Friday, December 31, 2010

Happy New Year Blog 12


Fire Circles

Bush Camp Sunset

Water color portrait

First Acrylic

Bush Camp
 Happy New Year Blog 12

There is no point in stressing about things you can’t change. We should have left on the 29th, but will now be lucky to get away by the 5th January 2011. The parts for the Kombi that should have arrived, were delayed because of customs in SA. Finally after vacant stares from the DHL office and with no small amount of assistance from Piet Marais, who occupies one leg of the laager he, his brother and “swaar” erected next to us at the Bush Camp, were traced to the Airlink office where they have been sitting for two days! One would imagine that if you formed part of the world wide transport link of a delivery chain and a parcel arrived marked DHL and adorned with every conceivable URGENT sticker you can imagine, perhaps you consider it an opportune time to stop talking on your cell phone for just a moment, so that you could walk into the adjoining office of DHL and inform them of the arrival of an URGENT parcel!  You would have further thought that, having now miraculously traced the said parcel, and further advised the cell phone operator, that the contents of the said parcel was urgently required to enable two OAP’s to return to Cape Town in order to meet their soon departing daughter, it would be possible to take possession of said goods. Wrong again!
Customs need to clear said parcel and customs don’t work today, being a Thursday! “Can you not see that I am talking on my cell phone?” she says.

Having traced a customs officer at the harbour, I am told to return to the airport where I will be met by another official who will take a R100 bribe and give me the said parcel. Having received that parcel and delivered it to the mechanic, I am further informed that the machine shop has just closed, the boss has departed for a long weekend, but “I promise that your car will be ready on the 4th….latest the 5th!”

No stress. If we travel all day and all night we should be able to blow kisses to JoJo through the security glass of the now FIFA approved Oliver Tambo airport.

Africa, take a chill pill and enjoy the ride! So it is New year at the Pemba Dive Bush Camp with the boys. I could think of worse situations!

As I have said previously, it takes stressful situations to find the good in people, people “who care”!

Piet Marais and his wife Sonje, brother Jan and his wife Bella-Marie and their “Swaar” Casper and this wife (Piet and Jan’s sister) Adell and daughters Tokkie, Deleen and Sassie, erected what can only be described as a “Laager”.
These are big people. Casper who is a Bees en Skaap Boer and diamond prospector from Bloemhof, weighs in at 145kg. Piet and Jan who between them see to the rubbish removal, verge and grass trimming of Polakwane; (Pretoria) Shoprite / Checkers central distribution warehouse and Toyota Assembly Plant, tip the scales at 130kg and 125kg respectively.

The Laager is contained in three Hannibal Conqueror all terrain trailers, transported by thee 3 litre Toyota 4*4’s of various descriptions. Each vehicle has a modified front fender with built in winch and deflector plates, which appear to have got their styling the from the Army Caspers, which were such a common sight in the mine fields and townships of the Apartheid era.

The sheer size of these wonderful people is intimidating. They are not the sort of people who you would approach with an offer of cash for their eldest daughter, they don’t find that sort of remark funny as a local lad on Ibo Island found out!

I don’t think I have ever seen such an encampment. They have every conceivable gadget imaginable. The somewhat erratic supply of the Mozambique Electrical Commission is of absolutely no significance to Casper and family. A mere flick of a switch has their aircon fans turning in a heartbeat. Why sweat if you don’t have to?!

I really had to laugh when I asked Casper if they had been to Sodwana Bay?
“Ja Oom, maar daar is te veel mense van Gauteng af, met daarie groot 4*4’s” (Yes uncle (I love the respect) but there are so many people there from Gauteng with these big 4*4’s) is his reply.

These are genuine people who look you straight in the eyes, “I don’t mind if an Oke wants to marry a black woman, but then they must be consistent, not like some of the Okes in Bloemhof who tell you one thing then do another” says Casper!

I don’t think that I have come across more unbridled generous assistance as received from the Casper and Co, and the children are a delight, they actually play made up games together, they talk to you with real interest and correct my Afrikaans with a laugh, these are not shy farm kids, they are right up there with everything, I think it is the manners, they have manners. I have said it before and I say it again, South Africa without the Marais of this world is a gonna.

More characters for the movie!

The Bush Camp is situated on the lagoon side of Pemba 2.5 kms down a dirt road. As we have been without transport we have done a lot of walking up to the main road, where we have joined the mass transport system into town. At 5 mets (R1) for however far you go, it is great value. However at times it gets a little crowded. The other day we counted 26 passengers in a 15 passenger vehicle! This morning had my face pressed unusually close to the bust of a delightfully unperturbed lady. It is so much more fun than the sanitised air-conditioned transport of the Pemba Resort Hotel, which drops off cool looking clients at their private departure lounge.

The markets are a photographic delight, but you would expect to find a bigger variety of produce. The goat heads and meat sections, tend to push you to the edge of vegetarianism, as does the morning catch of majestic sail fish. Such a clever advertising concept from Vodacom. They appear to give you the paint to paint your house Vodacom Blue. There are whole villages pained blue!

