The Balkans, the Stans and 4frikans… in numbers

• Total kilometres travelled: 32 000
• Countries visited: 30
• Song of the trip (reserved exclusively for the entrance into new countries): Usher, Love in the Club
• Cumulative pairs of slip slops gone through: 10
• Must haves of the trip: Maldon Sea Salt and Jax and Matt’s chut
• Chickens crossing the road killed: 1 (Malawi)
• Price paid for chicken in panic to acquiesce machete wielding farmer: astronomical
• Toasts made: too many to count
• Border officials that chased us 20km into Uzbekistan because of incorrect documentation before we realised: 1
• Hours spent at border crossings: +- 60 (1 hour in western Europe, 1.5 hours in Balkans and Caucasus, 2.5 hours in Central Asia, 1 hour in Africa)
• Beers drunk: 2160 (at least)
• Vodkas drunk: 160 (at least)
• Shashliks eaten: 160 (at least)
• Hours spent driving: 466 (rough estimate)
• Number of times Roxette was played in the car: thousands
• Highest altitude: 4655m (Pamir Highway)
• Cooldrink of the trip: Lipton Peach Ice Tea
• Things stolen on the trip: camping table (Hungary), windscreen wiper (Mozambique/Malawi border)
• Surprised we still have: Morkel the monkey, trip mascot (minus his arms but still going strong)
• Number of times the Turkmen Boyshey got stuck: 4 (all in South Luangwa)
• Hottest point: Ashgabat, Turkmenistan; Dubai and Tete, Mozambique
• Coldest point: Pamir Highway, Tajikistan
• Amount we went over budget: a bit (totally worth it)
• Items of clothing mysteriously missing along the way: many
• Number of illegal border crossings: 1
• Major lakes/seas visited: 6 (Malawi, Tanganyika, Victoria, Albert, Caspian, Black)
• Number of jigger attacks: 5 (plus 1 unconfirmed)
• Near death incidents: 6 (senile taxi driver in Kigali; swimming in Afghanistan; falling out the tented treehouse in Zambia; broom wielding youths in Tanzania, driving in Georgia; getting through the madness of South Luangwa park in one piece)
• Tennis games played: 14
• Number of times have heard each other’s stories: countless
• Weddings attended en route: 3 (Jax and Matt; Kevin and Katrina; and unknowns in Turkmenistan restaurant)
• Number of women witnessed rolling down a hill in Turkmenistan to increase their fertility: 3
• Jogs gone on: 0
• Rugby games watched: more than Louise would like
• Birthdays had on the trip: 4

 

The official end of the trip for the 4frikans, the Big Pineapple, Port Alfred

Magical Malawi

So now after you’ve gone to the shores of Lake Tanganyika you’ll want to make a beeline to Lake Malawi for a few magical days on the beach.

Our private beach

 

Snorkelling off the catamaran

Sundowners

Lou on crossing South Luangwa

From Katavi Game Reserve we made a last minute decision to drive with Shelley and Paul into Zambia and then into Malawi near Lilongwe rather then driving down Lake Malawi as we had originally planned.

We were looking forward to some good tar roads after the madness of the muddy slick we drove down West Tanzania that masquerades as the main road. The road was one big river punctuated by unexpected potholes and we saw about four cars that had slid off the road. EVERYTHING was completely covered in mud and we were fairly convinced that it didn’t get much worse then that. Little did we know…

Driving the road down West Tanzania

 

In Zambia now, we decided to drive through South Luangwa park from the top to the eastern side to a very nice campsite called Flat Dogs. We’re just at the beginning of the rainy season so we thought that we’d be fine except that there were 100mls of rain the night before we drove the road. The road was effectively impassable except that noone thought to tell us and blithely let us through. We were completely naive and perhaps a little brave after our Tanzania experience. From what we understood the worst part was crossing the Mufamadzi river. We had to drive through a 30m wide river that was about thigh deep over sandbags that are set up on the bottom of the river. HEART ATTACK STUFF!

