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4nd June 2011
After leaving the springs in the vicinity of Shiwa House (and the history of the Gore-Brown family, which has links not only with Africa but New Zealand and bloody Tasmania) we headed in a northerly direction towards Lake Tanganyika.
The day was but young (about 8am) when rounding a bend on the surprisingly/amazingly/superbly good gravel road for Zambia, we came across a vehicular device in a state of panel rearrangement. The two upwardly mobile young Zambian world vision employees had just cost the firm a considerable amount by trying some unsuccessful stunt driving maneuvers. I gave Brian, a mobile toting and extremely polite early twenties failed Zambian stunt driver, a lift the ten or so kilometers to the main highway. He was very apologetic to Gael who was relegated to the camper to ride out the distance. I couldn't afford to have young Brian, an unknown quantity in the back with all Gaels personable items and my smalls.
Several hours later saw us at Zambia's only Port, albeit a land locked one on Lake Tanganyika. Following a sign pointing in the general direction of the lake and a lodge we proceeded to hunt out our accommodation for the night. Lodges in Africa with camping attached are like small islands in a sea of humanity and its associated chaos, so finding one at the end of the day is like finding the last beer at the bottom of the fridge when you thought you had exhausted your supply. Lodge Tanganyika however was to prove to be hard to find. Even when we had to resort to asking some locals singing along (as only Africans can sing) to a tune outside a church in the middle of two meter high elephant grass, we managed to be pointed in the direction of a lodge that had clearly ceased operating years ago.
Having driven down a goat track for half an hour, and with the sun setting over the lake, we opened the closed gate and entered our very deserted campsite. The caretaker had seen or been told of our approach and was on the scene in microseconds. After Gael made him aware of our plight the wonderful old gentleman (an old gentleman in Africa is about forty years old) who gave a little chuckle every time we talked to him, said he would be honored if we would stay for the night. He would also not take any money even though we were clearly in a position to be taken advantage of.
The next morning saw us trying to track down two guys we meet a few days prior. They were supposed to be helping out at the local mission but were sleeping-in somewhere else when we arrived, so we didn't hang around. Driving back to Mbala, a neighboring town, we tried to track down another missionary we meet in a camping ground in Lusaka, Zambia's capital. NGO's and Missionaries in Africa are like rabbits **** on cleared ground, there everywhere.
Having been given a bum steer and being pointed in the direction of another Missionary at the other end of the same town we were spotted by Mr Grant in the main street. We were immediately invited to his farm about eight kilometers out of town where we were to meet Mrs Missionary (Lyn) and their five billy lids. Practical people (they made their own everything, and I mean everything, even down to butchering their own meat and neutering the cat on the kitchen table), with five very young self reliant and self directed children. They also had a practical world view that didn't appear weighted down with religious dogma.
The next day saw us on the road for a ten hour day. Six of those hours saw us travel one hundred and ninety kilometers on the worst road I have ever driven on toward east Africa and the border crossing with Tanzania. Our original plan of traveling north from Mbala up alongside Lake Victoria went the way of a soft serve on a hot day. Gael was issued a Rwandan visa and I wasn't, and we were advised that the road distance of around one thousand kilometers could take us as long as a week and see my nerves and the truck reduced to scrap. Based on the road we took to the east I could not imagine six or more days of the same with nowhere to camp for the night but by the side of the road. Also the border crossing on our propose route to Rwanda wasn't going to be capable of processing our paperwork for the truck without visiting other customs officials elsewhere.
Australian drivers qualify for their licenses after attending the school of advanced road rage techniques. African drivers clearly go to bible class to get theirs. Signs like, Ride with God, Heavens Wagon, and Paradise is here, adorn their vehicles. They either drive at suicidal speed or dangerously slow in cars held together with spit.
The Zambia/Tanzania border crossing was hysterical. I haven't had as much fun since I last had swollen testicles. Thinking we still had about fifty kilometers and a night sleep in which to prepare ourselves, we were visibly shaken to find ourselves grid locked by traffic at the border with nowhere to go but through. Well what a **** fight! Even with the help of a small and calm, I think Zambian official, it was interesting at the very least. You really haven't had one of life's great experiences until you have crossed an African border in your own vehicle. I remember the guys Borman and Mc Gregor in the series "A Long Way Down" complaining about the crossings, and they had a team of people to do it for them! By the end of the process Gael was seriously ****** off with all the hangers on trying to bleed us of our hard earned loot. After the days travel Gael was taking no prisoners. It's funny, but nothing I can think of comes close to this experience in the Western world.