We have had an enjoyable time, met some truly wonderful people and enjoyed the weather in the morning and the evening! It is hot, very hot. 26 degrees at 5 in the morning quickly rising to 40 degrees by 11 am. If you want  to get anything done, do it early or late afternoon, otherwise reading a book while lying in a shaded hammock, floating in the lagoon or painting a picture, tends to lower stress. But I am looking forward to moving on next week. Hopefully!

I have done my first Acrylic painting as well as a couple of other water colours. Acrylics are so different, I will try again, they are quite fun to do, if you get it wrong, it can be corrected, unlike watercolours!

Happy New Year to you all.



Sunday, December 26, 2010

Pemba Bush Camp

Alex

Justin

Pemba Bush & Dive Camp

Dressed for Christmas

Sunset Bush Camp

Russells Lodge Wimbi Beach
Blog 11 Pemba

Wimbi Beach. That is the place to be seen! So we are told. Russell’s Place is on Wimbi beach. Well not exactly on the beach, rather on the other side of the road of the properties that border the beach. I am not sure what Russell will do, if in the unlikely event the person who started building the four houses on the beach properties over the road from Russell’s Place, decide to complete the project, as the present access system to the beach works just fine. Out of the gate past the guards, over the dirt road, over the broken fence, past the unfinished houses, around the piles of rubbish, onto the beach, Simple.

If the tide is out you have to work a further 500m to find the sea. Is it pretty? Not really. Is it what we expected? No, definitely not and I certainly would not drive 7500 odd kms to come to Pemba, but we have had a really interesting time getting here and I believe Pemba Dive and Bush Camp, which is where we have made our reservations for a ten day holiday, will realise our expectations.

Russel is an Aussie from the Gold Coast who makes laid back feel busy. He started Russell’s Place soon after the end of the Frelimo war, to accommodate the Overlanders travelling down from Tanzania. Trade in those days, he tells us, was excellent, but then the ferry which provided the link across the Rovuma River sank, so most of this trade by passed him via Lake Malawi. They have built a new bridge across the river, but it is 200 km upstream and the roads on either side make crossing this bridge a serious challenge and not a particularly attractive option. Trade he tells us is OK but not that great. On the other hand the drop off in trade could also be due to the fact that he finds it a bit of a drag replying to booking requests!

Russell’s Place however reminds me of the Pudding Shop in Istanbul. It is the place that all travellers seem to pass through if they want the low down on what’s what. The facilities are great, clean and functional. His swimming pool is a blissful retreat from the heat, even though the water temperature and the outside temperature are on parity.  It was a great place to spend two days playing catch-up before the boys fly in and we move to the Bush Camp. A couple of cold beers, a painting or two, don’t know when I will find time for this Blog thing!

Pemba leaves a little to be desired. I imagined it to be a quaint palmed lined, seaside resort village, with turquoise seas and coral reefs, just like the brochures. It isn’t, but it must have been at one time in it’s history. It began as an Arab trading port. Being situated on a peninsula with a massive bay/lagoon on one side and the open Indian Ocean on the other, it certainly must have presented an ideal harbour for the Arabs to take refuge in their dhows as they waited for the Trade winds to switch from blowing from the North in summer, to Southerlies in the winter. (Dhows incidentally can not point into the wind, well maybe a couple of degrees but not enough to go back to Arabia!).

Pemba must also  have been a great place to “hang out”; chain up whatever locals you could find in the area for future sale as slaves, lie under the palm trees, bonk a few of the lasses and generally have a good time swopping whatever on whatever was the then equivalent of Gumtree. A good place to be! Then came the Portuguese. Why change a winning formula?

Majestic remnants of the good times can be seen falling apart all over the place. If there was a Gum Tree it has long been cut down and turned to into charcoal. The waste management policy leaves a bit to be desired. The dump in the middle of the town is full up and I don’t think that anyone has come up with an alternative option, but there again the work day lasts about four hours. Five in the morning to about nine, then you melt.
The upside is you can fly in and out of Pemba with ease. There is a runway that can land any aeroplane, it was built by the Americans to give them strike potential into Mogadisu.

Oh dear, something is wrong with the Kombi engine…aaaah, but we are in Pemba…..yea……but I don’t know what is wrong….aaaah, but I am on holiday in Pemba so have time to fix it …..yea…….but …. Its more than dirt in the fuel…..aaaah………but I have more time to look at it….yea….the valve guide has collapsed…..big aaah……there are no Kombi exhaust valves, valve guides or any kombi parts in Pemba……more aaaah……and it is the day before Christmas…..bigger aaaaah….. I have found parts in SA that are flying DHL from Cape Town………yea, yea, yea, …..and I have a mechanic who will do the job….yea…. but the parts have not arrived………aah…..so we may have to remain on holiday …..yea!

Pemba Bush and Dive is a great spot. It is situated on the lagoon side of the peninsular away from the madding crowd.

We left Russell’s, picked up the boys at the airport and drove to the Bush Camp. It has everything seen in the brochure, except the diving. The best diving is on a reef off Wimbi Beach, which we drive to on the first morning at the Bush Camp when I thought the lack of performance of the Kombi was a fuel blockage. It was spectacular snorkelling. Luke warm, clear water and beautiful fish; coral and seahorses. We don’t Scuba dive, but we are told  there is some spectacular Scuba diving.

