Maasai Meeting

11^th - 13^th March – Days 163-165 – Handeni/Lengusero, Tanzania

I could do it every day for years on end but I still wouldn't get used to it. It leads you to call into question the utility of life itself. I am talking, of course, about the early morning wake-up. On this occasion it was about 5am as we tried to get the 6am bus to Handeni. The 6am bus, naturally, left at 8am. Sleep happened a little but then we left the tarmac and as the corrugated road rattled the fillings out of our teeth it became obvious to me that trying to sleep was pointless. As we were being thrown several metres into the air, M still snoozed happily. She manages this all the time but I'm still at a loss as to how she does it...

Attempting to impress the locals in Lengusero and probably not doing well

I like these project visits in a way that it really gives us a backdoor into the local community, a way to enter into a social sphere without doing it as a tourist. On this occasion we suddenly found ourselves chairing a meeting of several dozen Maasai herders in a small village some 40km from Handeni, none of whom spoke a word of English so we relied on Adam to translate our questions and the answers to them. We chatted for a few hours in this way, got shown some cows, received gifts of Maasai necklaces, and then, somewhat strangely, ended up having a conversation with two young guys from the village in Spanish. It was a tranquil place where life went at its own pace (i.e. slowly), kids ran around playing football with balls of rags, and people sat around discussing everything and anything at great length.

Chairing a meeting of Maasai herders - as ya do

Handeni town is nice – nothing in particular to see or do but it's a typical African small town. It also is away from any main road and doesn't see any tourist, which results in a complete lack of Jambo-men. Instead, people say hello and wave and ask how you're doing. Also, our hotel room was more of an apartment and came at a price which probably couldn't even get you a mattress on a roof in Dar es Salaam. As a result, we sat and wandered and sat some more and just took it in, before retiring to bed early. We had grand plans to get going early and get as close as possible to Nairobi as we could.

Could we succeed where we have failed so consistently before?

M gets gifts of necklaces from Lengusero village, while T is totally caught out by the camera

TIA

6^th - 10^th March – Days 159-163 – Stone Town, Changuu Island and Jozani Forest, Zanzibar, Tanzania (plus Disaster in Dar)

We arrived back in Stone Town and in the Abdalla Guest House to a familiar sight – fading light, hurricane lamps, and increasingly sweaty air as time went on. I surprised myself again by being happy to be back in Stone Town, however much I'd liked Bwejuu and its laid-back and let's-do-nothing atmosphere. We planned a big day out for tomorrow, aiming to go to the Jozani Forest Natural Reserve to try to see the Zanzibar Red Colobus Monkey, one of Africa's rarest.

Changuu Island's dock sees much traffic these days

The plan was grand, and the follow-through was terrible – we got up late, went to send some emails, bought postcards, wrote them, sent them, and then looked at the time and realised that it was utterly pointless going to Jozani. It would have to wait until tomorrow. I suddenly started feeling tired and told M that I needed a nap, and she said she would go into the centre and find a cafe and go to read a book. We arranged a place to meet up again in a few hours.

During this few hours, something revolutionary happened that the awoken M witnessed and the happily snoozing me missed – the electricity came back on !! I came out of my slumber to see a radically changed Stone Town – people out on the streets at night, sitting in squares eating and socialising which they wouldn't have done in the darkness of the previous 3 months. I got to our meeting point and M told me that kids had been running around laughing and screaming in the streets as the light came out, banging plastic bottles together with joy. It seems this was a moment the entire island was waiting for. I wandered off to the meeting point in a rooftop cafe, ordered a beer, and the electricity promptly cut off, to moans and cries of despair from outside. “Tonight is only a test”, we were told. “They'll switch it on again tomorrow”. Zanzibar spent another night plunged in darkness.

Next morning brought more expectation and hope for Zanzibaris, but for us it brought day trips. We'd been to an agency to book some boat to Changuu Island (which, of course, is world famous for its population of Aldabra Tortoises) and left land around 9. Our guide rattled off a few facts about Changuu before mentioning in a rather insisting way about how he didn't get paid much and relied on tips from tourists to feed his wife and kids, and brother and sisters, hint hint wink wink, but aside from that he was a relaxed and friendly guy who took us around the tortoise sanctuary on Changuu (the only island in the world outside the Seychelles where you can see these tortoises, the second largest in the world after the Galapagos Tortoises) before sailing us off to a reef and seeing us overboard armed with flippers, masks and snorkels for a touch more of snorkelling. I'm not much of a fish expert so I can't get too overexcited about seeing this or that fish but it's always a bit of fun, and we saw a couple of purple starfish lazing around on the coral. That fun, it turned out, was the beginning of a problem. Before realising that, however, we went an hour's drive away on the dalla-dalla to Jozani Forest which, true to form, we arrived at 10 minutes before closing time. This being Africa though, we were greeted at the gate by a worker there who said that he was very sorry that we had arrived too late but that if we really wanted to go we could pay overtime wages for a guide to show us around which, having come all this way, we agreed to. Ten minutes later, we ended up with this very same guy as a guide. Africa Wins Again!

M successfully avoids snakebites

It's Africa's rarest monkey. Apparently.

We got a quick tour of the place where we saw a snake which they called a “forest cobra” due to its habit of lifting its head up high when it feels threatened (and our guide attacked it with a stick Steve-Irwin-style to illustrate his point, as you do) and saw an elephant shrew wandering throuh the trees. “Now, we can go and see the monkeys” said the guide. “But they are on the other side of the main road, so we will cross over and go to look for them”. It seemed that even he was surprised when, about 50 metres into the forest on the other side of the main road, we bumped into a huge troupe of these Zanzibar Red Colobus monkeys, swinging around the trees, eating fruits and occasionally dropping the remains on us, leading to hilarious consequences when one of them fell on M's glasses. “They are showing off for you! You are very lucky!” our man in the forest said. And so it seemed – they'd jump between the trees in front of us, follow us, hang upside from their tails and stare at us, whatever they could to impress the wazungu who had never seen such monkeys before! The forest was also home to troupes of Blue Monkeys and these two species seemed to take joy in wrestling with each other. We watched them for about half an hour before another shower of fruit fell upon us and we decided that maybe it was time to hop back to Stone Town. We stepped back onto the road, and our guide in the forest said he'd come with the dalla-dalla back to town as soon as he'd got changed. We stood around for a bit and he came back out, as we told him that dalla-dallas hadn't gone past yet. “No problem, something is coming” he said. It was a private pick-up, but he flagged it down anyway. And hence for the first time since Sudan, we hitched a lift on the back of a Hilux! The guys were taking firewood from Paje to Stone Town and happily gave a lift back but dropped us off on the outskirts of Zanzibar Town. We decided to walk the 45 minutes back into town.

