, wait a minute.

If I get up on that, he has to let me across or he can't get his planks back.

Well, he didn't like that, but what could he do?

So he pulled up a little further.

We got over it in Swahili.

I don't know what he was Saying in Swahili, it wasn't saying, have a great day.

And he grabbed the planks, put him in the back and sped off, because he obviously knew there were more of these and he didn't want the shenanigans to continue.

So I fell out of heck after him to keep up because I know what the game is now.

And sure enough, there was an even bigger washout up ahead, and he was halfway across it, probably saying, I got rid of these guys.

And I just followed him right on onto the planks.

Well, we did this about three or four times.

After a while, it got to be a game, and the last one turned out to be the last one, and he kind of turned around and waved, which was kind of his saying, hey, you've made it, mate.

You're on your own now.

And sure enough, there were no more of them.

But also, and I will use a pejorative here only because that's how they were described.

Very short, short people, which were locally called pygmies.

And this was just before the Ugandan border.

And he had a little.

Not even a stall.

It was just artifacts laid out on the ground.

And matter of fact, one of them was that thumb harp that is depicted in the book.

Anyway, we got to haggling and I figured, gee, his English is pretty good.

So I said, you know, how do you.

How do you coexist out here?

Well, then he told me a story, and I told the story in the book, but it was.

It just shows how different their life is.

Yeah, they would.

They would get a little place where the jungle was thin enough that enough sun got in that they could raise.

Plant a maize crop, corn crop.

There's very tiny.

Well, just as the corn was ripening.

Well, the baboons love corn too.

They would come down and they would rip up, not even eat the corn, but just destroy it.

Well, the only way around this was the baboons would track one of these, the pygmies would trap, or these little people would trap one of the baboons and they would slowly skin it to death.

And the howls of.

Would keep the baboons away for about six months, allowing them to plant another crop.

You see, that's.

That's an element of life and death.

Yeah.

That we don't.

We don't have to face.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, just.

Just getting in this area, not saying all over, but in this area, this is how important a food source is to these people.

We just go down to the store and put our money down, and it's there not to these people.

Yeah.

You know, and so you learn so many life lessons when you travel.

And I always say, Donald, that if people would travel more, we'd have far fewer problems in this world.

Because a lot of the fear at the disagreements, let's put it that way, is born out of fear of ignorance, not knowing the other person.

I agree.

People traveled more.

They would understand that we're all in this together in one way, shape or form.

And that's another thing that I tried to portray in my book.

And it's not a Mondo Kani type of book about Africa.

I love the continent.

Does it have its problems?

Yes, but most of them come from the governments, not from the people.

Not from the people.

The people are wonderful.

Now, as you said in the intro, you didn't use the term, but I use electronic tethers.

People ask me today, gee Barry, would you do this again today?

I said no for a reason that maybe you're not thinking of.

It was more of an adventure back then.

We didn't have gps, we didn't have sat phones, we didn't have cell phones.

We didn't have all these electronic tethers that would make it less of an adventure.

Sure, go there and go on safari.

My children have been to the Kruger national park in South Africa.

Had a wonderful time.

I'm not expecting that of them because that's not the world of today.

They have this and I was the beneficiary and my wife.

Because we see.

We saw all the pictures and the videos of everything they were doing down there.

Yeah, we didn't have that.

I had a single lens reflex camera, took about 5,000 slides.

But there were a lot of scenes that I would have been able to take today with a serendipitous or a sneaky cell phone photo, you know, which would have been priceless.

But, you know, you can't say, stand still while I get the f. Stop ready and get it and focused.

And it doesn't work that way.

The moment is gone.

The magic is.

Has disappeared.

Yeah.

So, you know, it was.

I.

Was I a courageous traveler?

Not really.

I just took a day at a time and.

But you must go prepared.

We had extra tires, we had extra tools.

We had tow rope.

We had all these things and ended up using a lot of them.

Driving by people who were literally stuffing grass in worn out tires because they thought that this was some sort of a lark.

The African continent, if you're not prepared, will spin, spit you out, chew you up and spit you out.

They've got the acacia trees with the thorns from those acacia trees.

Show your listeners here.

That long.

Yeah, they're like hypodermic needles.

They'll go through the sidewall of a tire and nothing flat and leave you flat.

