Bob in Africa

Relax Chitimba
Stay: Chitimba BeachCamp, Chitimba, Malawi

A chill out and relaxing day in Chitimba Beach Camp on the shores of Lake Malawi. One added bonus is that we’ve no hangovers following an early night. No sooner do we wake up, than Vin Diesel and Patrick are hanging around the camp gates looking for us. We met them when we were here last here and spent New Year’s Day partying with them which was quite an occasion. A boom box from the 80’s and a few crates of beer does maketh a party!
Anyway, the boys are there to make sure we are still coming to dinner this evening with their Mums. Vin’s Mum is bringing rice and Patrick’s Mum is supplying the chicken. We tell them that we’re very much looking forward to it and ask what time we’re expected for dinner. Apparently 3pm is not too early for dinner here. I feel it’s going to be a long night! Anyway, Joakim sends them off with some jobs to do and it keeps them busy for a few hours so that they don’t keep pestering us. Whilst they aren’t allowed into the campsite, they ‘send messages’ through staff at the camp which you become accustomed to ignoring. But they seem like good lads and Joakim gets them to repair a few items of clothes, make a teak table for the side of our car and get the tent cover repaired.
The two boys arrive back at 2.30pm and we figure it’s just easier at this stage to head off with them. We tell them we’d like to buy a crate of beer on the way. Patrick tells Jocke that it’s not a problem and that we’ll be able to buy beer where we’re going for dinner. We arrive at a house, I still don’t know to this day who owned the house. We sit down and typically there’s a TV blaring out reggae and it’s a tiny living room. I now understand why African’s shout when they talk to each other. It has nothing to do with calling one another in the bush, it’s because they’re stone deaf from listening to pirate music DVD’s. If it’s not bad enough there’s about 10 children screaming and shouting and so conversation is limited. There are two other pieces of furniture. A sofa and a giant chest refrigerator which has been fully-stocked with beer and soda’s.
Another dude, Charlie, is there now. Apparently he and Patrick go back a long way. This also means that so do Charlie and us and this manifests itself in us also becoming his newest sponsor in his alcohol consumption. Charlie seems to be the person in charge of ‘the fridge’. Then the Mum’s turn up. They are quite sweet and some hilarity breaks out when we give them a bottle of wine. We’ve been wondering if perhaps it may be inappropriate to give them wine. Our doubts are alleviated in about 10 minutes when the bottle of wine is empty. I’m sensing our nice South African white, purchased from a Ukranian women in Tanzanian, that we were saving for emergencies, was wasted and they ladies already have a beer in hand (also sponsored by us I guess). In fact whenever anyone is empty or one of the village children want a soda, it would seem it’s on us. It’s so wonderful making friends in Malawi!
After supper of chicken and rice as promised, (in whose house I still don’t know), the mothers give us gifts of African sarongs which they dress us in. It’s 40 degrees inside this sweatbox of a house and we’re now in two layers of clothes! At which point dancing commences (yes guys, the octopus (read Joakim’s dance moves) does make an appearance.
We move on to the local bar and neither of us can keep up with the mothers drinking and yes, we are still buying the beers. However, all becomes clear when we leave the bar and the mothers wobble back home and from the enormous bags they’re carrying, all we can hear is the clinking of bottles and I doubt very much they’re empties!

Stay:Jacobson Campsite, Kigoma, Tanzania

We are leaving Burundi today to drive to Tanzania. It would seem there isn’t very much to see in Burundi, although some of the beaches are spectacular. Firstly they only speak French, not one of our strong points. I have developed a habit of speaking English with a French accent and throwing in the odd ‘bonjour’ and ‘merci’ and kidding myself that I’m fluent. The good food only extends as Bujumbura. We try stopping at one beachside bar on our way out to get lunch. Despite having eggs, they apparently can’t make omelette!?
The border crossing on this road is not a main one and so we’re expecting a typically quiet, easy crossing (although Joakim has just read as we approach the border that this one is really reserved just for UN vehicles.) The road to the border is pretty bad and it’s slow going. What we think will be a short drive typically turns into a full days driving.
The Chinese are here providing yet another new road in Africa and it’s really funny to see what look like CHinese restaurants littered along the roadside in the most remote part of Tanzania and Burundi, but are in fact their site offices with the Chinese lanterns adorning the entry gates.

The border crossing is very quiet. We get stamped out of Burundi and yet again as happened previously at the border crossing from Ethiopia to Kenya, this office can’t stamp out our carnet either. It would appear that the one carnet stamp they have is in the other office. Instead the official stamps our carnet with a passport stamp and we hope this will be sufficient.