The road to sunburn...

By now, M's sunburn from the snorkelling adventure had intensified to a point where she wasn't too happy carrying a bag and after half an hour, when Stone Town was still not in sight, she suggested we take a dalla-dalla. “Sure”, I said, and after a minute or so one came past, touting for business. We waved it down, it screeched to a halt, and I walked off towards the door to ask the ticket guy where he was heading. At some point, however, I realised that my legs were up in the air and that I heading towards a ditch. As I landed in the ditch I turned around to realise that I'd been hit by a motorbike which had missed M by a whisker, crashed into the back of the dalla-dalla and then bounced off and hit me, leaving an irate rider, the jerrycans he was carrying scattered over the road, and me with a dead leg wandering what the hell was going on. As I clambered out I ended up in the middle of a one-sided shouting match with the motorbike rider screaming at the dalla-dalla boy, who was just trying to scoop us through the door and optimistically explaining “there's no problem, let's go”. Africa Wins Again! We got in, and got to Stone Town without any further trouble...

M meets a relative

That night was supposed to see our final departure from Zanzibar but the “Spice Islands” played their final trick on us – M was feeling a bit rough after her encounter with the African midday sun, and didn't fancy taking the overnight ferry back to Dar es Salaam. “It's OK, you can take the fast boat at 9.30 tomorrow, you will be in Dar by midday!”. This was useful as we'd arranged to meet another 1% Fund project guy, Adam, in Dar early next day. We had dinner and went to find another place to crash for the night. 8.30 came, we dragged ourselves down to the port, and asked for 9.30 ferry tickets. “But there is no 9.30 ferry today... there is one at 12.45 though!”. Great. More sitting around with bags (although this did involve a great burger for me and a big salad for M so hey, who's complaining?) and we charged up to the pier for the boat which was waiting for us at 12.30. “This is not your boat. Yours is not here yet.” Africa Wins Again!

Signposts on Changuu Island. The prison was never actually used

A bit over an hour later we were off, with me frantically dishing out text messages to Adam, keeping him up to date with our situation. Our minds were put at ease by the fact that our ferry had a showing of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, but within two and a half hours we were on the road again, as Adam had told us that he was waiting for us at the main bus station about 10km out of town. We hoped to get there and hop on a bus to Handeni where the project was based. Unfortunately we landed in an enormous traffic jam caused by (as we eventually found out) a bus which had ploughed into the back of a minibus, and these 10km took us well over an hour to cover. We met Adam, realised that there were no buses to Handeni left, and tried to look for a place to stay. We apologised profusely to Adam, especially given that he'd taken time off work and left his base in Morogoro very early that morning and had been waiting for us at the bus station for about seven hours due to our repeated disasters. “Oh, it's fine, don't worry about it!” he said, without a hint of sarcasm. “I know how it goes with these connections, traffic jams, boats, buses... it's no problem at all...”. We'd have to spend the night in Dar es Salaam and take a bus up to Handeni the next morning. My mind floated off for a second as I thought about how a European would react to waiting seven hours for someone to show up. Africa Wins Again – The Flipside!

Little Ado About Nothing (at all)

3^rd -6^th March – Days 156-159 – Bwejuu, Zanzibar, Tanzania

It wasn't quite that windy.

We were up bright and early, kicked ourselves out of bed on account of the sweaty sheets not encouraging a lazy lie-in, and headed off to the bus station to go and see somewhere else. The coast of Zanzibar Island is dotted with small fishing villages which themselves are dotted with resorts and guesthouses, and we pretty much picked one of them from the map and headed off. The ride was scenic although we were half asleep for most of it. It's an attractive island and the slow pace of life in the main town was taken even more seriously in the countryside – people wandered or cycled around, sat in the shade, or worked lazily in the fields. We arrived in Bwejuu, rocked up at “Mustapha's Place” the first place we saw a sign for, and went in to discover that we were the only guests there. It was getting towards being low season, they said, and so they wouldn't normally be full at this time of year, but the fact that it was complety empty was a result of the lack of electricity. We explained to them that mzungu tourists like their cold beer and air conditioning but it was still amazing for us to see what a huge effect a simple lack of electricity has had on visitor numbers – come on wazungu, satellite TV and air-con aren't THAT important!!!

The hustle and bustle of downtown Bwejuu was almost too much for us

We were joined almost immediately by a guy who offered us a snorkelling trip, M's eyes lit up and I could see the lazy morning I'd planned for the following day come down in flames. Within a short time, it was decided – we'd get up early for the trip, pay over the odds for it, and meet the guy at the beach for the trip. Later in the day a Danish woman and her daughter arrived and we had a few chats with them but the conversation was rather Scandinavian in nature (i.e. it didn't flow very well, fast, or easily) and I drifted in and out of it. I think I need to do nothing at all for a few days to get the energy levels back up. Bwejuu seemed like a good place to do that – it was a small, quiet village with nothing much to do aside from sit and lie around reading books and having a warm beer or two. The two guys who work at the place, Mohammed and Ali, are friendly and a guy drops by in the evening to hang around. He's half Zanzibari, half Somali, he tells us. He's a nice guy too – his face has some Somali features to it, he speaks English with a partly African and partly London accent and tells us tales of his days as a fisherman off the Somali coast before the war broke out. He tells us of his disgust for the effect that qat has on the Somali lands and is interested to hear of our impressions about Hargeisa. It's a relaxed and nice evening, and for me the only souring event was being destroyed at chess by M (yet again) in the evening. There is a generator here but they switch it off at around 11pm, the fan goes off, and it's another sweaty night.

