Overland in Africa, Part 6

Friday, Late Afternoon

A young man dangling out the bus door grabs my tent and backpack and disappears into the bus. Another young man appears and physically places me in the bus, almost like a piece of luggage. It’s completely packed, with people sitting in the aisles. No seats are available, and two men are already sitting on the floor in the front. Before I have time to act, the bus accelerates furiously and I sit in the only spot I can: a cushion next to the other two men in the very front.
The bus keeps accelerating. The sound of the engine is deafening. It’s combined with a high-pitched beeping coming from the dashboard. Just next to the tachometer, a red light flashes in sync with the beep. It reads: STOP. An ominous sign, I think. The men sitting on the floor argue loudly, then start to slap at one another and wrestle a bit.

We are still accelerating down a straight patch of road as I assess the driver. In his early 20s, stocky, and with a shiny shaved head, he grips the steering wheel with two hands and rocks back and forth as he aggressively stares down the road ahead.

The tachometer goes up to 3,000 RPM; the dial is red from 2,400 on up. At this moment, it’s pushing 2,600

The speedometer goes up to 120 kilometers per hour. Right now, the needle is flush against the pin on the other side of 120. A bright red light next to the 120 is illuminated. Another ominous sign, I am sure.

All the while, that shrill red indicator on the dashboard keeps flashing and beeping at the driver: STOP. I could not agree more.

The brakes make a terrible loud hissing noise when they are engaged. I cannot tell whether they are engine brakes, air brakes, or standard pads. If they are pads, they are shot. They do have some effect, but I have no doubt that it would take a great distance to bring this death trap to a halt.

The breakneck speeds don’t keep the driver from yanking the wheel left and right to dodge potholes. We drive partly off the road to avoid some big ones. Oncoming cars or not, we veer into the other lane if that’s the best way to keep all the wheels out of the craters. Cars literally drive off the road when we drive directly at them blasting the horn like maniacs. Each swerve, whether to avoid potholes, bicyclists, pedestrians, or potholes, forces the bus to lean precariously one way or the other.

The driver relentlessly passes every vehicle he encounters. The routine is always the same. Maybe 50 meters before reaching the vehicle, he flashes his lights 5 or more times. Then, he repeatedly blasts an unbelievably loud horn, which sounds just like a train whistle. It’s so loud it drowns out the engine, which is saying something. The driver continues to floor the accelerator until he is extremely close, then he slams on the ineffectual brakes, hesitates a moment, and jerks the wheel to the right (we drive on the left, usually) and floors it again. As we come parallel with the car we are overtaking, the most aggressive staff member (who looks a bit like Tupac Shakur) leans out the bus window and screams at the car, pounding on the outside panel of the bus with his open hand and pointing furiously at the car's driver. This happens over and over and over again.

We pass trucks on hills when we can’t see what’s on the other side. We overtake cars on hairpin turns. I have difficulty fathoming a situation where the driver doesn’t think it’s acceptable to pass.

The road has many speed bumps, called speed humps here, which the driver negotiates much like passing. He accelerates until the last possible second, slams on the brakes, goes over most of the hump, and then floors it again. A few times, I think we nearly go airborne. The main difference between overtaking cars and speed humps is that the staff member doesn’t lean out the window to castigate the humps.

Paralyzed with fear and anxiety, I think to myself: This is how most people in Africa travel? This is insane.

Through the evening sunlight, I can actually see exhaust fumes rising from the floorboards near the driver. Although it’s cool and windy outside, it’s hot as hell in this bus.

A while after I take my place on a cushion, a young staff member in the front left seat -- a single, all by itself, almost as far forward as the driver -- gives it to me. I take it, thinking it’s a mild improvement. It’s not. For one thing, I must straddle the aggressive staff member for the rest of the journey as his shoulders press against my thighs. For another, there is (of course) no seat belt. As far as I can tell, sitting in the front seat guarantees that I will catapult through the windshield upon impact -- and perhaps upon hitting a particularly big speed hump.

Police checkpoints are a sight to behold. It’s then that our staff really shines. With the bus still moving, three of them jump out and hit the ground running. They are yelling at the policeman and waving money at him before our bus even stops, usually behind a few cars. The instant the staff gets the “all clear” from the policeman, they wave at the bus, which usually drives completely off the road to pass the cars ahead of it and barrel through the checkpoint. All three staff members board the bus as it accelerates past. It’s like some sort of bizarre pitstop.

I try to ask how far it is to Dar, but everyone speaks Swahili and nobody knows for sure. It’s getting dark, and I’m hoping it’s just a few more hours.

It’s not.

Darkness falls and we keep up the insane pace. Eventually we hit some steep, winding mountainous sections and even this bus has to slow down. (It still passes other cars, of course.)

Then, the road construction begins. Multiple segments are reduced to one-way traffic, and we sit for 10 minutes at a time waiting for traffic to clear before we’re allowed to proceed. Twice, the staff persuades the flag-bearer who controls access to the road to let us proceed into oncoming traffic, horn blasting and lights flashing. Sometimes we pull off into the construction, sometimes the oncoming traffic would. This stretch lasted for hours.

At a stop, I find an English speaker who tells me that this bus was scheduled to leave at 6 a.m., but the original bus malfunctioned and they had to wait for another one. The whole journey is supposed to be 12 hours. At that point, it had already been 15, and we were nowhere close to done. I am thunderstruck when I hear that we are nearly 400 km from Dar. Impossible. Someone else says 300. Still awful, but that sounds better.

We press on at high speeds. For a couple of hours, until nearly midnight, we seem to make good time. I doze for a bit and wake suddenly and look around. All three staff members are asleep. The driver is shaking his head this way and that and holding his hand out the window. He seems tired as well. I wake the staff members immediately and demand that one of them give the driver a cigarette. (He has been chain smoking for much of the trip. The smoke is actually a welcome change from pure exhaust fumes.)

Then it starts raining.

We slow down a bit and finally reach a city. At a police checkpoint, the staff’s pit-stop routine finally falls short. For some unknown reason, we are not allowed to proceed. We turn around and park in a petrol station. Everyone piles out into the rain and mills about. Someone shows me his cell phone: It’s 12:47 a.m.

