Safe Haven in Arusha

I met Father Dan and Father Bill in Beagle Bay, a remote Aboriginal community in Australia. When I emailed them that we were in Tanzania, Father Dan replied that we must go to St Theresa's Catholic Church in Arusha. He had already sent a text to his sisters there that we were coming.

Sister Mao greeted us warmly when we first arrived in Arusha a week ago. When Nate and I left for our week long journey in the bush, she sent us off with plenty of juice, water, and various snacks.

We came back to Arusha with heads hanging low from exhaustion, physical and mental fatigue. And we showed up to the church with a sick Quinn. The nuns welcomed us back, and were so happy to see we were safe. They gave us big teddy bear hugs that felt the world to us. There was nothing like coming back to a place where we knew we were safe and looked after by such a loving family. We were gifted with the comfort of love and a home away from home.

Indeed everyone at the church has become like a family to us. Meeting, talking, and eating with the nuns and priests have been keeping us entertained. Nate is Yesu (because he looks like Jesus with his beard), Quinn is Kwinini (because he has malaria and is taking Quinine-Kwinini in Swahili), and I am Rafiki (because I was the friend of Father Dan).

Sorry for the delayed news from the other trio...Nate, Quinn, and I. Nate is updating better than me, so check out his blog: matembezi.blogspot.com

We had similar troubles in the rain in Malawi, like Karen and Orian. So much rain that the three of us got pretty sick as we crossed into Tanzania, plagued with puking, nausea, disorientation, etc. But we were so lucky to meet with Quinn's family who brought all sorts of goodies from home. How we missed feeling safe and at home again! Many many thanks to Los Baumbergers...

Coming into Tanzania, on top of being sick, we encountered other stressful headaches that have challenged us. At the Tanzania border, we had to pay 100 USD for our visas. But since we were coming from Malawi, we only had Malawi Kwacha. The border officer wouldn't accept Malawi Kwacha, only USD. We tried to explain that we didn't carry USD around, but he said that we would have to change into Tanzania shillings and then go back into USD. As the three of us were discussing what to do, one of those sketchy moneychanging sleezeballs comes up to us and says, 'the officer says you need some money changed? we give you good rate'. Unbelievable! The border officials are working together with those sketchy sleezeballs! And this is happening all in front of a huge sign saying 'Money changing at the border is STRICTLY prohibited!'

Nate and I took a 7 day trip into the bush while Quinn spent time with his family on a safari. We had yet new surprises...but running out of time.

-MinWah

Dar es Salaam

We made it to Dar and will be here until Thursday, April 23rd or 24th, waiting for some Egyptian visas and some clothes I got tailored from some chitenge (brightly colored material used as a sarong or for tailored clothes). Then we are going to take a ferry to Zanzibar and Pemba Island and from there back to the mainland to avoid having to bike out of Dar and to see where some spices are grown and some Indian Ocean islands.

From the coast of mainland Tanzania, we will train and bike to Arusha, getting a glimpse of Mt. Kilimanjaro and then take the road north to Nairobi.

Tanzania has been quite a colorful experience. The main language here is Swahili, and is the first country we've been to that has a common language other than English, so more people speak very little or no English than in other countries, and almost everyone addresses us first in Swahili, and only very occasionally in English. We have a couple little phrasebooks and have learned how to purchase things like chai and chapati and to count, as well as have some minor exchanges of greetings. It is hard for us to converse beyond a very topical level in Swahili, but people here really appreciate the effort. We will say a few things beyond Jambo and Mzuri, the basic greetings, and out will pour a flood of Swahili and smiles directed at us, more than we can keep up with.

Tanzanians have been some of the friendliest people we have met so far, and we appreciate that the friendliness is not offered with an expectation of getting money or a gift as it was further south. In Malawi and south, excepting the Boers and all our hosts in S.A, whenever someone offered us assistance or friendliness, we were always a bit wary because sometimes people would offer help and then later ask us for something. Here, people occasionally still put out their hands as we go by, but no one who has hosted us has later asked for anything extra. This is distinct from someone performing a service for us, like showing us how to get somewhere...I am not being entirely clear on how these experiences are distinct, but that is the feeling we get.

Orian and I are still traveling alone. Quinn met up with his parents, went on safari with them, and contracted malaria, from which he is recovering in Arusha. Nate and Minwah took off on a loop down some dirt roads while Quinn was on his family excursion, and the three of them will meet in Arusha. I think the five of us will try to all meet up in Nairobi.

