Freezing out butts of in Africa

Freezing out butts of in Africa

It was below zero in Mbeya, frost still on the ground when we left the hotel to take the early morning bus to the Malawi border. Only the day before we had been sweating in our t-shirts and shorts in Dar es Salaam, now we were shopping woolly hats and putting on double sweaters… This is African mid-winter!

But when the African sun climbs over the mountain rims, it still gets hot, and of course the temp varies with the height - and we’ve been going up and down, over the mountains, down in the valleys as we’ve been going south-west from Dar, so there’s been a lot of dressing and undressing.

The 25 hour train ride down to Mbeya was a great ride, first overcrowded with people all having incredible amounts of goods that they brought home to their villages, then as we got further along, new people with only light luggage. The train, built by the Chinese in the seventies to show the world they could do it, was quite comfortable - we were told we should upgrade to first class but in the end we just stayed in our reclining 2 class seats rather than going for the bunk beds. There were three dining cars on the train, with cold bear and all! And loads of wildlife along the tracks; giraffes, wildebeests, impalas, warthogs… It’s almost a shame the train didn’t break down in the middle of it!

Mbeya may be the biggest Tanzanian town in the south but it’s still a dump, and a very cold one! At least we got a romantic dinner by candlelight for ourselves, but that was only because electricity was out and nobody else braved the cold and the dark to go eating.

The bus to the border with Malawi had probably the only female, African, Hindu driver around. She was cool although no different to the male drivers in her trying to fool the passengers that we were just about to leave, but in reality not going anywhere until absolutely all seats and floor room was taken (and then drove­ as if she was going to be reincarnated as a holy cow!). The last bit to the border was by bike, “boda boda”, named after their border-function but now operating in almost every major town. In Malawi the police didn’t accept the bus we were on, everybody had to get out and wait for another one. Once onboard a big coach the pretty landscape was rushing by outside - the “lake of stars”, glittering Lake Malawi, but we opted to skip the crocs and cichlids in the cold water to head for the mountains instead. For the last bit to Rhumpi we caught a ride with some safari people who told us that the horse back riding that we had come for was unfortunately out of business, but instead set us up for going to the national reserve of the Vwezi Marsh.

Living in Kenya, we are spoilt with wildlife, but Vwezi still got our hearts beting faster, when we had to sitt absolutely still and barely breathe because the huge old male elephant was barely a meter from us, hitting the acacia tree with its forehead for fruit to fall down for it to eat. It stayed for a long time, and we got worried that the elderly Irish couple we were safarying with couldn’t take the pressure anymore, but in the end it majestically walked away. The next day, the same elephant charged us but then we were in the jeep with all the false security that gives us. Apart from that, hordes of hippos grazing just outsider our hut at night, antelopes of different sorts and sizes, baboons and 30+ birds we haven’t seen before filled the plains around Lake Kazumi.

After two days in the reserve we moved on and got a lift with the Irish couple down to Mzuzu. More than 10 busses and 30 hours later we arrived at our next stop across the boarder into Zambia: The South Luangwa National Park. The last bus ride turned out to be a real torture ride, bumping up and down for 6,5 hours in 20 km/h on a road that would normally take 2,5 h to drive with a normal car. We arrived late and had no reservation for any of the lodges. Surprisingly most of them where full with large groups of people travelling on overland trucks, but in the end we manager to find a tiny kids tent to rent and enough blankets to keep warm. Wandering around in the dark to find another place nearby was not advisable since elefants and hippos where all around the camps…

The next morning we woke up early and went for a game drive in the park. Plenty of elephants, baboons, kudus, pukus, impalas, birds, etc. were all over the place. It was nice, but not as exciting as we would have hoped - partly because the guide was not that good (“the one with the horns is the male, the one without is the female“) and it was hard to find the tranquillity of nature among the many safari trucks roaming around. In the afternoon we launched at the camp, having lunch watching the hippos in the Luwi River and than taking a dip in the pool and a nice (warm!) shower. Then we took off for a second game drive and this time we manager to get in another car with another, much better, guide. He started off by taking us to a site where a whole pride of lions were feasting upon the huge carcass of an elephant! The stench was almost unbearable and millions of flies were buzzing, but it was so exciting to watch them eat. After that we were so content with the tour that it would have been ok to go back to the camp, but we continued to drive around until after dark and many more animals were yet to be seen. We came across sivets, genets, hyenas and in the end we even came rally close to a leopard! Tove was probably most excited since this meant she has now also seen all the Big Five…

Luckily we manager to get a lift the next morning with a German couple who were also going in the same direction. But we only got to the next town before the car broke down - probably too much dust in the ignition - so here we are, stuck in an internet café in Chipata. But we have good faith that the mechanic we fond will be able to fix it soon and then we will be on our way to Livingstone (I presume)…

(Pictures will be added later)

On how everything always (?) works out for the better

Big disappointment. There are no tickets for the Tazara train that leaves Dar es Salaam on Tuesday, direction Zambia, and next train isn’t until Friday. What to do with all that time, we wanna get going, our trip has hardly even started and we’ve got so much more mileage to clock up?

Here we are, at the YWCA (yes, they do accept men and no, it’s not nearly as fun as I imagined), it is soon Friday and we thank our lucky star that we didn’t get tickets for that Tuesday train. Not that anything bad happened to that train, in these times of plane crashes that wouldn’t seem such a farfetched story, it’s just that we would have missed a great time…

Tuesday was field day. Swedish Sekab has been busy trying to start African ethanol production in Bagamoyo, 60 kms north of Dar es Salaam; they are now busy trying to find a buyer because their owners have told them they should stick to Swedish core business – the main reason for this change of heart being the biofuel-bashing by some of our friends in the Swedish media… Anyway, we went out to see what they had accomplished and what was there for potential buyers to scoop up.

