Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania: My tour of "real" Africa

Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania (and brief glimpses of Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Qatar)
In this episode, I...
-get attacked by a baboon
-jump off a cliff
-accidentally pee on someone’s tent
-witness an overturned bus accident
-solicit some Malawian witchcraft
-catch pneumonia (actually happened before the witchcraft thing).
-find myself in a luxury hotel in Qatar
Finishing up my work in South Africa, it was time to head back to Canada. That said, there was no reason not to take the “scenic route.” After all, South Africa is said by some—based on its high incomes, level of development, and white population—to not be the “real Africa.” So I figured I’d see what some of other countries were like and try a bit of the Cape Town to Cairo route (although I quickly revised this to Cape Town to Nairobi owing ongoing political strife north of Kenya including: East African famine, independence of South Sudan, Libyan war and Arab Spring, etc.). I was originally going to do an overland tour, but when that didn’t work out, I decided to fall back on my independent ways (and hopefully hook up with something en route). Here’s what happened instead.
ZAMBIA (and a bit of Zimbabwe)
Due to visa requirements for my South African volunteer visa (normal Canadian tourists don’t even need one) I had to book an onward flight to prove I didn’t intend to take up permanent residence in South Africa. Being fairly inexperienced in Africa at the time (and thinking I could easily change the flight if I changed my mind) I booked a cheap flight to Livingstone in Zambia, a town next to Victoria Falls (which was a must-see on my list, so I figured even if I couldn’t weasel my way out of the flight later, it would still be alright). Naturally of course, I couldn’t get out of the flight or change it to Windhoek (so I could see Namibia’s sand dunes and Botswana’s Okavango Delta en route to the falls as was one of my plans), but I thought whatever and flew direct to Livingstone from Johannesburg (after a couple of delays including a screw-up where British Airways changed the gate and forgot to inform me, so I ended up waiting at the wrong gate and for the very first time missed a flight, had to wrangle my bags back from Joburg’s O.R. Tambo airport, fork out for a night’s accommodation, and try the same thing again the next day. Fun times.
The arrival in Livingstone by air is surreal—the bends and twists in steep turns over the falls so you can see them from above (provided you’re not curled up in the brace position) and the airport itself (basically a landing strip carved out of a red-mud dry forest) is barely visible until you touch the ground.
Getting through Zambian customs is less fun. Not only do you probably require a visa (which consists of a card with vague lettering that must be kept separately and will likely be lost forcing to pay for another one) but you will have to stand in line, inexplicably, for 3 hours to get it. Not sure what the border guard was doing as we were all waiting there and not moving. Perhaps he didn’t realize a plane was landing today. I mean, it’s not like its a freakin’ daily occurrence or anything.
Anyway, I eventually got out of the airport and got a ride in a pick-up truck from my hostel from a Zambian guy who spoke English surprisingly well compared to his South African compatriots. Zambia itself was super dry and consisted mainly of the small bush-like trees I’d seen in Kruger, dotted with a cow here and there. Livingstone itself is named after David Livingstone, the British explorer/missionary who led expeditions all over Africa in the 1800s looking for the source of the Nile and stuff. He may have been here at one point. Despite a charming history, the town itself ain’t nothing special to look at. It’s a basically a series of ramshackle buildings, shacks, and dusty road Wild West-style roads. Sure beats Lusaka mind you.
The hostel, a place called Fawlty Towers and run by folks with a John Cleese sense of humour, was a nice enough joint, complete with (unheated) pool, free rides to the Falls, free pancakes at 3 (yum), and even an Irish pub (or the African version of one) that specialized in Mexican food (yep, African version). It might sound strange that an Irish pub would specialize in Mexican food, but keep in mind I was constantly being mistaken for being English just cause I spoke English (and in one strange case, was somehow assumed to be Korean) so some Africans share the same geography skills as those Americans and Canadians who think Africa is a country. Ah crazy world.
Following the “hit the highlights first” mantra, I took the free shuttle (basically a minibus filled with tourists) to Victoria Falls (the Zambian side) and proceeded to wander around. Zambia is really dry this time of the year, and everywhere else I looked the trees were brown and dead, except around Victoria falls, where the spray from the falls kicks up a constant supply of water, and bingo suddenly you have rainforest or at least a very thin stretch of it. The Victoria Falls are the world’s widest waterfalls (I think... or at least I’m pretty sure) and you can easily see how they carved out the downstream zig-zagginess of the gorges. An impressive sight to say the least—all it’s basically impossible to see all the falls at once (unless you’re looking at them from the sky), and it’s interesting to compare them to Iguazu Falls, the world’s largest waterfalls. Victoria Falls are definitely not as high as Iguazu, but their width is far more continuous, and the land is formed in a strange way so that you can easily walk along in front of the falls and get a great view of them (although you will likely get wet. I shrugged off purchasing raincoats from the hawkers, assuming them to be unnecessary... that was probably a bad move).
I got so thoroughly soaked from the Falls that I decided to carry my camera, passport (the falls form the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe and I was going to try and see them from the Zimbabwean side) and other valuables I didn’t want to get drenched in a cheap plastic bag I found somewhere. Unfortunately, carrying things in a plastic bag soon opened up another problem.
While reading an inscription on a WW1 memorial at the Falls, I wasn’t terribly worried about pickpockets as there were only a couple of people milling around. That as I walked away from the statue I soon felt an unmistakable tug on my bag. An enemy hand had grabbed my bag—although peculiarly, it seemed to be pulling the bag down not out—and I wasn’t going to give it up without a fight. I whirled on the perpetrator and to my shock it was a baboon! I didn’t even know baboons were in the area.
I let out a manly yell at the primate as the cheap plastic bag tore in half (since neither of us let go). The baboon quickly fled grabbing my empty glasses case (apparently the only item it deemed to have value) as I gathered up my much more valuable items and continued glaring at it. It held up my glasses case in its hands, giving it a ponderous examination—you could tell by its facial expression that it was trying to figure out just what the hell this object was it had obtained—but ultimately dropped it (probably because it realized it couldn’t eat it) and ran off as some nearby African women came to my rescue. In the end, I lost nothing... except my pride.
