IN ZIMBAMOZAMWOWEE

IN REHANA'S WORDS

Tuesday, 28 May 2013

Hopefully, at some stage soon in our journey, we’ll figure out how to leave a place. We drove for hours in circles when we left Ponta; ditto Maputo. Driving out of Zimbabwe was our most hellish departure to date. 

Mike and Carol had identified a road to the border on their paper map, close to where we were staying at the Nyanga National Reserve. We were up at dawn, in time to catch the frost on the grass and the thick ice on our windscreens. We were intending to cross the border into Mozambique, to drive through Tete to the border with Malawi and to spend the night in Blantyre.

But a scant 20km or so from the border, after we had driven on a corrugated gravel road for an hour or two, we were hailed down by a young man who told us that a bridge had been washed away a few kilometres ahead and it was impossible to cross the river. I had noticed that there had not been another car on the road for a while, strange for a road to a border. Now I knew why.

Instead of retracing, we decided to cut across the tribal land in which we found ourselves and head north. After FIVE hours driving through a maze of gravel and sand with no road signs and no traffic, both our cars dangerously low on fuel, we hit tar again.

We had been remarkably cheerful at dawn, returning the greetings of hundreds of schoolchildren on walking on the side of the road; we scowled when we saw the high school kids on their way home when we finally stopped for breakfast at 2pm.

The border crossing was irritating. A clever tout got the better of us on the Mozambican side, quickly palming the $10 he demanded for the car import form that had been free when we first entered the country. We couldn’t complain to the uniformed official when the tout led us to him; he sat arms folded while the scoundrel rounded the counter and stamped our forms. The border official probably took his cut before he sauntered to the gate to let us into Mozambique.

We found ourselves in Baobabland. Round reed huts were dwarfed by forests of huge trees, their branches stretching above the homes like protective arms. Should have stopped to take a photo, I thought as we whizzed past Baobabland. Glad we didn’t stop when I screeched to a halt, our tyres squealing millimetres from a huge crater in the tar. 

 These holes are deep. Dodge them and swerve towards an oncoming truck.

All the way to Tete, a tantalising 80km away, we played pothole dodgems with slow-moving trucks, taxis, cars, bicycles, cows, goats and stupid chickens. There were roadworks stop-and-gos along the way – I don’t why they can't fix one stretch at a time. We would wait a while at a stop-and-go, enjoy a few minutes of perfect tar where I’d zoom up to 120km an hour, only to screech to a halt again when a patch of potholes appeared in the thickening gloom. Jules filmed some of the mayhem.

We arrived in Tete at 6pm – a full 11 hours after we set off. We pulled into the first establishment we found, parked our cars, climbed out gingerly and were engulfed in eau de septic tank.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON ZIMBABWE

1. Their people, almost without exception among the ones we met, are wonderful. Everyone’s so soft spoken, so impeccably polite. Our fridge was fixed – finally we hope – in Mutare. The owner of the workshop wore a short blue shorts and blue socks up to his knees – no comb though. He charged us next to nothing. His mechanic, Denzel, quickly found the fault and soldered and clamped and reassured us that we could relax when we left the car stationary for a day or a week. The young policeman who checked our papers at the roadblock was very cute – and so was his AK47. Everyone greets and I simply adore the drawled ‘you welcome’. I adopted it the first time I heard it.

2. Their economy sucks. And, as incredible as it may seem, its quite possible that it’s worse for us than them. I’m not an economist (can’t get my head around the whiffy whaffy things they say) but this is how I see it: There’s a group of women selling goods on the side of the road. We stop and buy a bag of apples from one of them, for $1. When that woman’s done for the day, she buys a bag of onions from one of the other road sellers before she heads home. She’s spent $1 on a bag of onions, we’ve spent R10 on a bag of apples. The only currency she earns is dollars. We try not to do the painful conversions in our head. Like paying R800 a night for a room with no electricity.

2. Mutare is spectacularly beautiful. The trees are gorgeous, and the round picnic tables under them at regular intervals along the road up the mountain. The escarpment, the cliffs, the crowded tea plantations below, the rivers, the waterfall, the fireplaces. I had been missing Zimbabwe. I’m glad I visited again; it has been a while.

