Southern Africa – Wandering Footsteps: Wandering the World One Step at a Time

Why You Should Never Trust a Zambian Road Map

Brittany — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 09:39:00 +0000

Maps should not be trusted. At least not in Africa. For though they may show you that a road exists in theory, they cannot account for its actual state.

We learned this the hard way.

We had based an entire month of travel plans on the existence of a single road, through Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park. Rather than re-trace our steps north through Malawi to return to Tanzania, we would head into Zambia, safari our little hearts out, and then drive north through the park on the supposed road to reach the national highway that runs from Lusaka into Tanzania.

View Full Size Travel Map at Travellerspoint

The map declared this trip easy. What our map didn’t divulge was that this cross-Luangwa road required fording three rivers. This was going to be easier said than done.

“The riverbeds are really steep,” explained a ranger at our lodge. “You won’t be able to get up the sandy river edge until a truck comes and flattens them out.”

“When will that happen?”

“Once the water level of the last river goes down. See, that river runs all year, so we have to make a sandbag bridge there. But with the water still running so strong, the sandbags just float away.”

Oh. Our map hadn’t prepared us for this reality. At least we had time on our side – a blessing of flexibility that this travel style brings. So we decided to wait for the water level to go down – patience had always served us well.

I’m good at waiting patiently, see?

“Have they sandbagged the river yet?,” we’d ask the rangers at the gate of the park each time we entered for safari. The answer was always no. Eventually we learned that the river generally gets sandbagged in June, and that this cross-Luangwa road was really only navigable a few short months of the year. It was only early May. We had time, but not that much time.

The only other option, it appeared, was to take a detour eastward, then north along the border of Malawi, up and over the mountains, and finally, west to meet the big highway just before the Tanzanian border.

View Full Size Travel Map at Travellerspoint

(The first and last point on the map would meet up directly if it weren’t for the rivers.)

This detour: an extra 900km.

That was what the map told us. What it didn’t – couldn’t – divulge was that this was a bad, bad road.

Bruno tried acquiring information on this road trip online, but it appeared that no one had tried to drive this way. Some had contemplated it, but fearing its inaccessibility, had made alternate plans.

We may not be the first tourists to attempt the Chipata – Lundazi – Isoka road, but we seem to be the first to write about it online. And what I can say, after a 4-day, 900km road trip with more than 400km of un-tarred road, is do not trust your map.

This is a normal road between Lundazi and Isoka. When the roads were REALLY bad, I was too busy
bracing myself to take a photo!

It was hard to focus on the sights that ambled bumpily past my window, for I was completely zoned-in on the road in front of me. I was as focused on the bumps, ripples, and ridges before us as if I were the one driving. But in fact, I was just trying to brace my body for the jolts, lest I get whip-lash or be thrown from my seat.

When I could look out at the windows, I mostly saw red dust. I know there were orchids and sunflowers and cotton flowers, but they had turned rust-red. The people who poked their heads out of the tall swaying grasses were dusted red, and the huts with patterns painted proudly along their bases were tinted red, too.

Rainy season had left its mark in this region. The road looked like undulating waves on a stormy sea. Except where the rain had simply swept the road away, so that we were driving on a strip of earth too narrow for the vehicle, with deep crevices on either end. In these moments, we were forced to set two tires into a crevice, and the vehicle would tilt precariously to one side. I’d inadvertently hold my breath and lean toward Bruno.

We drove over the fissures that the rainy season rivers had created on the road. We drove over the potholes left by the thick tires of stuck trucks. We drove over cemeteries of broken sticks thrown in disarray under tires to help vehicles climb out of the mud.

Notice the wooden sticks dispersed along the road.

But thankfully, we didn’t have to worry about mud. Not this time. That was, perhaps, the only saving grace of the trip.

We did, however, have to worry about accommodation. Because of the lack of tourism, there were no campsites between Chipata and Isoka, and no accommodation at all for the worst 400km stretch of road. Bush camping was going to be in order at least once.

Our first night, we lucked out, and got to camp in front of a real castle. The Lundazi Castle was built in 1949 on extensive grounds overlooking two rivers. It’s only the second castle I’ve seen in all of Africa, the first being in Namibia. For a few dollars, the manager let us spend the night in front of this national monument.

Camped in front of Lundazi Castle.

I was thankful to get a good night sleep at the castle, because the next day began the 400km dirt stretch of hell. We were averaging only 15-20 kmph, and the road was bouncing agonizingly slowly past. The road here was the outer boundary of Zambia so that, as we sat in the car, I was back in Malawi while Bruno was still in Zambia.

As the road passed into Malawi’s Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve, the tsetses came. At first, just a few here and there, and then so many that we had to shut the windows and bear the stifling afternoon heat without the faint but merciful outdoor breeze. Tsetse flies were stuck along the hood of the car and plastered on the windows. Worse, at least forty were trapped inside our cabin, so that we were constantly swatting our legs and necks.

This “flag” is loaded with chemicals. Tsetse flies are attracted to the color, fly to the flag, and die.
I can’t even imagine what this part of Vwaza Marsh would have been like WITHOUT these flags…

Tsetse fly bites hurt a lot, and their carapace is as strong as a knight’s armor. It’s almost impossible to kill them. When we opened the windows slightly to shoo them out, ten more would fly in. It was only by picking up speed whenever the road wasn’t horrendous (thereby out-running our pursuers), throwing open the windows, and swatting the imprisoned flies out that we eventually managed to have a tsetse-free cabin.

Needless to say, we breathed a sigh of relief that evening when we located a little uninhabited forest on the edge of the road a few kilometers outside of the little village of Muyombe. My first bush camp was about as good a location as we could have hoped for, but we slept fitfully, dreaming of the bumps we still had to face the following day.

Bush camping in a forest outside of Myombe village.

When the smooth tar appeared just before Isoka, it looked like a mirage. Driving at 80kmph felt like NASCAR race speed. The road felt almost too smooth.

I was finally able to look at something other than the road. But besides groups of school children, a few town shops, and a variety of goods for sale informally on the road (including black market diesel siphoned off of trucks and sold in jerry cans), there wasn’t much to see. Tar roads made everything seem less beautiful.

The black market for diesel… No filling stations for 200km.

My favorite roadside shop. “Muzungu” means “white person” or “foreigner”.
We get called “muzungu” on a daily basis.

Plus, there were so many transport trucks taking up three quarters of the road that our attention was once again diverted. We certainly didn’t want to end up flipped over on the side of the road like so many of them.

Trucks use branches from trees to signal to oncoming vehicles to merge into the next lane.

When we finally rolled into Kapishya Hot Springs Lodge at the end of our four-day detour, it was with sore bodies, scrambled brains, and indescribable fatigue. After tsetse flies, bush camping, 400km of the worst road I’ve ever seen, daredevil truck drivers, and a map that had led us very-much astray, we deserved a good soak in the springs, wouldn’t you say?

Warm natural hot springs, surrounded by lush forest, birds, and monkeys.

Tracking Lions in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park

Brittany — Sun, 01 Jun 2014 12:46:00 +0000

The deep growl resonated inside the cavity of my chest. It was unmistakable. A lion, and not far off.

We were camped on the edge of the Luangwa River, just outside Zambia’s most famous park, and we hadn’t been here long. The roar on the other side of the river confirmed that here, just maybe, we might spot that adult male lion I’ve been seeking since last year.

You’re in the right place, the roar seemed to say. Come and find us.

We intended to.

Our first morning inside the park revealed a much-beloved and much-missed setting, for we hadn’t been on proper safari in ten months. The open savannas displayed every variety of safari animal – warthogs standing on bent knees to graze, zebras staring suspiciously at our passing car, male impalas sword-fighting over coquettish females watching nearby.

Between the savannahs, low marshes attracted waterbuck, reedbuck, and sitatunga antelope. On pencil-thin legs stood herons, egrets, wild ducks, and crested cranes, and overhead soared fish eagles. Munching on marsh grass were hippos, in the exact style of Hungry Hippos, the American children’s game.

And in all this, the sounds of Africa – the low bullfrog croak of the buffalo, the coughed warnings of the antelope, the trumpeting of the elephants, the car horn laugh of the hippo, and the even cuckoo clock call of the dove, measuring the passing of time in this far-removed world.

Baby baboons and reedbuck.

Hungry hippos much on marsh grass while an egret perches on their sturdy backs.

Flock of African ducks flying over the marsh.

It was good to be back on safari. But we had a mission – to find me some lions. We pointed ourselves in the direction of the lion’s welcome-call, estimated its distance, and drew out a range on our map of the park. Here is when we would concentrate, we decided.

We strained our eyes. We gazed at endless landscape passing by. We braved heat and tsetse flies. And we drove up and down each dirt track in this lion territory. Still, we failed to spy any lions that day, male or female.

We did, however, spot our first of several lucky leopards in the park. I’d been so focused on lions I hadn’t even considered the possibility of seeing another feline, and this svelte female caught me utterly by surprise.

Alice the leopard enjoying this much-desired mud pit. (This was in between her charges to the warthog.)