I can’t handle proceeding further in the rain. Just as I’m about to wander into the night in search of a place to spend the night, I get word that we’re going to sleep for a bit. The police apparently decided that it was unsafe for us to continue at this hour. Corrupt or not, I will always be deeply grateful to the Tanzanian police for that decision.

We sleep for a few hours. For the third day in four, we resume traveling in the dark of night. The road is fairly flat, the rain has long since stopped, and there’s little traffic on the road. Surely we are less than 100 km from Dar. We’re going to make it!

Then the bus stalls in the middle of the road. We are out of gas.

We slept in a damned petrol station! How could we not fill up? It’s spilled milk now, as we pile out yet again. One more time, I face that terrible fear: Our bus is (of course) sitting in the road on a narrow two-lane highway. It’s getting light, but you never know who’s coming behind you. I get as far away from the bus as possible, but not far enough that a lion might jump out of the bush and eat me. I hope.

The driver and a staff member hitchhike with some empty gas cans. (Here goes one of them.)
Over the next hour, night turns to day. I’m struck by how calm and easygoing everyone is. Some doze in the bus. Many stand outside, chatting and laughing. They have been trying to get home over 24 hours and the driver makes a boneheaded mistake like this -- but they take it in stride.
An hour later, the staff is back. The final stretch into Dar is as hair-raising as the rest of the ride. There’s more traffic, and therefore more cars to overtake and berate. Our driver takes every opportunity. I can’t tell you how many times we forced oncoming traffic off the road while passing.

At long last, we arrive at the bus station in Dar Es Salaam. It is almost 9:00 a.m. on Saturday. I left 89 hours ago, and I was on the road (sometimes sleeping) for 77 of them. A mob of taxi drivers and other hawkers greet me as I, the only white man, leave the bus. I greet them with a big smile and even shake a few hands, happy to be alive.

Prizren, Kosovo

I spent the afternoon in southern Kosovo yesterday. The riverwalk in Prizren is lovely this time of year. I'll show you some photos of Kosovo in a bit. I'm on a train from Sofia to Belgrade in a few minutes.

Vlorë, Albania

Greetings from the Albanian Riviera. We took a ferry to Albania from Corfu, Greece.

The drive in southwest Albania was unbelievable -- huge mountains, crazy switchbacks, and much of the drive is along the sea. After I post the last installment of the Africa story tomorrow, I'll show you some photos.

Overland in Africa, Part 5

Thursday Morning

I wake at 8:30, feeling sore and groggy but intact. In no rush to carry on, I shower and wander around Old Town Lilongwe, looking at the markets and the busy streets.
I stop at an Internet café to gather details about the cities I will visit next, but find little information on western Tanzania. And I double check my flight: It’s definitely Sunday at 2:10 p.m. Then the power goes out. “We forgot to pay our bill,” says the woman in charge of the café.

I have a big lunch and buy some more provisions (mainly samosas), change some more money to avoid the near-debacle in Mozambique, and take a cab for $3 to the main road just outside of town, heading north. I sit under a tree, stepping out of the shade as cars approach to flag a ride. I’m surprised as nearly 40 cars pass before one pulls over. Jim is an accountant for a Malawian water company. He has a nice SUV, but he only takes me about 20 kilometers before he pulls off to attend a funeral. I’d need about 70 more Jims to make it to Dar.

Back on the side of the road, I snag another ride right away. This time, it’s a kindly, straightforward tobacco farmer who was forced off his farm in Zimbabwe in 2003 and had to start over in Malawi. He is returning from selling his crops in Lilongwe, and thinks he got a fair price. He doesn’t have kind words for the middlemen who buy his tobacco and then sell it to cigarette manufacturers. He says they do little but make a fortune, so his farm is trying to deal directly with the manufacturers to cut out the middleman. He tells me stories about the Rhodesian War and hitchhiking along the South African coast to surf with his friends.

We drive perhaps 80 kilometers until we reach his home. He says that if I can’t find a ride this evening -- it’s after 4:00 in the afternoon -- I can stay at his place tonight. Then he graciously drives me another few kilometers down the road so I can wait for a ride on the other side of town, a far better location to get a lift.

As the sun dips in the afternoon sky, I play my favorite side-of-the-road game. Set up a piece of litter on the opposite side of the road and try to hit it with pebbles. This time I prop up a corn cob. It’s not as intellectually challenging as, say, chess or bridge, but the beauty is that you don’t need to pack cards (and bridge partners) or a chessboard to play: Two things you’re guaranteed to find on most roadsides in southern Africa are litter and stones. (Here's the view from the road as I wait for a ride.)
After a while, a semi comes from town, turns at my junction, and stops to pick me up. The driver is heading near the Tanzania border -- yes! As I hop in, the first thing I notice is a big “I Love Jesus” bumper sticker on the dashboard. I settle into the front seat, greet the five or so passengers in the bottom bunk (without a mattress this time), and enjoy the Christian reggae pumping from the speakers.

This driver is good. His driving is precise and controlled, his gear shifting is crisp, and he seems honest and kind. He treats his passengers better than any other truck driver I’ve ridden with. And he’s the first one I’ve met who doesn’t have a “Cabbie!” -- a staff member to handle the manual labor and other small jobs that come with operating a truck. He handles those duties himself.

We pass through beautiful countryside as the sun sets. For the first time in recent memory, I pass a thick forest with picturesque rolling hills. The atmosphere in the truck is pleasant and easygoing, and all is well, I think to myself.

We forge ahead slowly, struggling up big hills at 10 kilometers per hour, carefully controlling our speed on the way down, and occasionally dodging abandoned trucks in the road. Mercifully, there are relatively few potholes. We pass Mazuza, the third of three cities in Malawi, which looks to be the smallest and most pleasant, based on my quick journeys through each.

Stopping at the side of the road, I meet a teacher from Johannesburg. He is making his way to the north of Malawi to visit his parents. He has many questions about America, and I’m excited to learn about life as a schoolteacher. As many others do, he gives me his cell phone number and takes my email address, telling me that if he gets an email address himself someday, he will definitely write. (The view from one of our stops.)
Around 9:00 or so, we stop at another depot so the driver can get something to eat. Before he does, he calls his wife to check in. I am flagging again, still tired from the last few days’ journey. I ask the driver if I can sleep in the top bunk while he eats, and he says sure. He turns on Malawian music and I am asleep within minutes.

