Malawi (part 2)

In short, Malawi was beautiful. As I said before, the official reason for me being there was to do a tree project, while the unofficial reasons were to visit KCB, and to have a holiday (by that stage he had been away for about 3 months, which is a long time in my books...) and to have a holiday.

I was pretty shattered after the bus trip, and the day after we got there, we rested. We were staying at a missionaries house and doing some work for them, so we got a bit of an orientation that day. I suppose I was overtired and rather emotional, but TP presented his view of religion which I intensely dislike - his rather bull-headed approach is the one that makes me shudder to be called a Christian... The following day, KCB and I, and the rest of the team drove to a remote village where the missionaries do their work, so that the rest of the team could build a water tank system thing (it slows down the water and acts as a filter for sediment, I just have no idea what it is called!). KCB and I spent the night there, and headed back to the base to do our tree project.

Only, we didn't land up doing the tree project while the rest of the team were doing water stuff, because KCB got malaria. This was possibly the scariest thing that happened during the trip (I have never ever seen someone shake so much), and one of those times where I discovered that I cared for KCB more than I thought I did (soppy moment, yes, but it Happened and was Significant, and therefore will be Included in this post). Anyway, the team came back before KCB had fully recovered, and our hosts were throwing a birthday party, so we did no further work that week, except help with the party preparations. The party was... not my cup of tea. I'm not the world's biggest social butterfly, and being completely out of my comfort zone, and really only knowing the team didn't help matters much. Anyway, the party left me with a nasty stomach bug, which kept me and two other members of the household, in bed and feeling awful for the rest of the following day.

We had aimed to do the tree project during in the next few days, and KCB hauled me onto my feet and into the forest. I learnt some important lessons that day, mainly about the importance of carrying a panga, the difference between a temperate forest and a tropical forest (read: jungle), that the forest can distort sounds that a baboon can sound remarkably like a hippo... The second day of tree sampling was much better than the first, and the third day (although physically the hardest) was the best. We had to try and find a path (it's impossible to hack your way through the jungle) to the top of the mountain, and we had heard that there was a fort there: Fort Mangochi. Where do you find a fort? At the top of a mountain... Or so we thought. We marched up to the top (or rather, KCB, Triathlete and the guide Marched, and I Tottered, feeling like I was going to vomit from exhaustion), and we carried on going, because we had set our sites on the fort and I at least was rather curious. When we eventually found it, we discovered that the ruins had been neatly signposted... Only, the signs had been covered by thick swathes of tall grass... At times the grass was so thick and tall that you could lose the person in front of you (and the path) if they were more than 2m away from you!

The rest of the week we quite relaxed - we went to the market at Chiponde, which was rather fun, and the next day we went to Monkey Bay on lake Malawi, where it was windy but beautiful. KCB and I took out a sit-on-top kayak with our snorkel gear to try and find a relatively sheltered spot where the viz wasn't too bad to see the cichlids. We did see them, eventually, but being so windy, the viz really wasn't great, and I actually had more fun paddling, watching the leguwaans and the fish eagle. We also watched a man fishing from his home-made boat - a structure made out of a single tree (which reportedly only cost less than double what we had paid to hire the kayak). We were due to leave the following morning, and after much packing (the rest of the team had been in that particular spot for about a month), we set off for Blantyre.

We took Organiser (one of the team mates) to hospital that night, to check if she had malaria... Turns out she did, and she had it badly. Over the course of the next few days, while we were travelling, she took three courses of anti-malarials, and eventually flew home from Mozambique to recover.

From Blantyre, we crossed the border to Mozambique...

Im working on it!

So, Helen has promised that I will be posting lots more on my trip to Malawi. I really am working on it, but in the meantime, I'm working harder on getting better. I seem to have picked up a random virus or something on my travels. Or I picked it up in dear ol' Jo-burg, I cant decide which is likelier!

So anyway, I will be posting as soon as I can!

Malawi/Mozambique trip: Part 1

The bus trip

For the record, I have no problem slating this particular bus company, because, quite frankly, they need to jack up their service and stop being such a dodgy bus company. Even the "regular" travellers on the bus had a horrendous time, and swore never to take this bus again! Since I have been back, people who heard about my trip have told me that they never, ever use this particular company, because it is so dodgy! Hindsight is such a marvellous thing...

