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Thank you for coming to my blog, for following it and for being interested.
Kasia
"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but... rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming... WOW! What a Ride!"
Finally after having returned to a warm country, unlike the African continent where I had just spent the last three months freezing my bum off, I found myself waking up last night not because I was too cold, but rather because I was too hot. Having a dense mass of hair pressed close against me was not helping. I tried moving away, rolling over into the other corner of my bed, but he would follow, pressing himself as close to me as possible. Eventually I had had enough and decided to kick him out of my bed, even though my heart ached at the cruelty that I was about to commit. There was no avoiding it though, Kuba had to go. If I was going to get a good nights sleep then my little puppy, whom I hadn’t seen for three months, would not be able to sleep with me. Such is life; you’re always either to hot or too cold.
The last few days in Jo’Burg were great. After the final truck ride filled with quintessential Italian vocabulary learning, we finally arrived in the world’s safest cities. It is so safe there that everyone whom we spoke with had not been downtown in the last two years and if they had, they did not stop their car. So after having been dropped off in a posh neighbourhood which I would equate with say North or West-Vancouver, we were given free reign to do what we wished with the remaining three days of our time in Africa. We could do anything we wanted, well except for: leave the area, walk at night, walk alone, go downtown, go anywhere else, hop into a taxi ourselves, or pretty much do anything that was outside of the two block radius which was deemed as ‘pretty safe’ so long as we were in a group.
Please don’t take me seriously. I’ve just spent the last few days showing a new friend around Vancouver and enjoying every single minute where I was able to convince her of something outlandish and completely untrue – so the sarcasm and story telling has taken hold of me and has also found its way into this blog. But seriously, Jo’ Burg is definitively not a city you want to roam around and especially not if you don’t know it. We did speak to quite a few locals who were not joking when they said that they never go to the center and do not advise for any of us to go there. One thing which makes Jo’ Burg and South Africa so dangerous (more so than Nairobi), is the fact of how readily available guns are. In Nairobi or Dar es Salam you might get robbed or be kidnapped, but only on rare occasions will there be guns involved. In Jo’ Burg, on the other hand, that is the norm. We saw a guy leaning against a car with an AK47 sticking out the back of his pants. Our driver informed us that he was a cop, but I saw no marked vehicle anywhere or any form of uniform or anything else that might indicate that this was a police officer. Equally well could have been my neighbour from down the street.
But yeah… according to Julita, Jo’ Burg was the best part of all of Africa. The rest could just as well not have existed. Julita decided that South Africa was definitively a place that she would love to go back to – maybe even next year (regardless of the safety concerns). The reason for this – well, one should think it would be obvious: nice restaurants and fantastic malls. Not having bought enough things up to this point, only a measly two wooden statues weighing approximately 17 kg and a stone statue weighing another 16 kg, not to mention the 6 paintings, couple wooden bowls, some candle holders and a few more soapstone carvings, Julita decided that she needed some placemats, a duvet cover, and can’t forget the clothes. The unfortunate thing was that whatever Julita liked I generally liked. She’s got a pretty good sense of taste, just a bad sense of weight and packing. So once she made up her mind that she was going to buy something and that she would somehow manage to fit it into her luggage, I had no excuse to justify me not purchasing the same. As a result, we left Jo’ Burg with two queen size duvet covers, 14 place settings for our dinner tables and a whole bunch of clothes. It was a miracle that we didn’t end up having any excess baggage – but that’s a whole different story all on it’s own. The second miracle that we experience in Jo’ Burg was my success in preventing Julita from buying a carpet (or as some would call a rug). I truly don’t know how we would have lugged that home with us.
But yeah, aside for the shopping center, the Italian restaurants inside it, and the movie theatre, we did not see much of Jo’ Burg. We did go on a Soweto Townships tour – but that was manly comprised of sitting in a car and driving through all the different streets. Nevertheless, Jo’ Burg was Julita’s favourite city.