Taking lunch while on safari. The Luangwa River is FULL of hippos.

It appeared that even when South Luangwa didn’t want to give me my longed-for lions, the park did have other surprises to offer.

This was a lesson I was to learn and re-learn over the course of the next few safari days. Once, as we were making our morning round in lion territory, I caught sight of what looked like a very large fox. As my brain caught up with my eyes, I understood what the large ears and big canine build actually was.

“Bruno! Wild dog!”

These black and red painted dogs were once so endangered on the African continent as to be near-impossible to spot. Because of fabulous conservation efforts in the last two decades, parks across Southern Africa are slowly being repopulated with these fascinating dogs.

I’d never expected to see one, though.

It was a brief spotting, however, and before Bruno could snap a proper photo, he was off, scampering into the bush. This most-successful of hunters (70% success rate!) appeared to be very camera-shy.

The only photo we could get of this camera-shy wild dog.

The park also gifted us several sightings of their endemic Thornicroft giraffes. This unique giraffe subspecies is found only in Zambia’s Luangwa valley, and is estimated at only eight-hundred. It seemed that a great proportion of them were in this park, and we were able to park ourselves for hours in the middle of large families of them.

We watched young giraffes nuzzle their mothers with their long necks, and tall, dark-spotted males court females with butt-sniffing, stalker tactics. We watched them gallop gracefully in the open savannah and tentatively bend their knees to drink from the river. And we observed the spots which make them unique, more jagged and leaf-like than their southern brothers.

Butt-sniffing as a way of wooing.

This position makes giraffes very vulnerable to predators and they take A LOT of care before bending down.

Our riverside campsite, too, had its fair share of animal surprises. Pods of hippos and solitary crocs stationed themselves on sand bars in the water. Monitor lizards – like the one our second leopard of the park had caught in his jaws – ambled around the grass. Troops of baboons launched themselves off our hammock. Vervet monkeys made daily visits to our gazebo, waiting for an opportunity to steal any unwatched scrap.

And best of all, elephants visited. They crossed the river in front of us, rummaged for tasty leaves behind the toilets, and silently crossed the campsite while we sat watching under our awning. These close-up encounters quickly put our elephant experience in Malawi’s Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve to shame.

Watching elephants pass through the campsite.

Baboon acrobatics on the campsite hammock!

Just one shot of the creatures in the river in front of our campsite.

Despite the gifts of wild dogs and leopards, endemic giraffes and campsite creatures, I couldn’t get my adult male lion off my mind. We hadn’t heard his call since that first evening, and hadn’t even so much as seen a footprint along any track. Searching for the lions was beginning to feel as improbable as searching for a needle in a haystack.

The morning of our penultimate safari, we awoke to lions roaring in the distance.

“This is it,” I thought to myself. We finally had a clue as to where to look. “Today, we’re going to find them.”

All morning, I was ultra-alert. When I scanned the landscape, I really looked at every detail. Every road we turned down, I’d get a feeling that the lions were right here.

But yet again, it was not to be. Our fourth safari day passed without spotting my thick-maned feline. Was this to remain my unattainable animal sighting? Was I asking for too much?

These questions plagued me as we passed the gate on our fifth and final safari day.

The sun rises as we drive over the bridge into the park for the last time.

“Any lion spottings?” I routinely asked the rangers while paying my fees.

“There,” one of the rangers pointed at a spot on the map, near the Big Baobab. “A pride of them was sat here all day yesterday.”

While it was difficult to hear that others had spotted an entire pride of lions – with three full-grown, big-maned males – when we’d been searching fruitlessly in another sector of the park, at least we had a clue with which to continue our search. With haste, we set off for the baobab, hoping the lions would still be in the vicinity.

I was filled with a sense of nostalgia all day. Each animal we passed could have been our last, both in Zambia and in Africa. This was to be our last national park on the continent.

And so, when we spotted our third leopard that week, perched on the perfect leopard-sleeping branch, I wanted to hold on to this moment forever.

The infamous Big Baobab bears only buffalo on this day.

Lazy leopard on the best napping branch. I’m proud of having been the one to spot him!

“There’s a pride of lions by the air strip,” divulged a safari driver parked next to us, as we watched the leopard sleep and wake and sleep again. “They’ve been there all day. They should still be…”

I glanced at Bruno. Here we were, sat watching his favorite African animal, yet offered the possibility of seeing the animal I’d come here to see. We could either sit here and continue watching the leopard sleep, and probably have time to watch him slip down the branch before the park closed, or we could race to a faraway section of the park in the hopes that the lions hadn’t yet moved.

When Bruno started the car, I knew what he was sacrificing for me.

“I just hope we can make it there before the park closes,” he said.

Morning chit-chat on a tall, safe branch.

“Move. Forward!”

We had thirty minutes, and the spot was several weaving, bouncy kilometers away. Bruno drove faster than I’ve ever seen him drive in a park, past a huge herd of elephants, another of giraffes, and another of zebras. All looked unusually beautiful tonight in the setting pink rays of the sun. But we raced onwards.

“This is hopeless,” I uttered. We were still so far, the minutes were ticking by, and the light was fast disappearing. Tears began to stream down my face at how close, yet how far, we were to fulfilling my wish.

The tracks in South Luangwa are not much more than bumpy dried mud, and are not fun to drive on!

Bruno sped up, turning left, then right, then right again. Up ahead, several cars were parked on the bank of a dried-up river. It was evident what they were all looking at – lions.

I tried using my binoculars, but it was in vain. It was too dark, and the pride had evidently begun to edge themselves into the bush on the other side of the river. I could see a few dark spots seated in the sand, but nothing that I could even faintly categorize as a lion.

“Let’s go,” I finally said to Bruno in defeat. I was never going to get a proper male lion sighting out of this situation.

Our motor roared to life and we drove off, leaving our last lion possibility in our dust.

“We can safari again tomorrow, if you want,” Bruno consoled.

“No,” I replied after a time. “I know when it’s time to surrender.”

And so I let myself surrender to the memories South Luangwa had offered us – the Thornicroft giraffes, the triple leopard sightings, the fleeting glimpse of the wild dog. I let myself surrender to the warm evening breeze and the sun setting over the river as we crossed the bridge out of the park for the last time. And I surrendered to the fact that I would see no big-maned male lions.

Not yet, anyway.

To read about my past safaris, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, or here.

Lucky With Leopards, Lucky With Life

Brittany — Sat, 24 May 2014 10:46:00 +0000

Leopard fur coats have always been pretty fashionable in Africa. Chiefs of villages and rulers of tribal kingdoms wore them during ceremonies and warfare. To have a leopard coat was the ultimate status symbol in Africa. The Lozi tribe of Zambia even has an ancient proverb on the matter:

“To wear a coat of leopard skin is to be lucky in all things.”

I’m just joking about the proverb. I made it up. But some African tribe somewhere might have had some such proverb, and if they didn’t, they should have.

Because to wear a leopard you have to spot a leopard. And to spot a leopard, you have to be pretty damn lucky.

Leopards are notoriously elusive and fearful of man (rightfully so considering their status symbol as a coat). Because they are stealthy, nocturnal, and solitary, they elude most tourists on safari. They even elude conservationists and rangers working day in and day out in the bush. I’ve met several such people who have spent decades in parks and spotted a mere handful. In Bruno’s four years of almost-constant safariing (from 2001-2004), he only spotted one leopard, and for a mere moment.

Without further ado, let’s bring out the leopards I’ve spotted in only fifteen months. Drumroll, please.

1. My first spotting, at uMkhuze Reserve in South Africa, was in March 2013. Bruno and I had spent a lone afternoon hidden in a wooden hide watching game drink at a water hole. I looked up from my book, and there he was, appeared as if from thin air. “Leopard”, I choked out, believing he was a mirage. Watching him drink slowly while periodically staring at us through the hide – especially knowing he could come inside the hide had he wanted to – was a safari experience unmatched by any since then.

2. Later that same month, we received a more “typical” leopard spotting, among several vehicles on the side of a main road in Kruger National Park, South Africa. When we approached the safari trucks – which, when clustered together, always signals a big game sighting – we had to ask neighbors what and where we were viewing, so far away was this leopard. Vying with the other vehicles for the best spot wasn’t the most romantic way to see a leopard, and I was even more grateful for my first leopard spotting.

3. A double dose of leopards, in the Lumo Community Wildlife Sanctuary in Kenya last July. Bruno’s niece – a safari virgin! – was the one to spot the big male lying on a rust red rock. After a few photos, he disappeared, and the couple of vehicles that had accumulated left. With patience, we stayed on and waited for over a half an hour. Suddenly, he reemerged from the bush, this time with an accompanying female! The two performed a mating dance around our car for over 30 minutes, and we were so close we could feel the vibration of their purring against the frame of the car.

4. Earlier this month, in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park, we watched this female leopard mock-charge a warthog, surrounded by barking baboons and curious reedbucks. Eventually she vacated the patch of mud the warthog so desired and sat in the shade for us to observe. Later we learned she had been nicknamed “Alice” by local game drivers and didn’t shy away from the limelight. That explained her atypical leopard behavior.

