Christmas in Malawi

I was debating what to do for Christmas with the office closed for a week, limited funds, and no desire to spend too much time on busses. There are 2 other Crisis Corps Volunteers who did their Peace Corps assignments in Malawi. They invited me to join them for a trip to Malawi. Bill, Meghan and I left Lusaka at 6 a.m. on Christmas Eve to head first to Chipata, still in Zambia, then to take a shared taxi to the border, to take another shared taxi to the nearest town, and then a minibus to Lilongwe. A bit gruelling, but we reached our destination before dark and settled in to the Peace Corps transit house after a Christmas Eve feast of burgers and chips. The house was empty aside from one volunteer whose planned trip to Zambia was postponed due to stomach troubles.

Bill and Meghan had turned in when this other volunteer came in with a wide eyed look and a question of what to do about a certain guest hovering near his backpack. It was a hairy, fat tarantula, probably 4 inches long. I watched to make sure it didn’t make any moves into the backpack, while he went and got a security guard who used his club to bludgeon it to death. Thank goodness for security!

The next morning we hit the road around 7 to head to Senga Bay. This involved taking 2 minibuses packed to the rim with people and goods, then hopping into the back of a pickup truck, followed by a bicycle taxi. This was my first time to experience the latter. Skinny boys with rickety bikes have a padded plank on the back of the bike and they transported us with our packs and all for about a dollar the final kilometres to the lake. I have to admit, I was pretty terrified and felt really bad for the poor guy straining to transport my bulk! Unfortunately, the first place we went to had no rooms available so we had to take the bike taxis one more time. On the sandy potholed roads with speeding cars passing occasionally, I was really not sure we’d reach our destination. This was Meghan’s first time away from home for Christmas but she pointed out it didn’t really feel like Christmas lugging our packs around in sweltering heat. We finally were checked into a room which we were given at a substantial Peace Corps discount, cleaned up a bit, and headed for something to eat.

We apparently had found a very popular place for Malawians to have their Christmas dinner. After 2 hours and multiple enquiries, we finally had something to eat, by which time I was really grumpy! My festive entry was vegetable curry (green bean and potato) with rice. They had no dessert, no chocolate, no ice cream---nothing. IMAGINE! Christmas without sweets!!!! I had a 15 cent box of stale animal crackers for dessert. Talk about not feeling like Christmas!

We walked on the beach for a little while but before long it started to rain so we went back and watched tv in the room….a rare treat although we lost reception through much of the film we were trying to watch due to the storm.

Bill headed back to Lilongwe the next day and Meghan went to her Peace Corps village to see some kids she is supporting to go to boarding school. I went to see about some activities on the lake, particularly hiking and sailing. On my way, I encountered a hotel employee who was so concerned the people would overcharge me for a sailboat. He connected me to a friend who said it was $40 for 3 hours….out of my price range. Instead I went hiking with another friend of his for $8. This is a lot of money in Malawi. Later I found out I was being scammed, but luckily it was just for the $8 and not the $40! I went on a really nice hike in the hills with stunning views of the lake. Bouldering down the hill in the heat wasn’t quite so much fun. The guide took me to his sisters for lunch of nshima (corn meal porridge), fish and beans. What I really wanted….a bowl of ice cream! A hot lake shore without ice cream just didn’t seem right! No diet coke either although soda water sufficed on that one.

I was really tired by the time I got home but did stop and book the one sailboat (catamaran) in the area…which is $10 an hour….for the next day. So Tuesday I went for a quick morning sail before hitching a ride to town to catch a minibus to Blantyre and Mount Mulanje. Also on the bus were two German aid workers who were also headed to Mount Mulanje but a day after me.

I reached Blantyre around 5… a backpacker with a popular bar and good food but really smelly dorm rooms. I shared a room with a chatty Peace Corps Volunteer from Namibia. Despite the smell, I managed to get a good nights sleep before heading to Mount Mulanje.

Some by Train….

Some by fuel truck!

The Tazara Railway runs between a town a couple hours north of Lusaka called Kapiri Mphshi and Dar es Salaam. This is the most popular way people travel to Tanzania and being a bit of a train fan myself, I’d planned on doing this since I came. When it came to actually going, the 24 hour trip by bus sounded better than 2-1/2 days by train….not to mention the people I spoke to who’d spent an extra 23 hours on a broken down train in the middle of nowhere!