The fun of the swim was marred somewhat by the body of a child washed up onto the beach. The body turned out to be that of a ten year old cerebral palsy girl who being a drag on the family resources was taken out to sea and dumped overboard. Africa is no place for the faint hearted.

We are now forced to stay put at the Bush Camp while we wait for the Kombi Parts to arrive. We are happy with that. We had a really relaxing Christmas and it really is a time to relax and catch up before the long drive back to Cape Town via Zimbabwe.

I have done a couple of paintings, a few sketches of the boys, mud bath, fishing, swimming, reading……. I like this forced relaxation!

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Blog 10

I forgot that I published the last blog, and modified the last paragraph! So please read the following as a continuation of Blog 9

....................It has been an interesting couple of days. Did I enjoy it? Yes and No, but on the whole No. You can’t close yours eyes as you are watched and regarded as a bank on two legs, a Fat Monkey.

The drive out went a lot quicker than the drive in. What a relief to reach the tarred road. The relief is short lived, a much more intransient obstacle lay ahead about 5 kms down the road. A fat, officious, corrupt, smirky, low-life, police woman operating a road block that is nothing more than a Christmas collection box for other low-life colleagues, stops us. First the drivers licence, then the car insurance letter she can not read, then the registration papers, the inspection of the SA tax disk, the vis. jackets, the triangles. All good, no Christmas Box here. Ah, what about a fire extinguisher? “Not required I reply, only for commercial vehicles”. Actually, I have had an extinguisher in the car for years, but I must have left it in the workshop after the latest re-fitment! We look anyway, out with everything, delay, delay, delay.
“I must fine you” she says. “I am telling you a Fire Extinguisher is not required, so why don’t you write out the fine and I will take it back to the Police Station in the appropriately named Monkey Bay and check the statute books and speak to the Top Monkey” I say, or rather wanted to say but managed to bite my tongue. We take the scrap of paper and return to meet the Top Brass Monkey.

I am correct, vehicles carrying hazardous materials require two fire extinguishers; public transport vehicles, one fire extinguisher; private vehicles, nothing. When I point out the law to the TBM, he says to Ewa “You are a passenger therefore it is a public vehicle.”

I tell the TBM that we will pay the fine and take the matter up with the Embassy when we return to SA, which we will do, not that it will make a scrap of difference. The TBM then says that they do not have a cashier at the Police Station, only at the road block. We return to the road-block, a swarm of recipients emerge and we pay the “cashier” who is some random lady sitting on a bench with a plastic packet. This matter is not closed!

We met similar TBM’s when we arrived in Moscow in 1975. I didn’t like them then and I like them less now as they are getting closer to home.

I need some light relief, but there is none! We check in to Palm Beach Lodge at the Southern end of Lake Malawi. It is stunning. We park under the Palm Trees on the lake shore. It is owned by another Daanie, an erstwhile South African fisherman, who started developing the place 36 years ago, when it was “one of the best fishing spots in the world”. Now? “I doubt if their will be any fish left in 5 years time” he says. An Aid Organization sponsored mosquito nets in an attempt to fight Malaria. The nets are used to catch fish, and are so fine that they have all but wiped out the breeding grounds!

What is going to happen in Africa? Right now before our eyes you can witness the land being turned to desert by charcoal and the Chinese, no fish in the Lake and very little agriculture. This is happening now. The impact on South Africa can only be devastating whatever our immigration policies may be.

Our next destination point is Ilha de Mozambique, it is about 650 km due East. We have two options, either we go South, East and North on the tar, almost doubling the distance or we go 450 kms due East on dirt to pick up the tar at Nampula. We decide to brave the dirt and pray that the rainy season will abate for the day.

Palm Beach to Mangochi, where the evidence of past wealth adds a quaintness to the town. Left at the defunct traffic lights, along a tree lined avenue to the round-a-bout with statuesque statue celebrating the entrance to the bridge over the river separating Lake Malawi and Lake Malombe. It is impressive. We cross the bridge and start the climb out of the rift valley. We climb up to 1400 m. The views are vast and spectacular. We reach the Mozambique border at Chiponde a depressing dustbowl of a town. We miss the border post, which is hardly surprising as it required a left turn between various informal traders, money changers and touts. We correct our mistake 10kms down the road. I wait in the car while Ewa negotiates officialdom. Can my wife act? She returns to the car in tears. More tears, and pleadings of ignorance and poverty see us through. That made both our Malawi border experiences  a trial.We had only been granted a 2 day visa into Malawi, why I don’t know as we had said we wanted to travel around a bit and had asked for a 2 week visa. So now we had overstayed our welcome by 8 days and needed to pay a fine.Luckily the young official on the other side of the counter was embarrassed by Ewa’s weeping and wailing and as we hadn’t yet signed the book and filled in our particulars he just tore up the visa document and sent us away. Much better experiences on the Mozambique border and we are on our way. Seven hours of dodgem cars, dodgem livestock, dodgem people, and dodgem potholes. One unsuspecting sunken bridge landing bottomed out the kombi, but we survived. The rain largely held off, the light vanished but we made it to Mantes Nairuco Camp site.