5. A mere five days after Alice, in the same park, Bruno spotted a big male resting in the shade by the Luangwa River. Upon closer inspection, we saw that he was carrying a monitor lizard – probably caught just before our arrival – in his jaws. Were it not so hot, this annoyed male would most certainly have charged us (we who had disturbed his feast!), but instead he eventually stood up and carried his meal to thicker bush.

6. On the final eve of our time in South Luangwa, I was joking that it would be funny if we spotted another leopard. I looked up into the trees, and there he was, on the perfect branch for an afternoon snooze. We crept up very close and watched him snooze and wake, snooze and wake, for almost an hour. This sleepy man was in no hurry to wander off hunting, and we eventually left to hunt lions (that’s a story for another time, however.)

I didn’t make this list to boast. Ok, I did, kind of (and to showcase Bruno’s fabulous photos). I mostly made it, though, to prove a point.

The point is this: To see seven leopards, most by ourselves, and all for incredible lengths of time, is incredible. It’s rare, really really rare. After our fourth sighting, Bruno and I got to joking around about how we were “lucky with leopards”. After spotting leopards thrice in a matter of days, we could no longer joke about it. We werelucky with leopards, and it had to mean something.

Bruno, unromantic that he is, started rationalizing that perhaps the leopard population in Africa had increased since he was here a decade ago. Or, he supposed, after several generations of leopards that were no longer hunted, perhaps the leopards had become less weary of humans. Perhaps it had been bred or taught right out of them.

I agree not.

The reality is that the luck we have with spotting leopards is a manifestation of the luck Bruno and I both have in life.

How else can we explain the luck it took for us to find one another, on that fateful afternoon in Mozambique, when the winds were beckoning Bruno onward to newer pastures?

Or how else can I explain the fact that we live in a camper van and travel the world, with more stories and photos to share on this blog than we can keep up with?How else can I explain that we are both living a dream and that we feel blessed every single morning when open our eyes and pop out of bed for a fruit-muesli breakfast, gazing at whatever garden we happen to be parked in front of?

Nope, Bruno’s theories about our luck with leopards are just.plain.wrong. Two years ago, almost to the day, we both put on leopard fur coats, and they became magic capes, for now we are lucky with life.

Memoir of a Malawian Village Woman

Brittany — Sun, 18 May 2014 18:29:00 +0000

I grew up on this hill. I’ve always known this crisp breeze and these fields of bright flowers, and I’ve always looked up to those green knolls over yonder. Always looked, and wondered what was beyond them.

I was a naughty child. I remember racing down into the maize fields with my friends, singing church songs and playing hide and seek among the carefully-laid heaps of dried maize leaves. Other days we would find our younger brothers, tending the flocks of goats, and run amok, causing the goats to scatter in fear and confusion. During the rains, I would wander up the path carved into the patches of yellow flowers and scatter their petals until the dusty track turned the color of bright sunshine.

Sometimes, though, I would pick a bouquet of pink flowers with petals like tongues and offer it to my mother.

Mamma worked hard. All day, she labored in the fields, tending to the life-giving maize. It was that crop we ate most regularly, and traded on market day for other essentials, like soya and cassava. It was my mother’s job to bring the heavy sack of maize, carefully dried in the sun, to be weighed on a scale in town for trade. It was her job, too, to carry back the new sack, carefully balanced atop her head.

Father didn’t help much. It was my older brother, Thomas, who burned the firewood into charcoal for sale on the roadside and rode the family bicycle into town to pick up sugar or oil, without which father wouldn’t have had his morning tea or his evening meal. He even built the maize shed, weaving the dried stalks of twine I’d been ordered to collect into a circular vessel for storing our picked cobs. Mamma loved Thomas best.

Father mostly sat on the red-glazed porch or under the shade of a mango tree, awaiting his meals. Sometimes, he and his friends played bao,wagering the very kernels of corn mamma worked so hard to grow. Other times they drank local beer, brewed once again by mamma, out of maize meal.

I would have loved to sit with father, to watch him play bao or to hear his tales of the good old days. But every time I approached, he chastised me about my laziness, never seeing the irony in his accusations. But father was always right, and I would rush off to fetch water from the well or to pound the cassava into a fine white powder before he could catch and beat me.

The forest on the top of the hill was my favorite place of all. My sisters and I were often sent there to pick firewood. We learnt to bundle them up and balance them on our heads, winding a piece of fabric around itself in a circular shape to soften the weight of the wood on our heads. Inside the forest, as we collected our wood, we played games – climbing trees rung with vines, weaving long, stringy plants into golden-haired wigs, and pretending we were witches that cast green moss onto everything we touched. And at the edge of the forest, I could catch a glimpse of the valley beyond the hills.

Our house was small – only one room – but it was tended with care. It always smelled of wood fire and nsima, the maize-meal powder mamma pounded into porridge every day. Our walls weren’t made of red earthen bricks like some of our neighbors, but instead, dried cow dung and clay. I often helped to remake the floor and wall, mixing the dried dung with water and smoothing it onto the craggy surface. Every night, I curled up between my sister and mamma and dreamt warmly of hilltops and the possibilities that lay beyond them.

One day, soon after I’d developed mounds on my chest and been deemed by the tribe a woman, a family came to our hut to speak with father. I was sent to fetch water, but I knew what was going on at home. When I returned, the bargaining had been completed – I’d been offered as a wife to a boy I used to play hide-and-seek with in the maize fields. His family had offered mine a cow, several goats, and sacks of soya. My father was pleased. I was not.

The wrinkles have started to show on my weathered face, and still, I haven’t gotten to see what lies beyond those hills. I’m too busy tending my maize fields and trading in the market. I’m too busy brewing tea and pounding nsima and smoothing the crags of my hut floor.

I’m too busy teaching my daughters to be like me.

Occasionally I catch Charity, my eldest, staring off at those hills. She tells me it’s Lilongwe, a city with almost one million people. With cars a-plenty, and televisions everywhere, and one-stop shopping malls. She has friends there, with whom she chats ceaselessly on her mobile phone. The friends keep asking when she, too, will move to the big city and begin her “real life”. I need to marry her off quick.

The other children cause me no less stress. The little ones spend more time sitting along the road, watching the cars go by, than playing in the fields, as we did. They wait for the white asungo to go past, and then they chase them for sweets or pens or coins. And my older boys spend their time loitering outside the town shops and bars, listening to blaring hip-hop music and smoking rolled-up tobacco leaves.

Truth be told, I don’t stare at those hills as much as I used to. They don’t look as fresh and green and full of promise as they did so many years ago. Apparently, they’ve turned the forest at the peak into some sort of government reserve, called Ntchisi. It hasn’t seemed to stop the trees from disappearing, and the hills are dotted more and more with brown every day.

No, my life is here. In these crisp-breezed, wild-flowered hills. Amid my maize and goats and cow-dung hut. With my family, my tribe, my ancestors. I was born here, and it is God’s will that I will end my tired days here too.

This story is fiction, though its setting is real. The account is centered around photos taken in the hilltop villages around Ntchisi Forest Reserve, and the information woven into the tale is based on things I know about Malawian life specifically, and African life generally.

For non-fiction stories on Malawi, click here.

All Things Nkhotakota: A Malawian Lesson in Disappointment and Expectation

Brittany — Mon, 12 May 2014 11:14:00 +0000

It’s time I’m honest with you: travel isn’t always wonderful. Sometimes, it’s not amazing or awe-inspiring or any of the other synonyms listed in my thesaurus. Travel writers (myself included) are really good at making even mundane experiences seem legendary, but the truth is that sometimes traveling is just plain ok.

Rather than mislead you – as our guide book misled us – into thinking the Nkhotakota region of Malawi is a place of great natural beauty, friendly people, and historical significance, I’ve decided to be straight up with you. All things Nkhotakota disappointed us, save one.

Disappointment #1: Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve

We arrived here with visions of lions dancing in our heads, for our Bradt guide had told us this was the last stronghold of lions in Malawi.

It wasn’t true, the lodge manager gently revealed. Though this reserve did boast the only permanent lion population in Malawi, that number was nowhere near the forty or fifty we’d come expecting. It was more around four or five.

“This park just can’t support more than a few lions. There’s nothing for them to eat,” he continued. It was true we hadn’t so much as seen a rustle in the bushes on our game drive, let alone an actual living ungulate. I suspected that was, yet again, because of the unchecked bush-meat trade in Malawi.

Sometimes an old male lion would be spotted as far as Mzuzu, 150km north of the reserve. It was likely kicked out of the pride, a burden on the group in a territory with such limited food supply. The male lion would pick off a goat here and there on his journey north for survival. But outside the reserve, things never ended well for him.

Crossing the bridge over the Bua River.

The reception of Bua River Lodge at Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve.