We are going to drive to the nearest ‘big town’ called Kigoma to stock up on provisions for what could potentially be a weeks driving with only villages stocking goat and cooking oil along the way. It’s pretty late by the time we get there and so we head straight for the campsite we’ve picked out from our plethora of literature (read LP). It’s a little way outside of the town and we drive on a few km and the road is getting increasingly sandy and narrower and more challenging and eventually we arrive at a tiny little campsite. It looks like no-one has been here for quite some time.
On first sight it’s a little disappointing, and we chat with Lawi the owner anyway and discuss rates. Then he tells us that there’s no running water because the pump has broken and so runs off to get a couple of buckets of water so that we can flush the toilet. That’s luxury at this stage....someone to fetch the bucket for you is a novelty.
Since we are now professional pikies and have given up on bathrooms altogether, we settle the deal and go for a dip (read bath) in Lake Tanganyiki before the sun goes down. We walk just twenty yards from our car and there is the most beautiful, private infinity pool in the form of Lake Tanginyiki that we’ve ever been lucky enough to swim in. (Although ask me that after the bilharzia sets in!) The beach is spotlessly clean. There isn’t a person in sight and the water is as clear as glass. Instantly we decide to stay one more day!

Kigali Memorial and Museum

We get up early to go to the Kigali Memorial and Museum which was set up by two English doctors in memory of the people who lost their lives in Rwanda.

We spend the next 3 hours walking around the museum, which not just recognises the atrocities which were carried out here, but also explains the history of not only the Rwandan genocide, but many others that occurred around the world. The last room is a room dedicated to the thousands of children and babies who lost their lives here and whilst the museum does an excellent job of presenting the facts and highlighting the issues and the reasons that this should never happen again, I manage only briefly to go into this final room and it's too much to take in.

This day feels like a very very long one. We drive from Kigali to Lake Kivu and we stay in small town called Kibuye. This remote part of Rwanda was one of the worst hit areas and 90% of the tutsi's were slaughtered here.

We’re having dinner when I see a couple of westerners having dinner with some Rwandans and I decide to go over and ask them what the road from here south is like since we have a couple of options from here. As it happens, one of the fella’s is from Newport in South Wales and himself and a few colleagues are out here on missionary work. They tell us that their work largely involves helping individuals and today they’ve been working to secure the home of a widow who is routinely raped in her own home. Its been a long day and the horrors followed by stories of compassion and bravery make today feel like it’s been a week long.

Today we have gone our separate ways. We are staying at a campsite at the source of the Nile and probably 90% of people who pass through the Nile River Explorers campsite participate in the white water rafting. However, following my near-death experience last year on the Zambezi, God has spoken to me and said it’s probably best for the sanity of everyone else unlucky enough to be in a raft with me if I abstain from any such activities remotely connected to rafts, kayaks or any other such vessel that may involve me turning upside down in water.
Meanwhile, Superman has decided that white water rafting on grade 5 rapids is childsplay and so books himself in for kayaking instead. Whilst this may be tandem kayaking, it still involves going ten times as fast as a raft, going under water (lots) and turning upside down and relying on a total Ugandan stranger to effectively save your life and get you out of trouble.
I plan to spend the day doing the less dangerous stuff such as editing some of our photographs from Kenya whilst Joakim goes off to battle with the forces of nature. Little did I think I would be the one ending the day with a lot more bruises than what I started with this morning. Shortly after I watch them go down the part of the Nile that runs past our campsite, the heavens open and rain of monsoon proportions start to descend upon us and more importantly upon our tent, the front of which has been left unprotected from such extreme conditions. With all the grace and speed of a mountain gazelle I hop up onto the roof of the car and thence the roof rack, at which point the friction between my sandals and the roofrack ceases to exist and I slip and fall straight over the edge. If that’s not bad enough, we are parked on some really nasty gravel. And if that’s not bad enough, I bang my head on our table on my way down. The wind is knocked out of my sails a little, but I try to quickly regain my composure and hope that nobody has witnessed my fall from grace since anyone with any sense has headed straight for indoor cover out of the rain. Fortunately only one of the locals appears to have seen me. Either that or they’re all inside splitting their sides laughing at me from the safety of their straw huts. She comes running out to check I’m alright, which I think I am!
Joakim arrives back after his day of extreme sports without even so much as a hint of sunburn!
Tomorrow I’m off into the mountains to track down the Mountain Gorilla’s in the Ugandan rain forest. Hopefully I won’t come to too much harm there!