I diligently journaled the events of the bus trip, which is a good thing because so many things happened. However, if nothing else, the take-home message from this part of the trip is: Never use the JR CHOEU bus company. Ever. For any destination. However, I might use another bus company to travel some more - its cheap and you see way more of the countryside than if you flew, not to mention the fact that you get some of the culture too. Anyway, without further ado, here are my notes (square brackets are my thoughts now). Apologies for the confused tenses - I added stuff after it was written, and am too lazy to change it all to the same tense!

• Arrived at JR Choeu building at 7.30, in the middle of town [no, really, the middle of the middle, it was quite dodgy]! Got tickets which was a relief, since I was sure that they would have sold out cos we booked on the morning we were leaving! [with hindsight, this is probably an indication of how dodgy the bus actually is...] But there is no bus yet. People are packing an enormous removal truck that is 22m long, full of goods that are being taken to Malawi.
• 9.30. Still no bus. I discovered the law of packaging tape though: every item of baggage must be covered in as much brown packaging tape as possible, the desirable state of the item is that you shouldn't be able to see any of the original bag/box under the packaging tape. [I was vastly amused by this, it kept me entertained for a few hours] The truck is still being loaded.
• 11.00. Found another law: the law of packing. This law states that there is ALWAYS room for more baggage. Even if there isn't really... We discover that the truck must move before the bus can come.
• 11.30. We watch as the doors to the truck are forced closed on account of the truck being overloaded. Hoping the bus will arrive soon, because the truck has now departed.
• 12.30. No bus. We are assured that the bus will come by 1.15. [At this point, I started telling my parents that we hadn't in fact left yet, and was contemplating getting them to try find a bus company that went to Mangochi that had a number that worked... Travel Partner said we should just wait it out]
• 1.15. No bus.
• 3pm. People are threatening violence against the bus company and its employees, who aren't communicating with us. Bus company hands out cooking oil and food to placate the passengers.
• 5pm. Bus arrives after I got my mom to try and find alternative travel arrangements. Getting on the bus was the most stressful short-term event I have ever experienced! Trying to get your luggage and self onto the bus was crazy. Everyone pushes and shoves, and it is just insane... The bus was one of those extended buses, with no trailer. So much luggage was piled into the bus itself - don't think this is legal. We think the trip was overbooked for a normal bus, so they had to get the bigger capacity bus, and then the licence to go with the bigger bus. There is luggage everywhere.
• 7pm. We attempt to leave, drive 2 blocks, then return to the start point. The brakes sound super dodgy, and I hope that I make it out of the trip alive...
• Eventually we left. It was night time, and on account of being exceptionally lonely throughout the day, and not wanting to use my phone too much (because we were in the middle of JHB), I was smsing people like crazy. The rest of the time, I spent gazing at the stars, and thinking. Lots.

.

• My first border crossing ever! We arrived at the Beit bridge border post early the next morning [I think about 4am on the SA side]. The SA side was pretty quick, about an hour, and I saw my first case of a fake passport [he was a Malawian guy, and taken in for questioning, but later we saw him back on the bus...]. The Zimbabwean side took in the region of 3-4 hours to get through.
• By the time we left the border post, the sun was well and truly up, and I got to see the landscape - loads of random baobabs. [I didn't get to see any of the landscape as we travelled north through South Africa, so I had no idea as to what to expect, and it came as a bit of a surprise, although a pleasant one] Its rather pretty. I told TP about savannas, tree-grass interactions and a bit about landscape drivers. He must think I'm nuts, and I'm not sure that I explained very well either...
• We got stopped at every roadblock we came across, and got 2 fines. Bus driver and "handlers" paid bribes. Good times.
• Dusk: We arrive at Harare: "Welcome to Harare. Enjoy our pleasent environment", with litter and a broken landscape behind the sign. By now, I'm impatient, a little hungry, and really missing communication from the outside world. We were stopped in Harare, and the bus impounded. We waited for another hour, while another bribe was paid. The other passengers were fed up and hungry. The food money was used for the bribe. I was getting fed up with TP, he wouldn't stop complaining and saying "if we had taken another bus we would be at...", etc. I discover that we will have to spend the night at the border between Zimbabwe and Mozambique. TP slept and I had complete sense of humour failure as TP wont send an sms to let KCB (who was fetching us from Mangochi) know where we were, and that we had been delayed. So I cried, knowing that there is nothing I can do but wait this out, and make the best of a really bad situation.
• TP lets me send an sms when we get to the border, but doesn't wait for a reply before switching off the phone, to conserve his battery [I still had battery, but he didn't want to swap sim cards, and I couldn't use my phone because I don't have international roaming]. The bus is humid and stuffy, cramped and uncomfortable. I left the bus, stepping on people, over people, disturbing them as I try to exit. I find myself a spot on the road to the weigh-bridge and put my feet on one of the blocks. My feet and ankles were really sore from being down for 2 days and not moving.
• I had a chat with DG, a girl of roughly my age from Malawi. We struggled to make ourselves understood, since her English wasn't amazing, and I don't speak any Chichewe. I was shocked to discover that most of the bus thought that TP and I were married! YUCK!!! [my thoughts at this point went along the lines of, if I ever do this again, I'm travelling with my boyfriend!]
• I fall asleep in the early hours of the morning, with my shoes off, backpack under my knees and a copy of Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy as my pillow [strangely fitting], and pearl-spotted owls calling close by. I woke up once to put a jersey and my shoes back on, and then again to turn over. I was so unbelievably comfortable, that I'm not entirely sure why I woke up, but was immediately glad that I did, because the bus had started up and was moving toward me [The danger of sleeping in the road is that you could be run over...]! This was my first 3 hours of sleep in two days.