I spent the next couple of hours hiking around Victoria Falls some more (keeping a watchful eye on those sneaky and dastardly baboons) including hiking to the base of the Falls and to the rocky outcroppings on top of the Falls. There are enough rocks and shallows there, that you could probably safe hop your way across the top of the falls in low season, but I wouldn’t recommend trying it.
Finished with the Zambian side of the Falls, I decided I’d see how things looked from Zimbabwe’s perspective. The two countries are connected by an old 1905 iron bridge, that ironically might be in the best shape of all the bridges in Zambia. There are bungee jumps operators on the bridge and its a popular pastime for tourists, certainly attempting to cross the bridge by foot will solicit endless harassment from overly aggressive touts who can’t fanthom why else you would come to the bridge. But considering I inherited my fear of heights from my Dad and my susceptibility to motion sickness from my Mom, bungee jumping wasn’t terribly high on my to-do list; and if I was going to try such a thing for the first time, I don’t think I’d choose an ancient bridge (that probably hasn’t seen a rivet repair in 100 years) over rocky churning rapids in a sketchy no-man’s land between two poor African nations not exactly known for their safety records. The touts were insistent though, with one even calling my refusal to bungee jump “racist.”
While walking across the bridge was “fun,” Zimbabwe wanted me to fork out for a $75 visa plus park entry fees to see pretty much the same thing I saw from the Zambia side (although I do have lovely exit and re-entry stamps on my Zambian visa), so I ended up getting a taxi back to the hostel (the free shuttle was only one way).
I’m glad I saw the falls on my first day, as the next day things went bad. I woke up with a nasty cold—which I probably caught off my boss Anriette before I left Joburg—and while I had paid for a canoe trip that day, I spent most of the time just trying to not feel like shit, so I didn’t really get to enjoy the whole preventing crocs and hippos from attacking your canoe thing. I laid low hoping for a few days hoping the cold would go away and switched to a private room as I developed nasty and very loud coughing fits. As things got worse, and I got anxious that I was spending way too much time in Livingstone (and was becoming known as “that sick guy” by other people at the hostel), I finally opted to see a Zambian doctor (recommended by the hostel staff) who promptly diagnosed me with pneumonia (whether I actually had pneumonia or not, I’m not sure, but I wasn’t in the mood to press my luck). He said that pneumonia was the 3rd or 4th highest killer in Africa and if I had waited another day, I would have had to be admitted to hospital (which naturally made me gulp a bit) and started an aggressive antibiotic treatment that involved leaving a needle jammed into my hand for 24 hours so I could receive four regular doses of antibiotics straight into my blood stream. This resulted in me being taxied back and forth at weird hours (it was unsafe to walk) from the hospital for treatment which had only one magazine in their waiting room (a 1989 edition of National Geographic). The treatment seemed to work, but the regular and weird hours of the doses left me groggy and after the final dose, as the nurse struggle to remove the bandages holding the syringe in place (ripping out my hand hairs in the process) I offered to do it myself (thinking it would be less painful if I just removed the bandages myself since I knew where my hand hair was). Unfortunately I got a little too energetic with one bandage and the whole thing, needle and all, came out, and a little geyser of red blood began spouting from my left hand (I asked them to put it in my left hand as I’m right-handed and I didn’t want to incapacitate my right hand). Confused as to what I was seeing I stared at my hand as the nurse quickly grabbed another bandaid and some cotton swabs as my fountain of blood made a mess of her floor. “Don’t be so hard on yourself” she scolded me. In the end, it seemed the antibiotics worked as I soon felt better (although my usual coughing fits would plague me for weeks to come and my hands felt tender from having a needle ripped out of them including the one that never even had a needle in it, which I never quite understood, perhaps some form of phantom pain) and I decided I could continue on my journey would had really just begun.
The next stop was Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, but don’t let that make you think its grand, as it ain’t. Livingstone was a bastion of development by comparison. Not that I usually like calling any country’s capital a dump, but when you ask local residents (including my hostel staff who make their living off of people staying here) “whats the best thing to do in Lusaka” and they uniformly answer “leave,” you got a problem. I knew I had a problem as soon as my bus arrived (in the dark) and a mob had already crowded around the bus yelling “Taxi! Taxi! You want taxi! I give you good price! Good Price!” You literally couldn’t look out the window without someone trying to get in your face and get you into his cab for a “good price.” I literally had to shove my way through them to retrieve my bag from under the bus, run a few feet to the other side of the station to get away from them, to try to find a more official cab (a lot of the people aggressively shouting at you, are go figure, con artists). I spent two days waiting for my bus and then I took my hostel’s advice and left for Malawi. Not that Lusaka doesn’t have its nice bits, I’m sure if... ah who am I kidding, let’s just move on.
MALAWI
Arriving in Lilongwe from Lusaka seemed like a breath of fresh air. Sure Malawi’s capital had all the trademarks of the other non-South African African major cities: chaotic streets, run-down buildings, heart-breaking poverty, but it also had green areas—and yes I mean park areas as well as plants and other things that were actually alive and not fungal growths—even some of the buildings weren’t all that run down. That said, I soon learned I had arrived in Malawi amidst a period of political upheaval. A couple of weeks earlier, police forces loyal to the president had opened fire on a group of protesters (never a good sign) and this had led to riots and looting and calls for the president to step down by Aug 16th or face a forced removal by the military (who sided with the protestors) which I’m sure was going to be peaceful. I promptly decided to get the hell out of the country by the 16th.
First though, I would stop by Lake Malawi, my main reason for being here anyway—one of the African Great Lakes, a large tropical fresh water lake, beautiful, clear, warm, and complete with unique species found nowhere else including a fish called a coalecanth that was thought to have gone extinct before the dinosaurs and yet still lives in the lake (Bjorn, a South African expat who went by the local nickname Banana and worked in Nkhata Bay as a tour guide, said that the lake had been under explored by scientists, especially at its incredible depths, and any scientist up to the challenge stood a real chance of hitting thezoological jackpot as it were. So all you marine biologists out there who are no doubt reading my blog, get it goin’ on. Just put the mini-sub in your backpack or as a carry on. Although you might have trouble getting it on the bus.
