I loved reading the names painted on shops and restaurants we passed on the road. I also loved how most businesses had painted on their wall, underneath their name, ‘We offer the following services…’, often followed by a long list of what seemed like quite randomly chosen goods and services, and ending in ‘etc’.
In Tanzania, and Zanzibar particularly (outside Stone Town), the names were quirkily aspirational:
Nice Hair Dressing Salon
Aalya Beautiful Salon
Bob & Bad Boy Ritzy Barber Salon
Tulifo Modern Butchery
In Zambia, things tended to take a more philosophical tone:
Reasonable Shop & Take Away
Reasonable Restaurant
No Money No Power Grocery
New Deal Tarven (sic)
Be Strong Enterprises
Be Strong Barber Salon
Tropics Depot – for all your stationary, food, signwriting etc etc
Just Imagine Investments
Hope Dot Com (internet cafe)
Sex Thrills, AIDS Kills (billboard)
Namibian businesses seemed to have less personality overall, apart from a couple of interesting ones:
The Dog Is Hot Bar
OK Food (actually a big supermarket chain, where we bought food to cook for dinner, and yes, it was acceptable)
But one of the best signs we saw was in Malawi:
Road Signs Save Lives (painted on a road sign)
Days 152 – 153, Saturday 17th & Sunday 18th January 2009 (Cath)
On Saturday, a 5am start and a roughly 13hr drive meant breakfast on the truck (peanut butter sandwiches, biscuits, cake, popcorn and bananas – very healthy), lunch beside the road, lots of reading (I finished ‘Life of Pi’), and late (delicious chili sin carne, thanks to Andy) dinner.
Refuelling stop, Tanzania
We did pass through Mikumi National Park (‘Danger – Wild Animals Next 50km’), so some roadside elephant and antelope sightings kept us awake; and even after the national park, the scenery wasn’t bad.
This was our first night at a ‘bush camp’, which turned out to mean pitching tents in not so much ‘bush’ as ‘pine plantation’. ‘We’ve camped here heaps of times and nobody ever drives on these roads’, said Mel and Franco as we started setting up tents around a crossroad. Literally (and I mean that in the correct sense of the word) five minutes later, we heard a suspicious rumbling, and had to move all of the tents so that three men on a tractor could pass.
There were two other super exciting things about the night: it was cold enough to sleep in sleeping bags for the first time, and we saw our first firefly. Al and Matt got so excited they drew a firefly house in the dirt.
Sunday was a gentler day, with only 10 hours on the road. At our roadside lunch stop, Mel sternly told us to hurry because we were an hour behind schedule. This was a slightly odd thing for her to do, since not only had she declared that we are not allowed know the schedule, but we are routinely told that driving times are impossible to predict so there is no official schedule anyway. Either way, we had definitely not had any control over the matter, since we left on time and had only stopped twice: once for a five-minute toilet break, and once for Mel to shop at a local market, while we were told to stay in the back of the truck.
Local market – locked in versus locked out
In the afternoon we crossed the border into Malawi, and before long started glimpsing a huge expanse of water to the left of the road. Our camp at Chitimba Beach was cosy with plenty of shade, which Al and I shunned by setting up our tent on the beach (against the unsolicited advice of lots of strangers that it would be too hot), so that we could see the sunrise over Lake Malawi. It was my first cookgroup night, which involved Emma, Jez and I following Mel’s directions to make some barely edible fruity meatball pasta (with fresh mango and everything – I don’t understand what went wrong, with such a poetic marriage of flavours).
After dinner an awesome lightning storm over the lake made everything better (and yes, we waited until it finished before getting into our tent). I wish I had photos to add but we’ve lost them – will ‘borrow’ somebody else’s when I can.
Filed under: Tanzania
Days 150 – 151, Thursday 15th & Friday 16th January 2009 (Cath)
Our group arrived back in Stone Town slightly weaker than when we left – about six people had come down with what seemed to be a nasty viral gastro (which didn’t stop Mel insisting they all needed antibiotics), so we tried to quarantine them by shoving them all in the same dorm together. While they slept and rehydrated themselves, us healthy ones ventured out to watch the sunset.
‘Don’t give up any day’, says the wall – soccer on the beach
While we sat watching the soccer, a few young guys rode up on their bikes and started chatting, practising their English. This is James, who is in Form Three and wants to be a pilot. He asked me what diseases we have in Australia, and wanted to know if people there have AIDS too. I was really surprised that he brought it up spontaneously, and really wary of over-stepping any boundaries, so let him lead the conversation. Although he told me he was not taught about HIV/AIDS at school, he seemed to have learnt a lot about modes of transmission, apparently from talking to people on the street, and he was mostly accurately informed. He said ‘Zanzibar is crying – our President and Prime Minister have no motivation… Mr Bush helped us in 2001 – I think Mr Obama will help us some more… We need money’. Money, and probably a local plan and action.
After sunset, we braved the fish market.
Running the gauntlet twice wasn’t enough to convince us to eat here, so we found a restaurant instead and had a nice quick meal with Keryn, Matt, Tom and Luke. Back out wandering the streets, we met Lis (who’d just finished looking after a sick Andy), so went to a second place for coffee and dessert while she ate dinner, then headed to the beach for a drink to farewell Stone Town.
