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March 17, 2008 chris @ 3:46 pm

Harmattan head
Between November and March each year a Sahalian storm called the Harmattan blows down onto the northern reaches of Nigeria and Cameroon. It makes for several changes in the climatic conditions.

Firstly, it makes it very dusty. What starts as a sandstorm in Niger and Mali becomes a, very dull dust storm further south; it’s in our noses, ears, eyes, clothes and upholstery. We cannot see Yaounde from the hills of Yaounde or anything from the summit of Mount Cameroon. And as we drive our sensitive little rust bucket along the potholed roads, a giant lorry will suddenly appear through the haze, careering down the middle of the road and frantically flashing because it has no brakes and wants us to pull over right now.

Secondly, it makes it very windy. The Muslim women walk by the side of the road, their Bhurkas swept up over the four giant cooking pots on their heads and the kids play football, their wind blown gowns clamped against their faces as they run blindly in for the tackle.

Lastly, it makes things a little colder. Whilst we sit in our car, sweating into our lightweight walking trousers, outside men ride bicycles wearing pink, 1980’s ski jackets. To be fair, it wasn’t long ago that their ancestors came up from Port Harcourt (in the Niger delta and very hot indeed) where18oC is definitely considered cold. And this can work to our advantage as each hotel/campsite owner thinks we must be freezing and brings us hot water to wash with. Yes!

Now all we need to do is remove the kilogram of sand from our frontal lobes.

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March 17, 2008 jackie @ 3:45 pm

Ten things you’ll never hear an African man* say
*When we say ‘African man’ the only criteria is that he has always lived on the continent and has a penis. He could be San, Bantu, Afrikaans, Toureg or Hausa.

01. I know nothing about cars / toilets / lights / space ships. Lets call a mechanic / plumber / electrician / astro-physicist.
02. No, really, it’s none of my business.
03. My team doesn’t have a chance in the African Cup of Nations / Rugby World Cup.
04. Smith Street? No idea where that is, sorry.
05. That’s just not possible (I haven’t got the tools).
06. Why would I need a girlfriend? I’m already married.
07. No monkey for me, thanks. I’m vegetarian.
08. I can’t do that; it’s against health and safety regulations.
09. I’m far too busy to help you, go away.
10. Wow, your car looks so old and crappy.



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February 29, 2008 jackie @ 5:33 pm

Bushcamping

Bushcamping [vb; sl; SA]
Def: to find a flat(ish), secreted spot to raise ones tent and sleep for the night, not necessarily in the bush.

Bushcamping for us has ranged from the ridiculous (pulling up on the side of the road at dusk, eating some stale bread, sleeping and then leaving at dawn) to the sublime (staying three days on a beautiful beach undisturbed by anyone). It was something that we didn’t do at all in Southern Africa but were somewhat forced into by the bad roads and extortionate accommodation prices in Angola. Like most people, we were pretty apprehensive the first couple of times, driving far too long into the dark before stopping and so not really picking the best spot. Later we realised the best way was to stop an hour or so before dark to give ourselves time to cook and be noisy before the dead quiet of the night.

On most of our bushcamps we’ve been completely undisturbed and anyone who does see us simply waves before passing by. In fact, after a couple of times our fears about motorised bandits dissipated and we learnt that the real concerns are running out of water and finding a soft piece of dirt to dig a hole for a ‘Bush Bradley.’1 On a couple of occasions we’ve asked permission from the local village and subsequently had a series of men formally introducing themselves, mostly to allay their worries about us being child-snatchers or (worse still) missionaries. One guy wouldn’t leave until he got Chris’s explicit permission. On our beachcamp in Mayumba, Gabon, we were awoken in the night by torches and banging on the car. Rather than being afraid, a grumpy Chris opened the flap of the tent and found three men who rather sheepishly explained that they wanted a lift into town! ‘Not now, it’s two in the morning’ Chris barked and zipped the tent back up.