Speaking of buses in Africa, they are legends unto themselves. You’ve heard about the minibuses in South Africa, well they predominate elsewhere as well (although in other countries, there are absolutely no qualms about shoving in as many people and chickens that will physically fit or not). Even the regular buses (which usually are used relics from some Asian country where people sizes are not large to begin with) often had the original sizes ripped out so they could have more narrow seats installed (often at the expense of the aisle). Even so, the buses often won’t leave until they cram more people per room than there are seats (so you get actually half a seat and some stranger who probably has never seen a shower gets the other half and its... cozy). Some fill the aisles with standing passengers and maybe throw a few on the roof while they’re at it. The bus from Lusaka to Lilongwe wasn’t quite that bad, although thanks to their re-design of the seating plan and poor upholstery, I had to keep one foot down on the floor board to keep it from flying up and exposing the wheel axle below. Two Irish girls and a French dude I met on that bus, who were also headed to Nkhata Bay, decided to just catch the next bus, at night in a strange city in the cesspool of humanity that is a Zambian/Malawian/Tanzanian bus station (more like a patch rough gravelly terrain surrounded by shanties where buses and touts congregate), but I opted to stay in Lilongwe not in the mood for another super long bus ride (African bus drivers might think they’re race car drivers, but despite their use of speed bumps as ramp jumps they still generally arrive 3 hours late).
That decision turned out to be fortuitous. After three failed attempts to catch a bus from Lilongwe to Nkhata Bay on the coast of Lake Malawi, including one “luxury bus” (read closest equivalent to a Western bus, but someone will still try to stow a live chicken, without any sort of container or even a cloth, in the luggage compartment by shoving it between other people’s suitcases that the chicken will then proceed to shit all over). As I met up with Richard and Linda, a British (English-Scottish) couple that had also failed to get on the last bus and we decided to split a cab fare to Nkhata Bay. While certainly more expensive than the bus, you get what you pay for, and splitting it 3 ways meant I didn’t have to pay too much. Also, we didn’t have to transfer in Msuzu (which I would have had had to, had I taken the bus, in all likelihood) and got taken straight to Richard and Linda’s hostel, which I quickly decided to adopt as my hostel as well (despite making a reservation elsewhere). Mayuga resorts I believe it was called and it was a picture-esque series of little cabins and dorm facilities built (and built well) into the side of the rocky hills of a peninsula on Lake Malawi overlooking Nkhata Bay. It was run by a white South African expat named Gary (not Bjorn, but he also worked there) and his no doubt long suffering wife. Gary, a 40ish fellow and a skilled builder was rumoured to be a South African veteran of the Angolan War and in Malawi in a self-imposed exile as he avoided South African prosecution for some illicit, nefarious, and undisclosed act. My first impression of Gary was quite pleasant, despite the fact he was plastered out of his mind when I arrived and asked if he any dorms available. He responded by saying “Nah, we don’t have any fucking dorms available, but I like you, so you can have a room for a dorm rate. Fuck it, you can have the room for free.” To which, I replied sure, thus began a relatively lengthy stay in Nkhata Bay (if they were giving me a private room for free, can’t beat that, although I did make an arrangement with Gary’s wife the next morning to pay the dorm rate in the spirit of fairness and keeping them in business). I couldn’t really work it out with Gary as he was still hammered the next day and disappeared to pass out, re-surfaced the next day sober and apologetic for his behaviour, promptly got drunk again and started co-ercing people into doing shots in the middle of the day (I quickly snuck away), and ended up down for the count again. If there’s an AA in Nkhata Bay, I think this guy’s textbook.
That said, the resort he and his Malawi friends built was gorgeous, with little cabins everywhere and terraces for tents. Of course, the decision to tear down the washrooms before they built new ones was a bit of a sore spot amongst the guests who all had to share one measly composting toilet. Considering the toilet issues, and not realizing the purpose of the terraces on my first night (it was dark what can I say) I went out on the deck of my little cabin, decided it was reasonably private and since the lake was just below me, I might as well just take a leak right here. I took a big long whiz (it’d been a long drive up from Lilongwe) out into the night, aiming in the general direction of the lake (which I thought to be right below me) not unlike many shoreside whizzes I’d done at Pelican Lake back home. I did my business and went to bed.
It was only the next day, in the brightness of daylight, that I noticed there was some shoreline and a terrace below my balcony and pitched right in the path of my late night urination was a lonely nylon tent. Oops.
Later on, at breakfast, I overheard some of the camping guests talking about the “rain” last night. One couple was certain that they had heard some rain at some point, while the others didn’t notice any. I quickly added that “yes, I had seen a quick sprinkling of rain” at one point. That seemed to satisfy most, and I quickly changed the topic to the deliciousness of the pancakes.
The resort restaurant turned into a happening place at night. All the travellers congregated there as did many of the local boys with names like Gift, Troubles, and Coconuts, which caused them to burst into hysterics when I asked if they could translate “My Dog Smells Like Coconuts.” It has to be said that many of these boys (though clearly not all) were clearly only hoping to charm their way into the pants and/or pockets of the female tourists (for the male tourists, they were usually just satisfied with our pockets). Apparently they’d had some success at this as quite a few claimed to have had a friend with an Australian girlfriend or an American girlfriend or a Canadian girlfriend or whatever (all in all, if you’re a dude from Nkhata Bay, hitting on Western chicks travelling through might actually be your best chance at life advancement sadly). The girls often complained the guys were a tad too aggressive in their flirtations (and they certainly had no compulsions about interrupting you mid-sentence to launch into it), although some certainly didn’t seem to mind.