With no lions – or game of any kind – to see, Nkotakota Wildlife Reserve was proving to be not much more than a really expensive campsite. The view of the nearby Bua River was obscured by thick bush, and was devoid of even the possibility of crocodiles, hippos, and elephants. What there were a lot of, however, were tiny flies that hovered mercilessly around my face and stuck to my eyelashes.

It was easy for us to decide to hit the road the following morning.

Disappointment #2: Nkhotakota Locals

We had taken the north road into the reserve and had enjoyed the picturesque views of villages and hills. Now, heading towards Nkhotakota town, we tried the southern track.

We were evidently not the first tourists to drive this way.

Everywhere we turned, children hopped out from bushes and ran out from their huts to accost us with cries of “Pen! Pen!” and “Give the money!” They opened their palms out to us or rubbed their fingers together to indicate their desire for our gifts. So many kids were closing in on us from every direction that I felt like we were in a video game trying to get past hungry zombies. A few zombies – I mean, kids – hooked themselves onto the bicycle on the back of our vehicle. When Bruno managed to shake them loose, the bike’s frame was bent.

Here was yet another example of the negative effects of tourism and the so-called generosity of tourists.

We were still feeling on edge as we rolled into the town of Nkhotakota. But since I’d been following in the footsteps of Dr. David Livingstone throughout Malawi, I wanted to stop here for another enlightening afternoon.

See, Nkhotakota was the port of the 19^th century where legendary slave trader Jumbe had shipped 20,000 blacks annually across the lake into Tanzania. Nkhotakota was also the location of the infamous 1861 meeting between Jumbe and Livingstone, when the latter tried to convince the former to end his slave trading ways. It didn’t work, but the fig tree under which their meeting occurred is still standing as a landmark to this event.

The fig tree under which Livingstone attempted to convince Jumbe to stop trading slaves.

There were another couple of notable sights in the town, such as the Bondo Mosque, a remnant of Jumbe’s Islamic Dynasty, and the Banda Tree, under which Malawi’s first black president held his notorious 1960 convention. I wanted to see these sights too, but our map wasn’t accurate and we ended up down a terrible dirt road that dead-ended in a field. It seemed there was a mosque beyond, so I got out to investigate on foot, but after being cat-called by a few local men and laughed at by the surrounding women, I gave up and hid in the car.

It seemed to me that the locals of Central Malawi weren’t quite as respectful as those of the north.

Disappointment #3: Nkhotakota Lakeshore

We headed for the beach south of town, yearning for another refreshingswim in Lake Malawi to wash away the disappointments of the last twenty-four hours.

Our exploratory walk around our stretch of lake seemed to indicate that that was not going to be possible.

The stretch of beach in front of Nkhotakota Safari Lodge.

Bilharzia is always top on the traveler’s mind when deciding whether or not to swim in Lake Malawi. We’d always asked around before hopping into the lake, and once, the manager of a certain lodge, had broken it down for us:

“First of all,” he started, “it’s unfortunate that everyone associates bilharzia with Lake Malawi, and I blame the BBC.” According to him, some years back, the BBC had made a documentary on Lake Malawi, and for 55 minutes of the hour, it had shown the beauty and history of the lake in positive light. But just before the end, the camera scanned to the lake before zooming in on the reporter, who declared dramatically: “Unfortunately, this lake is unswimmable because of the horrendous bilharzia disease!”

Apparently, that had ruined Lake Malawi’s reputation.

“Bilharzia needs four things in order to be present: snails, cows, habitation, and stagnant water,” the lodge manager finished, satisfied that he had made his point. He had. At no time had we ever seen these four factors present at once on the lake. We swam worry-free in the lake thereafter.

But as we walked along Nkhotakota’s lakeshore, our worries returned. First, we spotted the cows, grazing along the beach. Then, we spotted the pools of stagnant water, separated only by a thin, impermanent wall of sand. Lastly, at the next bay we spotted the village, complete with a dirty beachside fish market, informal laundromat on the sand, and communal toilet in the water.

The fish market of the nearby village.

Clothes being laid out to dry in between our lodge and the village.

If ever there was to be bilharzia in Lake Malawi, it would be here. I looked at the deep blue water of the lake and the local children wading at its edge and knew I wasn’t going to risk it. There’d be no swimming for us in Nkhotakota. The mounting disappointments weren’t going to be washed away.

Forgetting Disappointment: Nkhotakota Pottery

I’d read in the guidebook that Nkhotakota was famous for its pottery, and that tourists could learn to be amateur potters here. No longer trusting my book, I expected this to be an expensive tourist trap that I wouldn’t get to participate in.

Ceramic pots for sale at the Nkhotakota Pottery and Lodge.

Inquiring into pottery lessons.

I was wrong! For only $4 an hour, I could take private pottery lessons! And for another $4, I could paint a ready-made mug, glaze and fire it, and take it home!

I took advantage of both offers. That first afternoon, I painted leopard print onto a mug. I laughed at myself as my poor painting skills manifested themselves on clay, but I had fun. The next morning, Bruno and I both [re]learned how to use a pottery wheel, and we played with gooey clay like two happy children.

Choosing the color scheme for my leopard-print mug.

Painting [poorly].

Learning how to lift up my clay.

“Ta-da! My clay is centered! I’m so good at pottery.”

It seemed we had painted and potted our Nkhotakota disappointment away. With lighter spirits, we took another walk along the dirty beach, this time admiring the village scenes as we had when we’d first spotted Lake Malawi. We even made friends with a few naked village boys who’d come to beg money and pens from us.

Posing for photos and teaching the thumbs-up sign distracts little kids from begging for pens and spare change!

Village life at the edge of Lake Malawi.

Sat waiting on our camping table, upon our return, was a small item wrapped in newspaper and plastic. Surely, it was the leopard-print mug I’d so poorly painted. Expecting nothing, I slowly unwrapped the packaging. Somehow, the shine of the glaze and the heat of the fire had transformed the colors and pattern of the mug into something that looked, well, decent.

Blushing, I offered the gift to Bruno. That part had been planned. What hadn’t been planned was that the mug would be more than just a gift. It would be a symbol, too. A symbol of a lesson we had re-learned here in the region of Nkhotakota – that one about expectation leading to disappointment, and the pleasant surprises that arise when you don’t expect them.

The mug didn’t change our perception of Nkhotakota. Traveling here had still just been ok. But at least now we had something to remind us that even when travel isn’t amazing, it’s still edifying.

Bruno trying out his new leopard-print mug for the first time.
The coffee tasted extra good….. growl!

Elusive Elephants Emerge

Brittany — Sun, 04 May 2014 05:26:00 +0000

The arc of this story might sound an awful like Spotting Kilimanjaro. But I swear it’s all true, that it really happened this way, again.

We were in Vwaza Marsh Wildlife Reserve in Northern Malawi, and we were there with a purpose – to see safari animals again. Readers may recall from The Failed Safarithat nine months have gone by without us spotting so much as an elephant!

And in fact, it was elephants that were on our minds as we drove toward Vwaza. We knew we wouldn’t stand a chance here with lion, rhinos, or giraffes, but with a little bit of luck we hoped to see one of the two hundred elephants that roam between Zambia and Malawi’s open border.

The road to reach Vwaza, deep in the heart of the country, was fascinating. We drove past rolling escarpment hills, jagged red cliffs poking like adult teeth out of the greenery. Village huts and small farms peppered the roadside. The deep purple stormy sky colored everything dramatic.

As the terrain flattened, the banana trees were replaced by tobacco plants. At first I didn’t recognize them – they were taller than a man, yellow and dry, and with the bottom half of the stalk plucked bare. This didn’t look at all like the tobacco plant I’d passed daily on the farm in Zimbabwe.

“It is tobacco,” maintained Bruno, when I challenged him. “See? Look over there – the leaves are being dried.”

And sure enough, on both sides of the road were tobacco leaves, hung upside down, their green slowly drying into yellow into brown. Unlike the large-scale production on the farm in Zimbabwe, however, here in Malawi, individual families were producing tobacco. They dried it on the verandas of their homes and inside rudimentary open-air straw shacks. Then, they walked or cycled it to town in big bales and sold it to auctioneers who would bring it to Lilongwe for international sale.

Malawian tobacco – tall, yellow, and plucked from the bottom.

Tobacco leaves being dried under makeshift straw huts.

Malawi’s tobacco business – one of its principle industries – is powered, once again, by small-scale farmers.

We pulled into Lake Kazuni Safari Camp inside Vwaza, only $37 more broke, a sharp and relieving contrast to East Africa’s parks. And what a picturesque sight we had before us – Lake Kazuni, absolutely chalk-full of belching hippos! Without a barrier between us and the lake, we were able to walk straight up to the edge, close enough to see incomplete sets of grimy teeth on the boasting hippos.

This guy needs a dentist!

And that’s when we spotted them. Seven elephants, on the water’s edge, some forty meters away. Trotting toward us, the dominant male leading several females and young, their ears and trunks flapping side to side in perfect harmony.

“Quick, get the camera!,” I squealed to Bruno. He raced off, and I raced after him for the binoculars, desperate to see these elegant creatures close-up at last.