Tanzania has a much better variety of food. For breakfast we can get big, moist, homemade rolls, any number of fried doughnut-like pastries, or chapati and chai, always sweet, occasionally spiced, and occasionally with milk (chai ya maziwa). The maziwa is always fresh although has not been pasteurized. So Tanzania is the first place I've tried raw milk, which is definitely what the Lonely Planet health book advises against--unpasteurized milk! It is incredibly rich and always served boiling hot (so it may be boiled). One full cup of milk will last in my stomach all day. Lunch is sometimes chipsi mayai (or french fries (chips) with an egg) basically a french fry omelette. We've also been seeing more wali ya maharagwe (rice and beans). For breakfast, I've seen many people eating a chicken broth with small piece of meat, slice of lime, and chapati or other starchy thing. For dinner, people like to eat rice or ugali with meat and tomato sauce.

There has been much more of a presence of Islam here in Tanzania. Many of the towns we have been through have mosques and many women have their heads covered. Here there are often women on the streets in the full veil as well. Men will often have the little hat and occasionally the ankle-length robe...but not nearly as often as the women in head coverings and veils.

It is interesting to see that there seems to be much more of a diversity of cultures living together here in Tanzania. We still see the same second-hand western clothes and women with chitenge wrapped around their waists, but we are also seeing more women in western clothes and women in clothes with obvious Islamic influence. The most interesting style we've seen recently is that of the traditional shepherds, with cloth draped roguishly over their shoulders, white plastic sandals meant for girls, beaded arm and ankle bracelets, and earlobes stretched and occasionally plugged. The cloth garment is held together by a leather belt that goes over the ensemble (basically your typical men's leather belt but not being held in place by belt loops) and occasionally they wear basketball shorts underneath for modesty. The leather belt holds their most essential items---handmade short sword sheathed in leather, torch (flashlight), wooden club, and cell phone. A few had assorted other items like a washcloth or a comb. Seeing these shepherds in small villages playing pool alongside men dressed in western gear, the shepherds look far more distinguished and well kept. They are also usually very tall and very lanky.

We've been in Dar since Monday evening. There are many mosques near our hotel, and one in particular is very close, so we hear the muezzin call to prayer five times a day. Sometimes it adds an exotic flair to the place. Other times it is intriguing. This morning it started at 5a.m. and went on for literally an hour, the low, droning, metallic chant. I thought, 'this must be why we don't hear it in the states...they would get shut down for disturbing the peace!'

I haven't been taking nearly as many pictures as I would like, but I will make an effort to take more before leaving Dar. Sometimes I am self-conscious...I don't always feel comfortable taking a picture of the shepherds, for instance, just because they look cool. Sometimes I don't want to display this obvious sign of wealth (I have not been wearing my wristwatch since Livingstone, Zambia).

Two days before we arrived in Dar, we rode 50km through a National Park. The road was quite flat for the first time really since Malawi and we had a tailwind, although the day was very humid. The terrain was open savannah, low open scrubland. We saw many giraffes and we saw buffalo for the first time, a few elephants and some quite cheeky (literally and figuratively) baboons.

We haven't seen many mazungus in Dar es Salaam, but we met more mazungus on the road in Tanzania than any previous country on the trip, including Charlie, a cyclist who has spent the past 10 months cycling down from his base in the U.K. This man was quite outgoing and we chatted for quite awhile on the side of the road. He has been bike touring for the past 10 years, and has been on this road in Tanzania 3 times (!) as well as doing the Alaska-Argentina trip and some touring in Southeast Asia.

We've camped in some incredible places, my favorites being a pine forest plantation in the highlands, where we slept on a bed of pine needles so thick it was like being on a mattress and our tent was cozy and warm since the night was so chilly, and the other being the day we came down from the highlands into a humid hot yet arid area and slept in the vicinity of seven large baobab trees.

I also want to mention something about the traffic:
We had a couple of scares the two days before reaching Dar es Salaam. The drivers of the buses here are really inconsiderate and the roads were not very good (imagine a two lane country road without any shoulders and buses bigger than greyhound going 100km/her around twisty little corners) so pretty scary. Also, we've had a couple of close run-ins...one time I was stopped ahead of a bad traffic spot (steep and long mountain descent...two lanes...and three cars decided to pass a truck even though they could see me in the oncoming lane) and this local guy flew past me on a bike and the last car decided to go anyway and there was a collision. The car didn't even stop. I made sure the guy was okay but all his stuff flew down into a ravine and I was pretty shaken up--tired from the long, steep, windy road without a shoulder and very little or no barrier between the road and a steep slope, and the sickening crunch playing over and over in my head, so close. And two days ago we were going up a hill, not as steep, and this bus decided to pass an 18-wheeler with double trailer, but the trucker wasn't having it. Orian was riding in the back and riding out in the road a little ways to try to force the trucker to slow down but he got within 5 or 10 ft of the truck without the truck slowing down and narrowly got away. I was ahead and by the time they reached me the bus had passed the truck, and the line of three large vehicles (there was another truck past the first) came within a few inches of my panniers going like 80km/hr...Since then the traffic has been better but a bit wary to take the road into Dar.