It was only local boys who came too by the way, not local girls. Malawi’s a very “conservative” (some would say “backwards”) country when it comes to gender relations, and its assumed generally that any woman you meet in a bar (unless she’s a tourist) is probably a prostitute. You did see Malawi women over the course of the day usually doing work, be it caring for children (many had children from as early as age 13), running restaurants and ticket counters, and balancing inordinately large objects on their heads over obscene distances (imagine walking from Winnipeg to Regina with a large sack of potatoes on your head. Now imagine doing it with hills in the way, potholes and swerving drivers trying to avoid them, and other people also on the road, and that’s life for Malawian women, not an easy one). As a possible consequence of all the political strife in Malawi, the president’s resignation might mean that a woman, the vice-president, would come to power. The local boys at the bar weren’t terribly excited about this possibility saying “Malawi isn’t ready for a woman president” although I’m not sure what one has to be ready for. Frankly, I’m opposed to voting for or against someone based on gender (the best person for the job, male, female, or whatever, should be the criteria), but considering how badly male power-mongers have run some of these very patriarchal countries, giving the reins to a woman for a change might not be such a bad idea.
It was good to meet the locals but I much preferred it when the conversation got past the “tomorrow you go to my shop” shit (sorry man, but there’s no way I’m fitting that elaborate wood carving of a tribesman in my backpack) and started talking about things all of us were interested in. My favourite local resident was the old man nicknamed the Chocolate Man (I can’t remember how to say or spell his real name) who was an 80 year-old (he celebrated his 80th birthday with us while I was there) vendor with a shelf of chocolate bars that he brought every night (and despite the fact that he was the only salesmen there with any goods to sell, he made no attempt to hound you to purchase anything and in fact usually fell asleep a couple hours after his arrival). I liked Chocolate Man, and usually bought a chocolate off him every night although we never really worked out a mutual understanding of the word Snickers so I could tell him what I wanted and he could tell me how much it was. One Aussie tourist had been told that Chocolate Man was actually the village the chief and proudly spread this news to each and everyone until it came out that in may in fact not be true. Saving the Aussie from embarrassment we asked Bjorn who confirmed that Chocolate Man was a village chief (or at least a village elder) and was well respected in the community for being the first successful commercial fisherman on Lake Malawi. He even apparently played suitor to one of the local boy’s mother when his father had fled the country for years in political exile (which made things a tad awkward when the father, believed to be dead, returned).
One of the most interesting topics to discuss with the Malawi locals was witchcraft, which in Malawi is no whimsical subject of fantasy but a real (or at least perceived to be real) concern and major issue (so much so that newspaper actually report witchcraft cases as factual and the government has even outlawed witchcraft and punishes people for being witches). In South Africa, I was used to stories of sangomas (South African witch doctors) whose special “healing” methods often did more harm than good to their patients and yet still had greater trust of certain segment of the population than medical professionals. This though was something different.
People told tales of western doctors coming to Malawi, disbelieving in witchcraft and trying to disprove it, only to fall victim to it themselves. One story involved a western doctor asking for proof of witchcraft from a man who claimed to be a witch and so every night the witch would change something on the western doctor while he slept, first shaving his armpits and then his pubic hair. I pointed out that the same kind of thing happens back home, but it’s not called witchcraft so much as fun with drunk friends, but the guy at the bar said it happened to “a friend of a friend” so you knew it had to be true. Of course.
It quickly became clear that my burden of proof and the general Malawi one were somewhat distinct as the stories got increasingly weirder. Our storyteller began: “You Westerners, you may have created jet airplane to travel the world, but we Malawians, we created flying basket.” He said a local witch could (and apparently did) travel every night to collect all the village children unbeknownst to their parents and fly Santa Claus-like through the sky with all the village children in a giant basket on a world tour (stopping to see the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Great Wall of China, you name it). At the end of the night, the magic basket returns to the village and all the children return to their homes, their parents never knowing they were even gone (and presumably the children don’t mention it, don’t remember it, or aren’t believed). Being not a fan of Malawian bus options, and concerned about how I was going to get to Tanzania, I asked if I could be put in touch with this basket man, as it seemed like a much better way to do it. If it could travel the whole world in a night, it could get to Mt. Kilimanjaro in like 10 mins, and imagine the travelers cred you’d get if you managed to do the journey in a magic Malawian basket.
Naturally the storyteller got a tad reticient when I actually showed interest in riding the basket. He quickly said something along the lines of the basket was only for kids or Malawians, and that two Catholic cardinals from the Vatican had attempted it and ended up with broken bones. And so my magic flying basket dreams were dashed, but I wondered if we could ship souvenirs home at least by flying basket or watch one of my Malawi friends go for a ride for them (a transportation mechanism like this just oozed untapped economic potential for a region that could use some), but no proof of the basket was forthcoming, I would just have to trust his word on it and that the basket could not be used for any other purpose than kidnapping village children and taking them on world tours. A pity, though at least the kids get to travel a bit.
Perhaps I’m playing a bit too much of the skeptic here when it comes this witchcraft (I do have six years of university education so its hard not to play devil’s advocate when someone’s talking about magically flying baskets), people do have a right to their beliefs. But in South Africa I read about a couple of very real tragedies resulting from belief in witchcraft, including the belief spread by a few prominent sangomas that having unprotected sex with a virgin would cure you of HIV, which led directly to some young girls getting raped and infected. Not cool. In one news story I read, villagers rose up and killed a man and his wife as punishment for being witches. The man apparently used witchcraft to make his penis invisible (and presumably also detachable and flying, as if just the penis was invisible you’d still see the rest of him coming a mile away) and used this invisible penis to sleep all of the village men’s wives (yes an invisible penis). His wife was also known to transform into an evil snail, although I’m not sure how much harm a snail, evil or not, can do, as they are generally fairly easy to run away from one would think (can a snail even attack... anything?). Anyway these two were effectively executed by the village elders for their supposed crimes in a very Salem-esque fashion (Trial? What trial?). So while witchcraft stories, like vampire or werewolf stories, are very interesting, if people take them seriously—and make decisions that affect lives and deaths of innocent people based on them—that’s not so funny. In many cases, witchcraft appears to be used as a scapegoat to hide the real problems in the community that perhaps the community doesn’t want to face. Lack of education is also a key driving force.
I actually inadvertently stumbled onto a Malawi classroom of sorts when I went to check my email at the Butterfly Center (a local NGO next door to Mayuga). The local fellow who worked there didn’t speak English that well and would generally reply to any question you asked, by repeating what you just said but with greater enthusiasm:
“Hi there.”
“Hi there! How are you, I’m fine!”
“I... um, okay... Is the Internet working today?”