1. Bush-Bradley [vb n; sl; Brit]
Def: to take a Brad Pitt in the bush/on the beach/behind a small spindly tree.




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February 29, 2008 chris @ 5:32 pm

Namibian ‘bars’
When we drove down the Caprivi Strip into Namibia we encountered a type of bar culture unique to that region and the great African highway that runs through it. No more than small shacks facing the road, and at first we thought them innocent enough (New Celebration Beer Bar and Market no.1, King of Peace Station, Long Life Bar) but soon the bars started to out number the other buildings until each village conisted of 20 to 30 bars and very little else, (Schoolhouse Shabeen, Try Again Bar, Chance Never Return bar). After another 200kms the names started to become a little confused (Small Boy Bar -unlikely in Africa) and eventually loose all sublty (Good Love Station, Young Star Bar, VIP Page3, Super Sex Shabeen, Unlimited Adventure Shabeen, Three Sisters Pick n’ Pay).

In Central Africa prostitution seems to have no stigma attached to it at all and the girls work without pimps and within the law and as one French ex-pat put it to us, ‘we don’t talk about prostitution in Africa. It is something they do between jobs.’ Back to



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November 2, 2007 jackie @ 3:26 pm

Motivational moments
A year is a long time to be on the road. Even six months, as we’ve done now, takes its toll. There are times when you are so tired of driving and village campsites that you want to check into a hotel and be a holidaymaker, and equally others when you are having such a good time that you want to stay put for a while. Malawi was such a ‘sticky’ country that we even considered looking after someone’s campsite for a month or two.

But it’s the momentum and everyday challenge of a trip like this that’s exciting – seeing new things and meeting different people everyday, working out how the hell to get across from A to B, finding out what’s gone wrong with the car, again. You just need to be reminded of that now and again.

We’ve had a few particular events that have given us back our momentum in the last few months. Enduring backpacker buses and rainy Port Elizabeth before finally letting Connie out of her big steel box and finding out that she was OK. Crossing our first African border and realising that, despite the chaos, it was really quite easy. Pat texting us to say that he had booked his flight (at last, the ditherey old fool). Meeting the Belgian who told us tales of the Niger desert and Janey & Tom who told us tales of everywhere! But the best one yet has been getting this great picture of our good friend Emily on the very day that we found out we’d killed our car. Thanks Ems.

Photo
Ems with postcards




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November 2, 2007 chris @ 5:32 pm

Unfortunately not, Your Honour
Unfortunately, unlike every other border post in Africa, when we crossed into Malawi we weren’t mobbed by insurance salesmen and we didn’t go and find any either. We knew you needed insurance but everyone was so relaxed and besides, we had no Malawian currency (Kwachas). “Never mind, we’ll get it in the next big town,” I think is what we said before turning the stereo up and easing on down the road.

Unfortunately, as we drove into the northern city of Mzuzu, we were stopped by a fresh-faced copper with a clipboard. Unfortunately, we didn’t have an insurance sticker clearly displayed on our windscreen and after the usual African pleasantries, “Hello. How are you?” “Fine, how are you?” the policeman asked to see my driving licence and insurance documents. I looked at Jackie, she looked at me as if to say, ‘He’s talking to you. You deal with it.’ I looked back at the policeman and mumbled something about the insurance offices being closed, and not knowing you needed insurance in Malawi, and all sorts of other contradictory nonsense before agreeing to pull the car over, get out and fill in a charge sheet. Fair cop! Again. He asked me to fill out two forms. ‘No’, I confirmed, ‘I do not have insurance’. ‘Yes, I am aware that I am driving illegally in Malawi’. Nice man. ‘Sorry’. ‘Yes, I will visit the police station’. ‘Yes, I will attend court in Mzuzu on Monday morning’.

Unfortunately, the fresh-faced Policeman was accompanied by a number of dubious friends who, after I left the car, circled it like sharks. One guy, clearly not a policeman, knocked on Jackie’s window and flashed a smile. She was reluctant to open the window, but out of politeness she did. “Hello. How are you?” “Fine, Madam. How are you?” “Fine.” Silence. Jackie looked up again from the map-book. “What do you want?” until slowly he replied, “Maybe you can help me and the policeman?” Now, it being our first encounter with corruption after five months of travel in Africa (true), Jackie was taken aback. “Um. No. Sorry.” and closed the window.