MONKEY'S ALIVE AND WELL 

IN JULIA'S WORDS

28 May 

In September last year, after I’d had time to digest what the force of hitting a truck, sliding into its rear on the motorway at 120km/ph had on my body and mind, I was quite convinced that my monkey-days were over.

Which seemed like the end of the world. Because I’m such a monkey. It’s not only liking to squat down on my haunches to relieve my friends of gnats, blackheads and ingrown hairs; it’s also loving to climb things, causing mischief and generally to play.

Nine months on, I’m completely healed. I can jiggy up the side of the car onto the roof to do the tent as nimble as you please. I can twist and re-re-turn as I play with the youngones on the beach. For which I have to thank the luck of a strong body, and my very favouritest physio ever, Tali Lubner. Hello Tali, and thanks again for your healing hands (if you need a phab physio, you can find her cnr Ivy and Scholtz Roads in Norwood). 

If you follow the M14 north out of Lilongwe and turn neither left nor right, you will end up where it ends: at the Sunbird resort and campsite at Senga Bay, right on Lake Malawi.

The campsite is very pleasant, grassed and peppered with trees like pod mahogany and baby baobabs, and surrounded on three sides by a brick wall seven foot high.

Our new home for a week

From their settlement among the rocks and wilderness where the campsite ends is where the bandit baboons emerge, swinging themselves over the wall into Camper’s Ville. The mammas carrying babes upside down on their tummies come, the prowling-shouldered young males and swaggering-bottom older males come, the cocky tieners come too.  
Mere tweaks of tumbling babes with their sticky-out pink ears wouldn’t miss it for the world, as they hang on to the cracks in the wall and ease themselves down into the campsite. One and all, they’re here to have a little fun and to play Devil’s Dare with the humanoids who have come to visit their turf.
The aim of Devil’s Dare is simple: nick something from the humanoid’s wagons. It needn’t be food necessarily – although a light snack of bread, lemons and baking powder is always welcome – because really anything snatch-ready is fair game. Pegs, washing powder, a plasticbagorfive of rubbish – all are coveted loot.

What’s really amusing is how this brings out the wild baboon that lurks just beneath the clothed skin of the humanoids. Even the ohm kinds among us like Mike and Carol revise their philosophy of harmony and oneness with Madre Natre.

Mike’s cloud of white hair bristles above his head as he lets out a roar to chase the latest Devil’s Dare bandit away. Carol settles in her peaceful hammock with her cache of rocks and large chasing-branch at the ready (although she does have some favourites – if not so much short-tail or wonky-tail, definitely lame-foot).

Rehana’s firm principle of the unbreakable rights of those-first-here suddenly becomes quite bendy as she bares her teeth and pounds after encroaching bandits.

As much as I aaaw and chortle as the littlies tangle with each other in the dust, it’s another story altogether when I galloomph after the latest daring one with every intention of landing the stone in my hand on its smooth rump, ever sorry that I hadn’t bought myself a li’l catty. ‘Cause of course I miss.

Probably enjoying the show the most are the disinterested bystanders: the blue-tailed lizards, the dassies and squirrels, the flappable butterflies, the pied crows egging the bandits on with their growling shrieks.

Jeez, I’ve never really liked reading naturey prose. But that’s all I care to write about this day, loitering bumbly as I am in paradise.

Sunset at Senga Bay.

IN REHANA'S WORDS 

Thursday, 30 May 2013

Very few cars we saw in Zimbabwe carried less than six people; bakkies were packed. On the gravel roads on which we spent most of our time during our short stay there were many people walking, flagging passing cars. We felt bad that we couldn’t offer lifts; our big car is crammed almost to the ceiling in places.

But even on the dustiest of roads in Zimbabwe there were frequent taxis and busses. In Malawi – especially here at Senga Bay, our first destination – bicycle taxis rule the road. I’m glad we filled our tanks and jerrycans in Mozambique, looks like here be fuel shortages or money shortages, or both.

Lilongwe did not look like a place to be. We hit a traffic jam coming in and soon noticed that although the speed limit in the city was 50km/hour, people drove at 30km on the centre line before veering across the road to turn left. 
Jules and I did a quick shop at a sparsely-stocked Spar, gawked at the houses of parliament that looked like a golden version of St Paul’s Cathedral before setting off to the lake.

