14 August

We left Kande beach the fishermen had bought in their catch and the ladies were retrieving water from Lake Malawi.

We travelled to Chatimba winding over the hills on steep narrow winding roads with cliffs on one side and ravens on other side. The trucks are modern and top quality articulators hauling everything. Though with the number of crashes and bad driving incidents even by petrol tanker drivers it was good our driver had excellent skills to keep us out of trouble.

Lake Malawi is where the Great rift Valley starts so the area has high hills that rise up from the lake and drop into a wide valley on the other side. We passed through market towns with plenty of produce and people exchanging and selling goods.

We stopped of to buy some fresh vegetables and other food at Lingamyo at the local market walking through the shacks that are shops made of anything from wood to cardboard and iron built directly on the slopping dirt ground with wood palings to bridge wet areas. The people were very friendly and did not harass us like the tourist areas and were very helpful in finding what we wanted.

Malawi people are very nice and welcoming. All manner of goods are sold, bicycles are interesting as they accessorise them with mirrors mud-flaps, coloured bits and pillion seats of bright colours. The frames are heavy and braced to take passengers and loads. Chrome and gears are quality as is the paint and the riders can tell you all about the various makes and differences. They reminded us of some motorcycle riders with show ponies.

Chitimba is another camp on Lake Malawi, these beaches have white sand and the camps are very nice but no hot water for showers and the makes shaving a bit of a task for the old boy. The nights are cool and days hot.

We arrived at Chitimba a usual Malawi town.

The camp was set on another stunning beach at the edge of Lake Malawi it was nice and clean, as were our huts but shared ablutions and cold showers. Tony went on a village walk that included shopping areas and school and hospital. He found it very moving as the school has to cope with orphans whose parents have died of aids so the kid’s live at the school in dormitories, 120 kids to a class with one teacher and many are HIV passed to them from their parents at birth.

A class room no chairs those were for us and no money to repair the broken electricity conduits on the wall and forget about computers. New Zealand kids need to experience this environment to appreciate how lucky they are.

Still they are lovely smiling kids who grasp your hand as you walk along and ask you where you are from. The village produces plenty of food but has no money to buy things so the class room has no furniture the kids sit on the floor and there is no electricity and the walls are concrete. The children sit in the same class room and are placed in groups related to age.

When the kids leave primary schools they only move onto secondary school if the grades are passed if not they have no further schooling. A few whose parents can afford it send there kids to a private school but others are left to make do in the fields. Others can make university but the government pays half the fees that must be paid back on ending university by time payment, much the same as ours.

The headmaster and deputy head are typically dedicated men to their students.

We walked to Witch Doctors house and were given an opportunity to have an inter view with him but no one went in as he wanted 4 USD and we preferred to give money to the school and hospital.

A big improvement for the village was this water pump, prior to the pump the villagers had to walk some distance carrying a 4 gallon bucket of water on their heads from the lake and use lake water that was contaminated by animals and a parasitic snail that becomes a host in the body and ruins livers killing people within 14 years.

The hospital that was little more than a clinic was quite sad in that there was a lady lying on the floor with malaria due to no bed, another in bed with malaria and another person on a intravenous drip suffering from Malaria and these were from poor families who could not afford to drive then to the main hospital as there is no ambulance. We did not take pictures of the inside of the hospital in respect to the patients but it was the same as the school but with benches and a stainless steel trolley for medicines. Aids has dropped from 80 percent of the population to 10 percent with better education however malaria is very high and the average age of death of the population is 45 to 50 years. Both school and hospital were government funded.

We came across these guys making mud bricks by hand.

The walk back was nice with the ladies in their colourful clothes carrying buckets of water on their heads. One girl we spoke to was 15 years old and a mother of two babies. The men can have more than one wife and as there are fewer men than women the men have a sweet life. The women appear to do all the work.There is no transport so they walk for miles and the number of people walking on the roads is astounding.

So very humbling to see these amazing people Karen was making noises about going to Africa to help.

15 August

Today is a long drive to Irina on an extremely bumpy road how the truck or the computer survives is amazing some of these bumps sends the 8 ton truck flying into the air and some of the pot holes could swallow small cars but the road is sealed at least.