The following Monday we went to the regional court in Mzuzu and I was informed by the duty policewoman to sit and wait for my name to be called. Jackie and I sat amongst the other minor offenders as ten men hand-cuffed to one another pulled themselves from the police truck into the court and out again in the space of ten minutes, joking with the policemen and making sluttish remarks to The Bee as they shuffled past.

The other waiting misdemeanours watched God TV on the tiny television suspended from the water stained ceiling. They all watched, absent minded, as if watching a reel of MTV videos, their minds elsewhere. Sat next to us, a very nervous young man turned his mobile phone over in his hand. We exchanged many, resigned smiles over the following two hours as everyone else was called, two by two into the courtrooms. We were both finally accompanied into a small office where two lady judges sat behind large, paper filled desks. At each corner of each desk an offender was filling out forms or paying fines. We were ushered to one of the desks where a circular discussion began, involving the judge, two policemen and a court assistant.
“Are there any mitigating circumstances that you wish to declare?”
“Um. For example?”
“You have a large family to feed or you give money to your local church.”
“That’s mitigating circumstances, is it?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Yes. Do you have any mitigating circumstances?”
“Unfortunately not, Your Honour,” I replied finally.
“The fine is 6,500 Kwachas.”
That was 3 times what we paid for two months insurance that morning and I told her so. She laughed and mumbled something about Wazungo and corruption and dismissed my protestations.
Maybe you are not corrupt, your honour but some of the police are, I thought but said nothing, having spent far too much time of my 11-month holiday in that courthouse. I paid my fine and reminded myself that it was less then £25.

The nervous lad sitting with me stepped up to the desk and the judge barked in Chichewa and the only thing I caught was the charge (driving recklessly at 110kms per hour) and the fine (9,500 Kwacha). He shook his head and explained that he didn’t have the money and although he probably had good, Malawian-style mitigating circumstances, the judge ceded nothing and the police dragged him away from the judge, out of the courthouse and to the police station across the road. I, on the other hand, dragged Jackie away from God TV and drove to Nkhata Bay to go diving and drink beer.

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August 20, 2007 chris @ 1:56 pm

Things fall apart
The deterioration of our beloved rust bucket, Constance, continues and leaving only The Super Bee to carry the burden of the expedition, I have also started to decline. First it was my tooth that fell out. It was old, I was fitted with a post by a dentist in Kingston years ago but it decided to come out in northern Mozambique on a bit of chewing gum. With our emergency dental kit (oh, the gear we have to play with!), Jackie cleaned the cavity, post and tooth and glued the devil back in.

Next, after our hotwiring sessions in Dar es Salaam, I contracted Malaria. Malaria can be fatal but it comes in all shapes and types and what I had was pretty low level. I felt very tired and along with aches and pains in all my limbs and joints and a temperature of 39 degrees, I had a strange, trippy migraine filling my head and vision. I took it easy and Doctor Bee cared for me whilst doing all the chores. After four days of anti-malarial drugs and painkillers (and no beer), I was fine and back in the bar.

When going up into the mountains from Kampala to see the gorillas, the car decided to stop starting once again and this time we were on a very high mountainside. Out comes Jackie Bee’s magic screw driver and we were hotwiring again. This was only matched by a foot infection that exploded from my usual dermatitis. The tropics are unforgiving and if you don’t look after yourself constantly, something will bubble up. I went back on the drugs; 500mg of an antibiotic called Zoxil (we have lots of drugs too).

In the course of visiting the wonderful Queen Elizabeth National Park and seeing lions, we got two flat tyres in as many days plus our prop shaft came apart. After all this, I took the car to a mechanic recommended by our hostel owner so he could take a look and advise about tyres. The guy was great and fixed the problem quickly. Just as I was about to leave, he asked if he could jack up the car and look under the rear. I didn’t mind him looking but I did mind seeing what he showed me. The chassis cracked in four places. Oh fuck! On either side of both of the suspension pumps, the rust had finally given up. Can you fix it? “Sure,” he smiled and him and is boys welded great pieces of steel to the problem for the next seven hours and somehow saved her. I played in their scrap yard and listened to Man city beat Man U on the radio.

