The truth about overlanding!
Trip Start
Jan 20, 2006
1
8
17
Trip End
Mar 24, 2006
Chitemba, Lake Malawi,
Malawi
Saturday, February 18, 2006
- The amazing sights like the Serengeti and gorillas are invariably interspersed with days and days of driving. Sitting in a tin can with windows staring out at the world outside. Its dull, very dull! It helps when you have fantastic scenery, such as in Uganda, southern Tanzania and Malawi. Also, the children screaming 'mzungu' (whiteperson!) and waving also raises the spirits.
- There is no room for independent thought. You do as you're told (which includes having your tent down by 5am on some days!), follow the rest of the group and don't ask too many questions about africa and its people!
- Lunch is ALWAYS the same! I'm sure that there is an art to making cheese and ham sandwiches pleasurable after 30 days, but i haven't mastered it yet
Lake Malawi
. - Bread in Kenya is foul!
- Tour leaders have as little knowledge of Africa as you do
- Your tent always leaks and you end up sleeping with your feet in a puddle of water (this happened again last night after a 2.5 hour storm with crashing thunder and lightning just above our tent!)
- You really do start to lose your marbles! Eg. we have spent the last 4 weeks thinking up extreme sports for goats (please, don't ask why?!), have been thinking up aerobics moves for flapping our dinner plates (no teatowels here, you 'flap' until they are dry!).....and you know you've really lost it when you start saying how nice lunch was today!
But hey, its an experience. I am having a fab time despite the whinging! Have made some good mates, sampled the beers, toilets and breads of East Africa and am slowly starting to tan. Also met some new friends in Zanzibar - bed bugs - eurghhh! I am now staying with my thermorest mat for the rest of the trip as at least I know nothing horrid is living in it!
Comments
mired in ire
Loved this contribution, chuck, though I did hit my funny bone when I feel off the chair with laughter.
This backdrop to your venture rounds the picture some; how do you manage with water? If it gets carried around with you in tubs or kegs it probably tastes like it.
I am hoping Floyd will suggest some interesting games to play with your travel mates. The one involving goats cries out for significant improvements.
Malawi - here's what NI says about it:
Malawi is a visitor's paradise: 'the warm heart of Africa' has good roads, beautiful craftwork and polite officials. Lake Malawi's beaches are one of the places where white South Africans can go to meet their international peers.
Yet the warm heart bleeds. Though the climate is kind and the people industrious, farming every spare inch of tillable land, malnutrition is rife and infant mortality among the highest in the world. Health and education are not priorities for government spending: pomp, palaces and prestige buildings are.
Low education levels and low wages are meant to keep people on the land. Migration to South Africa has been discouraged for the same reason. But the land is being privatized for tobacco estates to provide the Big Men with financial security.
War in Mozambique is forcing thousands across the border into Malawi's over-crowded refugee camps, where international relief programmes further skew the tiny local economy. At present, Malawi hosts almost a million refugees.
Though still dependent on South Africa, Malawi has recently improved relations with Mozambique and Tanzania - its 'socialist' neighbours - in preparation for the impending changes in South Africa.
The new capital, Lilongwe, however remains an ugly monument to apartheid city planning. Its space-age downtown offices and shopping malls are miles from black residential areas - but handily close to the bungalows of the aid and diplomatic brigades.
Here's the ratings:
(income distribution) Wide gap between poor and rich.
1981: *
(Self-reliance) Dependent on world commodity prices.
1981: ***
(Position of Women) Traditionally strong; little violence against them.
1981: ***
(politics) Autocratic conservative.
41 %. Tiny education budget.
1981: **
Man(freedome) political exiles and prisoners. Censorship; informers; opposition stifled.
1981: **
(life expectancy) 47 years. One of the world's lowest. Low health budget; malnutrition.
1981:*