The idyllic (.....or at least quasi-cleanish) beach in Bwejuu.

We'd walked around the village just after arriving and it was clear to see the effect of the long power cut yet again – most of the resorts in town were empty, some had closed down, and the few that remained open didn't have many customers – aside from the Danes the only other wazungu we've seen are a family on holiday at the beach. In many places, a tourist crash like this would result in the few that arrive being relentlessly hounded by touts and TCSs (tourist-crap-salesmen) but these aren't in evidence in Bwejuu (just as there were very few of them in Stone Town) and this increases my liking for the place even more. I get the feeling that this is a place which tourists have discovered and which residents have adapted to, rather than exploiting the situation ruthlessly as has happened in so many places. Zanzibaris, I salute you...

It was only "Kilimanjaro" but there was nothing else cold. Life is a struggle.

The snorkelling wasn't bad – the underwater life isn't as impressive as it was in Hurghada and the visibility wasn't as good – but it's relatively rare enough to see life underneath sea level that some colourful fish flitting around is always nice to see. They were well outnumbered by sea urchins and corals that looked disturbingly similar to extremely large brains. The afternoon was as unproductive as I hoped – lying around in another one of the low-key resorts where I found Louis Theroux's “Dark Star Safari” on a shelf and read the beginning of it, where the author traces much the same route as we did on the beginning of the trip, through Egypt and Sudan. More of the same later at another resort run by a German guy who ran over to the generator-owning neighbouring resort with several iceboxes and filled them with ice every morning to keep his beers cold. More of the same the next day at the same place. Eventually we managed to get moving back to Stone Town at 4pm. Nothing much accomplished but in my mind that was needed...

3 days in Bwejuu - a summary

The Bwejuu award goes to the guys who work at Mustapha's whose names are Mohammed and Ali, for naming their two cats Cassius and Clay. Genius!

Ali (left) and Mohammed (right) flanking M (rear) and Clay (front). Thanks guys!

Who needs Electricity???

2^nd-3^rd March – Days 155-156 – Stone Town, Zanzibar, Tanzania

Zanzibar Town's rather understated ferry port seen from "Mercury's" bar, which is surely not trying to cash in on Zanzibar's most famous son

I'll be quite honest here – I'm not a fan of tourist, beach places and I didn't really expect much of Zanzibar. I didn't really like Lamu all that much and as the ferry pulled up to the docks, I was expecting more of the same. After getting a Zanzibar stamp in our passports for some reason, we stopped for a drink while we worked out where to go, and eventually set off looking for a place to lay our heads for the night. As we wandered around the small, winding streets of Stone Town (the old Swahili quarter of Zanibar Town, the main town of Zanzibar Island – surprisingly), the place grew on me very quickly. There were tourists around and the place had a definite beach-town feel, but it was somehow very different from Lamu. I didn't at all get the feeling of being an animal in a zoo who is expected to buy everything from everyone and where anyone who offers to help is just looking to make something. People said hello and smiled, gave us pointers and welcomed us. I don't know why but it just had a completely different feel to Lamu, even though technically they were quite similar. As we got (unsurprisingly) lost in Stone Town's alleyways, a guy offered to help and guided us to the place we were looking for. It was full, and so he took us to another one, which was also full. His third suggestion had space for us and we settled into the sweltering room.

Typical (above) street scene in Stone Town

It's the hot and rainy season in this part of Africa and the air is oppressive enough as it is, but Zanzibar has an extra problem – in December of last year, the electric cable under the sea from the mainland snapped and Zanzibar Island, which has no power stations of its own, was plunged into darkness. It's been that way ever since even if a few places have generators. I suppose it creates a largely similar scene to what it must have looked like a century ago – merchants did business at night in the flickering light of candles and hurricans lamps, and fans and air-con are distant memories. While it creates a nice atmosphere, it's been rather tougher on the island itself as Western travel companies have cancelled all of their bookings. There are still a fair amount of tourists around but everyone says that it's far less than it normally would be at this time of year. Taking the positives out of this situation as they can, hotel owners are using the slump to carry out renovations on their hotels, waiting for the electricity to come back on. No-one really seems sure about when this will happen though. As often happens in Africa, people take the situation as it comes and are dealing with it in a way that just wouldn't be possible in Europe...

A Cathedral. What else to say about it ?

Stone Town is one of those places where you just wander around and take in the atmosphere in the small cobbled streets. You eat whatever you can find (because of the lack of fridges outside of the expensive hotels, a lot of restaurants have scaled down their menus drastically and the drinks are warm. It's alright though and we don't really mind – it does some good to get away from the comforts of life sometimes (and in my opinion the more the better). The evening was a lazy one having a cold drink on the seafront, getting lost once again and eventually finding our way back to the “Abdalla Guest House Annex” for a shower in the dark (if you can't see that you're still dirty then it doesn't count, right?) and a pretty sweaty night.

...little did we know we'd be just in time for the Eid-al-Moulid celebrations! Hurrah!

The Abode of Peace

26^th February - 2^nd March - Days 151 - 155 - Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

All seemed well on our return to Dar es Salaam for about four minutes until it dawned on us that our one remaining camera had somehow been left on the bus. A few phone calls to the bus company left us empty handed and so, with our Somaliland Nokia phone being of a slightly basic model, we were left with no photographic equipment whatsoever.

