21/8/19
So for the funny anecdote about the night this time! About halfway through the night, we were awoken by a loud squeal followed by some grunting as a large 4-legged creature ran past our tents. Yep, pig hunting in the middle of the night in the campsite, what could be more fun?
We left the campsite at 7:00 this morning – what a sleep-in! – and headed away from the lake into the mountains. I can comfortably say my earlier assessment of Malawi was correct: what a beautiful country. The views we got from the climb up the mountain were incredible, overlooking green hills and the lake in the distance. Francis being the amazing driver that he is, would slow down and honk the horn a few times when he saw a good photo opportunity for us.
We stopped at a shopping centre in Mzuzu town a little later on for some food and most importantly drinks. The plan for tonight is a home-made punch apparently, so we all chipped in some money towards buying juice and alcohol, and came back with several bags worth. This will be promising!
We continued the road for a little while longer until we came to a brief stop in the middle of the rubber plantations. Malawi has the ideal weather conditions to grow rubber trees, and so we stopped to have a look at the thousands upon thousands of rows of trees. The older trees had several cut marks covered up by wax with a small cup attached at the bottom to collect the sap before taking it to the factories to make it into the rubber items they need. Interesting stuff.
Another hour and a half or so, and we had made it to the campsite. Once again directly on the beach of Lake Malawi, though on a different part of it. And once again, all the other tour groups were already there. This is getting a bit repetitive now…
In any case, once again we split up between a group helping with the cooking and another group setting up the tents and mats for everyone. Pete made us some burgers for lunch, which tasted amazing, but after which once again my stomach wasn’t all that settled.
In a fit of annoyance therefore, I threw on my togs and headed down tot he beach. Some parts of Lake Malawi have a parasite which can get into people’s skins and make you sick, but thankfully not this part of the lake. It’s quite surreal too, because the lake really truly looks like the ocean, the waves were bigger than in many seas I’ve swum in, but the water is fresh. When you get splashed in the face by a wave, it doesn’t sting your eyes or get the yuck reaction to the taste.
After my nice little dip in the water, I met up with the rest of the group at the bar while Brenton and Jess were busy preparing the punch. The amount of alcohol that was thrown in was quite frankly terrifying and promised a good evening ahead of us!
Around 17:00, the fun began with a dress-up party. Our helpers brought out several bags of what I assume were strange clothing sent as second hand and we – along with the other tour group – had to pick our “costumes”. Some the results were definitely interesting! Lizzy found herself some sort of space suit that looked amazing, Brenton had a beautiful dress and tutu while Vincent found a one-piece sequin shirt and pink trousers with a tail attached! For my part, I went with a classy sequin skirt, an oversized red Santa-style corset and a frizzy head piece. A weird cross between an elf and a nymph apparently!
We then started on the punch and the party began. To our absolute delight, Francis and Pete joined in, looking absolutely fantastic in their leopard print tops and skirts! Meanwhile next to us, the other tour group seemed to act very tame, and we were out to show them how to have a good time. Games, music and a lot of laughs: this is how we party!
22/8/19
Our party went on till 22:30 before we went to bed – such young spirits we are. However the main party at the bar carried on well into the hours of the morning, with very loud music. Thank goodness for earplugs.
This morning was an easy day, we had a village walk panned for 9:00 and nothing until then. Unfortunately by force of habit, we were mostly all awake well before 7:30. So we sat and watched Pete preparing pancakes for us – he really does treat us way too well!
Our village walk was completely different to the previous walks we had done. We began by seeing a chicken house – essentially a wooden house on stilts for the chickens to sleep in at night. The chickens run around wherever they want during the day, but with the threat of hyenas and other nocturnal predators looming around, they have learned to climb up into this small house to spend the night there in safety. Smart little things.
We were then taken through a multitude of cassava plantations, which serves as one of the primary nutrition for this village. Each family has a plot of land on which they can cultivate their plants, and keep their chickens. They then have areas on which they can dry the roots before crushing them and making flour out of it. The plants grow very easily with little water or interference so it makes for easy farming.