“The Internet is working today!”
“Is it slow?”
“It is slow!”
Anyways eventually I got online and slowing waited for my email back home to inform my parents that I wasn’t dead eventually got through and the small center began to fill with a few local villagers and Western NGO workers who began teaching them how to use computers. Despite the fact that most of the students were teenagers or young adults, the lessons were incredibly basic (like what you might give to an elementary schooler back home) and I realized how valuable and lucky I was to have had a good education.
I ended up in Nkhata Bay for about a week, enjoying the lazy lakeside life (it reminded me a bit of home), swimming in the lake, trying to canoe on one of the local canoes (basically a hollowed out giant bean that are incredibly difficult to balance), losing at pool tournaments, and going on a boat tour to see fish eagles, play soccer with local villagers, snorkel (Lake Malawi’s got some gorgeous snorkelling even right out in front of the resort), and worrying about catching Bilzaharia, the Malawi equivalent of Swimmer’s Itch (it also goes after ducks and snails normally) except the parasite is far more potent and can in some cases cause death (although it’s easily treated by a one time dose of toxic medicine that knocks you out. Bjorn had it while I was there, though he claimed he got it at Cape Maclear (another beach resort further south on the lake) and that it didn’t exist at Nkhata Bay and assuming the same rules as swimmers itch apply: avoid marshy grassy areas (snail and duck habitat) and stick to open, moving water. (as I write this its been a few weeks and I haven’t got it, so I’m pretty sure I’m in the clear). Observing Bjorn the treatment just seemed like a bad hangover and he was back at it pretty quickly. Of course Bjorn seemed like a tough kinda guy. His parents were seafaring nomads who lived on a houseboat and traveled Africa and India and he apparently served in the Swiss Army for 2 years because his Mom was Swiss and all Swiss male citizens are required to give 2 years (conscription) and he wanted “something to do” (he even got a battle scar from the experience when during a training exercise against an imaginary enemy—the Swiss don’t have actual enemies—someone accidentally lost a live grenade and his unit was told to hit the deck and he landed on the still hot barrel of his gun and singed his arm creating an actual battle scar from a war against an enemy that never existed). He told stories from his uncle’s redneck farm in South Africa where for fun his uncle would take kids for a drive in his pick-up truck and have them sit in the back saying “whoever stays on the longest wins” and would try to knock them off by driving rapidly over rough terrain and getting them to hand him beer, and considered “welfare-states” to be “nanny-states” (or perhaps “pussies” is the more appropriate term).
He was our tour guide on lake Malawi (see the snorkelling, games with local villagers, private beaches, fish eagles, etc.) and was very knowledgeable about the lake (apparently the water level used to be a lot lower but rose suddenly one year, possibly due to a volcanic eruption under the surface, and he showed us the underwater remains of a village and its white rock, which the chief would climb and speak from, as the only thing left still extending above the present water line. The tour was great but it held one attraction which I particularly dreaded: the cliff jump (due to my aforementioned fear of heights). There’s the cliff you see, and if you climb to the top of it you can jump off and land in the water below entirely unscathed (the cliff goes down a long way under water). The cliff was about 5-10 m high (about the height of a high diving board) and didn’t look too scary from its base, but from the top it was a different story. Nevermind you had to climb up there over sharp slippery rocks without climbing gear (or shoes for that matter) wearing nothing but your soaking wet swimming trunk (you have to swim to the cliff from the boat as the non-jumpers stay on the boat). I struggled mightily just getting on the blessed rock and out of the water (I’m not climber, I can’t even climb trees), but after multiple tries (and considerable assistance from Bjorn and others) I got on to the rock and and climbed to the top and the specified jumping point (I wanted to jump from lower, but didn’t knew if there would be rocks there or not, so decided it was best to jump from where I had just seen people jump and not die). Having fought my way to this point, not excited about the prospect of climbing down (probably more dangerous than jumping), and not wanting to wuss out, I pushed myself forward before I had too much time to think and leapt into the air—cannonball formation. At first it felt just a normal swimming pool diving board jump, something my body had done numerous times, but when I didn’t hit the water at the usual time and there seemed to be more air (and my mass, ever more evident when I’m shirtless and in a swimsuit gathered speed) I began to feel a tinge of terror as I seemed to rocket uncontrollably downward through the air.
I hit the water with a large bang and went deep as water rushed up my nostrils, an unpleasant feeling I remembered from childhood (probably jumping off the high diving board at the Sportsplex for the first and only time). But my velocity slowed and I found myself back in control.
I returned to the surface amidst applause, breathed air, and felt exuberance that I had faced my fear and conquered it, and now never had to do that bloody thing again.
At another point in the tour, we went snorkelling around some rock outcrops in a sheltered bay (although I seem to not quite have mastered the “keep water out of your snorkel” technique—at least it was fresh water). One Israeli girl who apparently fell out of her raft while white-water rafting in Uganda (and was promptly abandoned by her guide and nearly drowned) was clearly anxious about being in the water again and wanted to get back in the boat, but since this was a wooden jalopy with high walls, hastily constructed floorboards, and one flea-bitten dog, this was easier said than done. Bjorn and the boys on the boat tried to pull her up while I tried to offer my hands as a foot rest. When that didn’t work, I dove under the water, stood on a rock coming up from the lake floor (it wasn’t that deep although it was still over my head) and tried to push the girl up. Unfortunate I forgot I had a snorkel and soon saw my snorkel (now filled with water) sinking to the lake floor. I desperately tried to keep the girl up, with one foot on the rock and the other trying to wrangle my runaway snorkel. Eventually one of the Swiss girls came by and picked up for me and we got the Israeli girl back into the boat with one big shove. Then it was my turn to board the boat which was far from glorious. The Africans don’t call me “big man” for nothing.
Later on, as I left Nkhata Bay, I joined with some Swiss girls from the resort and the boat trip on a tour with a local guide who promised to drop me off at the Tanzanian border (so I could avoid another bus ride and see part of northern Malawi in the process). Also, since there was no ATM with cash in it in Nkhata bay all week (the two ATMs had not been serviced) I had to go to Msuzu to get money, so I just paid my guide who was connected to Mayuga so I wouldn’t have to go back and pay them (needlessly complicated African style).