Mantes Nairuco is owned by Manuel Malves Ferrera. I have met some amazing people in my life, but not many like Manuel. I have GOT to make a movie or documentary about this man. Please film-makers, writers and promoters out there, help me. This man provides the centre point of an African story. He ran away from Madeira when he was 16, he was hungry. He arrived in Johannesburg in the 1960’s when “Verwoerd was in power”. After six years in Johannesburg he had overstayed his visa and was arrested. He could pay a fine or go to gaol for a month. He had no money so he chose gaol. Not speaking anything but Portuguese and no formal education he managed to get release into Mozambique. He started driving trucks. Leased some land 20 kms outside Nampula. Married Veronica, started farming, started dam building and carried on driving trucks. 18 years later he has 450 hectares of land, groves of orange trees, lemon trees, and leachy trees. Enough chickens that he can have 7000 stolen by his workers and still be in business. Enough Quails to produce 1400 eggs a day. A timber plantation, palm trees and a camp site highly recommended by Lonely Planet. The whole enterprise sustained by the water in the dam he started building 18 years ago. A dam that now spreads back 1 km through massive granite rocks.
On the 28th of March 2010, the hidden city of termites in the dam wall caused a fist sized breach in the wall. Two hours later Manuel watched 18 years of life washed down the river, leaving “Baraccas” and Palm Trees arbitrarily standing on what was once the shore line.

We arrive somewhat shattered by our long and dusty drive, we are warmly welcomed by Manuel and Veronica. He says, “The rains must come now, I finish the dam wall today, everything has died, we need the water again”.  So he starts again and he will succeed against all odds. He is philosophical about life, nature, corruption and politics. He is truly an inspirational person.

Ewa decided that she would like to spend her birthday on Ilha de Mozambique a World Heritage Site accessed by a somewhat suspect 3km single file bridge. The idea was that we would stay in a camp site next to the start of the bridge and described in glowing terms in Ewa’s version of the Lonely Planet. Unfortunately, Ewa’s version is 6 years old! We arrive at what was once a camp site! We can stay there, but there is no water, what were the facilities would necessitate constipation. It is disgusting. I assure my wife that I think it would be OK to stretch the budget and stay in lodgings on the Island, after all it was her last evening at 59 years old!

Ewa vacillates and eventually agreed to splash out! The sun is about to disappear. We cross the bridge and circumnavigate the Island then head for the next Lonely Planet recommendation.
I really do think that out of date second hand guide books are not a good idea! The lodgings described do not exist. Muanangonh (Copa Cabana) presents itself. Sonje the owner is delightful but does not understand a word of English. Marcos Ogasawara is a Brazilian who has been teaching orphans in Chimoio and is sitting at table on the pavement. He speaks English perfectly and helps us out. We are shown various rooms and settle for the en-suite room No.8.


Room No.8 is a basement room with one small window, a double bed with mosquito net over, a TV, a fan that squeaks and very little room for anything else except mosquitoes. The en-suite bit consisted of a loo which had to be flush by water from a orange plastic ex cooking oil container. I took off the cistern top to see if I could remedy the situation, but it was used as a container for ex light bulbs and general rubbish and was not connected to the bottom half of the loo. There was a tap in the wall but no fitting above and anyway if you opened the tap there was no water in the system anyway, hence another bucket of water and milk jug to scoop it out! This was definitely not how I would have imagined spending Ewa’s 60th birthday!


It was fun and coolish sitting on the pavement having a beer and chatting to Marcos and learning about Sao Paulo and his Japanese father. The potatoes and onion soup was great, the fish was terrible but the rice filled a gap!

We retired to bed, or rather to our room. I think I managed to kill all the resident mosquitoes after about half an hour and managed to fall through the loose slats in the bed in the process. Spike Milligan once said he could grab a handful of air and squeeze the sweat out of it! Such was the air. The only relief was the squeaky fan; we turned it on, climbed under the mosquitoes net and sweated it out until 4.30 in the morning!  At 4.30 the sun starts rising, the Mosque starts calling, the person on the other side of the window makes a fire for cooking and begins sweeping whatever was that side of the wall. I start choking, wish my wife Happy Birthday, pour a milk jug of tepid water over our sweating bodies and decide to walk to town before the general rise of the masses. This was definitely a memorable Birthday!


By 7.30 we had walked the Island. It is a photographic feast of dilapidated buildings and humanity. I am not sure what obligations a World Heritage Site places on UNESCO or Government, but whatever it is, it appears not to be working.Actually it really was awful…the accommodation that is…it was worse than any servants’ quarters in SA….I think it must have been where the Arabs “stored” the slaves before sending them off to the Americas…anyway at least we could laugh about it and  know more about what it feels like to live here!!