We were then taken to the mud spots where teenage boys were making bricks. They have wooden frames, able to make 2 bricks in each, which they fill with the mud, then empty in one swift move in rows upon rows of mud bricks, left to dry for several days. Once the bricks have been left for a few days, they are then baked in their ovens and become the reddish colour they use for housing or any other buildings. This is done only in the dry season of course, so we were quite lucky to see this part of their daily life.
Next, one of the local guys started explain a bit more about how the village works and most importantly the local hospital. The village itself has about 4,500 people, and the hospital services this and almost 20 others, with only 2-3 doctors/midwives. The services of the hospital are provided free to the people in an effort to encourage a more responsible approach to health for the poorer families – such as Malaria, HIV prevention or contraception for example.
What we learned from him and from the doctor/midwife at the hospital directly blew me away. As time passes, more and Moore of the community take to using the hospital for treating issues rather than keeping with their traditional medicines or witch doctors, though a significant proportion continue to observe their traditions. Consequently, the occasional megaphone messages we’ve been hearing while driving around these countries aren’t in fact bible preaching as I had suspected, but messages on general health, on attending the hospital and even encouraging family planning to reduce population and the poverty and other issues associated with the large families.
Our group member Jess is a nurse back home, and was actively asking about many of their practices regarding childbirth in particular. But soon enough we were all chipping in, absolutely fascinated – and sometimes appalled – by the conditions of the treatments they can offer. For instance, should a woman require an emergency caesarean, she needs to go to the mother hospital, almost 80km away. The only ambulance they had no longer works, so any transport needs to be organised urgently within the community, and I can only imagine how many times this process ends badly.
We were shown around the facility, which despite the best efforts possible clearly showed signed that this was definitely not the best environment to deliver a baby. I also felt a bit embarrassed as while the doctor was telling us about their operations here and we picked his brain some more, no less than 15 patients were waiting outside to be seen. I won’t go into more detail about the many many things we learned in this place, but I will say that I now have even less respect for the outlandish requests and complaints about western hospitals moving forward.
After the hospital, we were taken to the local school. 1,250 students for 12 teachers. That’s classes of 100 students for those who can’t do the math. Most of the subjects are similar to ours, but I was intrigued about the agriculture and life skills subjects. In many ways I feel that our western children are missing out on some important general life lessons which these kids are benefiting from. Finally some good in all this!
We were back at the campsite in time for some lunch and ready for a fully relaxing afternoon. I’m talking some swimming, some reading, some typing up diary, and overall chillaxing. Occasionally changing hammock just to feel like I moved and did something. It was magical and I loved it.
As I walked around the cooking area we had made for ourselves, I thought for sure that my mind was playing tricks on me, because what I was seeing couldn’t possibly be real. And yet when dinner time came around there it was: a plate of home-made lasagna. In the middle of a campsite. Pete, Francis and our helpers had made lasagna from scratch in a metallic tray, and then placed an empty tray upside down on top of the lasagna, covered with red-hot coal. Improvised oven right there. And it tasted amazing. Never again will I accept canned goods for dinner on the excuse of “because we’re camping”!
23/8/19
The first of 3 full days of driving. We left the campsite around 7:00 and left the view of the lake shortly after that, heading westward. A couple of stops here and there for some bushy bushes, and finally we stopped a few kilometres away from the border for our makeshift lunch.
Francis had re-parked the truck in a strange angle, trying as best as possible to hide us from the road. His ploy didn’t work however, and soon enough a few kids spotted us and started to just stand by the trees to watch us – thank goodness we had had enough time to pee before they showed!
We made our lunch and before long, all the kids of the local village had shown up and were just standing there. It was very very unnerving, as they just stood and watched in silence. I’m not sure if it reminded me more of people watching animals feeding at the zoo, or seagulls waiting for a moment of inattention to snap at the chips. Suffice to say we weren’t very comfortable and I knew I’d be getting indigestion from this!
When we left, we gave the kids a bag of the leftover food which they promptly began to fight over before the eldest kid started to share out potatoes evenly. Once again, being confronted to the sheer level of poverty here can be a bit stomach churning.
Shortly after, we made it to the border. We exited Malawi fairly easily, and then had to walk across to the Zambia side, much like we had with the Rwanda crossing. There the visa processing took about 20-30 minutes a little longer for the truck customs forms to go through, and finally we were through.