When the driver returns, the teacher from Jo-burg is sitting in front and I am only too happy to continue sleeping. A few hours later, the driver pulls off the road and says that he is going to take a nap, and that I can stay right where I am. I would ordinarily protest or at least offer to sleep somewhere else, but I take him at his word, scoot over, and fall asleep again. After a short time, the driver wakes up from his catnap and starts off again. He takes another nap an hour or two later.

While it is still dark, the teacher reaches his destination and gets out. I hop back up front and watch the sunrise for the second morning in three. I learn that the driver is carrying lime to a new uranium mine -- Malawi’s second mine (the other is for coal). The mine employs many workers and has a constant stream of trucks bringing supplies, but it’s not producing quite yet. After a bit, it’s time to say goodbye. I pay $10 and start walking along the road in the early morning light.

Scores of people are walking along the road, possibly on their way to work at the mine. I sit down for a bit to watch them pass by, then flag down a hatchback to get my next lift. The driver is a policeman who works at the Malawi-Tanzania border: Perfect! I chat with the six men in the back two seats as we speed down the road, dropping off passengers and picking more up. I’m at the border before I know it.

The flock of money changers shouts at me: “Shillings for kwatcha! Change US dollars! There is no bureau here!” I cut through them, disbelieving their claim that I can’t change money eventually. Stamp the passport and I’m out of Malawi. Walk a bit to the Tanzanian post, avoid the $100 visa fee by getting a $30 transit visa, and I’m on Tanzanian soil in no time.

The money changers were right. There’s no official place to change money at this border post. I know what to do, though. I stop by a customs office and ask an employee if he can recommend a trustworthy person to change my kwacha. He heads off and returns with a young money changer. We sit in the customs office, off to the side, and I get a fair exchange.

Before heading on the next leg, I stop and have breakfast at a nice café near the border. I have a doughnut and my first ever chipati -- a delicious rolled-up flat circle of fried bread, somewhat like naan or a thick tortilla -- and tasty black tea, all for less than $2. All the tables are full with men talking and enjoying their breakfast. I sit in a corner of the café next to a giant incongruous poster of Britney Spears.

Time to forge ahead. I take my customary hike through the corridor of trucks waiting to cross into Malawi -- better to hitch from the end of the parked vehicles, so I can be sure the ride I get is actually departing. Along the way, several men in parked trucks tell me the same story: They are leaving right now and they will take me. One says the cost is 30,000 shillings. Not knowing whether that’s fair or whether he’s really about to depart, I tell him that if I see him when he’s actually driving off and if that’s really a fair price, I’ll gladly hop in.

I sit in the shade and talk with a few men lingering about. 30,000 -- somewhat less than $30 -- is indeed a fair price for a ride to Dar Es Salaam. It seems high to me, but we’re in a remote spot, and I calculate (wrongly, as it turns out) that the final trek will be about 700 km. One of the men is thrilled to learn that I’m from the States. “Eminem! Detroit!” This is the first non-Obama American cultural reference I’ve heard in ages.

The men help me flag down a truck. I hop in to greet my new driver, a young, fit Malawian in a red plaid shirt named Noel. One thing strikes me immediately when I get inside: air conditioning! The truck is nice, quite new, and it even has automatic transmission.
For over a hundred kilometers from the border to a town called Mbeya, the landscape is breathtaking. Gorgeous mountains covered in lush vegetation stretch into the distance. Huts sit on hillsides overrun with banana trees and greenery. Crops are everywhere, in fields large and small: Maize and tea predominate, but you can’t throw a groundnut without hitting some cultivated land. The soil here must be amazing. (Here's the road early on.)
For a few hours, we wind through the mountains, occasionally stopping so Noel can conduct mysterious business transactions. This is pure luxury: When we hit a bump, our individual seats glide gently up and down like we’re riding horses on a carousel. I actually yearn for the occasional pothole on this high-quality road. Around noon, we arrive in Mbeya, the last big town on my map before Dar Es Salaam. Noel suggests that I catch a bus here, but I’m pleased with our progress (we can ascend hills at 30 or even 40 km per hour) and opt to stay on. Noel obliges. We conduct one more odd transaction in the dusty parking lot of a petrol station, and we’re off again.

The landscape is varied and striking. We pass through more mountains, flat plains of scrub that remind me of the Kalahari, a thick forest, and a delta flooded with water. The only frustration is an endless succession of police checkpoints. At each one, Noel stops and answers a few questions, then hands over a 500-shilling note (less than 50 cents) before he’s allowed to proceed.

Along the way, we stop for lunch. I try to communicate with 4 or 5 kiosk owners, telling them I’ll take some food for the road. They only speak Swahili (a different version that what I’d heard in the southern Congo), and we completely fail to communicate. Noel steps in and helps me order a meal of grilled beef (I think) and fries (called chips) African-style: drenched in oil. Starving, I scarf it down. I’m full, but it takes my stomach a few hours to come to terms with what I’ve given it.

Around 4:00 in the afternoon, we hit a snag at our umpteenth police checkpoint. The officer approaches the truck and talks to Noel in Swahili; Noel responds in English. After a few questions, Noel tries to hand over the customary 500 shillings, but the officer brushes it off and continues to pepper Noel with questions. He asks for a driver’s license and other papers. He demands to see the truck’s first aid kit. He orders Noel out of the cab so they can inspect the truck’s fire extinguisher. I hear him ask Noel’s religion (Muslim). The officer seems displeased.

The officer takes Noel behind the truck for a few minutes. Eventually, Noel returns to the cab and says the policeman has found some flaw that supposedly requires immediate payment of a fine. It’s a pure shakedown -- this is the most modern and well equipped truck I have seen in all of southern Africa. As we endure the officer’s transparent efforts to extort money from Noel, at least a dozen old trucks in various states of disrepair pass unmolested through the checkpoint.

Noel tells me that he won’t pay any money. “You cannot ask a man to pay you after you torture him,” he says. The officer then begins to interrogate me. I steal a glance at Noel, who signals to me that I shouldn’t pay either. Eventually, the officer tells Noel that he needs to drive the truck down to the police station. I’m disgusted.