We are away from Ilha de Mozambique by  km 7.45 am. We have a 200km diversion to yet another Lonely Planet recommendation in Nacala, which does not exist and decide to head for our ultimate destination. Pemba.Well it did but under a different name!! and was a couple of kms up a sandy road and we felt sorry for the kombi and I didn’t want to push and dig on my bday!! He left out the part when we had to dig and push the Kombi out of the dreadful campsite near Ilha da Mozambique, the day before my bday!! After a tumultuous thunder burst 400 odd kms, we make it by nightfall to Russell’s Camp. A birthday dinner, champagne and sleep, ends my wife’s 60th birthday celebration.
My wife as we know her after champagne. A memorable day for sure.

The GPS says we are 12º57.59 South 40º34.01East and have travelled 7215 kms

...................

Monday, December 13, 2010

Cape Maclear Malawi

Blog 9

GOD IS WITH US ……….JJ & SONS, so says the writing on the “kappenta” boat as it chugs by, it is 6.15 in the morning. JJ at the helm and the Sons curled up asleep on the fishing nets squashed between the paraffin lights and the dugouts which are loaded across the beam of the boat. They and many others have been out all night laying their nets. It is a tough life staged within the backdrop of tranquil beauty.

We have taken up residence at Fat Monkey’s. The Kombi is parked under a massive Mango tree and my view of the lake, half sunken boat and the island is framed by hanging mangoes that “thud” down on the Kombi roof and the ground around us at regular intervals. The beach between the no-go zone of Fat Monkey’s wall and the lake is traversed by all sorts of passing life; kids going to school, woman with large colourful plastic bowls balanced on their heads baby strapped to the back and the previous child toddling next to her, Hustlers waiting to engage the unsuspecting traveller who puts foot into this zone, with “Hullo, how are you, my name is Livingstone”  (he got around did David!) and all sort of stragglers walking to where-ever. Some prefer to paddle the distance in their hollowed out dugouts.




Fingers of Chembe village occasionally fill the gaps down to the lake which is otherwise occupied by White owned resorts of mixed nationalities.

If you flew into Cape Maclear you could be forgiven to think you had arrived in heaven, the warm water of the tranquil Lake Malawi, very agreeable weather and peace of the Lodges with their straw roofed bars on the lake edge.

I don’t think I like it, I feel like a monkey in a cage, Ewa says that we are looked at as “money on two legs”. You can’t blame them as the economic difference is massive. Yesterday we walked through Chembe village and thei little market to buy some yeast, (I am determined to perfect the making of bread!), it is really depressing, you look at them and they look at you. It is almost impossible to communicate with any sense of equality, (it is raining mangoes, a breeze got up!) then you retreat back to your largely white enclave.

I was appalled on our arrival. We were sitting under our mango  tree about to enjoy a Carling Green Label (manufactured in Malawi by the only Carling factory in Africa). Two of the Fat Monkeys children ran out into the lake, hotly pursued by their two pet dogs, black jobbies of mixed pedigree. An unsuspecting villager on his walk back home comes between dogs and children and is immediately set upon by the dogs and flees into the lake. I feel sick. The dogs back off and the villager moves on.

I approach the Fat Monkey owners. Repentant? Not a chance. “No doubt he taunted the dogs at some time in the past, welcome to black Africa!” is their reply. I ask them please not to summons me to court, as I would have to say what I saw and in any civilised country in the world the dogs would be put down before someone was killed.

How in the world can this place survive if the only reason the villagers tolerate you is economics. There is absolutely no intention of bridging the gap.

Cape Maclear reminds me of Apartheid in the sixties. Except for the falling mangoes!

I have to say that snorkelling around the island about IKm off shore was like swimming in an aquarium! Now we have to pack up and endure the 18km of hellish corrugations back to the main road.

It has been an interesting couple of days. Did I enjoy it? No, I can’t close my eyes.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Blog 7 & 8

Blog 7

Limba Country Club to Zomba Plateau Trout Farm Camp site; to Dedza Golf Club Lodge with no golf course!, only Hippo Necks; (Hippo Necks? They are the men who viewed from behind  have rolls of fat where their necks should be, they normally drive large white or silver Turbo Cooled Somethingorothers, with chromed covers protecting the spare wheel. More often or not they have a sort of circular star logo that looks very similar to the UN Logo); to Senga Bay via Lilongwe.

LCC has been described. The trip to Zomba is really scenic. Zomba was the capital of Malawi until 1976 and has the beautiful backdrop of the Zomba Plateau. The steep twisting road winds up the side of the plateau for about eight kilometres to about 1500m. If you are lucky enough not to be shrouded in mist, the views down over the rift valley to Lake Chilwa in the distance are spectacular, and the cool of the forests are a welcome relief form the floor of the valley. We were the only campers at the Trout Farm Camp site. The black ants took us by surprise, but Livingstone, the camp janitor took care of them with a similar remedy to Zimbabwean Steve! Loverly walks, cool air really refreshed the soul.

There is an element of calm in Malawi, decent well educated peaceful people. Everywhere there is an effort at cultivation. The school girls all wear calf length dresses (hangover from Banda days). Most villages have a Post Office and it is not uncommon to see book-shop signs. Bricks, brick kilns and more bricks, everywhere bricks. Apparently it is said that in past days the rural people would demolish their parent’s house when they died, so stock piled bricks in preparation for the day when they would be required! Whatever the reason, there are bricks everywhere……and walls. Brick walls surround every establishment!