Coming back, I did hope to take the train but it only makes the routes on certain days and it would have meant staying in Dar waiting a couple days and I had done what I wanted to do and was ready to return to Zambia. Maura and I thought we were being slick taking a bus from Moshe to a town fairly close to the Zambian and Malawian borders where she was going. We quickly noticed that the bus was travelling the same route we’d came on, just passing a short distance outside of Dar. We did save maybe an hour on the bus, and spending another night in Dar which we weren’t that keen on, so it was ok. We were just disappointed that we didn’t get to see other scenery and the bus was a lot less pleasant than the bus which goes from Dar to Lusaka.

I got to the Zambian border at about 9 the next morning and when I found out that the earliest bus to Lusaka didn’t leave until 6:30 p.m. I decided hitching would be the best way to get home. One little problem…there was very little traffic! The only vehicles that passed were either local, or fuel trucks carrying petrol to meet Zambia’s ongoing fuel crisis. Just when I was going to give up and go to wait for the bus, a fuel truck came by with a driver and his assistant. They agreed to take me on board and the adventure began.

The scenery through northern Zambia was different from what I’d seen before and I was glad I managed to find one of the few ways to actually travel through during daylight hours. It was also one more cultural experience! We stopped very frequently to make sure other truckers parked on the side of the road were ok. Also, not only were most of the people we encountered spoke Swahili. All the way to Kapiri Mposhi it felt more like Tanzania than Zambia. We even ate at a West Africa restaurant in the evening…well, I did. The driver was Muslim and observing Ramadan, so he drove the entire day with no food or drink until about 6 when he had some tea, chipati and samosas.

When it got dark and I couldn’t enjoy the scenery any more, I crawled in back, finished my book, and fell sound asleep on the nice soft bed. They woke me up at about 11 p.m. when we reached the town where they were diverging from my destination. They had met another trucker headed to Lusaka who had agreed to pick me up there. They left me at a restaurant where the owner, again east African, agreed to make sure I was ok. I enjoyed chai tea and chipatis while I waited, waited, and waited. The other driver never arrived, so when the restaurant closed at 2 a.m., they took me to a guest house their family owns. It was a simple room with outhouses in the back and cost less than $3.

The next morning I caught a bus to Lusaka and was home by midday, happy to have enjoyed a great trip, and to have had such an interesting trip home having met some great people who helped me get home safely and securely!

Arusha and Kiliminjaro

As I said in the last entry, we came back from the safari and stayed in Arusha, and woke up to stunning views of Mt. Mehru. Femke had to get to Nairobi to fly back to Holland and Maura and I were going to Moshe that afternoon, so we had a number of things to arrange before we left.

After buying bus tickets, checking email,… we visited the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda which is taking place right there in Arusha and open to people who want to observe. You have to go through a security check point and leave your passport. You then have a choice of which trial to listen to. We were advised that the 3 rd floor was a high profile person and would be most interesting, but when we got up there, it was closed to the public. We went downstairs where we were given a headset, and pointed to benches where you can sit an observe through one way mirrors. You could choose which language you wanted to listen to, but the attorney speaking was French. There were a number of people in the courtroom…the UN judges, interpreters, and I don’t know who all. You couldn’t see the man who was testifying as they were behind another one way mirror. The trial we sat in on was for 3 former Senior officials from the Interim government of Rwanda – Edouard Karemera, Mathieu Ngirumpatse, and Joseph Nzirorera. They are charged with seven counts including conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to genocide, genocide, alternatively complicity in genocide, rape and extermination as crimes against humanity, and serious violations of the Geneva Conventions. All three pled not guilty.

The attorney was interviewing someone who had known one of the men before the genocide and was making the point that he had done good things and were these the actions of someone who could commit such crimes against humanity. I think that’s the whole point of the genocide though….people who had been good, who had been friends and neighbours and done good things, went crazy with racism and hatred.

Afterwards, we wandered around town as my friends wanted to do a bit more shopping. Then we went our separate ways, with Femke heading to Nairobi and Maura and I heading to Moshe, the town near Kiliminjaro.