Queuing trucks can wait days to cross borders, we get priority as tourism brings in much needed dollars.

We have crossed the border into Tanzania, border crossings make the guides nervous as they are subject to the vagrancies of officials for whatever reason can make it difficult to get visas. They ran out of visa documents so we got a stamp and receipt. Picture taking is strictly forbidden due to insurgents and struggles in the past. Tanzania is mountainous with a lot of cultivation and tropical fauna. The people are not as friendly as in Malawi but the country is has more wealth.

It was a long drive passing through small towns, pine and gum tree plantations, fields of tea plants, rice paddies, tomatoes and peppers being harvested at the moment.

There are lots banana palms, we stopped for groceries and walked through a local market buying stuff for our meals, fresh bread for lunch, usually we have sandwiches that are made at the side of the road with lots of fresh salad vegetables and cold meat, the kitchen duty people have to wash their hands well, hygiene is really watched and only one of us has had the runs, felt sorry for him.

Tanzania has the usual businesses in small towns these guys were into fixing bikes and others were manufacturing steel bowels from 44 gallon drums.

The girls tried sugar cane and they don’t like it.

AIDS the scourge of Africa is being reduced with education and advertising like this.

Tanzania has coffee and big tea plantations such as this.

Advertising is interesting as in this picture of a band of dancing singing and blaring music on the back of a truck. They are having fun but its loud real loud.

Our camp is a converted farm built on a traditional style round houses with thatched roofs. That night we had a dinner put on by the camp people that were very nice; however it was cold showers in the morning grrrrrrr.

This area is in the mountainous north of Tanzania near Kilimanjaro and is very beautiful with houses built around the hills set amongst tropical trees.

16 August

Mikumi, we were living in converted stables that were very nice but they had communal showers and toilets that required a walk to get to. Cold showers are not inviting as the temperature here is cool to say the least, about 5c this morning. Still the dinner was nice last night as it was put on by the camp staff in a nice dinning room. This was very much appreciated after a long days drive on a rough road we had arrived in the dark.

Don’t yah love being called out of bed at 630 by your old man for a picture.

The Baobab trees were growing along the road

We passed a War Memorial to the German Army troupes and tribesmen killed in a skirmish with the local tribes. Our German friends struggled with the lack of morality of war, we have met some very nice people on this trip. It seemed rather a lonely place to have a monument let alone get killed miles from anywhere.

Mikumi is the home of the Lion, Zebra, Wildebeest, Impala, Buffalo and Elephant, we did not do the game drive as it seemed to consist of everything we had seen and cats were not on the list of probable’s so carried on to Dar es Salaam

17 August

The road to Dar-es-Salaam was the usual but truck traffic increased and so the number of crashed and broken down trucks on the side of the road. A timely warning from guide come driver Nico “Wear your seat belts I may have to take evasive action at any time”.

The milk deliveries were interesting.

On reaching the outskirts of Dar-es-Salaam the traffic was more stop than go and we appreciated what our guide said about starting early that day to miss peak hour traffic. Heck it was peak hour at midday.

Road works some being worked on and others were not adding to the congestion.

The City was a nightmare no way we wanted to stay there, it was dirty smelly with rubbish all over the place.

On the way to our camp we drove though the city to let some of our group off as the finished their tour here. They were shocked with what confronted them and the street sign summed it up.

Due to congestion our fellow travellers finishing here could not be dropped off outside their hotel and they were visually shaken by the look of the town and the thought of trying to find their hotel in the crowds of people.

We drove out to a beach resort that was great, along the way we saw markets so considered a walk to them but were stopped by two guards and told not to go there as it was dangerous. Outside our door a really pretty green snake, first one we have seen in the wild. Hmmm must close the door.

The resort was nice with the beach on the Indian Ocean warm seas and white sands we had a pina-colada and enjoyed the respite from the truck and travel. Maybe this was the place that the Sultan who named Dae-es-Salaam (City of peace) was thinking about when he named the city.

There was plenty for the girls to see with handsome young men on the beach in traditional dress.

Our accommodation overlooked the trees to the beach.

Tomorrow Zanzibar