Thursday, January 21st, 2010
Baby Elephants and Karen Blixen
Stay: Jungle Junction
Top temp: 28
Oh my God. Today was the best day ever!!! Ok, so slight exaggeration, but we went to the elephant orphanage which rescues orphaned elephants from all over Kenya and hand raises them and then spends a minimum of five years re-introducing them into the wild. The Trust opens its doors to the public for an hour each morning and they bring out 2 groups of orphans. The youngest one we saw there was 3 months old and was adorable. He followed his carer around exactly like an elephant following its mother in the wild. Amazingly there’s only a rope segregating us from the elephants and they come up and curiously touch people with their trunks and use the rope as a scratching post. Many of them have ended up there because of the mothers being killed by poachers and many were also simply found fallen down wells in the National Parks.
We then spent an hour waiting for Impala Spares, our new spare parts supplier in Nairobi to reopen their doors after lunch and in order to kill the time we went and made our picnic lunch at the Karen Blixen (think ‘Out of Africa’) Museum. It was a perfect way to spend an hour and you get to stroll around the home she bought in Nairobi where she failed in her quest to successfully grow coffee, but left her legacy behind her before returning to Denmark by advocating and supporting medical care and education for the local people. Whilst the farmhouse is the original and was also used in the movie, only some of the exhibits are original and the interior has largely been fitted out with props from the movie set.

Monday, January 25th, 2010
Lamu Donkey Derby
Stay: Paradise (don’t be fooled by the name) Hotel
Top temp: Scorchio
We are leaving beautiful Shela today to go and find out what’s going on (if anything that is) in Lamu Town. First there’s the important business of making the most of Shela’s beautiful beach and topping up the tan whilst Joakim spends some time perfecting his windsurfing skills.
In a moment of madness we’ve decided to forgo the usual mode of transport for tourists in Lamu, ie boat and opted for the more traditional form of transport, ie the humble donkey. Ollie is also with us and shortly after lunch four donkeys arrive at our hotel accompanied by one handler. We mount our trusty steeds and head toward Lamu. The lads are so unimpressed it’s not even funny. Joakim looks like a child who’s lost his sweets, but been given an apple to compensate whilst Ollie is desperately trying to avoid tripping the donkey up with his own legs and somehow manages to get entwined in an overhead branch which unceremoniously brings him down!
The boys are very quick to abandon donkeys before arriving into the town for fear of ruining what little street cred they now have left and walk on ahead to leave me with four donkeys, 3 bags and one donkey handler!
We arrive at our accommodation and bid our transport farewell. Lamu Town is not half as nice as it’s neighboring town of Shela, but we decide to stay the night nonetheless, I mean, at least the number of places we can get a beer here has doubled from Shela. That is to say, we now have a choice of two places!

Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Out on the Town and Floating Bars
Stay: Janattan Hotel, Shela, Lamu
Top temp: Bloody Hot
We spend the day chilling out at Janattan Hotel which has now become just like our own private villa since there seems to be no other guests here and we have the pool to ourselves and staff who bring us whatever we need!
We decide to walk the few miles to Lamu town to go for dinner at Lamu House Hotel since we’ve heard the food is excellent and it certainly makes a nice change from Peponi, where we’ve already spent way too much time, but that’s only because it’s the only hotel in Shela that sells alcohol (albeit we have managed to get quite a few Tusker ‘under the counter’ at our own hotel too!)
The restaurant doesn’t fail to disappoint and the food and wine are both excellent and after staying until closing time, we decide to get a dhow back to Shela. Yes, much safer sailing at night without lights than walking! After some serious negotiation we’ve secured a deal whereby the dhow will take us back to Shela, but via the floating bar. The floating bar is midway between the two main islands and our dhow manages to pull up beautifully alongside the floating bar using just sail power (apologies for lack of sailing terminology!) Since the floating bar doesn’t have many patrons, particularly not at this time of night, we have to get the barman out of bed and Joakim gets a round in, whilst I hook up my ipod to the speakers. We spend an hour or so partying into the small hours (yes, 4 muzongu’s and 2 dhow sailers does make a party!). How Joakim managed to leave his jocks (sorry, boxers) behind though will remain a mystery to me! I think it had something to do with performing some acrobatics off the side of the bar into the sea, or at least I hope that was the case! I’m not quite sure where this guy came from, but we’re on a floating bar in the middle of the night and some fella appears out of nowhere and tells us to keep the noice down. Who he was, or where he came from will forever remain a mystery to me!
We eventually leave the bar, via dhow naturally, and our departure isn’t quite as graceful as our arrival since the dhow sail manages to take a nice chunk off the corner of the bar roof. I’m sure there’s was lots of bad language exchanged, but since it was all in Swahili we will never know. The party and acrobatics continue when we return to our hotel for a final dip of the evening!