The Kigamboni ferry prepares for yet another 4 minute crossing

We were determined to give Freda a good send-off anyway and put the camera issue on the back-burner. In the shadow of a ferocious looking storm, we sailed/took a tuktuk/trekked off to the Kigamboni peninsula on the other side of the bay for a day at the beach. In one of the more surprising events of the day, the jet black clouds which had been chasing us for several hours suddenly decided to change course and our afternoon in the sand was spent in glowing sunshine. The atmosphere was only dampened when a bit of a commotion went up and it turned out that a girl had just arrived in the area after having her arm knifed by fishermen who were trying to mug her further up the beach. Not wanting to crowd her out as she was already being helped by many people (including the barman who ingeniously disinfected the wound with a generous helping of Johnny Walker) we stayed our distance a bit as she was helped into the car. The wound wasn't huge but there was still quite a bit of blood – as M pointed out her distress was probably more fear than pain but it was still a reminder of what can happen in broad daylight. We've been so fortunate so far on this trip not to have had any trouble at all that it's easy to become complacent sometimes. We made a mental note of this as the barman's friends drove the girl off to get medical help somewhere.

Generic view of Dar es Salaam from the sea #58823294 (featuring Fish Market)

The final part of Freda's send-off was a trip to the suburbs to an Ethiopian restaurant which I'd been dreaming of ever since our last one with Tom in Nairobi. It was pretty good all in all but the kitfo was probably the best we've had, including in Ethiopia. So to all raw-meat fans out there, “Addis in Dar” is a great place to chow down, even if it does cost 5 or 6 times more than what it would in Ethiopia itself. We got an early night and, when Freda sailed out the door at 3.30am for his early morning flight from Nyerere International Airport, we gave him a rather anticlimactic farewell, half asleep as we were. I vaguely remember wishing him a good trip but that's about it. We tried to make up for it with text messages through his long trip home, attempting not to rub it in too much by mentioning the Finnish climate at this time of year...

"Addis in Dar", a paradise for lovers of raw meat and unleavened pancake dough.

The next day, we had a mission – get a new camera. For this we headed out to the posher suburbs of Dar es Salaam where we aimed to find shopping centres, hopefully to get what we were looking for. After several underpopulated and uninspiring places totally devoid of any character (and camera shops), we were engaged in conversation by two girls taking a lunch break who asked us our opinion on a new marketing scheme they'd drawn up for their company. The pointed us towards another shopping centre where they said we'd probably have more luck and, after far too long agonising over what to get, we finally emerged with a new camera. It got dark, started raining, and we finally injected a bit of life and character into the day by going to eat some Ethiopian again. The kitfo was still as good. This was our final farewell to Dar es Salaam as we packed up, got up early, and headed towards the docks to get a ferry over to the legendary Zanzibar Island.

A Tale of Two Cities

24^th February - 26^st February 2010 – Days 149-151 – Arusha and Moshi, Tanzania

Our arrival to Arusha was slightly less invasive than we expected from this place, one of the tourist capitals of Tanzania. We'd stopped off here for a few hours on the way to Karatu and it was as we would have otherwise expected – tourist stuff for sale, rip-offs aplenty and a general feeling of being a walking cash dispenser. Not for the first time, my mind cast itself back to Sudan and Somaliland. On the way back, however, we'd arrived on a dalla-dalla and, aside from a few taxi drivers looking for business, the bus station way empty. Where was everyone? I was tempted to think that Arusha may not have been as bad as I had imagined it. We wandered around the streets looking for a place that a guy on the dalla-dalla had recommended to Freda and, after a few wrong turns, we found a place to shack up for the night at the Kilimanjaro Villas Hotel (or something similar).

The next morning, at least for the first 5 minutes, was as quiet as the night before had been – that was until Freda got Jamboed and for the next 2 hours we were surgically attached to a bunch of guys who were trying to sell us some stuff and wouldn't take no for an answer. When we ducked into a supermarket, we were awaited at the door, and when we went into a bar they hovered over our table and gave us some rasta-speak (“Jambo my friend, one love, peace love and gratitude my friend!”). Freda bought some stuff from the guys, we got completely overcharged for the beers, an argument ensued (during which the woman at the bar closed up and refused to speak to us) and, once again, a tourist town left a bitter taste was left in my mouth. It seems that every time we go to one of these places, I hate them more and more.

We left soon afterwards towards Moshi – it's another tourist town as it's the nearest city of any size to Kilimanjaro (and it was too late to get any further than there) but it did seem more relaxed from the window as we passed by on the way up from Dar es Salaam. On the way to the bus station we bumped into one of the Jambo-men who was a friend of the one of the guys who'd ripped us off at the bar. We explained our predicament as diplomatically as possible (thinking that this guy was probably in on it) and we were told that, well, I don't know where my friend is, and, well, maybe he works at the bar but I don't know, and, well, hey, it's only money right? M and I pointed out that the “it's only money” argument only works in one direction and we were greeting with a telling wall of silence and a bit more “one love” rasta lines. My tourist-town hatred was confirmed (as if it needed any confirmation) and I suddenly started looking forward to Burundi a lot more than I ever had before.

Arusha was by no means the worst place we've been to but, once again, we've seen the effect that mass tourism has on towns such as these. Grr.

As we rolled into Moshi, the familiar feeling of tourist-town angst came over me but it was soon quelled by the look of the place. Even from the window of the bus, Moshi's feeling was more relaxed and I felt a lot less pre-arrival annoyed about this place. We got off the bus, wandered off for a snack and then took a walk down the main street looking for somewhere to stay. A few people said hello, a few people smiled at us, and no rastamen or carving-toting guys charged up to us with a big smile and a JAMBO MY FRIEND! Things were looking up. Moshi is quite an attractive town as well, and we enjoyed wandering around, taking in the atmosphere. The few people who approached us for business were direct and took no for an answer and we had a friendly chat with them before they wished us well. Things were definitely looking up. After finding a place to stay we engaged in the familiar routine of barbecued meat and beer and retired to bed. I'm in a much better state of mind now.