The boys measuring out the depth of the river

 

Turkmen boyshey makes the crossing

 

The bulldozer

 

We made it safely through and thought it would be plain sailing from there. How wrong we were! Not even three kilometres later we traversed a 15m puddle and got stuck as we were exiting. Paul tried to drive through and around us and also got stuck. This was at 1pm and we had to be Flat Dogs 150km away by dark. An hour and a half later after much pushing and digging and sand plates and sticks and hay we finally extracted both cars. A little more careful we headed on to an okay looking road up the mountain to what we hoped would be dryer ground. Looks can be deceiving. The road was made of mud unlike anything any of us had ever seen and we do have quite a lot of mud experience from the UK, the big puddle. Within seconds our tyres were coated in a slick layer of this hideous clay mud and it was with a lot of slipping and sliding the we made it to slightly higher ground. Paul tried to go round to avoid this sticky situation and immediately sank into an even worse quagmire. We found out later that this mud is notorious and is sometimes called devil’s mud because there is just no way to control your car. It also expands and looks hard but is actually like a sponge cake. Hard on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside.

Stuck... for the first time

 

Can you get any muddier? Slip slops were completely useless.

 

By this time the novelty had completely worn off and it was another 45 minutes of pushing and digging to get it out. And it just didn’t get better. There was no point on the road that was properly dry and it was sliding along in low range with the revs up all the way. At 5.30 when we got stuck AGAIN we were getting a bit desperate. We had only gone 30km and remember we were in a game park with the big 5! We found the innocuously named Bush Baby Camp 18km away on the garmin and headed there hoping that there was something there. At 8pm we were a mere 900m away and smelling salvation when we got to an absolutely impassable hill. THere was just no getting up there. I wanted to cry! Luckily, the Bush Baby Camp, the camp we had found on the Garmin was actually a rangers camp and they heard our cars struggling and came to help. It was clear that they were no strangers to this situation and quickly set about chopping down every tree in the nearby vicinity and laying it on the road. After another 45 minutes we were eventually up the hill and in the safety of the camp where they poured buckets of water for us to wash and set up a fire for us to cook on. Pasta and sauce has never tasted so delicious!

The next day we still had 120km to go and although they assured us the road was graded it didn’t get much better. There wasn’t a moment that went by when we weren’t all gripping the seats. It was only in the last 30km that the road improved. Meanwhile Shelley’s friend Emily who works at a lodge was expecting us and getting worried. She had radioed around and discovered that we had stayed at BBC. By lunch time when bedraggled and dirty we left the park every ranger knew all about us. We’ve retrospectively found out that the road we took is only used in emergencies and by tractors. We will be probably be the last people to do that road until May when the roads dry out.

So, safe and alive to tell the tale but a little shaken and a lot wiser! Unfortunately there is not terribly much photographic evidence. Noone wants to be the palooka taking pictures while everyone else is about to bust a gut with the exertion of trying to push a two and a half tonne car out the mud.

Safely through

Lou on the hippos in Katavi

Just below our campsite on the edge of the Katavi Game Reserve is a small river in which a school of hippos reside. But this is no elitist private school, there must have been at least 200 hippos living in a space not much bigger then a tennis court. There close living quarters make commuting into London on the district line at rush hour luxuriously spacious. Noses are wedged into armpits which are resting on top of other noses and at the slightest fright they all panic and clamber on top of each other to get away. To make matters worse they are very territorial and mark their territory by shitting and as they are doing so whipping up their shitty water into a frenzy with their tail. SMELLY! So much for the great open spaces of the wild.

Smashed in tighter than commuters on the district line

Yaaawwwwnnnn...

Lou on semi-rioting young men waving brooms

I had my first incident where I felt a little threatened the other day. We were travelling from the lakeside paradise of Kigomo down the West of Tanzania to Kitavi Game Reserve. There was about 30km of road works just outside of Kigomo during which you had to take a dirt service road that ran parallel to the road. Because of the rain we’d had the night before the service road was not much more then a muddy bog so we followed the cue of the cars in front of us and drove along the as yet unfinished main road.

As we crested a hill we saw in the distance a gathering of people on the road ahead of us that could only mean that there had been an accident or as Jex suggested there was some kind of demonstration. As we neared we realised they were all wielding large red brooms. They caught sight of us and started running towards us punching their brooms in the air in the same way you would if you were trying to incite a revolution and shouting. It wasn’t clear what they wanted but “give me money” was one of the common refrains. I was driving at the time and sat stock still with fright. Eventually I engaged reverse with the intention of reversing to the entrance of the service road a few hundred metres back. As I reversed one particular broom armed youth continued to run after us with what I can only describe as malicious intent. That confirmed it for me: I didn’t know what these guys were but what they certainly weren’t placid street sweepers or extras for the cast of Mary Poppins, the Musical.