So it was in Jo’ Burg that we said our good-byes to Rommy and her fantastic cooking (however, there was no shortage of phenomenal Italian restaurants in the mall, so we did not have to go completely cold turkey). Three days later, on July 26th we headed for the airport ready to go home. With all our luggage it was a truly nerve-racking experience. Our huge wooden statues were packed as two pieces of luggage (one 19kg the other 17kg). On top of that we had our backpacks stuffed to the brim and an endless amount of carryon bags. In my case my carryon was my backpack with my laptop and everything heavy that I could stuff into it (weighing probably at least about 13kg), then my camera bag (another 10 kg or so), then some paintings, and the duty free purchases that I made. In Julita’s case it was her 16kg statue stuffed into her backpack along with a few other smaller bags and toiletry kits. Not wanting to look like two bag ladies or pack-men(women) we decided to leave all our carryons with Matt and Tracy (who were on the same flight as us) and headed off to the counters to check in all our other bags. Turns out that in Jo’ Burg they weigh your entire carts as you approach the check-in desks. By some miracle (I truly don’t know how), between the two of us we had 94kg of check-in baggage and since we were officially allowed 92kg, they let us through without charging any extra. After all the formalities we went back to where Matt and Tracy were waiting and picked up the remaining 45kg of baggage that we had left with them. You should have seen Julita trying to put on her 16-17kg backpack. Seeing her take it off for the x-ray machines was yet another entertaining sight – especially when the airport official lady decided to check it out and tried to lift it like all other bags that normally go through the conveyor. After a bit of a grunt and some preparation, she managed to lift it off and place it on another table where the inspection proceeded.
Well, as I said, somehow we managed to get through customs. The flight was uneventful. In Amsterdam we had a 4.5 hour stopover which gave us enough time to head into the city for a few hours. We did some quick sightseeing (which was much more feasible on that day then it had been on Queens Day when Robin and I were there). We got to see the flower market, the canals, some famous churches, the red light district, the ‘coffee-shop’ street and yeah – just a nice roam before we had to head back to the airport to catch our flight home. 33 hours after leaving our hostel in Jo’ Burg we finally made it home.
Getting home truly makes you appreciate some of daily-life’s little charms. Things such as:
The list is much longer – but after having spent six weeks in an orphanage in the middle of a tiny Kenyan village that has rarely seen any white people where there is no running water and sporadic electricity and where everything is cooked over fire and coal, and then after travelling for another six weeks while sleeping every night in a tent and cooking in the same rustic conditions – I have a few-found respect for every little thing back at home. We truly live a good life.
So that’s it. The trip is done. Some more photos have been posted – the rest need to be sorted through and some time, hopefully in the near future, will be put together into another multi-media slideshow.
Our small group of six has now continued its journey into Botswana. At first we were a bit nervous about the border crossing due to the fact that the border officials are known to confiscate any wood products that they find. We hid everything to the best of our ability, but there is only so much you can do to disguise a huge 5 foot wooden carving, and much less to disguise four of them. Fortunately we were quite lucky and aside for a border official who needed our help to jumpstart his car, there was no one there to search us and we made it across without any glitches. And so our drive continued.
It truly is surreal to be driving on a highway and to find oneself having to slow down and eventually stop because an elephant is crossing the road. You sort of do a double-take, shake your head, and then slowly come to realize that yes indeed, things like this do happen in Africa. Only in Africa though. The first time round you look out the window in shear bewilderment. The second time round you are still amused by it. However, by the fourth time most the people on the truck didn�t even bother lifting their noses out of their books. The sight of these gigantic beasts slowly making their way across the road no longer seemed to faze them. In my opinion, just as you can watch the sun set thousands of times or look up in wonder at the starry sky above you every night, so too, as sight such as this, does not stop to amaze. This holds true even more so when you realize that you can witness this only in Africa and nowhere else � and in my case, that means only for the next three days.