Crater Tourism

22th February - 24st February 2010 – Days 147-149 – Karatu and the Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania

The long bus ride to Karatu started confidently with the driver not being sure where he was supposed to be driving. This came about as only minutes before the bus started to move he ushered us out of the bus in a slight panic saying that the bus would not be going to our destination despite us having been instructed so by another member of staff outside, then changing his mind after some heated conversations with his co-driver and the said member of staff outside and ushering us back onto the bus. Whether the driver was given instructions on the last minute in a yellow envelope or not, it was still a rather amazing race to Karatu. During the course of the 15 hours that followed, we were supplied with a Die Hard movies marathon dubbed in French, introduced to new plum-like fruits Freda picked up from some street vendors, driven past Kilimanjaro without any of us noticing as the volcano lay deep inside the mist (as it often does), made to wait at Arusha bus station for more than an hour for the bus to fill up again – and made to listen to the repeated sour comments of a woman from the UK on the bus about how nothing works in Africa – and tactfully overcharged five-fold for using the public toilet at the same station. We finally arrived at Karatu around 8pm after a couple more interesting pieces of entertainment, namely recreational movies about the stone age and the life in the South American jungle during the Inca rule.

After such an eventful ride Freda declared that he could really do with a beer. All we wanted to do was to find a place for the night quickly enough so that we could move on to this preferred pastime, but Freda was a step ahead and lead us to a streetside bar which, it happily turned out, had a guest house right around the corner and also served food. Better yet, there was a driver-guide hanging around at the guest house who agreed to take us to the Ngorongoro Crater the next morning. Bingo! We all got our beer and Freda got his first taste of ugali with nyama choma (charcoal grilled meat) and his first squat toilet experience of the trip before turning in at a decent hour.

As if we hadn't had enough of early mornings lately, we again had to get up before sunrise if we were to get down into the crater during the better wildlife viewing hours of the morning. So we met up with our driver-guide and yawned a request for a stop at the ATM and at the shop to get some drinks on the way. At the gate I showed my full morning personality to the park staff and to our poor guide when shocked and appalled at how the park didn't accept payment in anything but US dollars, thus draining our stock nearly empty after only being replenished a couple of days ago by Freda who brought us some with him. My anger was quickly smoothed out, however, when finally inside the conservation area we were met with one of the most rewarding, if not the most rewarding, views of the trip so far: misty thin layers of cloud floating over the crater seen from an opening on the rim. The crater lake below was so still it looked like a piece of matte mirror glass in the weak morning sun. We gawked for a while, snapped enough photos to make continuous wallpaper out of the frames and eventually climbed back into the car for the descent into the crater and some more beautiful views along the way down. Freda also engaged in some trade with the local Maasai herders selling their crafts while me and T were trying to make educated guesses about whether real ivory could be as light as the one in the necklaces sold by these Maasai claiming it as ivory. The outcome of this discussion is obviously rather pointless as both options would not be very good.

We spent a good while down in the crater spotting the abundant wildlife and giving a good workout to our cameras, me cursing T for leaving the memory card inside the laptop at the hotel on a day like this as I was deleting pictures in order to take new ones within the rotation of 20 photos that could be fitted onto the camera's own memory. We saw the grand list of zebras, buffaloes, Thomson's gazelles, wildebeest, hartebeest, hippos, elephants, rhinos, a waterbuck, a cheetah and some lions – the only male we saw was sleeping inside such a thick bush that he was barely identifiable as a lion by his tail which could be seen waggling gently around. Also on the long list were the birds, as always. Flamingos, secretary bird, kori bustard, egrets... As a reward for our guide, we had bought some mandazi (local breakfast doughnuts), bananas and soft drinks. Never mind that he was probably used to an actual lunch box which were sold at Karatu town at such extortionate prices that we had swiftly turned away from the seller in the previous night and decided to apply our own picnic tactics. We did feel slightly bad about this so we decided to get our guy some dinner in town later to compensate. On the drive back into town we stopped at a craft shop so that Freda and I could have a look at some mzungu-priced souvenirs and, thanks to Freda's initiative, at a local brick factory just out of curiosity towards the local way of life. The workers kindly explained to us their manufacturing routines and showed us the piles of hundreds of bricks they push out on a daily basis as a result of pure manual labour. Another one of those moments when you start to wonder how many bricks an average western worker would produce manually these days if put to the task. T kicked back by pooping out already before we even got out of the gates and continuing on that path until we reached town.

Back in Karatu we indeed held onto our promise of taking our guide out for dinner and a beer. We were joined by Franco, a friendly chap that we had met on the previous night at the bar and who had introduced us to the guest house next door. Contrary to mine and T's hardened expectations, Franco didn't order any food for himself but just had a beer while the rest of us scooped up some hefty plates. Our guide respectfully had his dinner and a beer and made his excuses, wishing us a good journey on and requesting that we mention to our friends about his services. Franco stayed behind to keep us company and hit us back as the night went on and the rounds of beer flowed to our table, in that he ordered one for himself on our tab on each of those. After some time Fredas' friendly and welcoming smile encouraged one of the waitresses to ask if she could have a drink with us as well, so we got her a round which she came and joined us for whenever she had a quieter spot in between her work. Later we got her another. When Franco was about to pass out at the table and I had already done so to some extent, I decided to call it a day and left the guys to it. The next morning I was sharing the room with two sleepyheads who had apparently had some kind of manly heart-to-heart about the prospects of a western guy attracting local ladies' attention if money was not involved, on which I was asked for my opinion as well. Somehow this had become a topic of debate over the course of the night.

The boys had not at least embarked on any larger festivities so we were all in the state to go wander around Karatu town in the daylight as well. Not that there is all that much to explore. Karatu has one main road, the highway up from Arusha that continues through Ngorongoro and Serengeti towards Mwanza. There is also a parallel street to the main road, and anything important in the town is situated mostly between and around these streets. Karatu has a small but cheerful selection of bars and restaurants, and you'll find a cheap guest house or two by the main road but otherwise the place really does not have that much to offer. As it is close to Ngorongoro crater, there are many lodges and campsites slightly outside of town, but we were happier staying in Karatu town as it does have that kind of dusty town character not spoilt by the fact that it is the last town before two major tourist attractions on a continental scale. We then strolled up and down the main street, concluded we had seen most of it and sat down for some more nyama choma for lunch, an early afternoon beer and a further debate over how one should relate to the locals – now that we had a fresh face coming from outside our four month viewing goggles we got yet another person's insights to this traditional opinion-divider. A bit later on our guide from the day before took us to see an old Nokia tyre that had been lying in someone's open courtyard gathering dust and rust for quite a while. He came to think of this as the day before this we had told him about how Nokia started off making all kinds of stuff, car tyres being one of them, and he remembered that they might have some. There it was, a gigantic old tractor tyre – made by Nokia.