Welcome to Zambia! The difference is striking. While the scenery is fairly similar to that of Malawi once we had left the lakeside – dry, arid with not many bushes to pee behind – the difference was with the people. When we stopped at a small town shopping centre a few hours later, I suddenly felt underdressed in my thongs and bus pants. After seeing the level of poverty apparent throughout Malawi, seeing the fancy shopping centre, nice clothes and gadgets of the people here was simply strange.
We grabbed some more drinks and snacks to get ready for the next few days of driving, and headed off to our campsite. We set up our tents, then started cooking up another great meal and chilling out before another super long drive day.
That’s when Pete sat us down to give us the terrible horrible news: the Namibian immigration had not processed the work permits for him and Francis. Which meant as of then, neither of them could go through Namibia to finish the trip. Another tour doing this route in reverse from Cape Town would be in Livingstone on the same dates as us, and consequently the head office had had to make the decision to swap the trucks and crew.
We were livid. After 35 days with Pete and Francis, the idea that we would not finish the tour with them was completely unacceptable. We spent the next hour or so in a group crying session trying to come up with any idea to get them across the border – the most popular being currently to dress them up as a zebra which can cross borders as they please. The likelihood of the visas coming through is extremely low, but needless to say we all strongly hope it may still work, and none of us slept too well that night.
24/8/19
Another amazing 5:00 departure, though the mood this time was less than humorous following last night’s revelation. Pete was desperately trying to keep our spirits up, telling us not to think about it, but it was on everyone’s minds as we curled up in our blankets and sleeping bags on the truck ready for another long leg of journey.
A few hours later we found ourselves at a petrol station checking the pressure of the tyres, and sure enough, Francis was dissatisfied and informed us we needed to change a wheel. Pete tried to give us options to go for a walk for about half an hour, but one of us would have it: we wanted to see the truck wheel change!
So the girls took up seats on the ground in front of the tyre in question, while the boys stood there watching, in good old macho style, ready to try to help. What fun that was! The truck is a nice big size, and the tyres required are definitely sizeable. Not to mention the culprit was one of the inside wheels, meaning they had to take 2 wheels off to change only the one. To be fair, it was definitely shredded and in need of a change – no doubt one of the rocky roads we took didn’t work out so well.
Francis and Pete worked tirelessly – no pun intended – on the wheel change, with the support and cheers of the whole group. The boys tried their hand at the process as well but they were no match for Francis of course – if highly entertaining for the rest of us on the ground. We then cheered them all on as they lifted the lifeless tyre back up onto the back of the truck, and I imagine that was not a light feat!
We continued our journey a little further on, with Pete giving us the routine speech about Zambia history and politics. Francis eventually stopped us for a bushy bush toilet again, and this time we had enough. Boys can complain all they want about the “direction of the wind”, but with the dry, arid climate around here, leafy bushes are small, few and far away and girls needs to fight off thorns to find a spot to eventually pee on our feet and get scratches all over our backsides from the rough vegetation. For the quote of the day: “It’s like I jumped into a cactus!” We demanded that the next stop be a pretty leafy bush, to the delight of Pete and Francis who were in hysterics of course.
We finally made it to Lusaka – the capital of Zambia – and stopped at another very nice shopping centre. Pete went off to do his shopping while the rest of us went off to do our own version of shopping. We rushed to the KFC and were disappointed to find it was not open. So off to the supermarket for snack stocking up and a proper coffee before we headed off again.
After countless hours on the road, we finally made it to our campsite, absolutely exhausted. By this point, the sheer boredom had started to settle in and, in an effort to keep occupied and entertained, I had started to take my braids out. Unfortunately by the time I was finally finished, it was too late to wash my hair and let it dry, so I had to make the decision to keep it insanely curly for the following 24 hours.
The campsite was a bit more special than usual, as it had zebras roaming around. Pete insisted heavily that, although they were cute, we were not to approach them because they have a mean kick! We made dinner showered and then tried to get some sleep despite the party going on next to us – though baby now we’ve become experts at sleeping through noise.
25/8/19
Once again we were up nice and early, ready for yet another full day of driving. Or at least as ready as we could be. The boredom seriously started to hit in this time, with many of us starting to lose our minds slowly. I started to run out of shows to watch, people were running up and down the bus, basically anything to keep entertained.