Moshe is probably my favourite town in Africa so far. It’s fairly small, has a variety of shops such as your Indian shops, market stalls, craft shops… It has great Indian food restaurants for a low price. The guesthouse we stayed in was clean with crisp white sheets. You’re in the shadow of Kiliminjaro. Best of all, it’s a lovely cool fresh mountain air climate. Heaven for an Oregon girl stifled by the dusty heat of Africa!

There were some people offering tours around Kili for around $70 but we decided to strike out on our own the next day. Sure, we didn’t get the cute little boxed lunch or a guide to accompany us on the mini bus, but we saved $30 each. Just to get into the park you pay $30. All fees were due to double in the new year. Then you have to hire a guide for $20. We were just going to the first level which wasn’t too strenuous. Unfortunately, cloud cover which later gave way to rain, meant we saw less of the mountain than we saw from town. I had previously wanted to climb the whole mountain, but I’m glad I did a day trip first because it ended any desire to do it. It’s too expensive, it’s too populated, and the views going up don’t seem that remarkable. We met one young woman from the UK who had spent her $800 but got altitude sickness and had to give it up. She said she really hadn’t been prepared for the strenuous nature of the trek. Clearly other people also had little awareness of what they were doing because we saw people with inappropriate gear, porters who had to carry peoples large wheeled suitcases on their head because the hikers obviously didn’t realize that a backpack might be more appropriate for such a journey. When they get to the summit I guess they hike from like 4:30 in the morning. If they reach the top and it is cloudy, they still have to start down to keep to the schedule. Anyway, it’s something great to be able to say you did, but I think it’s one I’ll remove from my list of must do’s. I did enjoy the one day…enjoyed the forest, the mountain air, the singing birds, the unique plants and flowers. Then finishing it off with a nice hot curry in town…perfect!

Photos

I'm having trouble adding photos to the entrys so here is Mount Mehru and Maura, Femka and I AFTER hot showers!

Disaster strikes!

Freshly scrubbed, and dinner of macaroni and cheese, we were crawling into our tent a bit early for a welcomed sleep. I decided on one last trek to the toilet and donned my headlamp with faded batteries. Intent on the task at hand, I passed through some people standing near the vehicles, and nonchalantly headed toward the toilet, when I realized that the sudden movement towards my direction was the tusk of an elephant who thought I’d come much to close. Judging the distance of only some feet, I completely agreed.

He continued to enter the camp, drinking from the water tank and checking out the meal a group was sitting outside eating on a picnic table. His friend soon came along for a drink of water as well. With all the tourists gawking, taking photos, shining flashlights in their faces and staying far too close to the elephants it seemed a recipe for disaster, but finally they moved on, I think with some persuasion from the rangers.

Early the next morning we were jostling down into the bottom of the crater. Because animals don’t migrate from the crater, we were looking forward to seeing some animals that had migrated from the Tanzanian side of the crater.

I took a photo as we were jostling along, and I was just playing around with the camera. I thought I was doing adjustments on that photo, so thought “format” was pertaining to that photo only. It soon became clear that with no warning, no “format disc” message, I had managed to clear the entire disc of all my photos of that past four months including Victoria Falls with my aunts, events with the kids, Zanzibar, Masai warriors, my leopard, the lion and reacting gazelle’s, EVERYTHING. I couldn’t believe it, since I had bought a large camera specifically so I would have a good zoom when I went on safari. It was so devastating, and put a damper on the rest of the day which seemed to be a bit jinxed anyway. We were on the wrong side of the river causing us to miss seeing a leopard that had moved on by the time we drove around, and didn’t see too much of anything else either. I tried to eat my lunch at an idyllic spot next to a lake only to have two large black kite birds literally snatch the food out of my mouth, gauging my mouth with their talons, and leaving me with small cuts and feeling very stunned. It then started pouring, and we had to continue the rest of the trip sitting inside the vehicle with the top closed…boring…aside from the fact that we didn’t really see any more animals of interest. One thing that was nice about the crater is seeing a variety of animals – wildebeest, zebra, gazelle, topi…. All just kind of hanging out together. We also saw hyena…rather mangy creatures, and a Cheetah, who we hoped was going to decide it was lunch time and go for one of the gazelle, but she didn’t seem to be in a particular hurry.