No.

Yeah.

You know, and again, that brings up another good point.

You know, you're trying to prepare for a journey across the place that you.

You have limited resources to learn about prior to doing.

You know, nowadays, you know, somebody would go into chat GPT and say, I'm thinking about driving across to Africa.

What should I bring with me?

You know, you guys are doing this without that pre.

Pre knowledge.

You're.

You're trying to anticipate what you're going to encounter in a world that is unable to be anticipated.

Well, thank you for that, Donald.

But I did have some.

Some help, as I learned along the way from mostly Brits and Aussies and Kiwis, I'd say, who kind of taught me the things that you need to bring along with you.

So I constructed a box on top where I kept a lot of the gear.

We made room for it in the inside, even though the living space was quite spacious.

So, you know, it just takes that one time, like, for instance, whenever we get to these quagmires, these long quagmires, and there's a picture of my wife in her wellies, and she's out there with Kevin on her back in the Jerry pack.

And her job was with the big stick to go wading into that, to make sure there were no big boulders just lurking under the surface.

And my job then was to back it up as far as I can and go, heck, forever.

Well, this one time, it's great if it's straight ahead, but there was one place where it was a dog leg to the right.

Well, when I turned the wheels to do the dog leg down in the mud, I said, well, what do we do?

We're in the middle of nowhere, and this is thick chica soil.

Chica soil is dark, thick, gooey mud.

Okay.

It's unforgiving.

Okay.

The point I'm going to make here is serendipitously, who comes along, A Toyota Land Cruiser full of Japanese tourists.

Okay, well, here I'm stuck in the mud.

They can't go around me.

So what do they do?

Well, I get up in my box and I pull out this braided steel cable I had on one end.

One end to me, they back up, I'm out.

But if I didn't have that braided steel cable, who knows?

I might still be there, you know.

Yeah.

But see, I only use that once or twice.

Yeah.

When I needed it, I had it.

Yeah.

You know, and, and like changing tires.

Okay.

I learned very quickly.

Well, we had tubeless tires.

Huh.

They don't know tubeless tires.

All their tires had tubes in them.

So you, you buy tubes and you put tubes in tubeless tires.

And then you have hot patch, cold patch.

You had a jack, you had two jacks.

You had, you had a heavy duty one and a light one.

And then you have to have boards to put under.

You have to think of every situation because you may only face that situation once.

But if you don't have the proper equipment, you don't.

Hey, Joe.

Yeah.

Where's your, where's your gas station?

Oh, five miles down the road.

Okay.

Okay.

Well, we can make this work.

You may be 100, 200 miles from the nearest place to get anything.

Yeah.

So the continent demands a lot, but it also gives a lot.

It gives you beautiful vistas, it gives you Kilimanjaro, it gives you the pyramids coming up over a rise on our way down to Cairo.

And there they are like a string of pearls laid out in front of you.

I mean, I get chills to this day thinking about it.

And then the Zambezi Falls, the Queen Victoria Falls, separate what was then Rhodesia and Zambia, now Zimbabwe and Zambia.

And so much.

You have to go at low water or you don't see anything.

That's the amount of mist that is thrown up by these billions of gallons of water just pouring over this.

And.

And you have, you stand in one place, which is a little jungle in the middle of desert, because the prevailing winds take the mists to this one spot.

And you stand there and they give you rain gear because if you stand there for five minutes or more, you're soaked just by the mists being.

I mean, these are the serendipities that will take away from the continent.

Yeah.

Seeing animals up close and like the nosy giraffe.

And in one of my chapters and things, it was all worth it.

And we've got criticized because from Ababa, Ethiopia to South Africa, we had a one year old with us.

Hey.

And there's pictures of him there.

He's now 55 years old, healthy as a horse and able to do his job better than most because he has to open up offices around the world.

Why is he better at it?

Because he's traveled there.

He would grow up as a minority.

All his friends in Ethiopia were of darker skin than him.

So now he can go to Lake India and open up an office there.

He's familiar with the sights and the sounds and the smells of a major Indian city so he can hit the ground running.

His team has to take two or three days to get acclimatized.

And same with the daughter.

She's in the adoption business and she can relate to people from around the world wanting to adopt children because he's lived among them.