The tour itself was something of a disappointment, beginning with my guides attempt to hike the price by $100 after it had already began (despite the fact that we had agreed on a price days beforehand) and I couldn’t exactly back out (I’d be stranded). The Swiss girls were friendly but they spoke mostly in German and kept changing their plans, with each change making the guides anxious to hike the price (the guides also spent a fair amount of time picking up supplies which they hadn’t bothered to pick up beforehand and various “friends” along the way). We saw a couple of Malawi’s national parks, the first of which had an elephant and some buffalo and was no Kruger, but fine for Malawi, but the second one was for me a heartbreaker as it was filled with clear-cut forests and scorched landscapes. There was some wildlife here (mainly antelope), but with such habitat loss it was unclear how the poor things could survive long term.
Also I had some sleeping issues. I’m a light sleeper at the best of times and with no pillow except my own rolled up jacket and the thinnest of mats on what felt like a gravel road beneath my tent, I just couldn’t get any sleep so I ended up dozing off in the truck. When one of the Swiss girls tried to wake me the next day, she apparently shook the hell out of my tent and they were quite surprised when I didn’t emerge from it.
The next night’s campsite had grass and cement pads yet everyone else insisted on putting the tents on the cement pads as it was a high altitude and they worried it would get cold (you see, they saw frost on the grass in the mornings so they assumed it meant the grass was cold). I tried to point out that morning dew/frost actually comes out of the air and collects on everything (its just more visible on grass) and if you put your tent on grass, it will actually block the frost from forming on it (not to mention provide natural insulation and cushion), but this was dismissed as ludicrous (apparently flying baskets are believable in Malawi, but not water condensing out of air particles) and the tents were put on the cement pads and I put myself back in the truck. The next morning, people complained about a cold night. Go figure.
At the campfire one night, we sat around while I occasionally scanned the bush with my flashlight for hyenas (unlike the parks in South Africa, these parks weren’t fenced, so there was nothing stopping a hyena or lion or whatever from just walking into your camp, although our guide was convinced that hyenas weren’t actually predators so much as scavengers). One of the Swiss girls, who had a clear interest in DRC marijuana and other African narcotics (she was training to be a nurse) apparently decided that I was not scanning the bush “right” and snatched my flashlight out of the hand and promptly dropping it clumsily in the fire. In a region where consistent electricity is a luxury (not just while you’re camping) losing your only flashlight was bound to make you a little annoyed, but luckily the guides managed to fish it out of the fire before it got totally destroyed (it still works, all its covered in ash marks and various other battle scars) while the Swiss girl assumed the duck and cover position, which apparently is her standard manoeuvre after doing something stupid (she also said that when she got between a mother zebra and her foal to take a picture—clearly a bright thing to do—and noticed that the mother zebra was not surprisingly upset she went into the same position, and the mother zebra—not surprisingly—kicked her).
The next place we stayed was another beach resort where overland tours stopped and seemed to be having a lot of fun. I gladly took a dorm here in lieu of the stinky old truck (which I was also spending all day in due to all our driving around) and then next day we had one last dip in lake Malawi before the girls and the guides had disagreement over our agreed departure (and since no one had consulted me when the decision was made, I had no idea what the actual arrangement had been) but we were all hustled up perhaps the worst road I’ve seen my life (basically tire ruts through worn sharp rocks zig-zagging up a mountain cliff) just to see the fairly non-descript town of Livingstonia. At this point we dropped off the girls and I insisted on being driven to the Tanzanian border before daylight ended, which we did.
At the border itself the money exchange desks wouldn’t accept my Malawi Kwacha (despite the fact they were literally on the Malawi border, so I don’t know what currency they were expecting) so I had to do black market trades to get rid of it. A border guard gave me a hassle because apparently upon entering Malawi, the Malawi-Zambia border official gave me a one week visa to Malawi not the two week one I had asked for, so techinically I’d been in Malawi illegally for two days. I pointed out that their own border people made the screw-up and my two days were spent spending tourist dollars into the local economy, and besides I was leaving the country so if they didn’t want me all they had to do was give me back my passport and I would go. The border official gave me a bit of a lecture but handed back my passport and I was cleared to move on to Tanzania.
TANZANIA
After crossing the border to Tanzania from Malawi I needed to get to the nearest major Tanzanian city, a non-descript place called Mbeya (in fact the only description I’d had of it was Bjorn’s description of it as a “shit-hole.”) While there were minibuses, it was close enough and I was tired enough that I thought a taxi might be a better idea. I ended being befriended by a local pastor—also crossing the border at the same time. At first, I thought he was yet another tout, offering false friendship in the hopes of getting your attention so he could launch into a sales pitch, but he soon turned out to be genuine and helped me negotiate a better price on the taxi, arranged a better bus transportation the next day to Dar as Salaam (Tanzania’s biggest city and my next stop). He had arranged someone to meet me at the notorious Dar bus station called Ubungu—a bastion of scum and villainy if ever there was one, but there was apparently a mix-up and his friend never appeared so I ended up having to get a taxi.
I spent the next couple of days struggling to get my bearings in a city that spoke Swahili which I couldn’t, but eventually I got on the Kilimanjaro express bus to Moshi, the town at the foot of Kilimanjaro. Moshi itself seemed pleasant enough a town, although I never saw the bloody mountain as it was covered in fog each day I was there (apparently a lot of hikers pay a lot of money to climb it and still never see it because of the fog, so at least I didn’t do that).
Realizing I was running out of time in Africa, I decided to give up on Kilimanjaro and focus on my remaining must sees before getting the hell off the continent. I tried to find a Serengeti/Ngorongoro crater tour (difficult as there are a ton of scam artists, and its hard to tell the legit companies from the illegit companies, but I eventually chose to join a tour based on the advice of a Finnish woman). After a day of paying for minutes on a store clerk’s cellphone as that was apparently the only phone I could use and no one responded to emails (due to an ongoing Tanzanian energy crisis—thanks to “a gov’t that didn’t bother investing in its power grid” according to a local coffeeshop barista—you were lucky if you had electricity nevermind Internet access. The power literally went out every day, usually at inopportune times like when you were about to watch TV or trying to use a squat toilet in a room with no windows. Many of the businesses had generators, but acquiring fuel was expensive and tricky at times and burning it just to keep the lights on can’t have been a great solution.)