We didn’t see Lake Malawi until we entered the gates of our campsite at the Livingstonia Hotel at Senga Bay. I had thought we’d see something that large from a distance, especially as our route took us up many a hill and down again. We arrived just as sunset hit the lake, and saw a shimmer of silver stretching as far as the eye could see. No time to linger, camping time again, we need to set up.

I never, ever thought I would say this, but I am delighted to be camping again. Sleeping in a hotel and chalets in Zimbabwe was very hard on my body, which was forced to get used to a different bed every night and the wrong pillows on every one of them. The ache in my right shoulder disappeared after a night in our tent with a just-right mattress and my pillows.

On our first day at the lake it took a long time for us to take the 30-odd steps from our car to the water. There's no need to rush, Malawi is a small country and we’re spending a month or thereabouts here. We needed to shake off the horror of our two full days of driving out of Zimbabwe, across Mozambique and into Malawi. We did that by flopping into our camping chairs that we turned to face the water and hardly moving until 3pm.

The beach at Senga Bay is short, confined by a hill to our left and a community to our right. We stopped short when we reached the fence separating the community from the hotel, after spotting dull-eyed adults lolling in the sand while children, many of them naked, romped on the beach. 
Julia enticed a gaggle of children to our side of the fence for an enthusiastic version of Simon Says, which included shouting, “I am strong”, “I can do anything” and other words of wisdom.

Too lazy to swim when this beckons

On day four we still hadn’t left the campsite and I finally got cabin fever. We had spent our last kwacha, which doesn’t last long, even when you have a wad of notes. Julia and Mike got speeding fines again – less than an hour after we entered Malawi and they had to be paid in cash before the receipt was laboriously written.

We were told that the nearest ATM was 2km away, so Jules and I set off in the blazing heat up a road that just wouldn’t stop going uphill. All the while as we panted uphill, bicycles whizzed by, most of them the Chinese version with the carriers at the back softened by padded cushions. Some passengers had babies on their backs or heavy-looking sacks on their laps. We resolved to take a bicycle taxi back to the resort.

We secured two of them a few minutes after we scored some cash. I didn’t feel too sorry for our drivers, it was downhill all the way, they had long patches of freewheeling. There were bolts on the wheel to rest my feet and as I clutched onto the back of the seat, I noticed that the driver didn’t reek much more of sweat than I did. Four kilometres for about six rand, not too bad for a taxi ride.

The road was lined with houses and every child who spotted us shouted out “hello” and “bye”. Every adult said “hello” and “how are you” and stopped to hear the answer. Some of the children got pesky, demanding “give me dorrar” as we walked by. Word must have gotten out that we had been to the ATM.

I didn't take a photo of a bicycle taxi but I couldn't resist this one

I had noticed in Zimbabwe that the moon was almost full and was eagerly anticipating its rise over Lake Malawi.

On our first night we were busy setting up camp, but I was transfixed every time I caught a glimpse of the silver moonlight shimmering on the waves. Night two I was distracted by the IPL final on the TV at the beach bar, a loud party right on the beach and a fresh butterfish I had grilling on the braai. But I did peek at the moon every chance I got.

On our third night we went for supper at the hotel and had a grandstand view of the moonrise from a table right at the edge of the beach. Carol spotted it first, a blood red orb rising from the sea ahead of us. A band of light stretched all the way across the lake to where the water reached the beach. The band grew wider as the moon rose, changing colour from red to ice white. 

There was a string of small lights on the lake, far too close to be dwellings on the other side. Our waitress told us they were lights from fishing boats, but she couldn’t say why they fished at night. We surmised that the fish rose to the surface when they saw the light. We tripped along the beach to our campsite, the band of light following us all the way back.

On night four a three-quarter pumpkin moon rose out of the lake. There hadn’t been a breeze all day and the lake was like glass. The water gave the beach a little lick when it reached the edge. A band of hot air moved up from the lake every evening, and sitting at the water’s edge on a catamaran shell on night four, it seemed as though the moon was sending balmy yellow heat towards us.

Sunsets on Lake Malawi aren’t too shabby either. The water is flecked with silver while the horizon turns violet and then purple.