The drive to Dedza skirts through the mountains along the border of Mozambique. It is littered with a patchwork of agricultural endeavour. Tomatoes, onions and potatoes all along the way, then all of a sudden massive mushrooms are vendored six at a time on a stick. We stop to look and are surrounded. Six or nothing, “We only want one” we say. Blank, part sales do not appear to be an option. We drive on. I suggest to Ewa that she tenders a 200 Kwatcha (R8, a great deal) note and see what happens. Blank stares until one smart Alec does the maths! The look of surprise on faces of the assembled crowd was amazing; maybe we have started a trend! We managed half a mushroom between us, absolutely delicious. Will buy again should the opportunity arise.

The weather has been very kind, a bit of drizzle and coolish air, not the 50 degrees expected. Dusk brings us to Dedza and on the advice of Lonely Planet; Dedza Golf Course Lodge is the place to camp. We find the sign and turn right, a fork road and no sign takes us rightish, better worn track. LP said DGCL backs onto the forested mountain. The narrowing track is just so. It stars to drizzle and the road and dusk light are running out. “I think we are on the wrong road” says the Dentist. “How do we turn around on a mountain side?” replies the Inventor.

Problem. We reverse. Very silent in the Kombi. Very tense. A track to the side presents itself. The Inventor is not happy, nor is the Dentist cum Car Pusher looking that confident. We make the hairpin reverse manoeuvre and manage to go backwards. The problem is we need to go forwards. No can do, back down the slippery hill, fine. Forwards up said slippery hill in the dark, a problem. Deflate the tyres. Tell the Dentist to take up pushing stance. Much mud flying, we make it to the road, or rather 2m short of the road.  Dentist not looking her best bespattered with mud, very grumpy, back left very low in mud. Rainy season in Malawi. Yours truly seeks help from lone light source. Four young twenty-year-old plus resident Car Pusher get us back on the road facing the exit. DGCL is up the left fork 200m from main road. Dentist very glum.

There is no golf course nor is there camping. The LP is out of date. The receptionist is delightful and offers us the car park and a bathroom in one of their spectacular suites. Ewa is looking a sight to behold spattered head to toe in mud! We have a wonderful bath and are squeaky clean in our new attire but the dress code does not include bare feet! Our shoes look like mud clogs! We have no other option but to scrub our shoes clean in the bath. Never in all my life have I seen a bath that colour!

With new attire, wet shoes and a cleaned bathroom, nobody is the wiser. We enter the bar / restaurant. Hippo Necks, everywhere Hippo Necks. Tribalism and Hippo Necks must go!
Once again I have to interrupt this monologue….please note photo of me and the spade!..it is not a joke……I really am expected to use it and perform miracles….photo is taken of me clean and relaxed by the lake a few days later!..this time no sand but mud much harder to dig!
Will insist ONLY MOTORWAY travel from now on.

We sleep like a log, routine Kombi maintenance in the morning puts me side by side with the Turbo-Cooled Somethingorother being polished. The difference. The West worries about how it is working, Africa worries about how it looks. The Turbocooled Somethingorother drives away in a cloud of smoke.

Lilongwe to Senga Bay. We are the only occupants of the Steps Sunbird Camp site on Livingstonia Beach, right on the lake. Everything excellent, electricity, clean toilets, absolutely beautiful. The peace remains for a couple of hour until the arrival of Ant Hill, a taxi from Lilongwe. 20 odd people spill out, and the party begins! Its fun, everybody cavorting and dancing, the bass of the music enough to alter any pacemaker. As dusk approaches Ant Hill leaves. Peace again.


It is the beginning of the rainy season. There has been rain most days, but the cloud cover has made travelling pleasant. The afternoons see the build-up of thunder showers which come and go, but nothing like prepared us or the locals for this particular afternoon. The normal size dustbin at our campsite filled up the halfway in two hours! A deluge would be down playing it. The beach was reshaped, two houses in the village were washed away, the lake turned from crystal clear to a mud bath. We battened down the Kombi and bided our time buffeted by huge winds. Then it was gone.

I love the Kombi. It seems to just accept life; it shelters you, protects you and just keeps on going, an amazing vehicle.

Post the deluge, the day cleared to become a perfect day. We inflated the canoe which was brought back as hand luggage from the Cologne Fair some years ago. It lives under the seat in the kombi and has been used many times at sea in an effort to catch a crayfish or two. It can more than handle the 1.5km paddle to the island that beckons a visit. Paddling the Kombi Pusher tells me is good for the Pecs.and boobs! Anything that helps at 60 is welcomed.

We snorkel around the island waters. The fish are beautiful, bright blues and greens, and the water is lukewarm. The gathering afternoon shower sees to the further development of the pectoral muscles!

We move on in the morning to Venice Bay Lodge in Monkey Bay, a 2 hour drive along the lake shore. I like this place, it is not on the tourist route, it is on the lake in the middle of a village; the log boats of the fisherman are lined up on the beach waiting for the morning sun. The lake looks like a sea so it really surprises you seeing people come down to fetch drinking water, wash and bathe in what the subconscious tells you is salty! Life could be easy with a salt less sea!