To top it all, I seem to have got a tick embedded in my backside and not the soft, fleshy part either. The fact that Jackie also had one in a similar place when on school camp as a child is frankly of little comfort to me. I had visions of me up at the university hospital, on all fours, the subject of an examination and the doctor saying, “I hope you don’t mind, Mr Burley, but students from the tropical diseases and bugs faculty will be joining us today.” And me looking behind at innocent faced students, mouths open at the sight of a Muzungu’s white arse on full view. Fortunately, after some diligent and very painful work with tweezers, needles, tooth brush and Dettol I seem to be free of it. Well maybe… Photos That tooth Tyre 1 goes during the storm Tyre 2 goes next day Then my foot Connie needs plastic surgery.

*Apologies to Achebe for the trite use of this blog's name.



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August 20, 2007 jackie @ 1:43 pm

Driving Chris crazy
As most of you know, I just about managed to pass my driving test a month before I left the UK to drive an old, overloaded Range Rover along some of the worst roads in the world. As you can imagine, I was somewhat apprehensive.

When we picked the car up in South Africa we were both wired and it rained solidly for days. Chris, having not driven the beast for over a month, had trouble differentiating between 1st and Reverse. Unsurprisingly it was 3 weeks before I felt comfortable enough to give driving a go, and even then we chose a route called the ‘Midlands Meander’ as it was a designated tourist route running parallel to a motorway and I figured I could get away with murder. Even so, my inability to find 4th gear or overtake the slowest of trucks meant that my meandering was a little too much for the rural SA drivers (and Chris) so we soon decided half an hour was enough.

Thankfully we got to Kruger a few days later and, under cover of the 50km/hr speed limit and the generally erratic behaviour of people game-viewing and driving at the same time, I got in some good practice.

Then came Mozambique and a strange combination of empty roads, polite (for Africa) drivers and ‘mixed’ road conditions. The main problem was trying to get Chris to hand over the wheel when the roads became good as all he wanted to do was bomb it. So we decided that he should cover the good roads and we would share the bad. That way we weren’t losing time unnecessarily.

Now, three months into the driving, we’re driving just about equally. I’ve managed to find 4th and even (sometimes) 5th, although the weight of the car, the patchy roads and the unpredictability of the other drivers mean I tend to stick below 80km/hr. Chris obviously finds this infuraiting whilst I, when in the poassenger seat, constantly tell him he’s going too fast. Aside from that, I seem to be becoming a true driver - shouting at cars, flashing my lights and abusing my navigator (well, he did take me the wrong way up a motorway exit when we came into Uganda!). So, Mum, no need to worry. I’ll be driving like an African by the time I come home….



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August 20, 2007 chris @ 1:19 pm

Keep the car running
So, the first mistake came when Jackie asked me if we could drive all the way to Selous Wildlife Park in one day. We had previously looked at the maps, read about the quality of the roads and agreed to camp somewhere half way. But instead of remembering this, I just replied “Sure. Yes.” And off we drove into the north like two people who had never met and certainly didn’t have rules about driving in the dark or rules about 4×4 tracks in the dark where dangerous animals live.

After 12 hours driving, two of which felt like a blacked out ride at Blackpool pleasure beach, we arrived alive at the campsites outside the park. We pulled up the tent and managed to cobble some food together as various roars and bark and grunts sounded off very close to us.. The next morning we were tired but we had driven all that way to see some animals and animals we would see. Selous is especially renowned for its lions and we were excited after failing to see any at Kruger. We paid our $100, including a hefty charge for bringing in the car – they are not keen on self drivers in Selous and the people in the office were certainly more interested in the high end tourists flying in than us and our tatty rust bucket.

We tirelessly looked for lions but to no avail. Although disappointed, after lunch we got some perspective and were grateful for the huge hippos and crocs and the very aggressive herd of forest elephants that came with touching distance of the car. We drove on and coming close to one of the lakes that are supposedly popular with the lions, the car stalled. Jackie tuned the ignition over but it didn’t start. “Try again!” I demanded and then, of course, got out of the car (not wise) and tried myself. No, she wasn’t mistaken. The starter was buggered.