By the time Bruno and I returned to our lookout – a mere thirty seconds later – the elephants had disappeared.

“How could a group of such enormous beasts hide so efficiently,” I wondered, taken aback. And then, as disappointment set in, “Why did we have to rush off for our equipment? Why couldn’t we have stayed and just enjoyed the moment?”

“We’ve got a few days here, Britt. Don’t worry – they’ll show up again,” soothed Bruno, evidently reading my mind.

And so, we set in for the wait. We parked the Toyota, set up camp, and placed our table and chairs under the shade of a sausage tree, in perfect viewing position for the return of the elephants.

Our shade-giving lakeside sausage tree. Just watch out for falling sausages!

We waited, and watched. We didn’t even go for a game drive – after the rains, the bush was too thick, anyway. Besides, waiting had always been our safari strategy and patience had proven successful many times before.

Over the course of the afternoon, baboons, vervet monkeys, warthogs, and impala came to drink at Lake Kazuni. The hippos sunned themselves pink on a nearby island filled with birds. But the elephants never returned to the water.

The view from Kazuni Safari Camp!

Bird and hippo island.

This vervet monkey is sneakily eating something before his mates find out!

I turned my attention to the camp’s facilities. They were in massive need of some good ol’ TLC. We’d been given the keys to a chalet because the camp’s ablution block was no longer in working order. It seemed the chalet wasn’t far from that state, either. Barely a trickle of water came from the tap, the toilet –when it flushed – leaked sewage out the broken pipe outside, and the shower head was barren.

“The government has neglected this park for a long time,” admitted Godwin, the camp attendant. “We do the best we can with what we’ve got.” And with that Malawian look of resigned creativity, he went to fetch us a few buckets of water.

“Elephant! Elephant!,” shouted Bruno as I finished washing the dinner dishes in the water bucket reserved for toilet flushing.

I raced outside. And indeed, walking past us at the lake’s edge, was a young bull. The only problem was that the moon hadn’t risen yet and we could barely make out his silhouette darkness of the African night.

Surely Vwaza’s elephants were taunting us!

The next morning, we popped out of bed with the sun, confident today would be an elephant-filled day. It wasn’t. Well, not exactly. We did spot elephants, twice. But both times, the elephants were very far away, and they approached the water only briefly, visibly nervous.

“Truth be told, poaching is still a problem in Vwaza,” admitted a game ranger we stopped to chat with. Organized large-scale ivory poaching isn’t the problem. It’s the poaching being done by surrounding villagers, for bush meat, that’s making all our animals so nervous.”

Bush meat is more often antelope and warthog meat than elephant. But with the ever-increasing population in this densely-populated country – not to mention the dire poverty – villages encroach on protected land throughout Malawi. This affects all wild animals, whether or not they are the direct targets of bush meat poachers.

Was this the reason Vwaza’s elephants were making themselves so scarce?

By the third morning, I was admittedly frustrated with our lack of proper elephant success. The grey, cold and rainy skies seemed to mimic my mood.

We went for a little bush walk (technically illegal without a guide, but Bruno is kind of like one) because I needed to feel proactive about our elephant hunt. We spotted the huge oval tracks and the fresh barnyard-hay smell of droppings that proved elephants were around. They’d just chosen to make themselves invisible to us.

So I passed the time. I read, I wrote emails, I cooked food. And I realized I was being grumpy and that my elephant obsession was preventing me from appreciating what Vwaza was giving us – grunting hippos spying on us from the water, birds floating past us, monkeys and baboons causing noisy havoc in the nearby chalet, and picture-perfect rainy season lakeside sunsets.

Each evening,we admired colorful sunsets over Lake Kazuni.

This is how I admire sunsets – with beer and peanuts!

Hippo spying on us from the water.

I pushed my book away and joined Bruno for beer and peanuts under the lookout tree. At that moment, an elephant emerged under his own lookout tree on the other side of the lake.

And then, a few more elephants materialized. Seven, nine, no, eleven elephants. A proper herd!

They were far, but I forced myself to enjoy the moment, assuming it would be the best we would get.

Yet, the dominant male wasslowly making his way up the shore, ever closer to us. His herd dawdled, behind him. They stopped to munch at trees, roll in the mud, and drink from the water, but they were definitely drawing nearer.

One hundred meters, seventy meters, fifty meters, forty meters. They were now in the exact spot where we had spotted the elephants on our first day, when we’d stupidly rushed off for our camera and binoculars.

This time, we weren’t going anywhere. This time, I already had my binoculars.

The elephants didn’t stay long, but I was thankful nonetheless for I had savored this moment, knowing it would be fleeting. It had been enough. Vwaza had given us what we had sought. I went to take my bucket shower.

There must be something yummy in the roots of this tree.

The herd of 11, being led by the dominant male, slowly approaching our camp.

Through the decaying walls of the bathroom, I heard a sort of crunching sound, like the crunching of leaves on feet. Then, the crunching sound was mingled with the tearing of branches. It was undeniably an elephant symphony.

I raced out to join Bruno on the chalet veranda, where he was already staring at the grey masses through the thick bush. The flicker of a floppy ear, the movement of a white tusk.

The entire herd of elephants was grazing in the bush, mere meters from us. And this time, they didn’t seem in a hurry to disappear.

The elephant munching on leaves mere meters from our chalet.

Through the trees, a snout emerged, sniffing us out. A large male elephant turned to face us, Dumbo ears out wide. A warning – don’t come closer.

But we wouldn’t have dreamed of it. We didn’t need to be closer. We were perfectly close enough, at last getting our long-awaited dose of elephant.

Don’t come closer!

Walking With the Missionaries

Brittany — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 15:57:00 +0000

The legacy of David Livingstone is very much present in this region of Africa. The Livingstone Mountains that skirt Tanzania’s edge of Lake Malawi are his name sake, as is the town of Livingstone in southern Zambia. Museums and memorials commemorate him from Lake Tangayika to Victoria Falls.

But perhaps the legacy of Dr. Livingstone is felt most strongly in the hillside mission settlement of Livingstonia, in Northern Malawi.

While we went to Livingstonia for the pretty views and the hiking, we left with a greater respect for David Livingstone and understanding of the piece of the African puzzle he represents.

***

Getting to Livingstonia is not easy. A harrowing road leads from the lake up to the top of an escarpment formed by the Great Rift Valley. In fifteen kilometers, one ascends almost a thousand meters. To make this possible, the road winds through a series of twenty “hairpin bends” – so called, I assume, because the road turns back on itself, making the shape of a bobby pin.

Bend 10 out of 20 hairpin turns on the road up to Livingstonia.

This is what a hairpin bend looks like.

With each turn, the material of the road seemed to change. Sometimes dirt or gravel, sometimes large boulders, occasionally cement, and oftentimes mud. Indeed, this road is considered one of the worst in the country, and inadvisable – according to guidebooks and locals alike – in the rainy season.

We were in the midst of a peculiarly long rainy season. Another rainy season road trip was apparently before us. Thankfully, though, this one was shorter. And luckily, we didn’t meet any oncoming vehicles while climbing the precariously narrow cliff-side road.

Most people walk up the hill, it seemed.

It turns out that perching the headquarters for the Free Church of Scotland (now the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian, or CCAP) on the edge of a cliff in 1894 was intentional. This was, in fact, the third location of the Scottish mission within a twenty year period. The first two locations – Cape Maclear and Bandawe – were both on the low-altitude edges of Lake Malawi. With missionaries and their children repeatedly dying from malaria, it was deemed best to move the mission to higher grounds.

***

We visited the old Bandawe mission as a break from a Lake Malawi beachside holiday later in our trip. We’d spent most of our time at the luxurious Makuzi Beach Lodge reading in the sand under straw umbrellas, swimming in the bathtub-warm water, and gazing at birds on white-stained boulders, fishermen expertly paddling wooden pirogues, and pink and blue sunsets over the lake.

Bird-drop island.

Writing, inspired by the glorious lakeside sunset.

Experts at paddling those crooked wooden pirogues.

When our guilt at lack of cultural contact grew too loud to ignore, we walked toward the village inland. At the mission school, we were welcomed by the head teacher.

“There are one hundred students in each class,” he announced matter-of-factly. “We have twenty desks in each room, and usually two or three students must share a desk. But now we have five to each desk. It’s just the way it is now.”

The conditions of this school sounded an awful lot like the government primary school in Ngara we learned about while at FloJa Foundation Lodge. It makes you wonder about education in Malawi.

A group of school kids accost us on the road – “Photo! Photo!” they shout. Canaan is at the front on the right.

One of the students from the mission school followed us on. “Where you go?,” he asked timidly.

I think that Canaan wanted to practice his English. And pass the time, most likely. It was the Easter holiday, and it didn’t seem like there was much to do in Bandawe.

With a trustworthy face and a structure too small for his ten years, Canaan became our self-imposed tour guide. He took us to visit the old Bandawe Church, constructed six years after the departure of the white missionaries, and still in use. It turns out that even though the Scottish had abandoned this site, their legacy remains over 100 years later.