And this is another, this is another serendipity, and that's why I call this journey.

A journey of serendipities is one thing after another.

Ibrahim El Tahawi arriving in Addis Ababa, where they had a radio station.

Hey, I can do that.

And having.

Bless his heart and may rest in peace, Ken Stewart, who was the radio Voice of the Gospel news director, just hired me on the spot.

And then I was able to burnish my career by working as the East Africa correspondent for the Financial Times and then correspondent for the Voice of America and New Zealand Broadcasting, UPI to the Point magazine.

Because if there's so few foreign journalists there, you get, they need you.

And as the world got interested more and more interested in the creeping coup, as we called it, against the emperor, then we were there to tell the world the story.

Yeah,

I think that's one of the problems that we have in society today is we like to, you know, armchair quarterback a lot of these scenarios and judge other people for decisions that they made and not even taking the consideration of the good that came of it.

For example, bringing, you know, having your son with you in this scenario.

These are elements that you just can't pick up from, from your couch and, and understand to, to one, make a educated decision, let alone make a decision based off of what other people have done.

So, you know, I, you know, my hat's off to the things that, that you've accomplished.

My hat's off to the things that your children have accomplished.

And if, if people, you know, my listeners want to look at this in another light, what is the difference between a, a child that is raised in the military where they're being traveled from place to place?

You know, we don't always send our military people to resorts.

A lot of times are not as safe as what you, you would think.

You know, so.

Right.

That same concept has, but, but those same children grow up just like what you said.

You know, they're, they're more likely to have resiliency because they're, they're, they know how to interact and have to make new friends over and over and over again because of the constant moving, they're, they're not afraid to put themselves in uncomfortable positions, you know, because their whole life has been an uncomfortable position of having to learn new places, learn new languages, learn new friends, you know, all those situations.

So there is a tremendous amount of benefits of what your son had gone through that the average person who, who never leaves.

You know, my wife, when we got married up to that point, had only left the state of Nebraska twice, you know, in, in her life.

Right.

And I don't, I don't denigrate people like that.

Except, but, but I, I stand by what I say about the, the value of travel and meeting people because I've, I've seen it not only in my own life, but the life of my former wife and the lives of my children, and they've inculcated that in my grandchildren.

So, you know, it's, it's bearing fruit to this, to this day, and as an ancillary.

God bless our military and the sacrifices they make.

And it's, as you say, Donald, you know, we don't know what they have to go through, the privations and challenges that they, that they face and.

But this book was not, oh, look at me, how wonderful I am.

I just tried to be the eyes and ears for a lot of people who maybe vicariously would have liked to have done what, what we did.

We're nothing special.

We were nothing special.

We were just people who prepared and didn't get too far over our skis and took it day by day and met people and loved people and cried with people and tried to understand their situation in life, whether it be in Zambia or Tanzania or, or Ethiopia or Egypt or Sudan or wherever.

The 15 countries that we, we visited.

And I carry a little bit of Africa with me.

I get a little malaria every now and then, but that's all right.

I'm just, I'm grateful that it led me to a career at the 25 year career at the Voice of America.

In the English to Africa service.

We broadcast 28 hours of listening material to the continent each week.

And I got to talk not just economic and politics, but they had a daily sports program and just tried to bring a little levity maybe to lives that didn't have much in it.

So it's.

People always ask me, ripe old age of 84, have you had a good life?

I said, I've had a wonderful, wonderful life.

And I just wish this kind of life for everyone.

Has there been ups and downs?

Yeah, but life's what you make it.

And I think that's.

That's what I can say about a trip throughout Africa.

Life's what you make it.

And it's the old cliche, lemons and lemonades.

And, you know, and just like that, that trucker in the Democratic Republic, he wasn't a bad guy.

He was just trying to do his thing.

And.

And then in the end, he showed his humanity by giving us a wave and, and saying, you know, in effect, hey, it was.

It was a merry chase, wasn't it?

You know, and.

Because there was no malice in that.

He was just going about his life and didn't mean us any harm.

And I think if you meet people and you show them that there's no harm in you, you're not to cheat them or to harm them.

And I was always accused of paying top dollar for any of the souvenirs that we acquired.

And I said, well, wait a minute.

Translate that to US Dollars.

That person worked a long time on that thumb heart.