Was it the electrics? Had we gone over one bump too many? We tried everything; changed the battery, fiddled with the ignition, tried to push it in the soft mud of the lakeside. After half an hour a safari company vehicle came by and eventually asked us if we had a problem. “Us? With both of us out of the car, batteries on the floor and the bonnet up? Why do you ask?”

He promised to tell the snooty glamour girls on the gate when he got there in about three hours and then left. Cheers Mate. We waited and the animals came closer and closer, the same aggressive elephant heard stomping towards the lake. It got to half five and we were starting to panic. What else could we do? If someone does come, would they find us? And just then, another Safari company arrived and after a brief discussion, I fished out our rope and they pulled us out of the mud and straight into second gear and revs!!!!

The next morning, another friendly guy at our campsite pulled us start and I kept the car running out of the park, up the 4×4 track, onto the equally terrible road to Dar es Salaam and to the land Rover dealer CMC Motors. The English speaking guys at the garage helped us immediately and deduced that the relay for the starter solenoid was blown. “Great,” I asked. “Do you have one? I have money.” “Um,” he started. “It is a very old model. We would have to order it in.” “I have relays,” I protested. Maybe they will work. They circuits look the same.” “No they are black. The one you need is a Siemens and its yellow.” “Okay….”

There was nothing for it; we would have to find some back street genius to cobble together a solution. Defeated but after the Land Rover mechanics had showed us how to hotwire the car with a screw driver (something which Jackie is now extremely proficient at) we left to find a hotel. The next morning I found my genius around the back of the hotels and he fixed it with one of my spare relays! All for £18. Now, just need to get that speedometer fixed before I get another speeding ticket..

Photo
Broken down in the Selous Reserve

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July 29, 2007 jackie @ 7:31 am

Race to the Border
25 days into our 30 day visa for Mozambique and we realised we were 4 days from the border and didn’t know if the ferry across the river would be running when we got there. Shit.

Next morning, we packed up and left the idyllic beach we were on, driving without really having done any route planning. Looking quickly at the map, I decided it would be a good idea to try and go straight up the coast - a more direct route, right?! As we drove though the villages with madly waving children and rapidly deteriorating dirt roads we got the distinct impression that not many cars, let alone many wazungu (white people) came this way. We had pledged to pick people up on more the remote roads without public transport and so when a young man stuck his hand out I got Chris to stop. We couldn’t understand where he wanted to go but when we said our destination (Tanzanian border/town right next to border) he nodded and smiled. In broken Portuguese we told him to shout when he wanted to get off.

And we drove and drove. I turned round occasionally and asked him ‘here?’ or commented ‘this is a long way to walk’ as Chris negotiated more ruts than Richmond Park stags see in a season (sorry about that…). But still he said ‘further, further’. Then finally we reached a village where we could see no road out and we asked him, ‘which way?’. He looked at us blankly. After a while we decided to ask one of the many locals now surrounding our car but they all looked blankly at us. Eventually the boy in the back told us to go back and follow a track off that we hadn’t even noticed coming through. Thank God, we thought, for a moment it looked like we were going to have to backtrack for 2 hours on the worst roads we’ve seen yet…

About 5 minutes on we met a park ranger. The guy in the back told us to stop and they spoke rapidly and quickly in some language we didn’t know. Then our friend told us that there was no way across the river up ahead and that we would have to backtrack for 2 hours…etc…etc…

And so we dropped this guy 2 villages (barely 30 minutes) on from where we had picked him up, 3 hours after we had let him into the car. As an Isreali we met once commented: Africans are ‘event orientated’, rather than ‘destination orientated’.