From Vic Falls we made our way to Chobe National Park were some enjoyed a morning game drive and a sunset cruise. I instead, chose to relax and pamper myself with the best shower I have had since coming to this continent. You truly learn not to take for granted such simple things as hot water and pressure greater than a trickle. This by no means is an exhaustive list of things that you start to appreciate. If I tried to write one of those I would have to include ones bed, clean towels, the ability to press down a toaster button and have toast in a matter of minutes instead of having to light a campfire, the ability to have a cup of coffee in the same time span, the existence of a bathroom within a few steps of ones bedroom, the ability to dry ones dishes without having to flap them or the need to continuously travel with a roll of toilet paper, etc. etc. But I�m sorry, I�m digressing. I truly enjoyed by day of laziness and relaxation, especially since most of it was spent on the waterfront watching all the boats pass by and the sun slowly disappear behind the horizon. However, I did end up regretting not having gone on the sunset cruise, especially considering the fact that Greg and Kate got to see hippo porn... definitively not a sight you get to see on a daily basis... but more so because of how the next few days would turn out to be.
Oh... one more digression. If you ever travel by overland truck, which I do not recommend, although I also do not discourage, insist on having an Italian tour guide. It�s like traveling with your own personal Italian restaurant. We�ve had such amazing food over the last few days!!! Mouth-watering risotto with 300g of rice allocated to each person, or beef curry on potatoes with two gigantic potatoes per person (one of which would have sufficed to feed my entire family at home). In true Italian style, everything is delicious and there is always more (much more) than enough. I think I�ve gained more weighed over these last 5 days than I have throughout the remainder of my stay here in Africa. It has been like eating out at La Terazza every single night.
From Chobe we had a longish drive day to Maun. As much as I complained about the long drive days earlier, it hasn�t been so bad recently. Ever since we�ve hit Zimbabwe there have been many more activities and much less driving � whether it would have been the two days at Antelope Park, the excursion on the houseboats, the adrenaline packed days at Vic Falls, or even the game drives in Hwange. However, even if those days had been drive-filled, it is quite a different story when you only have 6 people riding in a truck that fits 28. With four seats per person to stretch out across, a 8 hour drive is simply not the same thing and has a tendency of going by much quicker.
So a couple days ago we arrived in Maun and pitched our tents at the local campground. The next three days were to be spent in the Okavango Delta and we had been looking forward to that for quite some time now. Everything started out wonderfully. First there was a short drive to the delta�s edge, then a fantastic mokoro ride through the delta. A mokoro is essentially a dug-out canoe similar to our Canadian canoes, but a bit more narrow, much more wobbly, and made out of a hollowed out tree. Two people sit in each of these precarious-looking watercrafts and a poler stands at the back poling the mokoro forward with a four meter pole in an a-la-Venetian-Gondola style. Although the Venetian gondola guys might look a bit more graceful and might charm you with their serenades, this did seem to take a considerably greater amount of skill.
The Okavango Delta covers a total of 15,000 square kilometres and never reaches the ocean. The water merely spreads out and dissipates in the heart of Botswana creating a maze of canals and a paradise for those entrepenours who first came up with the idea of offering expensive tours into this uninhabited area. Essentially $130 US will buy you a ride out into the Delta in one of these mokoros, two nights of dusty bush-camping, a game walk where the guide has a hard time identifying the �Big Five� of Africa, and a ride back to dry land while your backside gets soaked in the overflowing mokoro... oh, and a mokoro sunset cruise (1/2 hour). I must admit that I wasn�t overly happy with this three day excursions. I loved the mokoros. I loved the sunset trip. But that�s about where the �I loved� list ends. The rest of it was a whole lot of doing absolutely nothing. Even the game walks, where we saw some zebras, a couple of wildebeests and some leopard shit, where a waste of time, especially after having had such amazing guides in Metopas and Hwange. Having someone try to explain to you what the �Big Five� of Africa are, after you�ve spent 2 months traveling through Africa is like having someone trying to teach you your ABCs after you finished university...
But yeah... the excursion would have been great had it left early one morning, done a sunset cruise in the evening, one nights worth of camping, a game walk in the morning and then a return back to camp that afternoon. Unfortunately, spread across two nights and three days it only led to boredom, complaining and an incredibly hilarious rant by Julita, which, if I tried to replicate, would be composed of a lot of **** followed by some more *?!?* and a bunch more indecipherable symbols. She�s not one to hold back on her opinion and it would be an understatement to say that she did not like the trip into the Delta.