Anyways, my tour operators said I could join a tour tomorrow, but that I would have to get to Moshi tonight—not to worry, though, as they could provide transportation. I figured this meant minibus (in Tanzania, they’re called “dalla-dallas”) and said 3 times I didn’t want to go on one at night (they’re not exactly safe during the day) and would rather wait until the next day and catch the early morning bus bus (you know the kind where all the passengers sit down and the chickens are stowaway luggage not squished against you with their sharp beaks protruding). Each time I was assured “Don’t worry, don’t worry,” but remained unconvinced.
Sure enough, as we waited in the dark for the bus to come, longer than the “10 minutes” was no surprise, someone grabbed my bag and (after a discussion in Swahili) all my stuff was uniformly chucked onto a dalla-dalla (the buses had broken down and another one wouldn’t be coming for hours, my guide said, so we had no choice). Naturally it was crammed as usual, and a bus designed for 15 people soon had 40 on it, we myself and my guides crammed in at the back, all of us jostling painfully as we went over speed bump and speed bump. At one point, a fight broke out amongst the crowd up and one drunken idiot had to be thrown off the bus. Fun times.
And we were passed en route to Arusha by the bus I was supposed to take. Twice.
At this point I was beginning to doubt my wisdom in joining this tour, but it was the only possible to see the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater by tour or car rental (and I wasn’t about to rent a car) and I watched far too much Discovery Channel to come this close and not go in. The hotel they put me up in that night was alright, but the power went out again soon after I arrived so I didn’t see much of it.
Woken up at 5 am for my transfer to join the other group of travellers, it was still dark and without lights I had trouble finding all my stuff in the pitch black. This meant I was a few minutes late for my transfer driver and boy did he let me hear about it. Apparently, the Swahili expressions Polé Polé (slowly slowly), Hakuna Matata (don’t worry), T.I.A. (this is Africa) etc. only apply when a Tanzanian is keeping you waiting. If you keep a Tanzanian waiting, surprise, its suddenly a different story.
Anyways, we made it out to the Tarangire campsite where my fellow tourists were waiting for me to join the tour and having breakfast. At first they seemed kinda cold towards me and I thought perhaps they were just an uncharismatic bunch, but it later turned out that they had been promised that the tour would only have 4 people on it and were incensed when the tour operators had broken the arrangement and sold space to another tourist (ie. me) and forced two of them to share a tent although they later confessed that they didn’t blame me for the deception as they realized I had no idea about any of this. I was just a dude who wanted to see the Serengeti.
After a long drive we made it to the park (you have to go through Ngorongoro to get to Serengeti, apparently so the Tanzanian parks board can collect extra entry fees). Despite the expensive park fees and high number of visitors, they don’t seem to be investing anything in the roads which were some of the worst I’d seen in Africa (I could have sprinkled gravel over open terrain and made a better road in some cases). I can’t imagine getting a rental car through there unscathed. I counted around 15 break-downs (and these were hard 4x4 land cruisers and land rovers we’re talking about here) and one overturned bus. The overturned bus happened shortly before we arrived on the scene and there were still passengers milling around in shock and being treated for injuries. Unsure of what to do, we gave some of the people our water bottles, but when these appeared to be snatched up by able-bodied men who didn’t necessarily need them, I made a point of hand delivering my remaining cookies and water to a little girl. Our truck itself, a beaten up old land cruiser, held itself together for most of the trip (although my door handle came off at one point so I had to roll down my window and open it from the outside). Gap, my old nemesis and former employer, had plenty of its shiny new trucks around, although I was quite pleased to see one if its Discovery trucks (the most expensive line) broken-down by the side of the road as we rambled past.
We did see plenty of wildlife which made the trip worthwhile, including the most sightings of lions I’ve ever experienced (as well as plenty of zebras, gazelles, wildebeest, hyenas, and even a couple of leopards). The highlight was a male lion sleeping in the sun by the side of the road who seemed only mildly interested in our presence. We had ample time to photograph him up close (unlike my Kalahari guides, my Tanzanian guides didn’t panic and hit the gas, although they may have also had less concern over our personal safety). Truly an amazing wildlife experience (although if you only see one park in Africa, I’d still say go to Kruger for the better roads).
After the safari, and some awkward arguing between the tourists and the operators (who seemed incapable of taking responsibility for their guides and own company’s false promises), I was supposed to be taken back to Moshi, it became clear that I wasn’t going to get a straight answer about how to get back (at first we were promised a ride then a bus, then it was supposed to take an hour and then it was supposed to arrive at 2 am). Eventually, I just said screw it, and walked away from the shady operation and booked myself into an Arusha hotel, and caught the next morning’s “luxury” (by luxury they mean follows international automotive standards) bus straight to Dar.
It turns out I stumbled back into Dar in the middle of Ramadan and in this highly Muslim region (Tanzania’s about half Muslim and half Christian), and all the restaurants were closed (except oddly the Lebanese place). Ironically, in both Qatar and Turkey (which are more overwhelmingly Muslim and which I also visited during Ramadan) finding food was never an issue. After scrounging up some food and I managed to sneak my away past about 48 touts to get to the legitimate counter for the legitimate ferry to Zanzibar, my last African must-see.
While I had heard reports that the crossing to Zanzibar could often be through rough seas (and my experiences in Mozambique and South Africa taught me that African seas were rough indeed), it ended up not being as bad as I thought it would be (although it was no Pelican Lake). Zanzibar town (often called Stone Town) is a network of Arabic style twisting streets (it used to be the capital for the sultanate of Zanzibar, back in the days of the British Empire) and the island itself has a bounty of gorgeous beaches and spice plantations and was the highlight of Tanzania for me. I did a spice tour where you could see where all those things going stale in your spice cupboard come from including turmeric, cinnamon, cocoa, vanilla, etc. and even some peppercorns (still green) and the strongest pepper flavour I’ve ever bitten into. After a couple days of lounging around Zanzibar, I caught the ferry back to Dar, to get my plane to Istanbul with Qatar Airways.