Canaan also took us to the old graveyard, where the fifteen-odd Scots-people who had succumbed to malaria were buried. It struck me that the missionaries had been so young – most in their twenties, the oldest thirty-one. Two or three infants were also interred here, beside their mothers.

I wonder if these pious young people left for Africa knowing they would soon be buried under her soil.

Old Bandawe Church, built in 1900.

Sitting inside the Old Bandawe Church with Canaan.

We’ve picked up an extra tour guide on the way to the old cemetery.

***

The rain had made the hills around Livingstonia lush and green. The clouds that accompanied the rain, however, obstructed those glorious views we were supposed to be catching. And, to top things off, the hiking trails were thick with mud, and we slipped and slid our way into Livingstonia town.

Still, it was picturesque. Something about the grey sky made colors pop out more vividly before us. Empty market stalls, restaurants with washed-out paint jobs, and mundane village huts seemed vibrant with beauty. Mushrooms swelled fluorescent out of the soaked earth. Children poked their legs out from under multicolored umbrellas.

We almost forgot that we were soaking wet and that our own umbrellas were doing little to shield us from the diagonal shots of rain.

Almost. I couldn’t forget my soaked feet. Somewhere along the way, the road had turned into a river, and my shoes and socks were completely soaked through. I longed for the refuge of Lukwe Eco-Lodge, where I could sit under the covered restaurant and gaze at the endless view in dry socks and a rain coat.

Trying in vain to keep my feet and socks dry on the road-cum-river.

We sought shelter in the only place we could – the town Craft Coffee Shop. I proceeded to squeeze excess water from my socks as goose bumps poked through my skin.

“Have a cup of hot tea,” a women gently spoke. “You look like you need it.”

It turned out this woman was a volunteer and that this craft shop was run by the highly-reputable mission hospital down the road. Proceeds – once again – went to orphan care in the surrounding region.

And so, we virtuously helped ourselves to several homemade scones and cups more hot tea, until we were ready to face the rain again.

Thank goodness for hot tea and homemade scones!

Getting some info about the orphan care project
from the local volunteer at the Craft Coffee Shop.

When we emerged – as warmed as possible – from the shop, we noticed that it was set in an old colonial red-brick building. I guess we had run into the building so quickly, vision blocked by our umbrellas, that we hadn’t looked at our surrounding. Just opposite the shop was the technical college, also set in a mission building, and the old clock tower at the head of a lovely – if redundant – roundabout. A commemorative bell announced that this was indeed the headquarters of the CCAP.

What a strange feel this little town had. So unlike Africa.

With a little more kick in our step, we waltzed past the old church, built over a thirty year period, and the mission hospital, still very much in working order. We stepped into the Stone House museum, once the house of Livingstonia’s founder, Dr. Robert Laws.

The facade of the blessed Craft Coffee Shop, where we attempted to dry off.

Headquarters of the CCAP, with 19th century red-brick missionary-built building behind.

Circumnavigating the roundabout toward the Clock Tower.

The hospital.

And there we learned the real reason that Livingstonia was so called.

David Livingstone, also a Scotsman, had traversed these lands in the late 1850s – some thirty years before the mission was set up – desperately trying to end slavery. In his words, slavery had created “an abode of bloodshed and lawlessness” throughout Malawi.

Indeed, the most infamous slave trader in Malawi, Jumbe, was carting up to 20,000 slaves annually across the lake from a single port. In the country as a whole, over 40,000 slaves were sold annually in Zanzibar – and that number doesn’t account for the 150,000 Malawians who died every year in slave raids or on the long march to the coast.

***

Slaves were gathered from all over the country. This did not exclude Livingstonia – or Khondowe, as it was called before the arrival of the missionaries.

To evade slavers, the locals of this region used to hide in a series of caves behind a giant waterfall. This waterfall is called Manchewe Falls, and is viewable on a short bush walk from our campsite. We decided to visit.

Because of the rain, the bush was thick, and the path petered out partway down the steep hill. With spider webs in our hair and burrs sticking to our clothes, we were forced to concede defeat. But not without a partial glimpse of the glorious, lush, fast-flowing falls. This made me want to see them all the more.

And so, on our last morning, despite the rain, I led Bruno to the falls from the main road. From the edge of Lover’s Rock Restaurant, we basked in the view of the falls. The sun even came out to [finally] illuminate a glorious view of the vista beyond – the fertile valleys and rolling hills, Lake Malawi sparkling in the sun, and Tanzania’s Livingstone Mountains in the backdrop.

Struggling to hike the bush path toward Manchewe Falls.

Manchewe Falls in its rainy season splendor.

The vista we’ve awaited emerges!

Seeing the mountains brought me on a chain of thoughts that led back to the poor slaves that had hid in Manchewe’s caves.

***

Livingstone was deeply disturbed by the sights of violence and carnage that slavery had brought to Malawi. He desperately tried to persuade Jumbe to stop the slave trade. But Jumbe was maniacal and cruel – not to mention rich – and so was unconvinced.

Livingstone died with the belief that the only way to curb slavery was to open Africa to the “three C’s” – commerce, colonization, and Christianity. The Scottish mission of the Free Church of Scotland named their mission headquarters after Livingstone and sought to enact his beliefs.

Walking around Livingstonia, you can almost sense the positive impact the Scottish missionaries – in the name of Livingstone – had on Malawi. Inspired by the humanitarian values of their late leader, they offered education to thousands, introduced new agricultural methods, and passed on other practical skills, such as carpentry and tailoring. They weren’t just bringing their religion – they were bringing the seeds of commerce and freedom.

Wandering around Livingstonia’s bustling university, prestigious hospital, and respectful orderliness, you feel that the spirit of the Scottish missionaries – and indeed, David Livingstone – is still very much alive.

Finally warm and dry, we relax at the restaurant of Lukwe Eco-camp and take in the panorama.

Poor Malawi!

Brittany — Tue, 22 Apr 2014 14:10:00 +0000

Malawi feels like the poorest country I have ever been to in Africa – and I’ve been to quite a few of them now. In fact, according to most statistics, Malawi is one of the 10 poorest countries in the entire world.

It shows.

From the moment we crossed the border from Tanzania into Malawi, I began to notice the signs of poverty around me. Now that we have been here for two weeks, evidence of Malawi’s abject poverty has truly begun to pile up.

The Cost of Fuel

“Be careful of that cyclist on the side on the road!” I warned Bruno, as we arrived in Karonga, Malawi’s most northerly city. It was an unnecessary warning, because soon enough we were surrounded by so many cyclists that it was all-but impossible to miss them.

Parked outside the bank, I began to count the bicycle-to-motorized-vehicle ratio. I’d count up for each bike I saw, and start again at zero every time a car, truck or motorbike passed. I noted each number on a pad of paper. When Bruno finally returned, with a bag of near-worthless Malawian Kwacha, I calculated the mean average of the data in front of me.

The conclusion of my very-very scientific experiment: Seven bicycles pass, on average, for every one motorized vehicle.

I must specify that this is on the main transit highway between the North of Malawi and its capital.

Seeing heavy packages loaded onto the backs of bicycles is commonplace in Malawi,
as is seeing four bikes on a car-less highway.

Loading dried tobacco onto the bicycle to bring to town

At over $2 a litre, Malawi claims the prize for most expensive fuel in all of Eastern and Southern Africa – 32% higher than the average world price. For the average Malawian, owning a car has always been a pipe dream, but now even those that do own cars don’t seem to be driving them. Almost all of the cars we see on the road belong either to international aid agencies or police officers.

Instead, most regular Malawians walk – pedestrians have staked such a claim on the highway that they hardly yield for passing vehicles – or ride bicycles. There are even bicycle taxis with padded seats over the back wheel for the comfort of a paying passenger. I’ve seen men riding bicycles carrying bundles of wood taller than them, or overflowing with jugs of water stacked and tied to every possible corner of the bike. I’ve even seen bicycles with an entire family aboard.

No wonder there are also a lot of bicycle repair shops in Malawi!

Moving Time! We saw five pieces of heavy furniture being moved on foot along this major highway.
Perhaps in times gone by, the family might have been able to afford a truck hire, or at least a minibus ride.

Bicycles taxis waiting for passengers.

Women walking to market, heavy bags on head.

Occasionally, while we guiltily drove along Malawi’s smoothly tarred roads, we would spot a transport truck or a minibus speeding along, overflowing with so many people and goods that we were sure the vehicle would either break down or explode its contents all over the road.

I decided to see what it was like to ride in a minibus in Malawi. For less than $1.50, I traveled 45km between the village of Ngara and Karonga town. That may not seem expensive, but in a country where 65% of the people don’t earn that cash in a day, it’s a hefty price to pay for a ride. Malawians think twice before hopping into a minibus.

But when they dohop on, they cram themselves into one of the few minibuses still plying the roads.

