Familiar territory here, although perhaps to a lesser extent in my life.
We quit South Africa in Nov 1983, after just over 2 years there, and the head of the family decided to see "proper Africa". So we drove back, along with 2 young kids. He got us into trouble in the Ngorogoro crater, where we had camped on the site there, by deciding to take an early morning trip into the crater itself (without a permit). All went well till we got nobbled! The main warden was down with a tourist party. He accompanied us out in our Land Rover (taking us past some interesting stuff). We apologised, and in the end we just paid the permit cost. Our main "waits" were firstly, just a couple of hours to get through the border between Tanzania (Serengeti)and Kenya (Masai Mara). For a start, we were a day late through, as a flash flood had stopped us on our last day. Secondly, it was found that our multi-entry permit - acquired right over on the Indian Ocean side of the country on 30th November, about 10 days previously, and valid for 3 months, did indeed expire in the allotted time: on 30th February! Now the problem we had with all this is that there are 3 agencies involved in crossing the border: game park officials, police, and immigration. It was pointed out to us by the parks official (a very nice man, who understood our delay, and had no problem over it) that we were the first people through for 4 days, and that the others had been drinking. The immigration officer picked up the anomaly on the permit, and told us we had to go back and get it changed (about a week's drive). We argued the toss that unless there were fuel stops in the game park we had no chance, and that it wasn't us who had made the error. After a couple of hours, a vehicle from the Kenyan side turned up, with some people on board (Swiss, I think) who were working in the area, and spoke Swahili. They informed us that they could hear that all they were after was a bribe, and that $20 should do it. Luckily it did, especially after I started bringing my tearful 5 year old into the office "to see what daddy was doing". We got into Uganda, which was not being advised at the time, as it wasn't long after Idi Amin had been deposed, and there were still some problems with anti-government factions. We never had any trouble at all. It just suddenly seemed that the police road side checks disappeared, and people looked at us a bit sideways. We camped up at the game park camp site near Lake Edward, and got told not to mind the rangers "training". The kids certainly enjoyed the assault course, and we had the place to ourselves. The guys there were marvellous, even giving Ian a lift on a moped into town to get the radiator braized, to cure a leak. Later he informed me that we were actually in a rebel training camp! Zaire cost us a lot in "fares" to use the free ferries across the rivers. The government provided them, but the forgot them. Diesel and sometimes batteries got sold off, and so some ask for a gallon of diesel before they let us on. Another meant the loan of our battery, and a trip across in a dug-out to get the loan of a battery from a vehicle on the other side in order to start the engine. The fuekl option didn't work with us - we were on petrol. We got through many packets of cigarettes (bought specially), Ian's shirts, and once, even a paperback novel in English, (for the dug-out) which I had to convince the lad who owned it he could remarket to tourists coming the other way! We broke the U bolts on the back axle in Zaire, but that didn't cause much hold up - we just tied it on and used front wheel drive until we found some more, at a mission, that actually didn't break. Our next hold up was in Central African Republic. You have to get a visa to get in, which wasn't a problem. the only place you can change money is Bangui, the capital, so everyone heads there. What they didn't tell you is that you need another to get out through the "12 Kilometre Post". To cut it short, Ian, and the driver of another LR we had joined up with, both got a bit "bad tempered" at this, as they said we had to go back and get one from the post office, and hey, guess what, it's now closed for the weekend. They suggested ian and the other guy go back into town in his LR, and they'd sort things out with them. After about 3 hours, a guy came up to the females and kids, left in our LR, and suggested we drive down to the Port Fluvial in town (the riverside border post with Zaire) as it was all ok now. So I drove there to find out that we had to surrender our passports and car keys (we had spares) and stay there till Monday, when they'd see us again. Well, I got my washing done, but what a way to spend my birthday! On Monday all was smiles and they let us out to go to the PO and get the visas. We just breezed through the post. We had to wait 5 days in Njamena to get a permit to go around Lake Chad (which we never saw, as it has shrunk to 10% of its original size, although we did see very old hippo bones. The worst wait was in Algiers. We were forced by regulations to change a large sum of money at the official exchange rate, which meant that we could afford to buy very little in the way of protein foods (an egg was 25p, a kilo of sausages worked out at $17 - and that was 24 years ago!), and so we went to the bank to telex some funds from the UK. Our plan was to get the ferry to Marseilles. However, they kept telling us there was no news, day after day, and our money was nearly gone. Most of it went on fuel for the LR. We contacted the British Embassy who said that we would have trouble after buying the traveller's cheques we wanted, as the Algerian dinar is non-exchangeable. So what we did is cancel the original order (after about a week), then contact NatWests's head office and get them to reimburse the Foreign Office, who in turn would lend us some money in francs and some in dinars. Trouble was, the francs weren't enough to pay for the ferry, which was about £400 - and had to be in foreign currency - so we filled up, using the dinars, and crossed to Tunisia, which our expired insurance (thanks to the delays in Algiers) only caused us an overnight delay and an affidavit. We then telexed more money over and got the Tunis/Naples ferry in the nick of time.