Now my shaving case had broken a hole out the bottom early in the trip which I had makeshiftily repaired with duct tape, but naturally the duct tape came off en route to the airport. After some negotiating with the airport staff I managed to get it put into bag and the bag put into a box that was taped so I could check it in (I couldn’t exactly take my shaving case on to the plane for security reasons).
After that, all I had to do was catch my plane to Doha, Qatar and then on to Istanbul.
KENYA
Now I had earlier planned on going to Kenya, being one of the premier East African destinations, but the main thing I wanted to see in Kenya was the Masai Mara reserve which was effectively the same park as the Serengeti, so after I saw the Serengeti, I didn’t see the point in forking out for another visa (the only other place I heard of from Kenya was Nairobi and all reports were that it was God-awful). I was hoping I could count hiking around Mt. Kilimanjaro’s base (which I had planned to do if my safari tour operators had taken me back to Moshi as originally agreed upon) as being close enough (even though Kili’s entirely in Tanzania, its close to the Kenyan border), but no dice. So I was content to leave Kenya for another trip. Besides there was a famine going on there and stuff.
Qatar Airways had other plans however, as my flight to Doha inexplicably got re-routed through Nairobi. I wasn’t allowed to leave the plane, but I guess I inadvertently got a sneak peak of Kenya (or at least their airport in Nairobi).
QATAR
If you’re wondering where the hell Qatar is, its a tiny peninsular country shooting out from Saudi Arabia into the Persian Gulf, not far from Dubai and the U.A.E. (they’re very similar countries in fact). After landing in Doha, Qatar’s capital, from Nairobi, I immediately realized I wasn’t in the third world any more. The airport was actually clean and relatively shiny and new, and people seemed to be organized.
Of course that wasn’t the only surprise Qatar had in store for me. I had a lengthy layover (12 hours overnight) before my next flight to Istanbul, and I had reconciled myself to the fact I would likely be spending the night spread out on a set of airport chairs, clutching my laptop carry on like a teddy bear (it would have better than some of the places I slept in Africa). When I asked a Qatar airways staffer about where I could best find a quiet area to grab some shut eye, he looked at my ticket and said “oh we have a hotel booked for you...”
“You do?” (Keep in mind, I bought this ticket cause it was the cheapest)
“Yes. Please check with transfer services.” What followed was a bit of a zig zag across Qatar’s scattered airport (mixed-up as it is currently undergoing renovations and expansion), but to make a long story short and I ended up getting a free 24 hour visa to enter Qatar itself, a free transfer, and a free dinner, breakfast, and nights accommodation at luxury hotel in Downtown Doha called Movenpick (something like a Swiss Hilton). The food was a Qatari buffet feast, the room was big enough to fit all the places I stayed in Africa combined inside, and there was a swimming pool, massage parlour, and my room even had a big flat screen television set (with more than 1 channel!). No, I don’t usually stay at places like this, so this felt like some pretty luxurious treatment. After Africa, it felt like I was staying at the Qatari Sultan’s palace. Best damn layover I ever had (wish it had been longer). Of course I didn’t have much need for the sauna, as if you wanted the sauna experience just step out into the Qatari summer night (35 degrees Celsius at night, it felt sauna like enough. Lord knows what it would be like during the day. How did people survive here without AC?)
At any rate, far too soon I had leave Qatar (I wasn’t really intending to spend a lot of time there) and contine on my way to Istanbul where I am now as I write this.
GOOD-BYE AFRICA
So what was my experience in Africa overall? I’m definitely glad I went and glad I had the opportunity to live in South Africa (still my favourite African country) and at least see life in neighbouring countries (although considering I got culture shock just traveling through these areas, I can’t imagine what would have happened had I tried to live in one). Africa’s definitely the hardest place I’ve ever traveled mainly due to bad transportation networks and infrastructure, chaotic approaches to everything, and shady characters at every turn who see you as a giant dollar sign. Still it’s an incredibly different, eye-opening part of the world. Sometimes called the “hopeless continent” there’s some truth to the description, as many countries have been spinning their wheels for decades thanks to poor selfish leadership and lack of basic necessities like infrastructure and education. Africa’s got its work cut out for it, but Chfirst and foremost, its leadership needs to take responsibility for their own screw-ups (and taking responsibility for your own actions needs to become a social norm) instead of trying to shift the blame onto witchcraft and western “imperialists” (Neo-colonial arguments don’t hold as much weight for me any more, sorry grad school friends, but colonialism ended in Africa decades ago). Most of the westerners I encountered in Africa were either tourists or NGO workers who were volunteering their time out of the goodness of their heart for dubious if any financial gain). While I’m sure there are still plenty of Western companies exploiting African labour and resources, the Chinese seem to be taking this over and now have a greater percentage and influence (and more colonial relationship) with Africa these days (during the Malawi unrest, Chinese businesses were attacked and not Western ones, because people felt the president was a puppet of the Chinese). Africans aren’t that different from Canadians or anyone else (it wasn’t that long ago that my ancestors were burning people at the stake for witchcraft), but years of poverty, disease, and neglect have left that at a perennial disadvantage. It will take great leadership, great personal sacrifice, and great diplomacy to bring Africa up and put it on its feet, and the change must come from within. Africa is certainly capable of producing great leaders—look at Nelson Mandela, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and Rwanda’s miraculous recovery from a nation devastated by genocide to a popular tourist destination to go look for mountain gorillas. Africa needs more leadership like that, and less like Robert Mugabe and Moammar Gaddafi (a rule of thumb: the more shops that feel compelled to display your country’s leader’s face in a visible place, the more autocratic they are).
It will get there. It may take decades, or centuries, but it will get there.

So in the end, I'm glad I decided to do my trek through sub-saharan Africa, although doing it independently allowed me to interact more with locals it was also incredibly frustrating... making it a bit like the cliff jump in Malawi (I'm glad I did it, but I don't need to do it again). I think next time I travel in Africa I might take tour.:)

Cheers
Ryan