Blog 8
Some of you have asked me to post some more of my paintings. Well let me say these paintings are tiny. I have a little A5 black book that I use. They are records and I hope to improve as time goes by. Sadly and scarily I filled the book up the other day, so now I have to go bigger and that scares me a little I am also going to try some other mediums, so who knows what the results may be, but either way I love doing them good or bad! The “Little Black Book” contains about 80 sketches and watercolours of trips done over the last year and a half, so I am posting the paintings done so far on this trip, from today onwards they will change!


























Thursday, December 9, 2010

Malawi

Blog 6

I think he is preaching a bit too much in this blog

Getting out and away from Pomene was epic. We were to be towed to the “Red” road by Umlungu who does a daily run to Massenga for provisions of one form or another. Umlungu is the PR/Liaison bloke for the Lodge. He is a real credit to the place and has a great relationship with the surrounding villages. His daily run includes chores for the villages and lifts for various souls.

The road out is 56 km. You hit the red road about 26km from the Lodge. We were attached by a very short 2.5m umbilical cord to Umlungu’s 4*4. We were attached but not towed, the Kombi was driven under her own power, (“her” was in the back seat with her eyes closed praying to Christopher someone or other). So most of the time the umbilical cord was slackish until we hit the really soft sand when the 4*4 took up the slack and we both powered our way through the trouble. I can’t tell you the relief when we finally got to the red gravel and cut the cord and went on our separate ways, and “she” opened her eyes.

One other perturbing thing about the trip. Umlungu is a seriously educated decent person with a wife who would not be out of place in Vogue. As I was concentrating like hell on the variable distance between me and the 4*4, the next thing I see is a Coke can thrown out of his window then a packet of some sort! If top management don’t care about littering their own back yard, who is there to set an example?

Africa is a basket case.

Our next stop was Inhassoro, which can best be described as Beaufort West by the sea! A place which happens to be a convenient place to spend the night, Wagon Wheels Motel without the Wheels! The camp sight was OK, on the beach and next to a pleasant beach restaurant who had more waiters than patrons. At the bottom of the steps leading down to the beach was a structure  that resembles a double crucifix where Koos and his mates gloated over the size of their latest catch. A carved sign celebrates a record Marlin of 456kg (there or there about). I feel sick.

It was evening, the tide was out. Ewa and I walked past the Crucifix over the kelp across the beach into waist deep water with the faint glimmer of lights from the luxurious cocktail bars of Bazaruto Islands on the horizon. The sea was very shallow. To swim I lay down and sort of pulled myself along with my fingers in the sand. I was amazed. Every step I touched a Pansy Shell just under the sand, they were alive. I always thought the perfect white Pansy Shells we used to look for on the beaches of the Wild Coast had something to do with Jelly Fish, not so they are animals in their own right and when they are alive are brown not white!

There was another couple camping, a German couple called Ollie and Helgar or something that sounded like Helgar. They appear to do nothing else but travel, and while they were not travelling did nothing. Helgar the Horrible didn’t like walking. She also used the Men’s toilet. Maybe she was confused, I felt sorry for Ollie. Poor man. They were spending three nights in “Beaufort West”, when I asked them what they had been doing, they said “Nothing”!

Inhassoro to Inchope. Hot, really hot. Thank goodness for the Kombi’s Aircon. The Kombi’s Aircon works by getting the Dentist to spray you top to bottom with water from the recycled Doom bottle or some such spray bottle which she  has been hording for years.  By angling the little triangular window that one only finds on pre circa 1980 cars your leaking body is chilled by a degree or so. You can’t see much while she sprays as it fogs up the glasses, but this can be a blessing as you can’t see the bloke at the side of the road who is vending live chickens and guinea fowl by tying their feet together and holding them upside down. As you drive passed they are jerked up and down a couple of time so that their wings flap, thereby proving their freshness. Or maybe the fog would stop me having to see a flatbed articulated truck with no sides and rows of live goats (you know they are alive because they are also flaying around) chain-ganged and secured to lie down on the flatbed so that they can bake in the noonday sun.

There were other things that also made my stomach sink. Flatbed timber trucks laiden with massive specimens of hard wood on their way to China to end up as veneered furniture of one form or another. You know that none of the specimens have been replaced. Then on the other hand you see the land on either side of the road completely denuded of the self same trees only to end up as bags of charcoal for sale on the side of the road. Maybe a veneer is better than nothing!

We spend the night in what potentially could be a magnificent campsite on the Chicamba Real Dam outside Chimoio, on the Mozambique side of the Zimbabwe Eastern Highlands. We have decided to go to Malawi via Tete. The camp site seemed a very good launching spot for the trip through the Tete Province, as the books tell you that it is not uncommon to experience temperatures of 50 Degrees C in this area.

As I am writing this I am crying with laughter. Ewa really must not give up her day job! She has taken my camera to photograph a pair of beautiful butterflies. The picture is attached!!! I promise the butterflies are there, see for yourself how beautiful the Green Banded Swallowtail is! I digress. Yes it is there…you just have to blow it up a bit and it’s a lot better than the photo he tried to take!