As the activities and attractions in Karatu slowly but surely started running out, we thought best to try and get back to Arusha the same night still as this would give us more leeway on our schedule of getting back towards Dar es Salaam. So we headed to the bus station, agreed on a dalla-dalla to take us, grabbed our bags and hopped in. We shared the merry ride with a total of 22 passengers in the dalla-dalla at times, as is consistent with the small town atmosphere.


p.s. - Apologies for the lack of pictures -disappearance of the camera - Freda, get on with sending them!!!

Feel The Rhythm !

We're still waiting for a mysterious guest writer contribution before we can keep posting so I thought I'd share a few rhythms from this continent which, in my opinion has the best and most uplifting music that can be found anywhere. For some reason, though, it's little known in the rest of the world. After all, we are writing what we are seeing and that's only one of the five senses - and in Africa, the sense of hearing is all important as there will never be a quiet moment in a settlement of any size. I love it

The first come from Teddy Afro, one of our favourites who was all over the airwaves in Ethiopia. Teddy was surfing a particularly large wave of popularity at the time we were there given that he'd just been released from jail after being convicted of a hit-and-run. His supporters pointed out that, given his overly critical tone of the government (and the Ethiopian government isn't a huge fan of criticism, it must be said) that he was set up. Not being there at the time I can't pass judgement but it's true that a singer who is so critical and so popular is probably quite a headache for a government like that of Meles Zenawi. The songs (Musica Heywote and Lambadina) are in Amharic so there's no way I can translate them but they're a good listen in any case.

The next is from one of my South African favourites Brenda Fassie (who died of a massive drug overdose a few years back). Again Nomakanjani in IsiZulu so I have no idea what it's all about but it has some kind of feel-good factor to it which you just can't find in the depressing indie music you find back home...

Next up - anyone who's been to Zanzibar will recognise this one. The lyrics aren't exactly earth-shattering (Jambo, Jambo Bwana - "Hello, hello sir, how are you, I'm fine") but the tune is catchy. And the Zanzibari adaptation of this Kenyan song from the 1960s everywhere there, so you have to get hooked on it at some point.

There's more sophisticated and high class stuff but I need to go and wash some clothes now so I don't have time to poke around YouTube to find it. So you'll have to wait until next time...

T and M's Token Milestone 150 Days Special Awards Extravaganza!

150 Days is a big milestone to reach, for reasons I don't really know or care to find out. But it seems that such an event must be marked, and we would like to take this opportunity to dish out some awards for those who have marked our trip and our lives (and made us smile) in such important ways.

Greatest put-down award

Award granted by unanimous vote to South African cyclist Sebastian for his outburst against an Ethiopian bus driver who insisted on a ridiculously large payment to put the guys' bikes on the roof when Grant was down with malaria. With a dramatic rise to his feet, a waggling finger and a delightfully thick South African accent, he angrily exclaimed “now listen my man – I'm not gonna talk to you if you continue acting like a prick!”. It's hard to get across in text just how funny this was, just as it was hard to ascertain if the bus driver had any idea what acting like a prick meant.

Greatest animal imitation

Also granted unanimously to Chinese Sean for his imitation of a donkey on the walk to Kawa in Sudan. Another moment that just should have been captured on video.

Most convincing prostitute

Not a tough one given that only one has really made a move, but granted anyway to the girl in Lamu who sat next to T, repeatedly claiming “I love you” and “Without you I am dead”, and pretending to cry. The fact that she'd had enough beers to keep smiling throughout the crying act just added to her merit for this award.

Most unthreatening threat

Once again another sadly comical moment near Lake Langano in Ethiopia as the ticket man insisted on payment for bags by slowly lifting and then lowering his sunglasses à la mega-tough-man and bellowing “GIVE... ME... THE MONEY!!!”. The fact that many of the passengers were laughing at his attempts to “intimidate” us didn't really help his cause, although T considered paying money for the wonderful act. He was voted the Weakest Link, and left with nothing.

Most foulmouthed kid

Ethiopia has a lot of contenders for this award but this one is given to the kid of an estimated age of about 7 or 8 who greeted our refusal to buy a packet of nuts from him with (and minors should look away now) “Fucking fuck you, god dammit!!”. He'll be going far with marketing lines like that.

Best request for state subsidies

Gabor from al-Azure tours. Not only did he entertain us all day with his stories and outrageous expressions (“DAyum!!”) but also expressed his frustation with the Ministry of Tourism in Muscat. “I mean... I'm the only Hungarian-speaking tour guide in Oman, why does the government not help me??”. We didn't have the answer to that although, as the only Franco-English tapas cook in Helsinki, I also didn't receive government help. It must be xenophobia.

Best chat-up line

In a country like Egypt, it takes a special effort to win an award like this. It's a good thing we had Mohammed, a fat, greasy, moustachioed tour guide atop a donkey which was obviously far too small for him, who took a shining to M. “Will you belly dance for me?” he asked. “I'll buy you a bottle of wine!”. With romance like that, it's no surprise that Cairo is one of the most populated cities in the world.

Second prize goes to the Ministry of Immigration guy in Hargeisa who claimed that T was not very photogenic but that M was very beautiful, and would she like to be his wife?