We still made it to the border town, and got up early the next morning to hit the border and try and cross the river. The roads were shocking and it took longer than we thought to drive but the border itself was tiny and quick to negotiate. We asked about the ferry but the guards just said there would be one, ‘maybe later, maybe tomorrrow’ and offered very little more information so, passposts stamped out of Mozambique, we headed to the river. Several boys circled as we drove up and eventually one, in a flowery shirt and with good English, came forward and told us that we would need to pay them to take us over in a motorboat to tell the ferry captain we were here and needed picking up. We were dubious and searched out a man in uniform (customs?) to ask again. He said there may be a boat at 4pm which we knew was unlikely as high tide was at 7am and 7pm. We drove into some shade and waited, and waited. All the time the boys came and chipped away at our confidence, asking us again and again if we wanted a boat. We drove down the river a bit further and tried to see the ferry, Chris on top of the car with the binoculars out. Some more boys came and offered to take us across the river for 50 USD so we laughed and went back. Eventually one of the locals cracked and said he had seen a car on the other side and that the boat would be coming in the morning.

That night we camped at the border post, between immigration and the village made by the staff families. Our rooftop tent was a major source of amusement (until something else turned up and the kids all ran off to look at that) and the night-guard kept finding more things to come back and ask us for - cigarettes, food, drink - but hit a poor vein with us. The ‘toilet’ was a patch of ground that had been cordoned off by a bamboo fence and I had to negotiate 5 men around a fire to get there in the night. These things make you think twice about drinking anything in the evening. Before dawn we packed up and drove to the river and were soon joined by 2 more cars and the boy in the flowery shirt trying to sell us Tanzanian currency at a shocking rate (you have to give it to him for trying and he did laugh when I took the piss out of him). We brewed some coffee and some Canadian missionaries gave us raisin bread from the back of their car. Surreal. Chris did a great job getting the car down the steep muddy bank onto the ferry and we enjoyed a beautiful crossing, with hippos and herons in the water around us (and probably crocs but we didn’t see these thank god).

By the time we reached the nearest town in Tanzania we were exhausted but pleased with ourselves for having made it in the end. Made even more the sweeter when we later met some South Africans who had also had to sleep at the border post and been charged a fortune for the privilege. There are benefits to playing the nice but bumbling Brit! Waiting for the ferry into Tanzania The ferry arrives



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July 29, 2007 chris @ 7:26 am

Food
We have done our level best to buy fresh produce where ever we have driven. Markets and roadside stalls litter the roadside and they sometimes shout as you drive past at 100kms per hour. They’re good value and besides, it’s good to get out of the car and argue the toss over a few tomatoes and onions. I think. No. You need to mix with the people a little. You can become very cocooned in your Land Rover day after day and besides, we might as well be driving at home.

We have bought all manner of fruit and veg from roadside stalls as well as fresh fish and king prawns from fishermen who haven’t had chance to get off the beach yet. Coastal Mozambique is the place for that. However, despite being the Chile of Africa (so very thin!), Mozambique does have an interior and the produce for sale there is a departure from the fresh fish mongery on the coast.

After we got across the Zambezi (a 6 hour delayed ferry and a story in itself), the packaged goods of the modern world vanished and suddenly raw produce was on offer. Many a boy stood in the middle of the road with a handful of peanuts or a bizarre collections of fruits; almost juggled as they dodged our path, caring not if I have to pick bits of them from the radiator along with the moths and gigantic beatles. One stretch of the road did a great line in live chickens. One place, three men stood holding four chickens each. They stretched across both sides of the road and at first we thought it was a hijacking until we heard all the clucking.

The offerings got bloodier the further north we drove until the penultimate day in Mozambique. At the side of the road, a boy of 8 years, I would guess, reached into a red plastic bucket and pulled out a whole spine from the bloody soup in the bucket. It splattered up his arms and onto his face. I felt we had done enough communing with the locals.



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July 15, 2007 chris @ 10:08 am

Death of the BBQ tongs
After the sleepy old town of Ilha do Mozambique, we needed a beach place with a good bar/restaurant, snorkeling and diving and Fim do Mundo was just what the doctor ordered. We arrived at 4pm and began to set up camp. However, the prospects of beer at the sundowner bar immediately sank beneath the sea.