I (Mattias) will be back with more writing about this, but it clearly seems a big shame if all this work will just go to waste… And for us, it was a great way of seeing, learning and touching more of Tanzanian farming and setting-up-business, with a whole day spent in the field – we would have missed a lot if we had had to go back for that train!

In the end, we spent two nights in lovely little Bagamoyo, that was the center for the slave trade on the east coast, the port of entry for the European explorers and the capital of then German East Africa, all meaning lots of crumbling ruins that are only now starting to be renovated with the eyes set on achieving Unesco World Heritage Status. And the seafood – after having been sick for two days I (Mattias again) had a lot to regain and refill, but I never managed to finish all the crabs, shrimp, octopus and fish set down before me!

Dar es Salaam, which only became the capital after Bagamoyo’s harbor was finally declared inapt for all up-coming business, is not much to write home about. We struggled to even find a café to spend some time after we finally gave up on finding anything else to do (most people rightfully set off for Zanzibar immediately, but that is a different trip for us). We did the museum (there is only one), we walked along the waterfront (dreadful, just stinking containerships all the way up to the shore) and we managed to spend almost ten minutes in the Botanical Garden (already very much)… So now it is about time to get going, and if everything works out well, the Zambia-headed train is a-waiting for us! Another 25 h onboard – next stop Mbeya...

Mnazi in Gazi

The first stop on our trip: the village of Gazi on the south coast of Kenya. Tove’s old master thesis supervisor Farid was staying there to do more field work in the mangroves and to visit his Kenyan wife Fatima’s relatives. Luckily they were in Mombasa the night we arrived and could pick us up at the train station. They took us to their guest house, which felt like a five star hotel after 25 h on the train and we had a looong nice sleep until the mosque woke us up at 5 o’clock. As most settlements along the coast Gazi is mainly Muslim and there are little mosques everywhere, often just regular houses really.

Luckily we could go back to sleep for another couple of hours, until the real important deadline made us rise and shine – the spring tide was coming out and it was time to go to the mangrove forest. First we took a canoe into one of the little creaks as far as we could get, then we continued by foot. We saw loads of crabs and mud skippers, but not so many birds since it was already approaching mid-day – and there are no crocodiles here, or so we are told. At first we walked along the river bed and it was all nice and easy, but more like a tourist tour than a real adventure. But the stakes got higher pretty quickly, since the monsoon rain started pouring down and we were forced to take shortcuts through the muddy forest to come back to the right place. But in the end we arrived back at the village all muddy and soaked, but with big smiles on our faces.

Rule nr 1: Muslim people don’t drink. Rule nr 2: If they do, it is far from the mosque. So the bar all the way up by the main road was full of people who had had one too many, mnazi mainly – fermented palm wine that you have to drink with a straw because it is so full of particles and stuff. When we came back the second night, the bar people proudly presented us with beer they had gotten hold of – possibly the warmest we ever had and not easy to swallow. “You look exactly like a Brazilian football player – Maradona”, they said to Mattias, and then argued for a long time how the rabbit and the squirrel are the same animal, except for the tail. When we had understood that fully, we went home…

Change of plans. Instead of going with 40 of Farid’s nearest family on the back of a lorry to relatives just off the coast, a dear and close relative died and the nearest 14 had to go to Dar es Salaam immediately. So we went just four wazungus (white people; us, a Belgian and an Italian student) to the island Wasini. Snorkeling in the marine park, dolphin watch and seafood… Well, not really… it turned out to be the local community’s little park with less marine life than just of Gazi’s coast, absolutely no dolphins and quite plain fish for lunch. But we had a good time anyway, and tomorrow we are off for Tanzania. Kwa heri Kenya!

Train riding through East Africa

Nairobi was getting colder and colder, while summer had finally arrived in full bloom in Sweden, so we were starting to wonder if we’d taken the right decision by staying on in Africa for our holidays?! But we had already experienced more than 30 Swedish summers – now it was time to explore some more and to get to know more of our new home continent. So we decided to take the train to Mombasa as the first leg of our African “Inter Rail”.

We had heard all the stories before about how the train runs late, very late, extreeemely late, but the two times we’ve used it before it has been on time – even early! So we were bragging to our fellow passengers – the train won’t be late as long as we’re onboard… But soon after we’d gone to bed the train stopped. Another train had derailed in front of us on the single track and was blocking everything. We had heard about this one before; a train had hit an elephant, the poor animal dead on the tracks and not very easy to move. In the end, they had to blow it up…

It took about eight hours to get it back on track, a great time to meet and greet fellow passengers and to let rumors about what would happen spread; can it really be true that the Americans will be airlifted in helicopter? Are busses on their way? Should we walk five kilometers down the track, to the other side of the derailed train, with wild animals all around, and then board another train? At some point a fellow passenger asks the train manager “Are we getting somewhere? And the reply was as Kenyan as it gets: ― Yes, we are getting somewhere…
In the end we came to Mombasa after 25 hours instead of the official 15. But the day on the train was actually quite a nice way to start our vacation. The temperature rose as we climbed down the Nairobi highland plateau and we instantly got into lazy holiday mode by watching the splendid view over Tsavo East National Park, reading books and wondering about when the next meal might be served.

For we are in no hurry; we have to be back in around a month’s time and only want to cross the continent to the western side - or somewhere approaching that - with a few stops on the way. Stay tuned for the next chapter!