We hear the traffic continues to be bad through Kenya, which is why we're considering taking some trains north.

Long-Overdue Update

Apologies to our faithful readers for not updating the blog sooner. The internet connection between Livingstone, Zambia, and Mbeya, Tanzania has been so painfully slow that it was practically impossible to update, even if we had been willing to spend the small fortune it would have cost in internet time.

A lot has happened since my last post, that I am not even sure where to start. We have witnessed the agressiveness of African killer bees and why they were given the nickname "killer", we have enjoyed eating with our hands the local dish nshima, we have crossed flooded waters on our bicycles and refused to give countless people money.

After leaving Livingstone, we got more of a taste of local food and how people eat. There is mainly subsistence farming in Zambia and Malawi, and people eat relatively well since the soil here is so productive. Everyone has a maize plot, and the popular food to eat is nshima, which is a very thick porridge made from maize flour, which is taken off in pieces and used to scoop up the "relish" (usually tomato sauce and spinach or rape or sometimes cabbage), similar to the way a chapati is used to scoop up daal or something.

As soon as getting into Zambia we were hit with rain. It rained at least part of the day almost every day we were in Livingstone. One day it rained particularly hard while we were in the market, and the access road to Gustave's farm was this clay-ey mud that was so hard to traverse. It I took off my shoes so they wouldn't be ruined but then had no traction, so I was slipping and sliding even as my bike became harder and harder to move...the mud just caked on until the diameter of the wheel and increased by 3 or 4 inches. I ended up dragging my bike the rest of the way home! Fortunately, it was only a quarter of a mile or so.

This rain plagued us through Malawi, sometimes giving respite for a week and then coming back with a vengeance. On the days it only rained at night, the days were often quite comfortable with an overcast sky blocking the sun's most intense rays. But the days that it rained it rained hard, until all of our stuff was wet and smelly, and there was no way to get it dry without the sun, since everyone here air dries...there is not an automatic dryer to be found anywhere.

The worst rain came the day we rode into Nkhota Kota in Malawi. Not only did it pour buckets, monsoon-style on us for twenty kilometers, but we slogged through several kilometers of roads flooded to our knees, almost losing our bags in the process!

Well, now we are in Tanzania and so far it is our favorite country. I would recommend tourism to Tanzania above Malawi or Zambia based on my own experience.

Running out of time, will try to post again later.

Past Nata

There are few villages in the 500km north of Francistown and only one in the 300km between Nata and Kazungula Ferry, the border crossing. Leaving Nata, the first road sign one sees, about 500m out of town, is a sign that warns about animals. Be particularly careful at night, it says.

We had been warned throughout Botswana of this area of road, and questioned about how we would deal with animals. "Do you have a gun?" was the standard question, followed by assertions that the road was riddled with elephants, lions, and buffalo. "15km out of town there are elephants," we were told.

The scenery in this part of Botwana had changed. The rest of the country up to here had been flat (or at least a constant uphill with maybe a single hill or so in one day), with grassland and shrubland, the small thorny shrubs. Just south of Nata we had seen some full grown trees, but at Nata, near the salt flats, we encountered palm trees and open grassland.

This stretch of road was very nice. There were several stretches with horrific potholes that had caused bent and broken axles and flats in several of the semis we saw...these stretches deterred most traffic from using this route and were navigable by bicycle and only lasted a few km before relatively smooth sailing. The road was narrow, two shoulder-less lanes, like a small county road in Wisconsin. The veldt was close on both sides of the road, and we were soon surrounded again by the shrub land of the veldt...though these shrubs were taller than the ones in southern Botswana and eventually began to grow into trees even further north.

I did worry a bit about the lions and hoped we wouldn't see any, but I was not too concerned all the same, as lions like to do their hunting at night, don't prefer humans (you don't hear too many stories about human-eating lions, especially with all the other tasty game out there), and probably don't hang around the roads much.

We were excited to see elephants, and elephants we indeed saw: elephants crossing the road, elephants eating branches, elephants making loud and weird and prehistoric noises. Our mid-Western raised boys compared the number of elephants we saw each of the three days we rode on this road to the number of whitetail deer they see in Wisconsin. We saw elephants, zebras, giraffes, and baboons. We even wandered off the road into the veldt at one point to try to get closer and take better pictures of a group of 11 giraffe, picking our way through the poky yellow grass and only sort of keeping an eye out for snakes.