Noel has been looking in the side-view mirror. He suddenly sits up straight and says “Take this bus.” Reluctant to abandon Noel during this process, I hesitate, but he insists. I make him take 15 dollars. We grab my bag and tent and race back down the road to a shabby looking bus that’s covered with Chelsea soccer stickers and the word SABCO written across the windshield. Noel gets them to let me in. We shake hands and then hug -- I’m sad to leave him.

Overland in Africa, Part 4

Wednesday circa 4:45 p.m.

As I walk inside the border post in the late afternoon on Wednesday, the driver tells me he is going to Blantyre, Malawi’s biggest city, about 100 km east of the border. Fine by me, I say, I’ll come along. I quickly get my passport stamped -- I’m officially out of Mozambique -- and sit outside, waiting.

After 15 minutes, I figure I’ll walk to the Malawi entrance. Usually, the entrance to one country is a short walk from the exit post. I walk down a hill and up another, then stop to ask how much further. It is six kilometers to Malawi, I learn. I sit back down with eight or ten young men who ferry people between posts on bicycles and wait for the truck, wondering why six kilometers of land that is technically neither Mozambique nor Malawi.

The truck finally comes, and it is indeed six kilometers to the Malawi entrance. Again, I breeze through, get my passport stamped, and sit down to wait. I get up to change some money and come back. The pickup is still where the driver parked it. I visit an actual restroom (first one in a while) and return. Still nothing. I buy some meatballs from the border post cafeteria (cold, but not bad). Nada. I locate the driver, who tells me there are some problems with his papers and that I should look for another ride. I wish he had told me an hour ago. I begin searching for another ride, but nobody will take me. Two passenger buses are completely packed and can’t fit another person. (Here's the border as night falls.)
Suddenly, the pickup driver waves me over and says there’s a change of plans. The papers have been fixed (somehow) and he’s going all the way to Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital, tonight. Spectacular! That’s nearly 300 km further north from Blantyre, that much closer to my final destination. Count me in. I walk 100 meters past the border post to avoid the customs officials who hassle vehicles with extra passengers, and wait for my ride.

A half hour later, we are on the road. I’m in the back with several other young men. Three older men, including the driver, are in the cab. It’s pitch black, probably sometime after 7:00 p.m. The night sky is dazzling.

I have done this many times before, and I know the drill. Even when it seems warm in the back of a pickup, it will get cold as you drive along at night. Very cold. So I am prepared. I have unpacked my sleeping bag and donned two shirts and a jacket. I take off my shoes, lie in the bed of the truck against a couple of pillows the driver has left back here, pull the sleeping bag up to my eyes, and enjoy the night sky.

I am asleep within minutes. I awaken a few times for a glimpse of Blantyre and some roadside stops, but mostly, I sleep the sleep of the dead.

When I regain consciousness, I have one thought: It’s cold. Even in my sleeping bag with all the layers, I’m freezing. I’m alone in the truck bed, and only the driver remains in the cab. We stop at a police checkpoint and I bang on the cab, asking if I can move up front. We rearrange some luggage (I discover that my peanut butter was stolen while I slept!) and I get inside.

Something feels off in the cab. The driver, a chubby light-skinned black man in his 40s with a beard, seems out of sorts. He appeared competent and in control when I met him and when I spoke with him several times at the border. I ask him how he’s doing.

“I have been driving straight from Johannesburg. All night last night, and all day today.”

He hiccups.

“I have gone…” He squints at the odometer. “I can’t read that. Can you tell me what it says?”

We can’t figure how far he’s driven because he can’t remember what the odometer read when he started.

Hiccup.

“I drive with the windows open so I can stay awake. My wife is an MP -- you know, a member of Parliament? I bought this truck in South Africa so I can build a house with it. Do you want some yogurt?” He hands me some drinkable yogurt.

Hiccup.

I look at the clock. It’s 12:45 a.m. We left the border more than five hours ago.

To my great relief, we are already on the outskirts of Lilongwe. Within 15 minutes, we are in the city proper. I want to be dropped off at a taxi so I can find a cheap place to sleep, preferably in my tent. He demands that I go to a “guest house” -- basically a low budget hotel. He walks in ahead of me and comes out, announcing that the rooms are less than $5. Fantastic, I say. I pay him $15 for his troubles, shake his hand, and walk inside.

My driver must have misunderstood, or the hotel manager changed his story once I was alone without a ride. The price became $40 for the room I was shown. I storm out and the manager calls me back, saying he has a room for $10. I pay in Malawian kwacha, slip into my sleeping bag, lay down in a suspicious but good-enough bed, and fall back into a deep sleep.

Little did I know that I just completed the easy half of my journey.

Greece

I spent last night in wonderful Thessaloniki, Greece. It's huge, and the people fill outdoor cafes, restaurants, and bars until well after midnight. It's on the sea and the weather is lovely -- hot and sunny at midday, mild and comfortable at night. There are beautiful outdoor promenades and endless mazes of markets and shops. I wish I could have spent a month there.

Now I'm in the three-pronged peninsula of Halkidiki, also in Greece in between Thessaloniki and Turkey. It's long stretches of coastline with beautiful beaches -- some rocky, some sandy -- with big rolling hills and extraordinary views inland. The water is a perfect temperature. And it's a bit after tourist season, so everything's cheap. Tonight, I'll camp on the beach on the east side of the first of the three "fingers."

Stay tuned for the next installment of my overland in Africa story. Scroll down to read the first three parts.

Overland in Africa, Part 3

Wednesday morning, 8 a.m.

After a stop for “refrescoes” at the side of the road (Coke, Fanta, or water), and a bathroom break (peeing between the rows of truck wheels or in ditches on the side of the road), we press onward to Tete (pronounced like “bet,” though they say it differently in Malawi). After nearly four hours of steady progress in the morning sunlight, we arrive.

An hour of the usual mysterious stops and business transactions follows. Finally ready to leave Tete, we end up on a ramp jammed with traffic. We inch forward until we merge into a neverending line of stopped cars and trucks. A bridge lies 100 meters ahead. It crosses the Zambezi river, but it has been structurally weakened and is in danger of collapse. Authorities only permit one lane of traffic to pass at a time. While we wait, the cars are coming toward us. The driver says the wait is usually 30 minutes. Color me skeptical.