The Manageress of the camp site showed us where to camp and proudly showed us the ablutions and cooking area. What can I say? What is it that that makes people care? Of the four loos, two male and two female, one was usable. The only other campers were a Zimbabwean couple named Steve and Rene and their very silent child Celeste. It must have had a real problem for Rene to pee, as Rene was a little ample about the hips and I very much doubt if she could pass through the opening to the loo. I say opening as it used to have a door! The lights were turned on by pushing up the circuit-breaker and the insect life was something to behold.

As a mother of storms was about to descend upon us we decided to sleep in the dining area, but the insect life and their attraction to light caused a bit of a concern. However, Steve, a farmer, carried in the boot of his car a pesticide that was mixed by the gallon and had a scull and crossbones on the label. He sprayed over and around all openings, crevices, corners and surfaces. He assured me that nothing would pass any threshold for four months, judging by the skeletal deposits the next morning I had to admit he had a point; I was quite surprised to find Ewa alive. Ha Ha! Can’t get rid of me so easily…who’s going to dig him or push him out!



The night saw the storm descended in a massive deluge of thunder and lightning which celebrated the start of the summer rains. The cloud cover  remained and made the journey through Tete very pleasant. The spectacular countryside really took me by surprise, but the ribbon of life along the EN1 did nothing to restore any confidence in the ability of the people.

The Zambezi is crossed by a large suspension bridge at Tete. The bridge was under repair. There is no other way to cross the river. The two ferries appeared to require some mechanical attention. The traffic ran for half an hour in one direction then half an hour in the other. Only one truck was allowed on the bridge at any one time and the pedestrian traffic moved faster than the crossing vehicles. All this resulted in a line of trucks that must have been three kilometres long. The car traffic simply drove down the wrong side of the road passed the trucks, which cause little dismay to the oncoming traffic, they just moved onto the pavement! I am not sure how but I managed to take a different route that saw me behind truck number three who was to filter into the car traffic that was merging from another road that I appeared to have missed. Thanks to the only other car behind me, all I had to do was drive over the pavement around some signage, passed a couple of surprises, over the next pavement onto the road between the waiting cars. Easy really!

It was not our intention to push through to Blantyre, but it appeared to be doable and the alternative to parking on the cricket field of the Limbe Country Club was not very attractive. There was however one further test ahead of us that we sort of expected but our expectations to be exceeded. The test was the border crossing at Zobue. The usual money touts at the Mozambiquean Border were brushed aside, but then we hit the Malawian border post. I can only think that the reason for the harassment that one gets is that the authorities are in cahoots with the hustlers. I didn’t loose my cool, but it came close. Not one mile from the border post is the first police road block and the request for something spare change or something to drink, neither of which we agreed to.

We made the Limbe Country Club by nightfall.  The first President of the Limbe Country Club; TM Partridge Esq. 17th August 1923 to 31st August 1926 helped to establish a fine establishment visited by the Queen mother. I don’t think he allowed camping on the cricket field, but that aside I imagine the professional mix of the establishment in 1923 and the professional mix of the current establishment are very similar. The racial mix is somewhat different, but as evidenced at the bar on the night we were there, the social strata of the current establishment has change very little. Why is it then that the buildings and infrastructure are allowed to go to rack and ruin? If it has nothing to do with education, it can only be due to culture.



It would appear that African Culture is not be sustainable.Is our Western culture sustainable? What is the difference?

There are many differences, but the biggest one is the lack of long term planning, African Culture simply does not seem to think about tomorrow. They will use up their resources of any kind without a drop of consideration of the implications of the future. They will discard rubbish, not maintain buildings, overgraze land, not add oil to a squeaking wheel, have many children, take whatever aid they can get and simply use up every available resource. The only anomaly I can think of is the planning of death. Vast amounts of money are put away for funerals. There needs to be a cultural change.

The concept of planning, be it business, family or agriculture appears to be sadly lacking. Aid of any sort will certainly make a short term difference, but I see very little chance or evidence of long-term sustainability, and in the long run these efforts only create beggars.

Of all the African countries I have seen Malawi has a real chance of sustained development. There is evidence of massive aid and support in Malawi. There is evidence of diligent, hardworking, pleasant people; there is Religion everywhere, Muslin side by side with the Catholics and everything in between;
However, if all the aid agencies pulled out, would it survive? Certainly Limba Country Club is on a downward slide! 

Where does that leave South Africa? My view is that the only way South Africa can succeed is in partnerships. The government needs to embrace the skills of all its people, not by enriching the elite with BEE nonsense and creating labour laws that are completely inappropriate. They need to create genuine partnerships in all aspects of life. The African needs to be mentored.

There needs to be ownership of the land in the rural areas. As long the inhabitants of the fertile lands of the tribal areas have no ownership and title to the land, as long as wealth is counted in cattle and children, I have diminishing hope that South Africa will survive. The reason it could survive, is because the Dannie’s of this world have nowhere to go. The Afrikaner is an African without the cultural impediments.

As for the Africa through which we have travelled. There needs to be a radical change in Cultural the attitudes and beliefs that limit the development of the individual. They need to realise the consequence of throwing cans out the window. They need to care about tomorrow.