As I write this we are having a rest day camping at a coffee plantation/lodge on our way towards the East Coast where we may spend a longer time looking around probably in about a weeks time. We have started taking longer breaks to try and keep the stress levels down between days on the road.
Life in Tanzania has been a real contrast to Zambia. Just as one notices the sloping forehead and forward thrusting jaw of a Queenslander, one sees a marked change in the African as you move further north. The women and men are certainly less attractive and generally shorter in stature. Muslims also far outnumber our once merry band of Christians. And with the decline of the Christian majority also go the missionaries (to be replaced by more NGO's). There is also more of the folding stuff around. Being more effluent means you can put yourself into hock for a 125cc motorbike instead of a Great Wall of China pushie.
In fact we are not enjoying Tanzania as much as we did Zambia. Whilst Zambia is a challenge on many levels to the overland traveler, Tanzania takes things to the next level.
The day to day chores of traveling are made harder by a complete lack of what we as Westerners have so far taken for granted. No matter how small and pathetically stocked it is, there has up until now been a supermarket even in all but the smallest, crappiest town. By way of contrast, in Tanzania the supermarket is no more. Here the small trader still reigns supreme, making Gaels daily chore of providing a hearty bang up meal a real chore.
As well as the lack of western conveniences, on several occasions today we nearly became just another stain on the Tanzanian tarmac. Driving has been becoming increasingly like a game of Russian roulette. The drivers of the intercity buses in particular are f-cking maniacs. On several occasions they have passed ourselves and others on blind bends at well over one hundred kilometers per hour. Because of these ********s, together with potholes and broken down semi's blocking the road, driving is becoming far more dangerous the closer we get to Dar es Salam. This place makes driving around Morocco stack up nicely with a drive down St Kilda esplanade on a Sunday with those who shave their legs, don their lycra, and pedal their pushies.
An opportunity presented itself as we got nearer to Dar es Salam to visit our first Tanzanian National Park. The experience was similar to opening a flat can of coke! The price of entry for two aussies, their truck, and the rent of a ****** patch of dirt for the night (with a drop toilet that we were too afraid to go into) cost us US$160. Privately run camping grounds usually set you back US$20, and you at least get a luke warm shower and a flush ******* at the very least, but to enter a National Park here you get seriously screwed.
As a consequence of the entire above listed negatives, but due in main to that fact that Tanzanians look suspiciously like Queenslanders, we have decided to cease our northward momentum and our single handed effort at financing Tanzania's balance of payments. If we can make it back south to the Malawian border without ending up as a decoration on the front of an Intercity bus, that will be a bonus.
Last night we shared camp with two young Dutchies at The Farm. The Farm is a private campsite just of the main highway linking Tanzania/Zambia/and the Congo. Still in Tanzania mind you, but private and not in a National Park. Our campsite with hot shower and clean toilets, and a DELICIOUS three course meal prepared by a French chef cost us the grand total of US$42. Anyway, the Dutchies had driven a little bucket of bolts Citroen down from Holland to Tanzania via Italy in just two months. Africa we are coming to realize, is not a place you holiday in, you merely make observations as you drive through it. To linger too long in a place, particularly those places that have a high fly in/fly out international cliental (National Parks), is just prohibitive because of the cost. It is by far the most expensive continent on our trip. So in the main, you become observers as you drive from secure campsite to secure campsite. It is still fascinating mind you, but because the places where you stay are merely stop over points and offer little else to occupy one self, you tend to keep rolling on. Staying more than one night in a camp is used more often than not as a means to recharge your batteries so that you can tackle the demands of driving again.
Today we arrived close to the Malawian border after a day of approx three hundred and fifty kilometers of driving. We also gained about two thousand meters in altitude as we headed towards Lake Malawi over a mountain range dotted with banana and vegetable growing areas. All these are subsistence farming plots and not a piece of farm machinery in sight. Massive hectares all done by hand with a hoe. These poor *******s are tough!
Women carrying massive loads on their heads. From water to timber (and not just twigs but heavy logs) to food, and all with a baby strapped to their backs. Men pushing heavily laden push bikes up massive hills. They just get down and do it, and they can still raise a smile and laugh as they push their loads whilst walking with a mate up these sole destroying hills.
Saw two truck wrecks on the way up the mountains today. Trucks, (old wrecks of trucks that you wouldn't find on the roads anywhere else), whose breaks fail and the only way they can stop the runaway is to drive them of the road, fully laden into the deep roadside ditches. The wheels were still spinning on one upturned semi as we drove past. A crowd was already gathering as someone from the truck was trying to drag his body up onto the road verge. We did wonder as to how lucky we might have been in not arriving at that spot when the truck was coming down the mountain out of control.
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