T, after 150 days, is still waiting for his first indecent proposal (barring Lamu-girl as mentioned above)

Gallagher brothers award for hotel destruction

We had to give ourselves an award, and we will for our great efforts in the Auberge des Sables Blancs in Djibouti. Returning from an evening wandering around town, we put our phone to charge with the brand new charger we had bought that day. Without about 10 minutes the plug had flown out of the wall and across the room with a loud bang and a shower of sparks and the electricity system of the whole building went out. In a country as hot as Djibouti, in a building without any air conditioning or fans, it was only a matter of time until trouble erupted and it did at about 4am when (from the sounds of it) a horde of angry women banged on the manager's door to demand he take action. He promptly did, the power came back on, and we never mentioned anything.

Al-Qaeda paranoia award

A prize to be shared between two worthy winners – firstly the manager of the Auberge des Sables Blancs who declared that if we went to Somaliland we would be captured and killed by al-Qaeda and he would “not accept” any other possibility, such as that we would get to Somaliland without any problems. The other winner is Rui who we travelled with in Sudan who warned us not to tell anyone where we were going and when because al-Qaeda could be listening. Despite our general indiscretion and our going to Somaliland, we are still (somehow) alive – which is maybe worthy of an award in itself?

“I knows what I likes” award

Our second youngest award winner is the Korean kid from Dongola who asked Sean where he was from with a big smile. “Are you Japanese?”. “No, I'm from China”, the ever smiling and friendly Sean replied. “Oh. China”. The Korean smile rapidly melted away and his scowling expression left no one in the room in any doubt of what he would have wanted to say. I can't remember who, but someone rather quickly changed the subject.

The “Ruben” award

The “Ruben” award is, as usual, awarded to Ruben for his early morning adventures on the way to Abu Simbel after a night on the Stellas in Aswan. A routine police roadblock would have presented no problems on any other day but on this particular morning Ruben leaned forward with panic in his eyes and declared (in Finnish so that no one else would understand) that he wouldn't be able to pass the test as he was too drunk.

The runner up prize goes to Ruben as well for his adventures in Bahariya, which I will try to reproduce as poetically as possible. One evening, Ruben went off to squat over the Turkish toilets which are such a familiar sight in much of the Arab world but, seemingly, were quite a novelty to Ruben. The rest of us outside heard a yelp from inside the bathroom and when he came out, he explained this alarmed cry by describing how he was looking between his legs to know where to aim when he was suddenly scared by the fast-moving shadow of his own production.

The University Challenge award

This prestigious award is dedicated with absolutely no hint of irony to the British girl in Cairo who, straight-faced, asked an Israeli couple if there was some kind of conflict in Israel. The guy who answered her patiently and somehow without being patronising is also deserving of some kind of award.

The salesman award

This is the only award which is given to an entire nation instead of specific individuals, so we would like to invite Ethiopia up to the stage to receive its trophy for providing us with endless scenarios such as this one.

Us: Hello! Do you have any Fanta?
Salesman (very enthusiastically): Ah! Fanta! Yes yes yes... Well... no... we don't have have.
Us: Ah. How about Coke?
Salesman: Aha, Coca cola!! Yes yes... we don't have.
Us: Anything else like that?
Salesman: Ah, like Pepsi????
Us: Yes, Pepsi would be great!
Salesman (shaking his head): We don't have.
Us: I see. Do you have any other sodas at all? Fizzy drinks? Sprite, Mirinda...?
Salesman: Mhmmm...!!....We don't have.

At first it was confusing, then slightly tiring, but eventually became highly hilarious, and “We don't have” is an expression that we still use in our everyday conversation. Thank you, Ethiopia. The first example of this was in the restaurant of the Ethiopian embassy in Sudan where we, along with the Slovenian biker dudes, discreetly enquired about beer.

Lady at desk (with big smile): Ah, you want beer??........... (smile disappears, head is shaken) We don't have.

It was a disappointing moment, and Boris in particular was left a broken man.

The big dreams award

This goes to Waleed and Areej (neither of whom have ever touched a drop of alcohol) who confided that, after their wedding, they would celebrate by sharing a glass of beer. We cordially tried to point them towards something more befitting of the occasion.

“You can take the boy out of Finland...” award

This prestigious award goes to Freda, who appeared determined to prove his worth. After landing in Dar Es Salaam at 5.30am, we wandered around town and then went to a local bar for a breakfast beer (note to parents: this is not regular behaviour). After a Kilimanjaro and a Tusker, our Freda, sleep deprived after his 34 hour journey from Helsinki, was drunk as a skunk and seriously struggling to keep his flipflops on. Freda, please come on stage to accept your trophy...(and try not to trip over the stairs on the way).

The lookalike award

This trophy goes to Fabio Capello, for having the good luck to resemble Tom in Nairobi a hell of a lot. However, Tom distinguishes himself with vastly superior intelligence given that, of the two, he is the only one who has never applied to be England's football manager.




See you in 150 days for the next round!

The Arrival of the Valkoinen Poika

20th February - 22nd February 2010 – Days 145-147 – Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

Another day, another bus ride – this one with a driver who enjoyed driving at high speed and overtaking on hills and blind corners. Who needs lions and buffaloes for adrenaline rushes eh? As a consequence, we got to Dar es Salaam way before sunset, wandered around looking for a cheap bed and eventually got one when it was way past sunset. A great use of an evening. In any case, we cheered ourselves up with a kebab, ruined our progress by doing the laundry in cold water, and then hit the sack at 2am, sweating buckets, in preparation for our trip to the airport to pick up Freda the next morning.

And at 5am we were up and about (surprisingly) although as Freda walked out of the magic doors after his 34 hour trip and a night spent sleeping on a restaurant floor in Heathrow Airport, it was hard to tell who was more of a wreck. We decided that it was a waste of time trying to work this out so went for a wander around Dar es Salaam. It's a nice enough city with a friendly feel to it, although it was early Sunday morning so it also had the aftertaste of a ghost town (and all of the ghosts were in church) and apart from getting Jamboed a few times (a new verb we have invented, whereby we are greeted by someone in this faux-Swahili way with a view of trying to sell us a safari/boat ticket/souvenir etc.) it was a pretty calm morning. Freda tried to wake himself up by stripping off to his boxers and throwing himself into the Indian Ocean, M walked through a spiky plant and injured her feet, and our collective wounds were licked at a bar where we sampled a few Tanzanian beers for breakfast. After concluding that they weren't as good as any other country so far, we wandered off back to the hotel for some sleep. Hours drifted past, we got up and bought bus tickets to Karatu, near to the Ngorongoro crater for tomorrow morning. It's going to be another early morning as the bus leaves at 5.30am. Freda's soft introduction was completed with a few more beers, Indian food and a shisha pipe, and we promised to keep him strictly on a diet of ugali from now on...