Well, there�s not much you can do about things like that. You can�t always satisfy everyone and every now and then something will not be the way you imagined it to be or will not live up to your standards. Nevertheless, the three days in the Delta made me realize a few things. On the one hand I was surprised that it took me so long to notice them. On the other hand, having given it some more though, I�m not so surprised given the amount of quite reflection time that we had. The first of these is the size of the African sky. Maybe those from Saskatchewan or Manitoba might be able to relate, but the sky here seems to stretch for all eternity. From one horizon to the other it�s simply massive. I lay down in one of the mokoros and all I could see was blue. I do understand the concept that if there is nothing to block your view that the sky will reach from east to west and north to south, but yet somehow it�s big here; a blue dome engulfing the world. I might have to visit you Lindsay in Saskatchewan to compare � but somehow I have a feeling that Africa is different.
The other thing that crossed my mind is the beauty of being able to lie in your tent, listening to the hippos grunt in the background, hearing the frogs croak in the grass as the mice scurry round the tent and out of your little window being able to gaze up at a star filled sky. Just as the endless blue of the day takes your breath away, so too does the vast night sky. We�ve travelled significantly further south, so unfortunately you can�t look up at the sky and see both the southern-cross and the big dipper, but there definitively is no shortage of constellations. Whether it would be Mars, Jupiter, Scorpio, Orion or even the Milky Way � I could go to bed looking up at them every single night � even if I did have to keep on sleeping in a tent.
Oh... and for the last while, although I�ve been talking about the beauty and charm of Africa, it is not the same Africa as further up north. We no longer feel like a truck-load of mzungus; no longer feel like a minority that stands out no matter where we go; no longer feel like a tourist whenever we walk into a shopping-center; no longer need to be wary (for some) of eating local food... Although all of Africa was at one point or another colonized, there are many more remnants of it in the southern part. There are many more whites � descendents of the former colonial settlers. The infrastructure, especially for Zimbabwe, Botswana and South Africa, is much more developed and better maintained. It is a setting in which we, the �white people�, feel much more comfortable in. It is not the Africa that is truly African � although that Africa, the Africa which I would really want to get to know and explore, we merely drove through and never got to see except out the window of our truck. Well, there are ups and downs to this... some might prefer it, and for some it�s only preferable sometimes. But it is the way it is... and it is where I am and where I�m heading... and I�m rambling nonsense, so I will stop.
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Kasia: Ready to Volunteer
Volunteering Information: http://volunteeringinkenya.blogspot.com
Travel Blog & Photos: http://travelingtheworld.blogspot.com/
Law Blog & Photos: http://lawubc.blogspot.com/
Other Photos: http://www.usefilm.com/photographer/73618.html
It’s been a while since the last time I wrote (and especially since the last time that I had a chance to post something), and I must admit that things have improved... at least a bit. We’ve finally had a bit of a break from driving and sitting on the truck so that’s a huge improvement. Not per se that we’re interacting more with “Africa” and the people here, but at least we get to enjoy a bit of sunshine from outside of the big tin box we call our Tokolosh.
We relaxed at Antelope Park for a day an a half and aside for the amazing lion walks it was just great to lie around all day basking in the sun and doing nothing. The only downfall was that the nights were freezing cold. (Apologies if this is a repeat of what I last wrote – but I can no longer remember.) The last night that we were there the temperature dropped to -2C. I was ecstatic because Julita decided to upgrade to a dorm room so I scored her sleeping-bag which was fantastic since I think I would have turned into an icicle in my +15C sleeping-bag.
The only downfall was that Tokolosh was out of order. The drive shaft was broken and if not for Eeyore being there as well, we would have been stuck at Antelope Park for a while. Fortunately Eeyore gave us a lift to Bulowaya. We left bright and early in the morning and arrived at our next hostel prior to 8am. However the ride was freezing cold. Eeyore, unlike Tokolosh has tarps on the side for windows. That means that it’s not as insulated and in the sub-freezing temperatures the ride was awfully cold.