We continued up the service road and noone bothered us further at which point, I am embarrassed to admit, I promptly burst into tears. The other three were all a bit surprised having jumped to slightly less wild conclusions and correctly assumed that these road maintainers were just a bit peeved that everyone was driving on their incomplete road and undoing all their good work. But just to illustrate that I was not alone in my apprehension this is the carefully worded sms that Shelley sent us after they had driven through the same place a few minutes before (unfortunately we only received it after the fact):

“Guys, be careful. Some semi-rioting young men waving brooms and trying to get money from us for passing one bad patch. Lock doors, close windows and drive through. Some of the guys helped us but some were quite aggressive”

Lou on Paradise Found

Next time you’re in the area I highly recommend a few days in Jacobsen’s campsite, Kigoma, Tanzania on the banks of Lake Tanganyika.

Paradise on the shores of Lake Tanganyika

Catching some rays

Lou on Rwanda and the Genocide

What were you doing in April of 1994? I don’t remember exactly but I was probably watching MacGuyver on Friday nights and playing block at break.

If you were in Rwanda you were either killing or being killed. There was no room for fence sitters. Sympathisers were targeted more fiercely then anyone. Over a million people were killed in the Rwandan genocide in just 100 days. This bloodbath between the Hutus and the Tutsis had been a long time coming and was a premeditated, planned and carefully executed attack. If you’ve watched Hotel Rwanda you’ll know that despite being tipped off about the planned massacre the UN stood back and did absolutely nothing. Kofi Anan even admitted afterwards that the UN was in the wrong but by that time it was too late. The genocide memorial was excellently done but incredibly harrowing. As were the churches we went to where large scale massacres had taken place.

Visiting a church where 5000 people were slaughtered and the remains of 123 000 people are buried

The events leading up to the genocide are a little difficult to get your head around but I’ll try to give you a bit of an overview.

• Rwanda unlike most colonially designated countries is made up of one ethnic group, the Banyrwanda
• The Banyrwanda was historically divided between the Tutsi cattle and land owners (14%), the Hutu farmers (85%) and the Twa labourers (1%). There is ongoing disagreement as to exactly when this system developed.
• Tensions began to mount in this closed mountain country of limited land as Tutsi demand more and more land to graze their cattle
• Belgian colonialists make an about turn from supporting the Tutsi and support the Hutus during the surging wave of anti-colonialism in the 50’s. The educated Tutsi posed a threat as they were more loudly demanding their freedom.
• 1959 marks the great peasant revolt where the disenfranchised Hutu attacked the Tutsi. Tens of thousands of Tutsi were murdered and many more fled the country.
• In 1963 the Tutsis invade and spark another massacre of over 50 000 Tutsis
• In 1973 after a coup General Nabyarimana declares himself president, a position he will hold for the next 21 years.  He hails from a very radical Hutu area in the North West. He creates a one party state and focuses on erecting a dictatorship.
• Meanwhile refugees Tutsis in Uganda join the Ugandan army and undergo professional military training in Uganda and abroad. They create an organisation called the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)
• In 1990 the RPF invade from the north. Habyarimana’s troups offer no resistance. The victory looks inevitable except that Habyarimana made a call to French president Francois Mitterand  who immediately sent in French paratroopers. The RPF did not wish to war with France and withdrew.
• Uncertainty and suspicion characterises Rwanda for the next few years.
• A radical and intellectual branch of Habyarimana’s clan the Akazu purports that the Tutsis are a foreign race and do not have a claim on Rwanda. Rwanda does not have space for both the Tutsi and the Hutu. Even more extremely they suggest that the only way to put an end to the conflict is to systematically destroy all Tutsis
• Preparations begin. The army is expanded and modern weaponry is procured by France, South Africa (!!!) and Eqypt.
• A paramilitary organisation called the Interhamwe (“let us strike together”) is formed predominantly from unemployed youths, students and schoolchildren. It will be their task to carry out the massacre.
• On April 6, 1994, Habyarimana’s airplane is shot down as it is landing in Kigali. The perpetrators are unknown but it is generally thought that it was the Hutus that shot down the plane to provide an excuse for the genocide.
• This provides the signal to begin the slaughter. The killings start with prepared lists of Tutsi and moderate Hutu opposition
• For 100 days the machete wielding Interhamwe comb the land brutally killing every Tutsi man, woman and child until the RPF troops seize control of country.

 And this was a mere 15 years ago.

Victim of the genocide