During one of my annual holidays while working as a foreign correspondent and journalist in Africa in the 1950s and 60s, I took to the seat of a bicycle to travel down the ‘Great North Road,’ literally a dusty donkey track in those days stretching from Ethiopia in the north to Middle Africa and then with the help of tarmac to Cape Town in the south.

My journey was my instant and poorly thought-out answer to a mischievous taunt from a much older man in Kenya that “you youngsters of today have no guts.” The man in question was an older friend, Col. Ewart “Grogs” Grogan who as a young man in the late 1800’s had walked the full extent of Africa for the love of a young woman.

Determined in a pig-headed way to prove “Grogs” wrong, I duly set off at the start of my next annual holidays with a rucksack of necessities and the nagging thought of why I had placed myself in such a predicament as cycling through Africa along a road that seldom saw any motorised traffic let alone any settlements of importance… and not knowing what lay ahead.

Although I did experience some frightening incidents in the wild, I never initially ever thought I would meet up with peasant tribesmen with some of the biggest hearts of generosity I have ever experienced over nine decades of living on this planet.

One such outstanding event occurred well into my cycling holiday when I had stopped for a sweaty rest under a large mopani tree on the deserted road from Tanganyika’s border at Kapiri Imposhi to what was, Northern Rhodesia’s capital of Lusaka.

On this occasion, I was minding my own business when a heavily laden truck suddenly came along the road, stopped right next to me and, to my utter surprise and bewilderment, unloaded an African man with an old pedal Singer sewing machine. The sudden arrival of this man and his strange cargo were happily the first signs I had experienced of any human habitation for at least 200kms of grime and dust.

With the biggest watermelon smile I had seen for many a day, this new arrival greeted me with great sincerity and gusto in his voice, gleefully adding that he had bought the sewing machine to enable him to make and mend clothes in his village “over that small hill.”

When I spoke to him in my broken Chinyanja language, I was shyly asked if I could please help him carry the machine to his home where I could spend the night in a vacant hut within the safety of his boma family settlement.

I gladly agreed as this was at least an opportunity to speak to another human being on what was a fairly lonely part of the ill-named ‘Great North Road.’

Between us, we clumsily balanced the sewing machine between us on my overladen bicycle and managed to reach my new friend’s small family boma of four isolated huts and what appeared to be a small rudimentary shop where we carefully installed our all-important cargo.

I was courteously shown around the shop, which consisted of two empty petrol drums and an old wooden plank for a counter, and large bags of rice, salt, tea leaves and sugar. But the pride of the place was three diminutive commercial tins of pilchard fish in tomato sauce which, I was gleefully and proudly told, was proof of my would-be host being the only “real shopkeeper” in the district.

I was then taken to my empty quarters for the night to rest in my sleeping bag with the help of a clean reed mat on the floor. While congratulating myself at not having to camp in the unknown wild for once, my host knocked courteously on the door of my empty sleeping hut, bearing a small dirty basin containing my evening meal. He announced his arrival just as if I was in the top hotel of a big African city.

I cautiously looked into the bowl so eagerly offered to me and all I could see were the contents of three small tins of pilchards in tomato sauce!

For the first time in my comparatively young life, I gratefully accepted a meal with tears streaming from my eyes. I knew only too well that this good Samaritan in the midst of Africa had been prepared to open his beloved tins of pilchards which he had earlier explained were the pride and joy of his humble shop.

When that evening meal was proffered to me so graciously, I realised that my host had quite unselfishly decided that, as a visitor, I was more important than his prized pilchards. With a lump in my throat, I knew I could not disappoint this obliging man by refusing a gift of that magnitude.

With a beam of happiness shining from his eyes, my host refused to join me in the meal, watching with relish every mouthful I forced down my throat. The look on his face was that of accomplishment and satisfaction in knowing that he was helping another person with one of life’s basic needs.

That particular experience of mine in the bushlands of Northern Rhodesia has always stayed in my mind as a sort of human balance against the acts of violence which I had witnessed as a journalist elsewhere on the African continent.

For as long as I live, I shall continue to remember that happy tribesman for the simplicity of his sincere generosity, obviously believing that nothing was too good or too expensive for his very foreign and strange bicycle-riding White guest.

My benefactor for that particular night a long way from home also flatly refused any of my suggestions to pay or compensate him for his now empty tins of pilchards in tomato sauce.

I sadly could not get his name in full as he had never written anything in his life using our alphabet, and my knowledge of his Chinyanja language was but minimal. I can only hope that he prospered with his beloved shop and made many trousers and shirts as he had vowed to do with the simple pedal Singer sewing machine he had so proudly bought.