I lean out the window to buy a Coke from one of the boys hawking them to the stopped cars. At that moment, a policeman approaches our driver and starts yelling at him. I pull back from the window, wondering if buying a Coke is somehow illegal in Tete. Eventually, I realize that the driver broke the law by bypassing the traffic and using a ramp to cut to the front of the long line of cars. The policeman wants to take the driver from his truck. The driver brokers a temporary truce and the policeman walks away.

This isn’t the last we’ll hear from the authorities, I realize. So I pay the driver $10 for the 20-hour ride and remain for a bit, finishing my Coke. A few more policemen return. Two on motorbikes park in front of the truck to assure it won’t go any further. The driver finally relents, gets out of the truck, and goes with the police. I say a hasty and heartfelt goodbye to my friends in the back. Still upset with the driver for kicking me out without my tent last night, I have no problem leaving him without expressing gratitude.

I march past the long queue and cross the wide Zambezi river on foot. A stream of people carries all manner of goods across the bridge, stepping over foot-long gaps in the bridge that are the clearest evidence of structural damage. The sun beats down as I quickly sweat through my shirt, carrying my tent in one hand, a small bag of food (apples, peanut butter, bread, instant coffee) in the other, and my pack on my back.

On the other side of the bridge, absolutely no cars are going in my direction due to the traffic stoppage. Determined not to be overtaken by the truck I just left, I proceed with speed and purpose, eventually coming upon a small combi stand. Drenched with sweat, I struggle to ascertain where the combis are going. I know that somewhere up ahead -- how far I do not know -- there is a junction. If I continue straight, I continue up Mozambique for several hundred kilometers, but if I turn right, I enter Malawi straight away. I have heard that the first option is quicker.

Using a map to explain my preferred dropoff point, I get a combi driver to agree (I think) to take me to that junction. When the combi fills up, we are off. Although twenty or so are crammed in the sweltering minibus, I enjoy the ride. The stereo blasts reggae music, the windows are open, and people are happy. I think of an hour-long combi ride I had a week earlier, when a church choir piled into the bus and sang beautiful songs the whole way. The combi picks up a man with one leg, possibly the victim of one of the millions of landmines dropped in Mozambique during its long civil war. I’ve heard about this, and I’ve seen it several times myself: The disabled often ride for free. Soaking wet with sweat, clutching my bag, squeezed between two strangers, and smelling worse than anyone else on the minibus, I feel very alive.

The bliss is interrupted by a lengthy stop at a gas station. All of us roast as we wait in line for our turn to fill up. We finally top up and move on. To my great surprise, the combi races onward at breakneck speeds for over 60 km. I had figured I’d be at the junction within a few kilometers. The combi stops near a sign that says “Malawi,” with an arrow pointing to the right. Not at all certain that this is the junction I wanted, I figure I’ll take a bird in the hand and proceed directly to border while there’s still daylight.

“Can I walk to the border from here?” I ask.

“Yes, you can walk,” says the driver, who slams on the gas and leaves me among roadside kiosks and villagers in a cloud of dust.

Glancing back at the sign pointing the way to Malawi, I set off on foot on the tar road at about 2:30 in the afternoon. It’s so humid I ask someone if it had just stopped raining. The bush is verdant, overgrown and teeming with banana trees and tall vegetation. A couple of children walk with me for a bit, then a young Malawian comes along, asking if I have any work for him to do. (Can he get me to Dar Es Salaam, I wonder to myself.) I ask each person I pass if the border is just ahead; some say yes, some say no. Many only speak Portuguese. All agree I am going in the right direction. Each time I summit a hill, I fully expect to see a border post on the other side; each time I am greeted by greenery and more empty road.

Eventually, a barefoot young man who speaks English joins me for a bit. “Is the border this way?” I ask.

“Yes, but it’s very far.”

“How far?”

“To the next town, it is 13 kilometers. You have walked six. You must walk seven more.”

I am flabbergasted and demoralized, but I press onward. If I have to walk to the next town, so be it.
I just wish I wasn’t already out of water and Mozambiquan currency -- I don’t even have enough for a combi ride, not that any combis have passed this way. To borrow a phrase (with a wink and a nod to a dear friend of mine): If I had some meticals, I’d buy a minibus ride, if there was a minibus. Had the border been where I expected, I would have budgeted things perfectly. As it played out, I was short -- and parched.

I walk up and down another hill, and … hooray! A large pickup truck is coming my way. It’s only the third or fourth car I have seen on my hike. I wave my hand like crazy, signaling that I want a ride, and it stops just ahead. I run up to the driver, tell him I’m going to the border, and he says he’ll take me. “All you need is money,” says one of the passengers in the cab. To my great relief, the driver says he will accept U.S. dollars.

Sitting in the bed of the pickup, I watch the next few hills sail past, awash with exhaustion and triumph.
At least I get some time to relax now before the border -- except that I don’t. Before I know it, the truck has stopped and I’m surrounded by the usual crowd of money changers and other hawkers that seem to populate every border post. I muster the energy to keep them at bay and walk inside the building. Goodbye, Mozambique.

Overland in Africa, Part 2

Tuesday Night Around 10:00 p.m.

At long last, we are back on the road. The woman is still on the bottom bunk (she slept through the reloading), and only three men remain on top (the others were paid and remained in Chimoio). The driver is clearly pleased with himself, and he lights a joint to celebrate. As he lights a match, he gives me a sideways glance and scowls, as if to say: “You’d better not write about this on a blog.” Almost immediately after he finishes the joint, we come to a police checkpoint where the driver is questioned and eventually asked to exit the vehicle and sit in a police booth for questioning. It’s a tense moment for the rest of us in the cab, but he emerges a few minutes later unscathed.

As we crawl towards Tete, the night air blowing through our open windows gets colder and colder. (We have to leave the windows open because the floor of the truck is extremely hot, and if there’s no air coming in, the cab turns into a sauna very quickly, especially for people in the back.) The landscape changes and the hills become steeper. And the fog rolls in. At first, there are just patches here and there. Soon enough, it’s as though we’re driving through a cloud. Eventually, the fog is thicker than I have ever seen in my life. Low beams or high, we cannot see the road ahead of us. I have to look out the side window to see the edge of the road to determine whether we are still on it.