Spot the white kid

Declarations of “let's get to bed early” were once again catastrophically inaccurate and after a long and convoluted packing process (where our destinations after Ngorongoro were decided by the toss of a coin) we went for another couple-of-hours-nap. We'll return to a hopefully more lively Dar es Salaam (hopefully more lively ourselves) next weekend.


N.B. Due to camera issues, the photos on this post are even more uninspiring than normal, and for this we apologise profusely.

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen

Average Beach Holiday

16th February - 19th February 2010 – Days 141-144 – Ukunda, Kenya

It all started so normally – the matatu had dropped us off in Ukunda town, we had a cold Coca Cola and started off on the long trek towards Diani Beach where we had a campsite lined up. Diani Beach, by all accounts is a tourist resort plagued with beach boys who wander around trying to trick tourists into giving them money, old sex tourists – both men and women (and we saw plenty of evidence of that) – and the usual soulless establishments that you generally find at tourist resorts on the coast. Our purpose for being here was rather that it was the nearest jumping off point to visit Kaya Kinondo, a sacred forest which M had read about in a Kenyan travel magazine in Lamu and taken an interest in. As soon as we arrived though, things started deviating from the plan in quite a spectacular way. After taking a few cooling off beers and a pizza, we had a chat with an Australian guy, a British girl and an American girl who, despite looking like beach bums themselves, told us unconditionally that Diani was a dump. After a few more beers we went out into the garden, pitched up the tent and clambered in.

As M fell asleep I was getting too much pain from the ever growing lump on my arm to get any sleep and so I tossed and turned until about 5am when I heard someone going through the plastic bags outside the tent where we had kept our pasta and juice for the next day. As I peered through a hole in the tent, a telltale long black tail revealed that our unwelcome visitor was the advance party of a troupe of monkeys which was coming to raid our supplies. I hit the side of the tent a few times to try and scare this marauding monkey away but instead of taking fright, it just punched me back a couple of times and more monkeys jumped from the trees. For the next 3 hours they were screeching, munching on raw macaroni, and jumping around on the tent. True to form, M slept through 2 hours of this but eventually I woke her up and we lay around for a bit, waiting for them to calm down and semi-hoping that they would take our small reserve of Tuskers – it would be annoying to lose them, certainly, but the sight of a drunken troupe of monkeys would definitely have compensated for the loss of the macaronis. As we broke out of the tent and inspected the damage, it turned out that not only had they not stolen any of the beer, but they'd broken one of the bottles. Half a kilo of pasta had been destroyed as well as a half kilo pot of creamy cheese sauce. M's towel, which she'd hung up to dry the night before, had been dragged off the line and used as some kind of plaything. The tent next to ours had had its top ripped off, and the frame of ours had been snapped. Nice work, monkeys!

The guilt on her face tells it all

As we had breakfast I looked at my lump which had by now a large black blob just under the surface. M's was giving her trouble too although hadn't grown quite so much and looked like a big spot with a large reservoir of goo inside. She inspected mine and declared that the black blob looked like it had wings and legs. We had breakfast and then decided that it may be a good idea to go and get a doctor's advice about what to do in cases of having flies growing inside one's arms.

Off we headed and one thing led to another, and before we knew it we'd been pumped with antibiotics and lined up for surgery to remove the offending lumps, and shown to our rooms where we were to stay for the night. It seemed a bit excessive for what was effectively just an abscess but we wanted to get rid of these and did as we were told. We were fed fish and chicken, watched al-Jazeera news for the first time in a while, and when afternoon came I was called over to the operating theatre where I spent probably the 30 most unpleasant minutes of the whole trip, having the lump excavated. No flies or spiders or small aliens escaped from the resulting chasm and so I was left to suppose that the big black blob was something altogether less cool, like dried blood or something. Dammit. M went after and came back smiling and in an altogether more composed state than the shaking, sweating mess that I had been after mine. We looked great as a pair with our patches on arms and a drip plug in the back of our hands. As we got ready to go to sleep in the “Palm Beach Hospital” in Diani Beach, we reflected on how we had spent the afternoon in an operating theatre rather than an ancient sacred forest as we had planned. But then again, if adventure always went according to plan, it wouldn't be adventure any more would it?

Things continued not going according to plan as we sat around in our room all day getting pumped with antibiotics, although the doctor did come in at one point to talk about football and inform us that we could be let out tomorrow. My dressing was changed and underneath it was a large black crater, which apparently was a “necrosis” which was basically not a good thing. We sat around watching more al-Jazeera, growing restless and wandering around the hospital trying to find something to do, before realising that a hospital is not necessarily the best place for this and settled for going back to the room to watch more al-Jazeera news. M had started getting strong pains from the IV antibiotics and it became clear that we both wanted to get out as soon as possible. Fortunately my crater looked a lot better the next morning, and we were unleashed onto the streets of Diani Beach.

War injury gallery picture #2347349

Not that we had much time to be there – just the time to go and pack our monkey-wrecked tent and have some lunch before heading out to the main road where we flagged down a matatu to yet another wonderfully named place, Lunga-Lunga, where the Kenyan border post is. Over from there the Tanzanian border post was at the equally well-named (apart from for the Finns, for whom it's much funnier) Horohoro where we got stamped in quickly and painlessly, hopped into a dalla-dalla (what the Tanzanians call a matatu) and, once it had been crammed to way over capacity, rattled off over the corrugated road to Tanga, where we were to spend the night.

This was possibly not one of the most successful legs of this trip.