We got back to Arusha pretty late – around 6:00- and finally found a place to stay at the Catholic Hostel, which worked out pretty well. It had a stunning view of Mount Mehru on the outside porch, and was near to where our friend was staying so we were all able to go for a nice meal after enjoying long, HOT showers.

Pos kichizi kaona ndivi kwenye friji!

Translation from Swahili: I’m cool as a banana in the fridge! Of course, that’s figuratively, not literally because it’s blooming HOT!

We arrived to Arusha after an ever so long day on the bus. It was “luxury” though, meaning they give you a soft drink now and again. Unfortunately, that did not mean that they had air conditioning, and of course, no one wanted any windows open. It was quite a scenic drive through the mountains, but Kili was hiding when we went through Moshe.

We arrived in Arusha to be met by David, the man we had arranged our safari with through a recommendation from a friend of Maura’s. He wasn’t the British man he was expecting, and he referred to me as Sharon, which had us slightly concerned. He checked us into the hotel, and took us to a pizza place for dinner. He seemed concern to leave us alone that we would switch our booking elsewhere. We handed over our $350 each just in our hotel room with no receipt which had us both feeling a bit uneasy, particularly as 8 a.m. came and went the next morning with no sign of him. Eventually he did arrive but we weren’t actually headed out of town until past 10:00. Concern grew when I asked the guide about some camels we saw with the Masai on the way out of town. “From the UK,” he answered. Uh-oh, what were we in for now?

This was certainly an indication of things to come, for hard working and well meaning as he was, our guide Charles was certainly lacking in English skills, animal spotting ability, or any knowledge of species or animal characteristics. That’s rather unfortunate for a safari guide!

We went to Lake Manyara after lunch, which is a beautiful park. However, we whizzed by the flora and fauna so fast, we couldn’t enjoy that so much. Still we did see elephants VERY close….almost too close in fact. We also saw wildebeests, birds (no flamingos though), zebra, masai giraffe (a first), and a monkey which we initially thought was stretching languidly on the road but instead was in the throes of death having been run over by the vehicle our Spanish friends were in.

Our camping site was a bit interesting… budget safari camping central. A pretty rundown campground filled with tents, a swimming pool, two grungy showers with toilets, and a common eating area where cooks from all the companies brought tasty delights!

The next day we went to Serengetti which involved a long drive, but for a big part of it we were driving through the Ngoragora Crater area. We stopped for a view of the amazing crater, as well as a Masai “compound”.

We reached the Serengetti finally and happened upon a large number of cars spotting something. We were told it was a leopard….the member of the big 5 that has alluded me through multiple safaris and I don’t want to think how many hundreds of dollars! No matter how much people described where she was though, I just wasn’t seeing it! My frustration grew, “don’t let me be THIS close and miss it.” Finally I saw the beautiful cat camouflaged in the grass against a dead tree.

My friends with me weren’t too keen on seeking out birds, but I did really want to see a flamingo. I was told one large white bird perched in a tree was one, but I was sceptical and rightly so. Our cook told me later the guide was wrong and it was something else. Still we did see quite a bit: hundred’s of gazelle, also ostrich, supurb starlings, African Pied Wagtail, 2 jackals, male and female lions, Topi, Vervet Monkeys (although Charles referred to them as Blue monkeys, which IS the colour of their scrotum, but NOT the name of the monkey!), Yellow Billed and Saddle Billed Stork, Yellow billed ox pecker, Marabou Stork, Goliath Heron, Grey Heron, Egyptian Goose, Hamerkop, Blacksmith Plover, Mourning Dove, and Cordon Bleus.

Enjoyed a nice dinner at the camp, which is located in the park, although I watched my fluids knowing that it wasn’t a place where I really wanted to be looking for a toilet in the middle of the night….far to close to hungry animals for me!

We headed out early the next morning and one of the first things we saw was a lioness who appeared to be looking for breakfast. It was interesting because the zebra, gazelle, and wart hogs were all there, making warning signals to each other, and obviously with high anxiety, but they just stayed and only moved when she headed their direction. Then they still didn’t run, just backed up a few feet, and stood there trying to blend in to the environment I guess! I got some great video, but, well, read on!