.

• After the sleep I find my sense of humour recovered, and I'm ready to deal with the next part of the trip. I'm still super irritated with TP. We have an apple which TP eats for breakfast, and he shares his packet of chips with me, while masticating in my ear.
• We cross into Mozambique without too many hassles, although as usual, it takes forever to get back onto the road. At the city of Tete, we wait to cross the Zambezi river - the bridge is under construction/repair, and is only open to one lane of traffic at a time. I changed money here, since we would be getting an extremely good rate of 22.50 Malawi Kwacha to a ZA rand. We crossed the massive river, and found that the country was rather pretty after the ugliness of Tete, and the dryness of the landscape before the city.
• I managed to sleep on the bus in the afternoon - must have been exhausted!
• Customs at Malawi took forever... All the luggage that was on the bus was taken off an checked by customs officials. As everything was being re-packed, we discover that the bus has no intention of taking TP and I to Mangochi. In the meantime, KCB somehow managed to get hold of the driver, who gave the phone to me, and in this way, we arranged to get dropped off at a police roadblock near the border, and KCB would come and pick us up (a long drive for him!). TP arranged this, cos KCB phoned back while I went and found a really dodgy toilet at the border...
• After about 3 hours, KCB arrived! Was so happy to see him, and despite not seeing him for 3 months, things were not awkward at all!

This ends the bus trip story. It took me a while to recover, and for a few days I was rather emotional, but I came out alive and unscathed :) Here are some factoids from the trip:

• In 72 hours, I went to the toilet 3 times.
• I drank 2 litres of water, and 2 cokes.
• Between TP and I, we shared 1 packet of chips, 2 apples and 10 mini seed bars.
• I slept about 5 hours
• I crossed 3 borders, and went through 6 border posts
• We travelled approximately 2000km

I'm more than a little impressed with myself, that as a first time traveller, I managed to survive this!

Before I start with the trip reports...

I feel that I need to express my utter dissatisfaction at my lifestyle at the moment. Particularly my life in JHB. I am totally unmotivated to do my masters, I feel like I'm not achieving anything, I feel that my social life is pushing on my decision-making abilities, with too many people that I want to spend time with, and too little time, and poor "saying no" abilities on my part.

Most of me would like to restart my life somewhere as a hermit, but since I know that that isn't at all possible, I need to jack myself up (somehow), start prioritising, start saying no, and find out what I actually want to do (besides get out of this hell-hole). Oh, and do my masters.

Terri is the most organised and jacked up person I know, so I'm going to elicit her help with this small project of mine.... For starters, I think I'm going to try going to bed earlier, in an effort to get up earlier, to cut out the loop of not getting anything done before lunch cos I only got to varsity at like 10.30...

I'm back!

With a million stories to tell (ok, maybe not a million, but enough for a lot a lot for me to write).

Im back from a super awesome trip to Malawi, where I officially went to go and count trees, and unofficially went for a holiday, and to visit KCB (yes, his name has changed yet again. I've stuck with this one in my head for a while now).

I used a bus to get there, which is an entire blog post on its own, (YES! FORTHCOMING ATTRACTION!!), and I travelled back with KCB and team in a landrover. Oh, the tales!

Thanks Helen for welcoming me back!