The Labour and Pain of Travel

Mitchell's and my contemplation led us to different directions so as I moved south to Blantyre my Aussie travelpartner for the past few months went west towards Zambia. In Blantyre I soon bumped into Maayan and Naama, two Israeli girls I first met in southern Uganda and since then in other locations. They were headed to Mozambique as was I so the three of us set off early one morning not knowing what travels lie ahead. The delays started on our first bus towards the border where not long after taking off did a woman give birth to a baby boy making the bus take a detour past the hospital. Once we reached the border I got my first real taste of the African corruption I've heard so much about as the Mozambiqui borderpolice claimed to have run out of regular visas meaning we would have to pay $90, more than three times as much than it should be to enter. We didn't have much choice but to cough up the money and after getting some food in us at the frontiertown of Milange we managed to get a ride with a truck transporting a mountain of plastic buckets and containers. It was only a 200 km trip but the roads would be bad so we knew the 2 hour promise was an optimistic lie, we just didn't know how optimistic yet. The uncomfortable cargo I was sitting on was poorly fastened and large sacks fell off every so often, meaning we had to stop and retie everything and on one occassion we lost Maayan's bag without noticing and had to backtrack for a while in pitchblack to recover it. It was past midnight and freezing cold on top of the buckets in the strong draft and dust of the roads, when the driver had drunk one too many beers and decided he needed a nap for a couple of hours, so we sat and waited for him to wake up before completing the stretch that lay ahead, by the time we arrived in Mocuba we had made really good time, just short of 14 hours. In the small dull town of Mocuba we recharged our batteries for a day staying in the cheapest accomodation we could find which was undoubtebly a brothel, before getting on a jampacked bus to Nampula, once there we managed to get a minibus to our goal from the start, which was Isla De Mocambique. All the painful travel was well worth it once we could walk around the beautiful island which was once the capital of Portuguese East Africa. Also it has been nice to hear the beautiful language again which I grew to love in Brazil, and I was surprised at how much I could comprehend. After a couple of days among the colonial buildings and peaceful settings I decided to move on back south leaving the Israelis behind. Before I continue I would however like a minute to describe the vehicle which is the weapon of choice when it comes to African transport. It has many names in different countries, the Matatu, Dalla Dalla, Matola or the Chapa as they call it here in Mozambique, however it is almost always a white Toyota minibus with anything from 9 to 15 seats, a number which in most cases is doubled in amount of passengers. People and animals (mostly chickens) will be packed in on top of eachother, sometimes hanging out of the sliding doors, but the front row behind the driver is the real breadwinner of the van. Here an experienced conductor can interlace his passengers in a zipper-fashion, two lines facing eachother, with each person placing each of his or her knees into the crotch of the two people sitting opposite, meaning you will also recieve two knees between your legs, if this is done correctly you can easily fit nine fullygrown men into a space which was designed to seat only three. It was one of these seats I was dealt on my way back to Nampula and even before we had got on the causeway off the island I had lost sensation in both squeezed legs, the only feeling I could recognise was the burn of my barefoot against the warm metal which covers the engine. After biting my lip for 5 hours I got into Nampula once again and had planned to get a bus south to Beira the next morning but after getting the run around for a few hours and finding only expensive hotels I opted for a bus which would leave at 2 AM for Vilanculo as the busdriver let me stay on the bus overnight saving me one nights accommodation as well as getting me further south. The 20 hour trip was incident-free and the roads surprisingly good for the most part, but when I got off the bus it turned out I was still 20 km from Vilanculo so I had to get a lift on a pickup before finally getting to a guesthouse with warm showers and a bed.

Steamboat Paulie

The four of us boarded the Ilala, which is an old steamboat that has been trafficking Lake Malawi since the 1951, just after midnight. There is something oddly romantic about chugging along in an old vessel, sleeping under the stars on the wooden deck and just looking out across the waters, almost like timetravel bringing you back to colonial days. We arrived just before sunset at the small island of Likoma which lies in the Mozambique side of the lake but belongs to Malawi. Marcus and Kate left the following morning while Mitchell and I stayed on the secluded beaches, venturing into town and seeing the cathedral which looks slightly out of place and would be more suited for a small English town. After three nights we got back on the Ilala, however the romance was over as the tranquil lake had transformed into a small ocean and the 40 hour voyage was a bit rough, making sleeping on deck rather challenging. We were quite delayed by the time we reached our port of disembarkation, Monkey Bay, so the crew let us sleep overnight in a cabin before we could get on the back of pickup-truck taking us to the small beachtown Cape Maclear. We have now spent a few days here doing absolutely nothing, contemplating what our next move should be.

Africa$h

My travel trio had once again changed, Mitchell was still around but English Paul had been transferred for American Scott. We managed to catch the early morning bus from Dar Es Salaam towards the Malawi-border, however we were all running low on Tanzanian shillings and nobody wanted to exchange more so we decided to go without food or drink until we reached the new country, problems arose though when the bus didn’t take us to the border in time to cross that evening. We were forced to find a bargain of a room and then make our way to the crossing the following morning, however we didn’t have enough currency for both accommodation and bus ticket but some sneaky misleading manoeuvres made sure that the bus cost us nothing. Once in Songwe on the Malawian side of the border we were faced with our next dilemma, the exchange rates we were being offered for our dollars were pretty good, but we felt certain we could get better once we reached a bigger town, in Malawi at the moment the devaluation of the local currency Kwacha means that one can get almost double of the official rate if you find somebody on the black market willing to buy dollars. We didn’t arrive in the town of Mzuzu until it was once again too late to do any business but an albino man named Christopher was kind enough to guide us around and took us to a cheap hotel which would let us pay for our room the following morning when the black market would reopen, this did however mean that we would once again have to go to bed on empty stomachs. When we awoke the next door restaurant made us some eggs which were delicious after almost three days of starvation, and we could eventually find a rate which was satisfying, pay for our tabs and move to the nearby Nkhata Bay. The bay provided a much needed place for relaxation and over the next few days we relaxed on the sandy shores of Lake Malawi, going on boat trips and enjoying beach parties. Then we met Swedish Marcus and his Australian wife Kate who work for National Geographic, they were driving down the coast to Nkhotakota where a ferry leaves once a week for the island of Likoma, and they kindly offered us a lift, so while Scott stayed to complete his diving-licence, Mitchell and I tagged along with the couple towards new adventures.
In Camera related News:
“Once Bitten, Twice Shy?” Not for this author, one would think after learning the hazards of salt-water in the Red Sea he would have learnt his lesson but no, once again the blue waters were too tempting and after going for a swim with the camera it turns out that it is not resistant to fresh-water either, so watch this space to see if it is possible to repair it for a second time.