“Is there space?,” I asked incredulously at the driver’s cash-boy, as he slid open the minibus door for me. He pointed to the tip of the bench nearest the door. I shrugged, squeezed in, and wedged my butt onto the half-seat. I peered around – with difficulty – to count how many people we were in the vehicle.

Eighteen, in a twelve-seater. No wonder I felt squished like a canned sardine.

Over the next few kilometers, the minibus stopped frequently. But not to let people off, as I’d naively assumed – to let more people in. At our maximum, we had twenty three people inside the vehicle. Heads poked over my shoulder, knees dug into my legs and back, smelly armpits hung over my nose. NowI felt like a sardine.

A truck, packed with people, finally takes off, when minutes before
it was on the side of the road doing some repairs (no doubt
from the weight of the cargo!)

This truck is carrying people and about 450 litres of water.

A year ago, road transport in Malawi was probably a more comfortable and pleasant affair, back when fuel prices were “normal” (well, the new normal). Drivers didn’t have to stuff their vehicles to the absolute limit in order to make a day’s wage. But now, the price of fuel in this poor country has forced everyone – from minibus drivers to shop-owners and farmers to families – to rethink the way they travel.

Malawian Tomatoes

After visiting Karonga’s local market, I cursed myself for not having brought in papayas, mangoes, and pineapples from Tanzania. The market had a serious lack of variety. Yet, the couple we met at our first campsite thought differently.

“Karonga market is heaven for us.” They were traveling south-to-north, and had been in Malawi for over a month.

Once we headed further south, I began to understand their perspective. In the Chitimba market, all I could buy were tomatoes and the spinach-like rape. In the Livingstonia market, all I could buy were tomatoes and onions. In the Rumphi market, all I could buy were tomatoes and cabbage. Along the roadside produce stalls, all I could see was tomatoes (if anything).

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes, everywhere.

The [tomato] market in Livingstonia.
Ok, there were tiny dried fish too, but the stink they create doesn’t
make me think these are particularly editable.

An empty road-side market with attached [closed] dried goods shop – an all-too-common feature in Malawi.

The People’s Supermarket – northern Malawi’s best-stocked – carried cookies, chips, long-life milk, cleaning supplies, beer, juice, maize-meal, and white bread. I walked around the shop, hallucinating gourmet foods, only to find another pack of coconut biscuits upon closer inspection.

“What do locals eat?,” I speculated rhetorically during each failed market visit. Deep down, though, I knew. In Malawi, 80% of adults are subsistence farmers. They grow maize and cassava in order to make nsima, their staple food. Boiled into a ball with the texture of porridge mixed with play-dough, it sits in the stomach like a rock. Though it has almost no nutritional value, it does fill you up.

To complement the flavorless nsima, there are always tomatoes (!). Those with foresight (and taste buds) plant small gardens, generally with a single type of produce. It might be pumpkins or potatoes, cabbage or avocadoes, potatoes or bananas. These products account for almost all that is bought and sold in local markets and on roadsides.

A family selling their squash on the side of the highway – hopefully
they will make enough cash so they can buy themselves some tomatoes!

Sometimes, a rare and desirable product shows up at the market, but it doesn’t last long. In Rumphi, I was walking past the road-side market at the exact moment that a woman showed up with a bucket of guavas. I was alerted to her treasure by the sheer kerfuffle the surrounding women made. Equally ravenous, I managed to squeeze myself through the women and reach inside the bucket for as many guavas as my hands could carry.

We feasted insatiably on nothing but guavas for the rest of the day.

Parentless Children

Madonna may have adopted a few Malawian orphans, but she certainly didn’t adopt them all. It is estimated that 25% of Malawi’s children are orphans. As one of the most-densely populated areas in Africa, – almost 20 million people packed into an area of only 118,484km₂ (maybe everyone here feels like a canned sardine..?) – that makes for a lot of orphans (so Madonna, you’re off the hook).

Malawi’s orphans are often taken care of by their ageing grandparents (come-of-age before the HIV epidemic). But they are a burden on the elderly, who no longer have the physical ability to work and are without savings accounts and social services. International aid agencies have come on board to help the countless families in this situation, but most are concentrated around the big cities of the central and southern regions.

We have stumbled upon quite a few lodges in the remote North that are generously running their own orphan care centers, funded by the profits from tourism. One such was the extensive Matunkha Center in Rumphi, which involves itself in education, health care, and agriculture for orphans’ families in 116 surrounding villages.

Another is the smaller but no less impressive FloJa Foundation Lodge. We spent a few nights camped along their lakeside site, and I had the opportunity to visit the foundation and speak at length with the founders.

“We started our organization six years ago, but the idea to give something to the children of this forgotten community started way before that,” says Floor, her husband Jan nursing their adopted Malawian four-month old in the background. “We’d come as tourists to Malawi a dozen years ago, and it called to us when we returned to the Netherlands.”

The idea of FloJa is to provide early childhood education and healthcare to the orphaned, disabled, and otherwise vulnerable children of the community. Preschool is offered for free – including two substantial meals – for 80 children between 2-6 years old in order to give them a proper kick-start at life.

The 2-3 year olds at FloJa taking their morning porridge.

FloJa’s playground, and the only see-saws I’ve seen in Malawi

The classroom for the 4-6 year olds, where I spent a
morning with Mr. Simon’s class

“The government primary school in Ngara is wretched,” continued Floor. “The classes are overcrowded, kids don’t even have their own notebook or pencil, and the youngest students learn outside under a tree rather than in a classroom.”

In these conditions, FloJa’s kids ordinarily wouldn’t stand a chance. But with their 3-4 years of literacy, numeracy, and English education, they are regularly at the top of their classes.

“We also offer free afternoon tuition for primary-aged children that have passed through our foundation,” pipes in Jan. “We want our kids to know that they are not forgotten once they leave our preschool, that we will continue to support them throughout their primary school careers.”

Floor brought me to see the two classrooms, to meet the children and teachers and to sit in on their lessons. As a trained teacher, it was interesting to see how the teachers were faring with limited resources and technology. The teaching style was admittedly rather traditional, with tables in a row facing the teacher, who would talk a lot and then ask a student to stand and repeat something or answer a question. There were also a lot of wasted minutes, as when I was asked to look over the answers in a literacy book, the teacher (Simon) watched over me for a full 10 minutes, periodically silencing his awaiting students.

When Simon went for breakfast, his class sat waiting for him at their tables, as it was raining out. Feeling uncomfortable with their gazing eyes, I broke into songs with actions, and the kids immediately followed suit. When Simon returned some 15 minutes later, he took my cue, and began running his students through their repertoire of English songs.

Mr. Simon’s class – only half full because of the heavy rains
(Can you imagine how crowded these tables are when all the students are there?
Yet this is a GOOD school.)

Throughout the rest of the morning, Simon and I talked education. He showed me his flashcards made of milk cartons and hand-painted wooden number and letter boards. He had the students copy out sentences on their mini chalk boards, and read words from the flashcards. When the class was practicing color words, I suggested a more interactive game, and he willingly played it with them. Despite our very different educational philosophies, Simon seemed eager to learn and adapt.

“I’m proud of the way I teach,” declared Simon unreservedly. “But I think I can learn a lot from you.”

Floor and Jan are doing some heartfelt work with their foundation. Many of these children don’t get another meal in their day, and if they weren’t in school, they would be running around their villages unsupervised – or worse, along the dangerous highway (as I’ve seen many a-time).

It costs about $4000 a month to keep the FloJa Foundation afloat – that’s about $50 per child. Imagine how much it would cost to take care of allMalawi’s orphans.

And Yet They Smile

It’s amazing to see a country stifled by soaring fuel prices and food scarcity, and with a high death rate in the valuable working-age population, still smile. And yet, Malawians are smiling, almost everywhere we turn. They smile while riding three to a bicycle on an uphill muddy road. They smile while hawking identical handfuls of tomatoes. They smile while harvesting mountains of maize in blistering midday African heat. They smile while crushed into minibuses on bumpy long-distance journeys.

And they smile when they meet us on the beaches, in the markets, and on the road. With perfect courteousness and genuine smiles, they greet us foreigners and welcome us with earnest to their country.Because even though Malawi might seem poor to me, a Malawian sees through these economic indicators, into all the true wealth their country has to celebrate.

Smiling kids of the side of the road. No school for them, I guess….

The Crooked Pirogue

Brittany — Tue, 15 Apr 2014 13:44:00 +0000

A storm was blowing in – fast – and yet here we were on a crooked handmade wooden pirogue, trying frantically to carve a straight path through the water. The pirogue was big, heavy, and almost impossible to steer, especially with the waves growing larger and more powerful by the minute.

We were on Tanzania’s Lake Nyasa – more commonly known as Lake Malawi – on a brief detour before our be-line for the border. As the third largest lake in all of Africa and one alleged so beautiful it shouldn’t be missed – turquoise waters! kaleidoscope of fish! dramatic coastline! – I was too eager to see it to wait for Malawi.

In my desire to immerse myself in all things Lake Nyasa, I had convinced Bruno to rent a local fisherman’s boat for the day. I had had the bright idea that we could ride that boat out to the rocky hills over yonder and do some snorkeling.