Our first stop was a toilet stop at a petrol station/pizza place. Pete told us the toilet was payable, so we could always wait and do a bush toilet as soon as possible, but most of us rushed off the truck to enjoy a nice clean toilet. For the quote of the day this time: “At least I don’t have an Acacia tree up my bum!”.
We stopped somewhere along the road at a sort of restaurant place, and from sheer boredom we all rushed in to try to get food. A little disappointing as the facade was definitely fancier than the food on offer was, but at this point, anything was better than chips. There was also a small shop and this is where things started to get interesting.
Back on the bus, bored out of our wits, I kept watching my TV shows and slowly running out of downloaded episodes, when Jess handed us each a balloon. She’d found balloons to make animals with, and we figured why the hell not. Only problem was that no matter how badly we tried – and we really tried, I’m talking eyes popping out of our skulls – we simply couldn’t blow the balloons up.
So instead they guys started tying the balloons between the seats to use as slingshots. Which someone then asked “how many do you think we would need to tie before someone could sit on it?”. One thing turned into another, and before long, several people were heavily invested in creating a full hammock in the middle of the bus – which worked by the way! When Pete came on to talk to us about the Victoria Falls we had almost reached, he simply looked confused (understandably so) at what the heck was going on.
Finally though, after well over 30 hours of driving in 3 days, we had made it to the Victoria Falls. The falls cover the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, though apparently they are more beautiful not he Zimbabwe side. Still, the price involved in doing a day-trip to Zimbabwe – between the multiple visa entries, transfers, access to the national park and so on – was too steep for me to justify just for a photo stop.
The falls were first identified in the west by Dr. Livingstone, who named them for the queen at the time – Victoria. During the dry season, only a portion of the falls are heavily active, with a lot of spray to be seen for miles around and mainly on the Zimbabwe side. But it seems during the wet season, the entirety of the cliff side we could seen is covered but the Zambezi river overflowing into several small falls combining to the one massive Victoria Falls. Needless to say I will be returning during the wet season at some point to Zimbabwe!
For now we were given an opportunity to walk around the national park and grab some beautiful photos of the smaller falls, and rapids down the bottom. We also got a good look at the Victoria Falls bridge, the bridge joining Zambia and Zimbabwe, built to get a good idea of the main falls area and, perhaps more importantly for us, the place from which adrenaline junkies bungee jump. We decided to stick around for a while to finally watch a jumper go off, and to be honest I can’t say whether it inspired me more or less, but I can’t wait to finally e there myself!
Our group split up on the way back to the truck, and we found ourselves sitting on the bus waiting for the last few stragglers. As I sat comfortably watching Netflix, out of nowhere I suddenly heard Pete go crazy and start making angry chasing sounds. I looked up but I never would have expected to see a fully grown baboon sitting on top of our fridge and angrily hissing back at Pete! The whole thing was surreal. Pete grabbed Jo’s backpack – the first thing he found really – and started swinging it at the monkey to scare it away, which eventually succeeded. For all of about 10 seconds though, we were pretty sure that was it for us and our tour. Death by baboon, how pathetic.
The other guys only heard the commotion and watched some baboon’s rear side sticking out of the bus but they seemed rather impressed with it all as well. The monkey then climbed on top of our bus, and Francis and a park ranger then had to try to dislodge it before we could leave. But we were all sitting on the truck in hysterics at what we had just seen, and hailing Pete as our selfless hero who took on the big bad scary baboon!
Shortly after, we made it to our campsite, which would be our home in Livingstone for the next 4 nights. Most of the tour decided to upgrade to rooms for this occasion, but I decided I’ve made it this far by camping, and I will not lose out to Vincent and Michael! So we put up the 3 tents between the 4 of us – TJ and I being in individual tents – next to a tour group who told us they would be leaving at 4:00. Not a problem, we are so used to these things by now.
We booked ourselves into a bunch of activities each – breaking our wallets one after the other – and then took to the bar/restaurant area. Pete and Francis get the next 3 days off essentially, only needing to supply the 4 of us tenting some breakfast. So we headed off, attacked some well deserved pizza while being devoured by mosquitoes, and decided to get an early night sleep to catch up finally!
Elodie's Travel Diary 