I am terrified. The driver has clearly driven this route many times, and he is driving fairly slowly, but that’s not what worries me. What I’m afraid of is abandoned trucks. It’s the same throughout Africa: When a truck dies, the driver doesn’t bother to pull off the road. He simply leaves the truck where it stopped, blocking an entire lane of traffic. At most, all he does to alert fellow motorists is place a tree branch in the middle of the obstructed lane -- though often the branch is just 50 meters or less before the unlit dead truck . I am petrified that one of these dead trucks will suddenly materialize out of the mist, leaving us no time to avoid it.

After 10 minutes of driving blind, the driver suddenly stops. Ironically, we become my own worst fear. The driver pulls the truck a few feet off the road, but part of it still blocks our lane. Now, I fear, we will be the dead truck lying in wait for an unsuspecting driver behind us. At least we leave our flashing lights on.

As these visions unfold in my head, the three men in the back of the truck push past me and vacate the cab in a hurry. I am still sitting, dazed, stressed, and tired, when I suddenly hear the sound of the driver, now in the back, kissing his mistress. I get the message: It’s time to get out. My tent is all the way in the back, and I can’t get to it without disturbing them, but I'm so intent on slinking out of the cab that I don’t even think of the tent at first. I step into the freezing night in the thick fog, wearing a light jacket. Midnight has long since come and gone.

The three men have a hearty chuckle as I stand angry and shivering by the side of the road, conveying my displeasure that my tent and sleeping bag are still in the truck. Meanwhile, the men prepare for bed. Having wisely brought their bags, they pull out heavy coats and a few blankets, setting up an open-air camp underneath the truck, between sets of wheels. Settling in, one of the men beckons to me, and I need no further invitation. I lie on my back on concrete covered by a thin blanket, with one man to my left and two to my right, directly under the truck.

My head rests against one of the workers’ small suitcase. I pull the thin blanket to cover my face. Soon, the cold air seeps through the blanket, and the concrete is freezing against my back and legs. The night, which seemed so still when I stepped out of the truck, comes alive. A child coughs; a baby cries. I realize that we are sleeping next to a village. Moments later, awful howls come from the bush nearby. Made by some animal, they sound like a man crying out in pain. As I gradually slip into an uneasy sleep, one thought possesses me: What if a passing truck slams into our truck as we sleep here? I calculate that because I am in the middle, the wheels would crush the man to my left but not me. This is no comfort at all. I am startled awake once in the night, crying out into the night as a large truck roars past us in the fog.

All four of us startle at the sound of our truck’s engine starting in the still pitch-black night. Without so much as a shout from the driver, the three men furiously repack their bags. They shove blankets hurriedly into their packs and race back into the truck. Within a minute or two, groggy but happy to be alive, I am back in the front seat, relieved to see that the fog has abated.

As dawn breaks, we traverse a horrific stretch of road. The thin layer of tar that once covered the earth has long since given way to cavernous potholes. In spots, there is more dirt than tar. Even the potholes have potholes. Our truck weaves crazily left and right, dodging some of these craters but slamming into others. We leave the road entirely in either direction when it’s expedient. Each time we hit a pothole, the sound is deafening. Our heads -- our entire bodies -- are thrown this way and that as the truck struggles onward. It is a miracle our tires survived. My neck hurt for days.
The only comfort was the landscape: Mountains in the distance, lush vegetation with barren stretches in between, and magnificent, baobab trees straight out of a Tim Burton film with trunks bigger than some houses.
The sun has long since risen when we arrive, bleary-eyed and sore, in Changara, Mozambique. (A village near Changara.)

Although we left 16 hours ago, we still have not reached Tete, which is less than 600 kilometers from Beira, a fraction of the way to my final destination.

Overland in Africa, Part 1

What’s it like to travel overland from Beira, Mozambique, to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania without your own car in less than 4 days? I did it last week, and I will tell you the story.

Tuesday

It is the afternoon of Tuesday, August 18, and I need to get out of Beira, Mozambique soon.

I crossed the border from Mutare, Zimbabwe on Sunday and arrived in Beira (halfway up Mozambique’s long coastline) the next day, committed to finding a boat to Dar Es Salaam. Any boat would be fine, as long as it arrived within a week: I had catch a flight out of Dar on Sunday, August 23.

The boat didn’t pan out, but not for lack of trying. I visited the main port twice, pleaded with immigration officials, and dickered with the logistics managers of all the major shipping companies in town. In the end, I couldn’t go the sea route because no boat would get me there in time.

Anticipating this result, I had asked around to determine the fastest way to Dar overland. The consensus was that it was faster and more reliable to go the long way around -- northwest through Mozambique, then north through all of Malawi, and finally east across all of Tanzania. The roads on the more direct route north along Mozambique’s coast were rumored to be awful, and trucks rarely passed that way.

One of the logistics managers at a shipping company told me he knew of a truck leaving for Malawi on Tuesday afternoon that could take me. I come to the company’s office around 2:00, as requested, and wait inside for over hour in suffocating humidity. As I begin to lose hope, the manager pops out of his office and says, “My dear friend, the truck is ready. Let’s go.” He drives me out of town in his pickup truck, telling me about a trip he once took to Vancouver.

We arrive in a dirt alley on the outskirts of town. A large semi is waiting, the engine already running. The driver is a musclebound, bombastic Portuguese-looking man in his early 30s who speaks little English beyond “Hello, how are you?” He shakes my hand, grabs my tent, and we get in. I sit in front; three Mozambiquan men in their early 20s are already in the back. They will handle the manual labor and help maintain the truck along the way.

The truck is about 10 years old, I deduce from the text “Spirit of Ninety-Nine” along its side. It may have begun its life in Canada, for it bears stickers announcing that it is compliant with Canadian regulations. And perhaps it spent time in the States: Across the back of the cab, in massive letters, is that peculiar American phrase: “Git-Er-Done.”
The inside is the standard layout for a cab of this kind: Two pilot chairs in the front, a large gearshift protruding from the floor, and bunk beds in the back with some shelving space and compartments in between. The radio has been stolen. At some point during the ride, I notice that the truck’s odometer reads over 928,000 miles.
I try to fasten my safety belt, but it’s broken. I greet the men sitting in the back, discover that they speak no English, and we drive off.