That morning we had noticed that the car was making funny noises and littered across the cab were little pieces of black plastic. Even when we started the car and the cold air blower didn’t work, we didn’t make the connection. When we made camp that afternoon, I heard the noises again, this time from the tailgate and when we opened the door, the corner seal of the tailgate was laying in pieces. We heard the scratch again. We considered ourselves infested.

Our first concern was the spare wheel, which is stored against the wall of the tailgate. We pulled out all the storage boxes and the rucksacks and taking our high pressure water hose, we tried to flush out the little buggers by aiming through the holes in the wheel. Nothing.

Then the scratches again. Okay, let’s get that wheel off. I unscrewed the wheel from the wall and there, inside the bracket was a very frightened rodent. The bracket is about 30cms long and although 5cms wide at the top it tapers to about 1cm at the bottom. The thing had trapped itself. Its tail was flicking about at the top and at the bottom; fierce, relentless teeth gnawed at the metal. What to do? If we left it to die it would stink the place out but how to get it out without having to immediately go down to the hospital for rabies jabs. We needed to pull it out but we just stood there watching it struggle. Just then, Sara the hostel/campsite owner walked by with one of her cats. “Hello, we have a rat in our car,” we say. “Oh, my cat is an excellent ratter,” she says, matter of factly.

We looked over at the scrawny cat which began to throw up a great pile of pink mess. “Oh, that’s just some bad prawns she ate. She’ll get your rat” and she picked up the poor animal and pushed its nose at the rat. Unsurprisingly, it was uninterested and left. “Okay. We better get it out,” she said and pulled at the wiry tip of the tail. It came off in her hand. “You need to push it. Get those tongs.” I picked up my precious BBQ tongs and pushed from below. Sara pulled some of the tail free and I grabbed hold of it too. We heaved it free and as its head came out I grabbed it with the tongs and threw it away. “I think it was a girl,” Sara said. “Better make sure that she hasn’t left all her babies somewhere.” What?

We decided not to cook that night and took our unhygienic selves up to the restaurant. The BBQ tongs went in the bin.



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June 25, 2007 chris @ 4:28 pm

The Vehicle arrives!
We picked the car up in Port Elizabeth from a shipping agent called Errol Meyer at M&H Freight. Errol was so friendly and helpful compared with the monkey in Tilbury, who would forget whole conversations from the previous day, including ones via email.

We pitched up at Jikeleza Lodge in the Centraal area of the city (don’t walk around here man, you’ll get killed,” the guy at the local 7Eleven informed us - suffice to say we never once saw or heard anything or felt in the slightest danger - what is it with some people making out they live in a tough neighborhood). Mike, the Marty Feldman of hostel managers barked that we weren’t supposed to arrive until the next day and that it was unfair that he should be inflicted with all the confusion arising from our early arrival. He took off his glasses, letting them dangle on the end of their strings, before pausing. “Who answered the phone when you called because you shouldn’t leave messages with Precious (Precious is a mans name, I kid you not). He wouldn’t understand where to enter you into the book,” he explained, some days he’s okay but sometimes he goes a bit black.”

We met Errol Meyer on what seemed like a day off for him but he was chirpy as could be (good money for him, I think). He told us a hundred horror stories about cars smashed to pieces inside containers or ships going down but smiled in that South African way so you just let them off, despite the constant casual racism. When the container was opened, our stomachs started to churn and despite one of the straps coming loose, the car remained together and functioning perfectly. We suffered a customs officer who had not checked a container before, let alone a car in a container and so we had to remove everything from the car for inspection. It took about an hour and a half and then we drove out of the depot cheering like idiots.

The Jikeleza lodge was not the secure place we needed for our first nervous night so we looked for a campsite. It was cup final day (Glorious Chelsea) and we parked up at a nice site near the sea so we could sort out all of our gear before heading north. Up until that day the sun was shining and the air warm but as soon as we put the tent up on top of the car (its totally great - who would have guessed!) the heavens opened and the long predicted South African winter finally started. It rained so much that when we foolishly closed the tent (oh how you learn) it immediately filled with water and when we opened it the next day, in the ten minutes it wasn’t raining, all of our duvet, sheet and mattress all soaked. It rained for another week so the bedding stayed in black bags and we slept on top of a tarpaulin on top of the soggy mattress.