After checking into our night’s accommodations we were met by Ian Harmon and his African Mumbo trucks. He would be our guide for the Rhino Walk which turned into one of the highlights so far. We were all expecting just a trip out to a park, a short walk with some rhinos and that’s it. However, thanks to Ian, or Stretch as we called him (since he was super tall), the day became amazing. He truly is one of the best guides that you can ever hope for. For those of you still in Uni, or even for those who are now done with it, you’ll know how much of a difference it makes if the prof is passionate about what he/she teaches. Even a subject that one doesn’t like can become fantastic if taught by a good prof. Well, Ian was definitively one of the most passionate people I’ve ever met. He truly loves his work and you know it immediately.
Ian is fight generation Zimbabwean (white) and 13th generation in Africa. He first took us to some caves with bushman paintings dating 25,000 years back. He said that there are only about 3000 true bushman left in the world. They are a race that is awfully close to extinction. These little men/people (most of them only about 4 feet tall) live in the African bush. They have no concept of possessions or ownership. They live day to day, harvesting only what they can eat in one day and hunting in the same manner. Whatever they kill has to be eaten that day and a bushman is known to eat up to 20kg of meat in one sitting... (eat, eat, eat, eat, sleep and eat some more). They store the excess fat in their backside enabling them to go longer without food.
From the bushman area we headed to the Rhinos. There are about 15,000 white rhinos in Africa and only under 600 black rhinos. In the Rhodes Metopas National Park (only about 106 sq km) they capture or kill 23 poachers a month. All of Africa has laws passed that allow you to shoot to kill any poacher on sight. Over the last 4 years only one rhino has been killed by the poachers, yet the risk they take is worth to them. A rhino horn goes for about $30,000-$50,000 US per kilogram and an average horn weighs somewhere between 5-7 kg. Considering that minimum wage in Zimbabwe is $10 US a month, even the $1000-$2000 that the poacher gets for his horn will make him set for a lifetime.
The largest horn every found on a rhino was 196cm long. The horns are generally exported to Asia where they are seen as an aphrodisiac. They are supposed to pass on the same capabilities as those possessed by a rhino and considering a rhinos equipment weighs 15kg and the copulation is never shorter than 30 minutes, the desire to duplicate this is understandable, although slightly unrealistic. Ian was great. He was filled with information. He’d be able to tell us which of the 86 white rhinos and 32 black rhinos crossed the road based on an examination of the dung that they left behind. We would pull over, he would hop out, look at the dung, say that it’s Swaziland III and that he walked by here two hours ago. Talk about knowing ones endangered faeces, I mean species. Knowing rhinos by name is nothing unusual especially when you take into consideration that out of the thousands of hippos in the Zambezi river, Ian talked to us about Mad Max, Psycho Pill and a couple other ones - all of which have unique personalities that differentiate them from all the other hippos.
But yeah... being two meters away from a 3 tone beast that can charge at you at 55km per hour definitively makes your heart race a bit faster. But it was phenomenal and loved every minute of it.
Some other miscelaneous animal facts:
From the Rhino walk we headed to the Zimbabwean and Zambian border, crossed over and headed to Lake Kariba for a couple days of houseboating. So as I said, it was great to be off the truck, but we were still secluded away from Africa eating, sleeping, drinking and sun-bathing. Sort of like the houseboats on Lake Sushwap in BC but a bit bigger. Two full days of relaxation and sunshine. Can't complain.
We came back to Livingstone last night. Today heading for a "Booze Cruise" - sunset cruise on the Zambezi where all the drinks are included. Tomorrow mornign most of us are heading white water rafting on the most difficult commercially rafter river in the world (Grade 5). The day afterwards I'm going sky diving and then on the 13th taking a micro-light flight over Victoria Falls. So hopefully I'll have some really exitiing stuff to write about next time.
Kasia