But trucks, in my experience, don’t just “drive off,” and this one was no different. We stop by the side of the road to pick up a very young Malawian woman who turns out to be the driver’s mistress. We stop so the driver can pick up some food. We gather a couple of additional young men to help with the truck. The woman gets the bottom bunk to herself, while all the men pile into the top one. Then we pull over by the side of the main road, no more than 15 kilometers outside of town, and wait.

After a while, an empty open-bed semi pulls up and honks. The truck’s driver speaks with our driver, and the empty truck maneuvers directly alongside ours. Everyone hops out, and the five young men in our truck proceed to unload 38 large sacks of fish from our truck and place them on the empty one. I am mystified. Are they really stealing all of this fish? Here's a surreptitious photo I snapped from the passenger seat.
Nearly an hour later, we are finally on the road. We drive toward Chimoio, a city on the way back to Zimbabwe. The vegetation is lush, and people line the roadways in both directions, carrying giant sacks, containers, or logs on their heads, or riding overloaded bicycles that wobble precariously as riders struggle to pedal them.

Our progress is slow. The truck crawls up hills, barely moving at all, and drives no more than 70 kilometers per hour at the fastest. The driver is no expert. His gearshifts are unsteady and his pothole navigation skills are lacking. He constantly checks his cell phone, glancing down for many seconds at a time as the truck swerves across the road. Shouting and waving his hands, he tells stories to the men in the back, who respond at regular intervals with the slightly forced laughter of those who know that being amused by their boss’s stories is part of the job description. The driver honks at nearly every truck that passes on the way to Beira, smiling in a self-satisfied way each time a truck honks back. About half of the time, he initially whiffs when trying to grab the string to honk the horn.

We arrive in Chimoio in total darkness. Chimoio is 164 kilometers from Beira, but with all the delays, it took us more than 5 hours to get there.

We pull into a truck depot and park. I wonder whether we are stopping for the night, but the men in the back communicate to me that we will proceed to Tete, more than 400 kilometers further, before going to sleep. All of a sudden, the flat-bed truck with our 38 sacks of fish pulls into the depot and alongside us once again, and the process recommences, this time in reverse. Because the men have to lift the sacks nearly above their heads to pile them back on our very full truck (shouting and grunting with effort as they do so), it takes much longer. I offer to help, but they say they are fine; the driver adds that the fish smell bad, a point I do not dispute.

With time on my hands, I wander a bit through the depot, which is little more than a large patch of dirt along the side of the road, adjacent to a former petrol station that now serves as a junkyard. I smell the smells (few are pleasant), look at the stars in the night sky, say thanks but no thanks to prostitutes, chat as best as I can with other drivers and their staff, and stop by a local bar to buy some water and take in the music blaring from blown-out speakers. I reflect on the mysterious fish transfer and decide that it must have been to evade weight requirements; we stopped at a weigh station shortly after unloading those 38 very heavy bags.

It's been a slow start, and I have a long way to go.

Qatar = Culture Shock

I only had a 13-hour layover in Qatar. I got to my hotel after a short drive with the intention of getting some sleep, but the contrasts with life in Africa were too much, and I couldn't sleep. So I took a long walk to try to take it in. Here are a few images from the walk and the flight.

Yield.
The suburbs from above.
The Hardees Jalapeño Burner.

More Shots of Dar Es Salaam

I was there on Saturday and Sunday morning. Town was pretty quiet, but I followed the people to this market, which was bustling.

Shots of Dar Es Salaam

Here's where I would have landed last week had I snagged a boat from Beira.
A building in the main downtown.
An average street downtown.
A shopping mall.
One of Obama's many official endorsements in Africa.
Traffic circle.

Shots of Beira, Mozambique

A few pictures to give you a sense of what it was like. I slept on this beach in my tent a week ago today.
From the balcony of an Internet cafe I visited.
The view down an average street in downtown.
It rained several times each day -- for a short while each time. The rain made it humid, but there were some fringe benefits.

Doha, Qatar

Now, I'm in Doha. It was about 95 degrees this evening when I arrived. I had read that it's supposed to be a dry heat. Maybe it is, but dry or not, it's completely overwhelming. And midday is much, much hotter. For example, tomorrow afternoon the temperature will be about 110 degrees.

The SUVs and other fancy vehicles coming through the airport were absurd. I briefly wondered how the combined wealth of the people in that airport compared to the total wealth of everyone in Malawi.

Many, many thanks to Qatar Airways for giving me a free visa, hotel room, dinner, and breakfast before my flight to Turkey. I got to see some of the city at night -- hopefully I get to see some more before I leave tomorrow.

Maasai

I was only in Dar Es Salaam for little over a day, but I had a wonderful time. I spent the evening and part of the morning with my new friends Daniel and Teelan.

They are in the big city to learn English. Daniel wants to become a doctor. Read about their tribe here. You may notice some differences between their culture and yours.

I had heard that some Maasai warriors can track and kill lions using only knives. Daniel said he'd seen it done. He said that usually, Maasai will only attack a lion when it goes after their cattle. But if the lion has killed a cow or two already, they'll venture into the bush to track and kill it.

As-Salamu Alaykum

I am in Dar Es Salaam.

Except for 12 hours of rest in Lilongwe, I was on the road for nearly four consecutive days and nights. I will tell you about it. But first, a long nap.

Personal Growth

My ride from Zimbabwe to Beira (Bay-ruh, emphasis on the first syllable, but try to roll the "r"), Mozambique involved 6 different vehicles. I couldn't make it in a day and had to stay at a very low budget "motel" along the main road. The room was tiny, and I shared it with my new friend and traveling companion, Mason. Total cost of the room: $1.60. This is the view of the room from the bed.
The view the other way. I originally unrolled my sleeping bag on the concrete floor and announced my intention to sleep there. I didn't know Mason that well, and I thought it was a nice gesture to give him the whole bed. He said I shouldn't sleep on concrete. I looked around the room and saw a few of the massive bugs crawling about, and decided that my sleeping bag and I would indeed take him up on the offer.
The view looking up when you're lying on the bed.