Yeah, it's a beautiful instrument.

And he wants what, the equivalent of three or four dollars for it?

Hey, cheap at the price.

I'm not going to try and beat him down.

Yeah, you just.

You just meet people at their needs and you'll be all right.

And I think that still holds true, whether it be Africa or anywhere else in the world.

Kind and gentle and understanding about people, and then, by and large, you'll be all right.

Yeah, I agree.

Hey, Barry, let me ask you this.

You know, for.

For somebody who has.

Has never traveled and, and has.

Has never put on your shoes when they.

When they pick up your book and they start reading it, what is it that you hope that they would get out of it?

That Africa is a demanding, sometimes horrifying, but beautiful continent.

It's got the diversity of peoples, nationalities, religious beliefs that it's well worth going.

And you don't have to travel like we did.

Just go on safari.

Oh, go and visit one of the national parks, but get out there and see the people and experience the continent for all it can offer.

And my book is just try to cast aside the veil of fear that people have for a wonderful continent and wonderful peoples who are just trying to have a better life.

And we tried to be generous along the way, but under it all, we.

We got the sense that, you know, we had nothing to fear as long as we behaved ourselves and.

And didn't try to pull rank and whatever.

It's like the book the Oneness of Love with that Dinka lady with a baby about the same ages and size, Kevin and coming over and gently, gently touching Kevin's face and skin because he was a towhead.

And she'd never probably seen someone with white hair and white skin and whatever, but she had.

She touched with so much love the love that she had for her baby.

And my wife did the same with her babies, and they exchanged holding babies.

And that was the time where people said, well, where's the picture?

I didn't want to spoil the moment.

I didn't want to spoil the moment with getting out my slr.

Maybe if I had had a cell phone, I maybe take a center, you know, a little picture on the side.

But that was that epitomized.

If one thing epitomized what Africa gave us, it was that moment, the oneness of love.

And that's a memory.

I don't need a picture.

And my then wife, Suzanne doesn't need a picture to remind us of that moment.

Kevin was too young to even remember it.

But that epitomizes the gift that the African continent gave us along with the malaria.

For me.

Well, you know, it's funny when you talk about malaria, because it reminds me of the time that I was.

When we first went to Afghanistan and.

And I was in the Kandahar region.

And, yeah, we took these pills, we called them Freaky Friday pills because you

take them once a week full of quinine.

And.

Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure what all was in them, but the side effect was these very vivid and.

And just insane dreams that you would have.

Really?

Yeah.

And.

And so we.

We called him Freaky Friday because you took them once a week.

Friday was our day, and so we would take these dreams.

And I remember.

I remember, you know, we're all in this tent, it's nighttime, and.

And we're going to sleep, and.

And earlier that day, a.

A younger soldier and his NCO got into an argument, right?

And the NCO started, you know, talking in his sleep.

And I'm just getting ready to doze off, and I hear, hey, man, what are you doing?

And I sit there for a second, and he goes, hey, hey, man, don't.

Don't shoot.

Don't shoot me.

And he starts screaming.

And I sat up like, oh, my God, what is going on?

And it was the NCO having a nightmare of that argument that him and that soldier have.

And it was from the malaria pills that we were taking that had those kind of dreams.

I remember dreams of, like, alligators attacking me and.

And.

And me fighting off these alligators in A desert area of all these places, you know, they ended up finally telling us, you're not going to take those no more.

We're going to take these daily pills.

And the, the return.

The side effect with those was just nausea.

So, you know, I don't know which was better.

Right.

Well, but that goes into a bigger situation, the PTSD that a lot of the servicemen come back with.

And, you know, my heart goes out to them.

You know, you've seen and experienced things that no one should have to, but you do it, and our country is safer for the, for your efforts.

So.

And I never, I never.

I was the last station for Vietnam.

They took a listen to my chest, heard some wheezing, and said, 4F.

Otherwise, you know, back in those days you were drafted down to the draft, would you win?

You didn't think of going anywhere else outside the country.

You know, you just, you just went.

But they had so many that they could be choosy.

Someone said to me, oh, nowadays they just put sticky behind a desk somewhere.

But, but back then they had so many, you know, and so, you know, my, and a lot of my friends went to Nam and thank goodness all of them came back, but with, with.