Never mind. Now we are old hands and the camping is comfortable and the sites beautiful. We are on our way.



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June 25, 2007 jackie @ 4:14 pm

So many Bigots!
It all started so well. The South Africans we met were friendly and helpful to the point of embarrassment, the TV celebrated Reconciliation Day with programmes celebrating the Rainbow Nation and in Cape Town we saw black, coloured and asian culture in the bars and restaurants. But slowly the old viewpoints started to be voiced and we became more aware of things going on around us.

It started [shamefully] with an ex Nurse from Sheffield. She had moved here 27 years ago with her engineer husband who had needed to come “because the blacks can’t do maths”. Now her husband had left her and she was left in a country where “the whites are paying for five white advisors for each black government official because they don’t know what they are doing”. Ho hum, she had problems of her own I figured [she seemed very bitter about the young lady her husband was now with…]. I just wished I knew the facts from an article I read a couple of days later about the Apartheid policy not to teach maths or sciences to blacks because they didn’t need to know it for the jobs they needed to do.

Then came the ex Tin Hat man [another ex Brit, from Barnstaple way]. He’d been in Rhodesia as a policeman then come here when he got kicked out and was convinced this country was doomed becuase it had fallen under black leadership. And slowly the comments chipped away at our positivity about the country…the shopkeeper in Port Elizabeth who told us the area had become very “black” and therefore we risked being murdered by walking around there, the hostel owner who told us his helper was normally OK but that some days they just “acted a bit black”, and the many white business owners we saw talking to [read: shouting at] their black staff in more contemptuous tones then they spoke to their precious dogs. And so by the time we left South Africa we were ready to leave these comments behind us, made especially uncomfortable because they were offered with no preamble, no encouragement and simply expected to be reciprocated because we are white.

Unfortunately Mozambique, according to many South Africans, is simply a beach resort of South Africa. In the holidays they come in their droves to the lodges being built and run everywhere by their contemporaries, stay in these enclaves and use the Mozambique boys as ’servants’ for a pitiful daily amount [many of the accommodations organise this]. And so we saw cocknose boys on the border, drinking booze as they went through at 10 in the morning and pushing past the black hordes to the front of the queue. I even had the pleasure of one of them winking at me as I stood midpoint in the queue and saying “this is bullshit man, push to the front” then, with a teeth click and a gun trigger motion of the hand he was off.

And a South African in our first campsite who told us the country was in a shambles because “the blacks can’t organise anything” - cheerfully ignoring the fact that there has been a 16 year civil war and numerous freak weather conditions to deal with. So we were pleased to meet a white Mozambican who had stayed in Maputo [the capital] during the war and had now set up a resort intent on rebuilding things slowly and without South African money. Then a South African who had been here 6 years and was working in a similar way, mostly with the aim of not having to go back to South Africa…. Unfortunately this last guy, Dennis, had his sister in law staying, who proved to be the piece de resistance of the lot. Eva Braun [sic] had been appalled by her first visit to Mozambique and told us that “these people live the way they lived 100 years ago, except with cell phones”. No amount of us explaining that this may be due to other factors than skin colour [and in fact wasn’t a bad thing in itself anyway] could convince her, “all countries with dark people are a mess”. When Dennis dared to explain that the bombs South Africa had dropped during the war might not have been welcome she actually left the dinner table.

Of course not all South Africans talk and feel this way but we’ve been amazed at how many launch into a “blacks are useless\stupid\lazy” conversation as their first topic of conversation and with no provocation other than the colour of our skin. And it’s easy for us to be liberal when we haven’t got fractious neighbours like Zimbabwe, or had the recent violent history of South Africa with the very real risk of the whites being forcibly expelled. But there is so much that is positive about the way the power shift changed in South Africa, compared to virtually all the other ex Colonies, that you can only hope that the white South Africans see it that way too soon and get on with moving forward positively.

There’s a lot of positive talk about the World Cup coming here in 2010 so hopefully that will be a catalyst.