Our first day riding a big strong tailwind picked us up and blew us 65 km in three hours. It rained on us and then left us, with a sun to dry us all off. It left us near a cell phone repeater tower, not far from the road, where we decided to spend the night...in an compound with a 2m tall fence with razorwire on the top. Fortunately for us the compound wasn't even locked, just closed with a little bit of twisted wire. And I definately slept better in that compound than I would have out of it, for on the short (~50m) access road to the gate of the compound, there in the fine sand, were a bunch of prints from a large cat, and soon after entering the compound we saw several large elephants next to the gate (you have to be careful at night in the bush as an elephant can walk right over you without thinking twice). The other nice thing about the compound was the ladder to the cellphone repeater tower. The ladder went all the way up to the top, which was ~200ft up from the ground. I didn't climb up, but the others did and had a fabulous view of the surrounding area and even climbed up early the next morning to experience the sunset from a bird's eye view.

Another tidbit to add: the land through Botswana was flat, especially north of Francistown. On the way to Francistown the road was flat but we were climbing. After Francistown and especially north of Nata the road was just flat, no rise, no fall. When we crossed into Zambia we began to see more trees with green foliage (instead of the thorn trees in Botswana) and more hills, but the land is still relatively flat and has been since Bloemfontein, South Africa).

Victoria Falls.

"You will get wet," Gustav was telling us. "It doesn't matter what you wear. I always laugh when I see the tourists wearing plastic bags and shit...you will get wet. I promise you."

Gustav decided to take us to the Falls. We piled into the back of his powder blue pickup (the backie, they call it here), and jostled around as we drove through the pot-hole ridden dirt roads to the main road. We followed the main road past the Spar strip mall, for about 8km. The parking lot for the Falls is small. There are about twenty or so permanent stalls for people to sell the wooden and painted trinkets and souvenirs that they sell in the ethnic sections of Pier 1, etc. These stalls seem cobbled together of temporary materials, as corrugated tin (or some soft, flimsy metal), scrawny poles, and thatch. The parking lot and visitor center is as you would expect from some small, out of the way tourist destination in the states, and though the traffic is probably a bit more brisk, it is not busy nor does it really feel crowded...most of the time, the only people we saw was ourselves, and then we would pass some locals, and then would be alone some more. At the end we ran into a large group of 25 tourists with the pastiest looking legs you ever saw, all covered with those plastic garbage bags.

There is a park entrance fee. The locals (any Zambian resident) pays ~2600 kwacha to enter the park, or about $0.50, and the foreigner pays $10. We forked over $50, using up the last of the money we had taken out of the ATM to pay this fee, and then walked through the little office onto a rough concrete path.

Immediately the path opens onto a view of the falls. The view happened upon us all of a sudden, an opening in the trees and there it was: a white torrent of water. It was very picturesque: there was enough water flow for the rush to be white and full, but low enough that we could still see the rocks pushing the river to this side or that in the fall. The fall is deep and the drop appears suddenly...one minute you are in a dripping rainforest and the next there is open air and a straight drop down, opening up an impassible space between you and the water.

We walked along the path, which follows the edge of the drop opposite the water fall. The first opening I took a couple pictures but after that I hid my camera in a ziploc bag because there was so much water I didn't trust my rainjacket to keep it dry and I definitely wasn't about to try to take a picture. Within a minute or two we were all completely soaked. My rainjacket helped some, but the water still creeped in around my wrists and through my hood. In the rainforest, the water came mostly down, but when we came to a clearing and looked over the falls, there was a mist everywhere. And the water wasn't all falling down...it was splashing up! From all directions!

The mist, the white mist that was not mild and gentle the way that a fog is, but blinding in the way that when you turn the hose onto the mist setting and spray it in your face is blinding. And the flow was a bit variable...sometimes you could peer in one direction and through the mist to the waterfall, the sound thundering around you the whole time, the next second the mist would change and would start coming into your eyes and you had to turn away. It was fun to follow the narrow, two person-wide concrete path. The path wound around through the rainforest (it is only rainforest right at the falls, where the mist feeds the plants that like it...the rest of the area is similar to other parts of the area in that there is a distinct wet season and dry season where the dry season is very dry), where the way was clear except for a bit of mist but mostly rain just dripping gently but persistently from the foliage above and a constant torrent covering the trail and running along your feet. Then a few more steps and there was a lookout, with the white and the gorge and the thunder. So much water and the fall was so wide (it is ~1km across).