“Stop paddling!” shouted Bruno over the crashing of the waves. “You’re just making it harder for me to steer!”

I was sort of relieved to stop rowing. The boat had no seats and my crouching kneed position had long stopped being comfortable. I turned around and sat on the rounded front end of the pirogue, facing a now-sweating – and none too amused – Bruno.

Me trying to look cool and collected in the front
of our handmade, seat-less, wooden pirogue.
Note the curve toward the right.

I tried snapping a few photos, but the waves and the not-so-far-off grayish blue clouds made it impossible to relax and enjoy my own personal gondola ride. And the hills I’d impulsively pointed to from shore seemed a lot further now.

“I think we’re better off on land,” I muttered to myself.

This was most certainly true. We’d been in Matema, camping right along the lakeshore, for three glorious days already. We’d seemed to have achieved the perfect balance of cultural exploration and relaxation. We swam in water warm enough that we could slip in easily, yet still cool enough to refresh us in the afternoons. We read books in clean off-white sand, enjoying the light breeze from the water. We watched mesmerizing rainbows add their colors to the purplish-blue post-storm sky and the faint yellow illumination of the setting sun on the hills. And we walked up and down the beach and into the surrounding markets.

The beach in front of Matema Resort, as the setting sun battles with an impending storm.
The beautiful rainbow begins to peep out from the Livingstone Mountains.

In truth, it was the walks that proved most interesting, for we were able to see the intimate relationship the locals have with their lake. The beach is, in fact, their kitchen, bathroom, and laundry room. I watched women washing last night’s pots and pans in the fresh water and drying chalky-white cassava on blankets in the sun. I saw children bathing naked, boys brushing their teeth, and men soaping up their heads and chests at the edge of the lake. And I saw adults washing clothes in sudsy buckets and then laying them flat out to dry on the rocky sand.

There is a lot of action on Lake Nyasa’s beach. Children playing in the water, women washing clothes,
fishermen setting out for their day’s work.

A woman washing clothes on the lakeshore. Behind, a topless woman
and her naked child go for a mid-morning bath.

Fishing boats, akin to the one in which we were now rowing precariously, lined the beach. Hand-carved out of giant tree trunks, they showed their age by the number of quilt-like patches of metal sheeting atop their wooden frames. Next to the pirogues were salmon-colored heaps of fishing net with floatable plastic water bottles or pieces of flip flops attached. Sometimes a quiet, respectful fisherman sat repairing his net. Next to him, his wife placed his day’s catch on a carefully laid-out tarp, the tiny fish sparkling as they dried in the sun.

A very smiley fisherman catches us photographing him.
The bottles in the left corner will be used to keep his fishing net afloat.
Behind is his pirogue, sporting many metal sheeting repairs.

Almost the only fish left in Lake Nyasa, they are as small as your middle finger.

As Bruno tried to maneuver our boat to the distant hills, I caught sight of the village’s beachside market. From the water, we couldn’t hear the music blasting from busted loudspeakers, but we had certainly heard the market before we’d seen it on our walk. We’d also smelled its rotting sewage and toilet before ever laying eyes on the market’s goods. As I walked, I’d pondered why a market would smell that way, until a young boy dropped his pants and defecated right on the beach in front of me.

On one end of the market, people huddled around morning fires cooking plantains and porridge while chickens and pigs scurried around digging through scraps. Further down, women sold grey clay pots decorated with rusty red paint. A few of the pots were makeshift stoves – you place charcoal in an opening in the side and your pan on top, and the heat flows through tiny holes in the clay pot. Most of the pots, however, were simple disk-shaped vessels of all sizes.

The bustling lakeside pottery market.

From our crooked swaying pirogue, I attempted to take a photo of the market. I wasn’t afraid of snapping shots from such a safe distance, but during our walk I’d been too intimidated to photograph. Bruno, however, invented an ingenious method of photography whereby he would hold the camera out at his waist and look down at it as though he were fiddling with the settings, and then snap! It’s thanks to him that there are photos on this blog entry.

“The hills are really far,” I called to Bruno from the front end of our pirogue. His face was glimmering and red, and he seemed to be silently begging me to let him off the hook. “Let’s turn around. We’ll never make it to the hills, let alone back again.” Relieved, Bruno turned the boat around easily, for its natural inclination was to veer right in endless circles.

Bruno’s knees and butt were killing him, so as
he turned our boat around, he opted for the
standing position.

Our boat was now pointed toward Crocodile River, where we had walked the previous morning. In the opposite direction of Matema Village, this walk has less cultural stimulation, but more natural beauty. Weaver birds flutter around their round nests dangling in clusters from the treetops. Black and white kingfishers perch on sea grass, scanning the water for their next meal. And crocs supposedly creep along the marshy river, occasionally sneaking into the lake to cause crocodile-havoc.

Because this side of the lake is less inhabited, it was the perfect spot for a group of men to lure a poor cow, slaughter her at the water’s edge, and begin portioning her up for friends and neighbors. Sure enough, individuals began arriving with empty sheets of banana leaf and leaving with big bloody pieces of beef enveloped less than inconspicuously in their banana wrapping. My vegetarian brain couldn’t handle this and the natural peace of this side of the river was shot for me. We walked quickly back home.

A women laying out cassava root to dry. She will then pound it into a flour-like powder making a cassava ugali,
the cheapest of the starch staples. This stuff smells strongly when you walk past.

Clothing drying in the sand. All women wear these rectangular fabrics around their waists and shoulders.

And now, we were paddling quickly back home, to our safe piece of dry sand, where the threat of crooked pirogues and rocky seas would be but a comical memory.

When we reached shore, we were greeted by two laughing locals come to retrieve our faulty boat. “You did well!” they encouraged, even though we’d returned several hours earlier than planned, grimaces smeared across our faces. Either they were mocking us or they were genuinely impressed that Bruno hadn’t tipped us over.

To nurse our bruised egos, we headed straight for the market. Tanzania may not yet have taught us how to navigate crooked wooden pirogues, but she had taught us how to get an awfully good deal on foodstuffs.

Later, we watched the storm break while eating our cheapest lunch yet from the dry safety of our camper van. It was the perfect last meal in Tanzania.

Doing what I do best – buying produce for cheap.
I didn’t buy any pots – they would break too quickly with our frequent off-road driving!

Maybe my best deal yet – all this for just over $2USD.

A big shout-out to my mom on her birthday! Love you!

Don’t forget to read my other stories about Tanzania!

The End of a Chapter

Brittany — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 15:29:00 +0000

Written on May 26th:

I’m in the transit lounge of the Jo’burg International Airport. I left Zambia, and Bruno, this morning. It’s strange being among all these people when I have spent the vast majority of the past 5 months with only one. In a few hours, a plane will bring me to Dubai, then onwards to New York and Washington, DC, where I will attend my friend Erin’s wedding (the same Erin I went to the Philippines with in 2009!). After that, I will pass briefly through New York and then back “home”, to New Brunswick, to my parents’ haven by the sea.

I am so thankful for the camper van road trip through Southern Africa that Bruno and I have shared. I experienced so many firsts – my first time off-roading in a vehicle, my first time experiencing gale force winds, my first serious tropical disease. I was mock charged by my first elephant, saw my first cheetahs and leopards, and had my first elephants roaming through our campsite! I slept beside hippo-infested rivers and under massive birds’ nests, under colossal African skies, and next to flooded salt pans. I visited new countries – notably Swaziland and Zambia – and got to know Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa even better. Every day was an adventure, a chance to explore beautiful landscapes, historically significant monuments, and culturally diverse villages. The panorama through the window of our Land Cruiser constantly revealed beautiful and intriguing places, and, thanks to the gift of ample time, Bruno and I were often able to get out from behind that window and discover. What a precious gift…

As I reflect upon my voyage, a few highlights stand out. Of all the things I’ve seen and done in the past 155 days, here are my top five:

5) Feeding the birds in the middle of the Namib Desert

4) Spending a week by the beach at Chintsa West, on the Wild Coast of South Africa

3) Camping in the salt pans of Botswana at the Nata Bird Sanctuary

2) Being surrounded by elephants at Bwabwata National Park in the Caprivi Strip of Namibia

1) Spotting the leopard 10m away, drinking from the water hole at Mbezi Park in South Africa

Truly, though, the best part of this entire journey was spending it with Bruno. I’m not one to get sentimental in public, but spending the past five months with him, sharing his life and his camper van, the adventures and challenges of travel, and the depths of our spirits, have shown both of us that we belong together. Not everyone is lucky enough to meet their soul mate, their other half, their life partner, but Bruno and I are that lucky. This unfolding of our relationship, dear readers, has been the best part of our journey.

As such, after making my rounds in North America, I will be heading back out to Africa to reunite with Bruno. We will begin a new chapter together, one surely worthy of blogging about. The details of that chapter will just have to wait. Perhaps your curiosity will get the better of you, and you will find yourself revisiting Wandering Footsteps in the coming weeks just to find out what we have in store!