It rained heavily on Friday while we went through immigration (although still in the same country, we did acquire extra passport stamps, so didn’t complain) and waited for the ferry back to the mainland.
Al in travel mode, fresh off the ferry in Dar Es Salaam
The truck and another ferry then returned us to our beach camp near Dar, where we struggled to sleep in the heat, even with comfy sand under our tent and bellies full of snapper. At least we were still two of the healthy ones. Go immune systems!
Filed under: Tanzania
Days 147 – 150, Monday 12th – Thursday 15th January 2009 (Cath)
After a tasty spicy lunch, we made it to the northern beaches. Here we spent a relaxing three nights and days, relaxing in a relaxed way, and sleeping in actual beds.
We did some walking along the beach, some swimming, some partying, lots of sitting on boats, some snorkelling, lots of eating greasy bland Westernised food (except cheese, as there was a Nungwi-wide shortage of dairy, Sprite, and sometimes electricity), some getting of massages, and some sunburning.
View from the restaurant at our place (to complete the scene, imagine a soundtrack of panpipe versions of Boyz II Men, Michael Jackson and Coolio)
Walking along the beach at low tide
After a two and a half hour boat ride, over a reef and through choppy waters (the waves constantly soaking me distracted me from being seasick), we snorkelled Mnemba Atoll. The visibility was not great, but the included lunch was delicious. Mind you, it could have been just as tasty back on shore.
Swimming in this amazingly blue water around the private Mnemba Island (once fully hired out by Bill Gates, now only $1250 per person per night) almost made the ridiculously long ride worthwhile – at least it helped us relax and prepare for the arduous journey home, which was enlivened by a cocky kite surfer jumping our boat and crash landing a few tricks nearby.
Feeding green turtles at the Mnarani Marine Turtles Conservation Pond – a community-run project, with a really friendly staff member who helped make sure I didn’t get bitten
A young ‘un
Showing off the new patches at a beach party
The village computer school, where we found internet access in exchange for a donation = guilt-free email checking!
Filed under: Tanzania
Days 146 – 147, Sunday 11th & Monday 12th January 2009 (Cath)
Contrary to what I expected based on past experiences with ferries and vomiting, the ferry ride across to Zanzibar was long but uneventful (except when the German guy in our group hit his head on a TV and treated the entire boat to some of the angriest swearing – in English – they are likely ever to hear, especially when directed at an inanimate object).
Oh, and I spent most of the trip listening to the iPod and trying to get ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ out of my head. There was an Arabic blessing or prayer written on the wall of the ferry cabin, starting with the word ‘bismillah’ (which means ‘in the name of Allah’), and with Zanzibar being the birthplace of Freddie Mercury, one thing led to another every time I looked at it…
We were staying in Stone Town for the night, so had a good wander around the narrow old streets that afternoon.
There have been African, European, and Persian, but mainly Arabic and Indian influences on the architecture here, as you might expect in a place that was a centre of the spice and slave trades for a few hundred years.
The recent US election result seemed to have been the talk of the town, and souvenir shops were cashing in:
Typical carved door (although most were scruffier and more interesting than this one)
I loved these paintings, which were on sale around town, promoting health and the fight against HIV, malaria and tuberculosis:
‘Beware of turberclosis TB (get cure)
Beware of HIV/AIDS (get cure)
Malaria is problem in Africa also we must fight drugs seriously’
Maybe it could be put to music! I’m not exactly sure what they want to encourage people to do about malaria (the ‘get cure’ bit is missing), but awareness is of course the first step, and I love the way they managed to fit in a quick anti-drugs message at the end too, as if they realised at the last minute they had space for it. I actually had a conversation about HIV with a teenaged boy when we were back in Stone Town a few days later, which did show that awareness seems to be growing – more on that later.
We watched the sunset from the fancy Africa House Hotel rooftop, somehow forgot about eating dinner until all the restaurants had closed, then joined a reggae party on the beach to celebrate Revolution Day. The locals pulled us off the dance floor to watch the midnight fireworks, which were single red sparks shot into the air – I kept waiting for them to burst into the bigger clusters we normally see at home and on TV, until I looked around at people’s happy faces, and realised these were the fireworks they were excited about.
On Monday we paid a sobering visit to the site of the former slave market, seeing the claustrophobic underground ‘rooms’ where people lived (apart from the times they were brought above ground in chains, to stand in a pit and be inspected). The market officially closed in 1873 when the Sultan declared the slave trade illegal, after much petitioning from Britain (after Britain was in turn pestered a lot by Dr Livingstone, I presume).
We drove out of town to a nearby spice (and fruit) plantation for a tour and some tastings and smellings. We were shown cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and mace (which we were told is ‘Viagra for women’ because it ‘makes you soft and gives you sleepy eyes’), pepper, passionfruit, durian, starfruit, bananas, mangosteens, ‘huge lemons’ (apparently that is their actual name), vanilla, turmeric, lemongrass and ginger.
Our guide had the charming habit of asking ‘what is this?’, then ignoring correct answers from the group, asking ‘are you sure?’, checking if anyone else wanted to guess, then eventually identifying it himself. But at least he always concluded with a polite little pause, almost a bow, and a smile: ‘Vanilla pods – thank you’
‘Lipstick fruit’ – not my colour
Coconut palm - climbing
Sampling
Wearing!? Apparently, yes.