There was so much power there, the kind of majesty that does not dull with modernity, where I felt myself to be inconsequential to stand its presence. Standing there, blinded beside the falls or dripping as I walked through the rainforest, it felt to me like the kind of place where unusual things could happen...it felt very alive, and separate from human invention. Magical, is how I think of it.

Livingstone

Here I am sitting in the internet cafe in Livingstone, Zambia. So much has happened since my last post that I am not sure where to begin as there are many stories crowding together, wanting to be told. I'll start with an update:

Orian flew out the other day to Boston. We dropped him off at the airport at around 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, October 4th, and his flight was scheduled to leave at 1 p.m. on that day. I received a call from him yesterday evening at 10:30 p.m. Zambian time (~3:30 p.m in Boston), saying that he had found our good friend Maria Luckyanova at her office and would be running errands.

Orian is in Boston for a final round of interviews for the Hertz Fellowship. I have heard that there are 50 applicants remaining and ~10 Fellowships will be given out. The Fellowship would be for Orian to pursue a degree and research at M.I.T. where he would like to study energy and transportation.

The four of us still in Africa--Minwah, Nate, Quinn, and myself--are staying with Gustav on his grandparents' farm. We call his grandparents Granny and Papa, and we often go over to their building where they sit all day chatting over tea and the paper at their table. Papa George started a crayfish farm in the area, and pioneered that type of aquaculture in this area, through correspondance with a professor at the University of Louisiana. The aquaculture and the rest of the farm are now in disrepair, as old age is preventing the Grubbs (Granny and Papa) from running the farm. They originally had 150 acres but in the past 7 years have sold all but 12 of those acres since they needed to money and were unable to farm them. Gustav has returned from England to help revive the farm and he hopes to focus primarily on aquaculture. He has been in Africa one month now (he grew up in the area but had been living in London-area for many years) and is getting a feel for the place and organizing the purchasing of supplies, such as a generator, and preparing to build larger pools and such.

The farm borders the Zambezi. We can see the tall trees that border the river from the building that Gustav has been sharing with us. He and Papa are always warning us away from the river, saying it is infested with crocodiles and hippos. "Don't mess with nature," he says. We have also been warned that the fields are infested with all types of poisonous snakes...black mambas and cobras and pythons. As such, I have not ventured beyond the area just around the house. If I leave Africa without ever seeing a snake of this type I will not be sorry.

We ride down dirt roads and walk (or ride) over a footbridge with loose planks towards the main road. Livingstone is almost all on a single road and the airport is smaller than the CWA (Central Wisconsin Airport) near Orian's house in Wisconsin. We go mostly to a little strip mall, seemingly geared towards tourists, for our grocery and internet needs. From the footbridge we can see quite far, as the topography, though somewhat hilly, is predominately flat. And when we stand there, looking over the tops of the trees, a few kilometres away a mist rises from the greenery, and this is the falls, Victoria Falls, which we visited with Gustav a few days ago.

One of the interesting things about Africa is that nothing is really very cheap here. South African prices have been the cheapest so far, with food being two to three times cheaper than in the States. But when we got to Botswana and especially since entering Zambia, we have been astonished to find the food prices only a bit less than what we pay for food in the states, especially because many people here in Zambia live on less than $1/day. Here, a dollar will only buy you some mealie meal (mealie is what they call their course, not very sweet, white corn) or some fat cakes (the deep-fried bread mentioned in a previous post). Moreover, the prices for manufactured goods is also steep. A sort of trivial example is that we went to look for a chess/checkers set the other day. Gustav found one for ~50 000 kwacha (about $10 U.S.). The set was the cheapest set of Chinese-made plastic I have seen in a long time and could not be sold in the U.S. for more than $2, but that is how things are here...there is not much, what there is is often of comparitively cheap quality and make, and the rest cannot be had for love nor money; if you want something really bad you would have to order it overseas and then pay for the expense of having it shipped to you by post.

Our diet consists mainly of rice, pasta, canned baked beans, and pulses (lentils and split peas) as things that you make yourself are still affordable, say about $1-3/kg. I am just amazed at how expensive things are here...a small box (say 250g) of cereal is about $3-4. Who is buying this stuff? Not locals, because if we can't afford to pay that, then they also can't. It is so weird. I cringe every time I go to the grocery store and it makes me feel so frustrated, thinking of how sparse the diet of the typical local is. Papa George and Gustav say it is because nothing is made here...all the processed food is imported from South Africa and much of the produce is. How do people live?