We drove until lunch time and saw elephant, Topi, Gazelle, Buffalo, Secretary Birds, Marabou Stork, jackals, 5 lions on a rock, antelope, Kirk’s dik dik, 2 warthogs with their 4 babies, giraffe’s, impala’s, vultures, ostrich, crocodile- 2 small and 1 large, vervet monkey’s, plovers and weavers. Then we were back at Ngorangora Crater.

This campground had a gorgeous view of the crater and supposedly had hot showers as well, but, well, that didn’t really happen! We still queued up though, and endured the frigid wash. Many of the other people said it was their first wash of the whole safari (for some 4-5 days!). I managed to wash everyday since budget or not, going without washing is just not going to work…particularly with thee amount of dust that gets in your hair and skin. I suppose I still have a few prima donna tendencies, but hey, I can certainly make do with just a few cupfuls of water!

OK, you probably need a break, so let’s continue this on another entry.

Zanzibar or bust!

For the past five years, the exotic sounding Zanzibar and Mount Kiliminjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, have been top of my places to visit. Finally, on October 9th, I was beginning my 28 hour bus ride there!!! I traveled with another Crisis Corps volunteer, Maura Carroll, who just finished her six month assignment in Livingstone. We arrived in Dar es Salaam around 9:30 and were happy to plop into beds at the o so luxurious “Econolodge.” Actually, it was luxurious for $20! Very clean, bathroom in the room, and breakfast included. The next morning we did some banking errands and made it in time for the 10 a.m. ferry to Zanzibar.

Tanzania is full of “touts”, boys who will pounce on you offering you tours, accommodation, to carry your bags, whatever you could possibly want – or not want. One man at the ferry, in addition to ferry tickets, was keen to book our accommodation as well. He made the arrangements, but we didn’t want to pay him as that seemed rather sketchy. We arrived, saw the room, decided the “deluxe suite” – 2 rooms, bathroom, satellite tv, and breakfast included- was certainly worth $20, and stayed there 2 nights. Turns out the other guy was legit in that we could have paid him, but it would have been $30. The owner said to make sure not to tell him we stayed there, since he would have wanted his $10 commission. Seems a bit steep, doesn’t it?

We were in Zanzibar during Ramadan, the Muslim period of fasting. We were given information at the hotel about how to behave….eat in hotels that are serving, not on the streets, dress modestly, and behave decently ie- no kissing in public. That last one wasn’t a challenge, but it took us a little while to find places for food, and it was pretty hot an humid to wear too many clothes.

We wandered around Stone Town, looking at the crafts and shops. After the sun goes down and all the Muslims are racing home to eat, we found a great restaurant overlooking the harbor where I had coconut curry prawns, spiced coffee, and we split a passion fruit tart. Isn’t the holiday about the food anyway!

The next day we had booked a “spice tour” where we saw the spices growing and learned about them. I won’t bore you with too many details but a few highlights….you can mix turmeric and sandalwood to treat pimples…although on white skin, not sure the orange skin would really be an improvement! Boil cloves in water reducing 3 cups to 1, drink, stay near a toilet, and soon you will have an o so “clean” stomach. Peppercorns are little round green balls, and the black, white and red pepper are all just dried and treated differently. Nutmegs are beautiful seed pods with vibrant red covering. After seeing all this, we were given lunch using some of the spices we’d seen, and then of course had an opportunity to buy some. We then went to a slave holding cell. Slavery continued to exist in Zanzibar long after it was illegal, so these cells were down in the ground, surrounded by trees, with hidden paths to the shore. It’s hard to imagine the horrors that occurred there. We then had an hour on a beautiful sandy beach before heading back to town. That evening we went to a park on the sea shore where vendors have heaps of seafood of every type on skewers which you have grilled, piled onto a chapatti, and enjoy all for a few dollars. I think I had swordfish, tuna and lobster.