But with scars, physical and mental.

Yeah.

And, and we can't do enough for our vets.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree 100%.

So where is it that.

That people can follow you and learn more about your adventures and pick up your book?

Well, I have a website, www.barrymonall1word.com b a r R Y M A U G H A N And of course, very humbled by the reaction I've got through Amazon.

It's got a nice rating and some nice reviews and it's on Goodreads and all the other major outlets like us.

Like I said to people, I'm not giving you money back guarantee, but you'll.

You'll enjoy it.

You'll enjoy it for, for what it is.

It's not a mondo Connie.

It's not the great I am.

It's just a serendipitous trip that eventually took us from one tip of Africa to the other.

And we wanted to get to Cape Agullis because we had previously read the Cape of Good Hope was the southernmost tip.

And then.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

Another 90 miles south of that is a Cape of Gullus.

And it was.

We, just the three of us.

And there's a picture of my wife holding Kevin at the time.

And it was just such a.

An ethereal experience to see the Indian and Atlantic oceans washing together over the last vestiges of the African continent as it disappeared.

And then we could say.

And then we could celebrate and say, huh, we did it.

We did it.

There's no club, there's no, There was no press coverage, but we knew that we, we had done something that very few other people had done at the time.

Yeah.

And fewer still with a one year old for more than half of the way.

But we didn't, we didn't see it as a, well, look at me type of situation.

It was just something that we, when we got started, we just wanted to finish.

Yeah.

And that was very, very satisfying.

Unfortunately, I had to sell Bridget in South Africa.

I've always wondered how she's doing, if she's still going.

Probably not.

But you know, Volkswagen still just go and go and go and go.

So if she's well taken care of, as she took care of us.

Only broke down once.

And that was the stupidity on my part.

Went through, I thought was pan and it turned out to be thin, thin dust and went through it.

A plume of dust got into the pad, the clutch pad.

And with the Volkswagen back in the day, you had to take the whole engine out to replace the, the clutch pad.

Well, that was, that was stupidity on my part.

If I got out and just checked, I would have known not to go plowing through.

This was in Tsavo east, one of the game parks known for its big elephants in Kenya.

But we were able to get up to Malindi, beautiful place on the Kenyan coast.

And while we traveled to the offshore island of Lamu again, another beautiful, beautiful place.

It was being repaired at the one Volkswagen place in the whole of East Africa.

And another serendipity.

And when we got back a few thousand shillings short, we were on the road again, you know.

But, but that was not the Bridget's fault.

That was just stupidity on my part.

Yeah, you know, it's.

I was sitting here also thinking about you, you naming your, your vehicle.

Right.

It's, it's a tradition that, that was very, very common a while ago and that people just don't do anymore today.

And I think I credit that to our throwaway society, you know, where we don't really feel that we're going to have anything long enough to even bother naming it.

The olden days.

And I was thinking back, you know, my wife's aunts, she had this big, big old boat.

I can't remember the name, the kind of the car, but I remember the name.

She, she, she named it Betsy.

And you know, it was just very common to.

To have a name and.

And be.

Have a vehicle for many years through.

Through the.

Your family growing up.

So, yeah, Bridget.

Bridget was the Celtic patriot saint of travelers.

Okay.

Saint Bridget.

So that's how Bridget came into being.

That's.

Anyway, that's awesome.

Well, Barry, you know, we're gonna make sure that we get all your links and.

And everything put in the.

The bottom down there so that people can easily find your website.

And, you know, if you purchase his book, you know, make sure that you.

You do like the other people have done, leave a review.

It helps every author out there.

The algorithms appreciate and.

And I know the authors do as well, so make sure that you.

Donald, I've listened to a couple of your Spirits and Stories podcasts, and they're excellent.

And I will continue to be an avid listener even long after this interview has been forgotten.

And I just wish you and your listeners all the best because this was a delight to get to tell our story and to meet you.

And I hope your listeners get as much out of the book and this podcast as we had traveling the wonderful continent.

Well, I appreciate the kind words, Barry.

Y' all take care.

Y' all be safe.

And don't forget, don't let the day kick your ass.

Kick than.

I love it.

I love it.

You can always learn new things.

I have to add that to my repertoire.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

All right, mate.

Cheers.

Go well.

Bye.

You too.