We’re a bit worried about bilharzia so we haven’t been frolicking much in the lake, tempting as it is. The locals are all wallowing in the water and so are some tourists at the hotel. We paid for a boat ride out to Lizard Island, about a kilometer out into the lake from the hotel, and snorkeled at its edges. 

The fish are much smaller than at Ponta and Bazaruto, but just as brightly coloured – mostly electric blue. The lizards also have electric blue tails. There was no coral, just boulders deposited under the water in what must have been a seismic event millions of years ago (or three thousand years ago if you believe the happy clappies).

HEY, BWITISH: We hungwy!

Prime position on the beach, prime time viewing for the masses.

IN JULIA'S WORDS

1 June 

Just where the patchy grass has gained a slight hold on the dazzling yellow sands that meet the dazzling lake waters outside the town of Nkhotakota stands a handsome rondawel. The thatch is held up with eight whitewashed pillars, and in the middle of its concrete floor is a wooden table with benches attached to it.

It’s midday food o’clock, and we’ve assembled the parts for our feast: crumbly yellow cheddar, fat dripping tomatoes, slithers of onion, olives salty-green and a yellow pepper that Mike had roasted on the last fire we’d had in Senga Bay and drizzled with olive oil and garlic. There’s a choice of slightly disappointing rolls or slightly old Spar loaf (rolled in oats) on which to pile our ingredients of choice.

“Amazing,” sighs Carol as she wolfs her roll down.

“Hmmm,” agrees Mike.

“Gmph,” gulps Rehana as she opens wide for her next bite.

“Jo, we eat soft,” say I, using one of the fabulous sayings that the elder of my children – Clay and Rich in particular – have contributed to my own idiom. (Others include “double-up double-up” (reverse), “the phone is crying” (ringing), and “money like-a dust”, which means both that you have more than can be counted and that it all blows away in an instant, like Malawian kwacha.)

Just then, three local young men stroll down the beach, past our merry feast hut. Like all other passerbyers here at Nkhotakota, they stare frankly and long in our direction. But unlike most other curious bypassers, they’re not a bit charmed by the symptoms of our cushy otherness. They’re not exactly waving their fists at us, but there’s some fierceisity in their tone as they yell at us, over and again, “HEY, you Bwitish, HEY, we’re hungwy!”

For a moment we all cease our groans of tongue’s delight, and stare doggedly at our diminishing but well-appointed plates. Is this guilt I’m feeling? Shame? And what else besides against this backdrop of resentment?

They men walk on, but the tight moment remains.

“Hmm,” says Rehana. “If we’re the British, then I choose to be Scots.”

Cheeky children jolling on the beach

IN REHANA'S WORDS

1 June 


We’re much more connected at Nkhotakota to the people of Malawi – from our boma on the beach we can see the women washing their clothes in the lake, the naked children frolicking on the beach and the cattle brought to the water’s edge for a drink. Even the chickens and the geese bring their fluffy babies to the water's edge for a drink. 
It confuses me still. The lake stretches as far as the eye can see so I keep thinking we're at the beach, which leads to we're at the sea which leads to: why are the animals drinking the water?

I took a walk yesterday through the rural, mainly cassava-growing community that surrounds us. The group of children who followed me called me mzungu (same meaning as mlungu in SA) but I got them good.

I asked the two loudest mouths among them for their names – they were Ishmael and Shukran Amadou. I said salaam aleikum and their jaws dropped.
“You Muslim?” Ishmael asked.
“Yes,” I smiled. There was a small silence.
“Say the fatiha,” Ishmael demanded. I recited the prayer and we were friends for life. 

“Am I mzungu?” I asked.

“No,” Ishmael said, “you a Muslim, like me.”
The boys walked along the road with me, we watched the girls finish a netball match then they took me back the campsite as it was getting dark.

More for the locals to gawk at

I wished I were 19 years old again as my 49-year-old body clambered back onto the catamaran Mike had hired for the morning. There wasn’t much wind and we were drifting becalmed in the lake.

Julia dived into the warm, clear water and I followed a minute later. Had I been 19, I would have stayed in much longer, I thought as I hauled my body back onto the catamaran.

I had the same longing for my teenaged body at Senga Bay, when we finally succumbed to the lake – bilharzia be damned.
But I realised that I was being foolish, I could go for 19 short swims every day if I wanted to. I was on holiday for a year.

The view from our campsite