Maura is a scuba diver, so she arranged to go diving and I tagged along to snorkel. The few times I’ve snorkeled I’ve loved it but been a bit terrified as well. I’ve always been a bit creeped out even going to glassed in aquariums. Here the water was so clear, and the coral and fish so beautiful, I soon got over my initial panic, and had a wonderful time. In fact, I was the only snorkeler left in the water when the boat went to pick up the divers and was slightly concerned I may be snorkeling back to Stone Town! We pulled up to a white sandbar for lunch, and then the divers went out again, but the water was very turbulent so we were stuck on the boat trying not to get sea sick!

As soon as we got back, we grabbed our bags from the hotel and hopped on a local bus to the north of the island called Nungwi. This area is where they build dhows (the hand made sailing boats), fish, and host a lot of tourists…in spite of being a rather rural, conservative village. Here our accommodation went up to $25 but we had a great little cabin looking right out on the sea with little evidence of the bars and tourists slightly down the beach. We ended up running into two Americans we’d eaten with the night before… another public health person who is working for Red Cross, and a corporate lawyer working in Hong Kong who wants to make a move to more humanitarian endeavors in the near future.

Not realizing the wet suit and stripped off all traces of sun screen on my snorkeling venture, I found myself hobbling around in sun blistered pain for the next number of days. On the second afternoon I went sailing on a dhow (they do pretty well actually), snorkeling, lounging on another beach, and enjoying sundowners on the way back with a group of overlanders (people who see an insanely large section of Africa in a reasonably short period of time riding around in very gigantic trucks!) Again enjoyed a sea food feast for about $10 which was a lot for Tanzania but when you think what it would cost at home!

The next day, our beach paradise had to come to an end, so it was back on the dalla dalla (local busses, but differently from other parts of Africa, Zanzibar has these more open truck types which were kind of fun although dusty!) to Stone Town and the ferry back to Dar.

We never managed to find much of interest in Dar aside from a good Indian restaurant and a friend of Maura’s had been mugged there a couple times in as many days when he was there, so we were pretty cautious. We did buy our tickets to Arusha, where a whole new adventure was waiting!

Transport

One friend of mine suggested that the large number of pajeros on the road is most likely indicative of the number of aid workers in Zambia….no small number! But perhaps the number of imported bikes on the road are indicative of the number of peace corps volunteers! Yes, this is my mode of transport which has made my Lusaka experience particularly thrilling! Bicycles are a very common mode of transportation here and considered by many to be a luxurious mode of transport at that! For those who have cars, vans, busses, trucks,… however, bikes are an insignificant nuisance and have no right of way. Although I was prepared somewhat by Oregon pick up truck drivers who also see bikes as something to run off the road, I have been caught off guard by vehicles turning directly in front of me, or pulling off the shoulder forcing me to slam on my brakes and swerve quickly (not without a few obscenities shouted by me!) I have developed a bit of a system of judging when to take some initiative and when I should not chance it. For example, I usually presume that a really nice car won’t want blood on their shiny hood so therefore will stop. I also presume police officers, soldiers, and health workers might want to avoid extra work from running over a cyclist. I was doing some racial profiling, thinking people who looked like they weren’t originally from Zambia might have a bit more of a cycling friendly attitude, but after a few close calls realized that many of these people have developed a “when in Zambia, do as Zambian” attitude and will run me over as fast as anyone else! There is also the incessant honking which means either, “hey, do you want to ride my bus,” “hey, why don’t you take my taxi,” or “hey, if you proceed on your current course, I’m going to run you over.” On a bike, it’s usually the latter! I do have some added protection as being such an oddity as a white girl on a bike with a helmet that many give me a wider berth! Also as a cyclist, I am higher on the chain than a pedestrian, so then it is my turn to wield my power and clear the path with a little ring of my bell! All said and done, not sure the bike is any less safe than other modes of transportation I have used including minibuses, private taxies, hitch hiking, sitting on top of high piled bags of mealies (corn), or sharing the back of a flatbed with pigs on their way to an uncertain fate. It is certainly a more pleasant means of transport anyway! Added benefit….I cycle right past the huge cars queuing for hours to get a few gallons of the very scarce fuel available in Zambia at the moment.

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wow, Blogging....what's next? To think when I learned computers, it was BASIC programming, c:, no cute little pictures or anything. So now I''ll have to come up with some more interesting things to say so you'll actually come here to read....o dear! Hope you'll write back too!