This guy spent the night on one of the bedposts. I saw him before going to sleep and didn't give him another thought -- and slept like a baby until we woke up at 4:30 a.m. to continue our journey. Getting used to bugs -- that's personal growth.

Lilongwe, Malawi

Last night at 1:30 a.m., I finished a grueling 33-hour overland journey from Beira, Mozambique to Lilongwe, Malawi. (The boat fell through.) The highlight of the trip, by far, was when my truck driver was arrested and removed from his vehicle for trying to cut in a gigantic queue while waiting to cross a bridge over the Zambezi near Tete, Mozambique. I saw the writing on the wall and left, marching triumphantly across the bridge on foot and finding another ride thereafter. A close second was sleeping under a semi with the 3 guys who helped with the truck. We were squeezed together like a package of Oscar Meyer hotdogs. It was freezing. A lowlight was when I was told I could walk to the Malawi border from where I was dropped off. 9 kilometers' walk later, I luckily found another ride.

A word of advice. If you are thinking about going overland from Chimoio, Mozambique to Tete, consider other options. The road was brutal. Just before Changara, even the potholes had potholes. Every time we hit one (which was about every five seconds in spots) it sounded like a canon discharging. For long stretches, we drove only 10-20 km per hour. Agonizing. The only other similarly painful main road I've heard about is a stretch from Maun to Kasane in Botswana. The potholes there are supposedly legendary. And a guy I met said his entire truck went under water at one point along the way.

That reminds me of a joke I heard in Zimbabwe. How do you know when someone's driving drunk? He drives in a straight line. (The "proper" way to drive on most roads is to weave crazily, sometimes leaving the road altogether, to avoid the most cavernous potholes.)

Things are heating up. I am pressing to get to Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania by Friday or Saturday. Then I'm on a plane to Istanbul (after a stop in Qatar) to see a friend and travel overland to Italy. More adventures to follow after that, including Spain and Malta - then back to Africa. Stay tuned.

Hike in Eastern Zimbabwe

Near Nyanga, very close to the Mozambique border.

Richard

I met Richard last week. He’s 13, the second of five children. Both of his parents have HIV. Richard was born with it. His other siblings have not been tested.

Richard had tuberculosis a few months ago. Some aid workers discovered it and put him on tuberculosis drugs. He coughs as though he still has it.

Richard has spent most of his life on a farm compound. His father worked on the farm and the family lived with 11 other families in a small community. They had shelter, water, and food.

The farm Richard lived on was raided and its owner was chased off. The farm’s game reserve was burned to the ground and the animals escaped, leading to this bizarre sight:
Two giraffes have already died. This guy does not look well. Also roaming this field were zebra, wildebeest, and springbok.

Both of Richard's parents have tuberculosis now. Neither can work. Meeting this family affected me more than anything else I have seen on my trip.

"There is no cholera" in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe had a severe cholera outbreak from mid-2008 until about April of this year. It spread to almost every part of the country. Over 100,000 were infected, and over 4,000 died.

I met two nurses who worked in an enormous cholera treatment center near Harare called Kudoma. It was just a tent on a soccer field, with special cholera beds: two slabs of board with space between them. At one time, it had over 500 patients.

One nurse described seeing hundreds of people at that huge camp lying on their backs in the cholera beds as diarrhea seeped from them “as if it was coming from a tap.” The nurse said that if a person could last an hour at the treatment center with IV without dying, he or she would usually survive.

One of the nurses said he could recall straddling a dead patient on the ground in order to reach over him to tend to another patient. He said that people died so fast -- and the morgues in Zimbabwe functioned so poorly, if at all -- that there was a small room reserved for dead bodies at Budiriro, a treatment center where he worked. As people died, they were moved into the room. Eventually, the room filled up. Both nurses remember bodies piled shoulder-high in the room. They also remember when the bodies were moved to a bigger room. That one too eventually filled with corpses.

How did President Robert Mugabe respond to the crisis? In December 2008, he said on national television: “There is no cholera in the country.” Instead of acknowledging the situation, news outlets would say that there was no cholera -- just a few cases of diarrhea. Or just a few deaths, cause unknown. It’s reminiscent of the government’s habit of referring to deaths as being caused by a “short illness” (such as murder) or a “long illness” (such as HIV).

Cholera is treatable and preventable. One of the main causes of Zimbabwe’s outbreak is poor waste disposal. News reports out of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-biggest city, describe sewage pipes “bursting." Harare itself has a serious waste-disposal problem, and its municipal water has not functioned for years in many places.

The United Nations warns that Zimbabwe is likely to experience another deadly outbreak when the rainy season begins this October. Some believe it will be worse than last year. The Zimbabwean government could have spent the past several months rebuilding damaged infrastructure and taking serious steps to avoid further loss of life.

But all I read in the (pro-government) newspapers is that Zimbabwe’s sewage problems are worse than ever. Plus, of course, news and evidence that members of government spend funds lavishly on themselves. This past week: The governor of Harare used government funds to buy a new $152,000 vehicle. Every week it’s something new. And, of course, there’s Mr. Mugabe’s Mercedes-laden 22-vehicle motorcade.

And all I have seen with my own eyes are poor communities with wells dangerously near outhouses. A friend of mine asked a resident of one of the poor communities why he and his family would drink from a well in their village when they know it might have cholera. “If we drink from the well, we might get cholera. But if we do not, we will definitely die of thirst.”

Where is Zimbabwe's Middle Class?

Zimbabwe seems to have no middle class. There is a vast lower class with little access to the services that the poor in a developed nation take for granted. Although these people suffer the worst at the hands of their government, they are powerless to leave the country, lacking funds and the ability to navigate visa requirements. They are usually grouped in high-density areas on the outskirts of town or otherwise out of sight. And based on what I have seen in these communities, it seems extremely difficult to lift oneself out of those circumstances.

Meanwhile, there is a conspicuous upper class: Government officials. Military and political officers have gigantic mansions, rivaling anything I have seen in the United States. They drive outrageous cars and SUVs. They have access to electricity and water and virtually every comfort enjoyed by the rich in the First World. They even pave and repair the roads they regularly use.

Then there are the whites. Supposedly numbering about 20,000 out of a country of 12 million, the whites have suffered under Mugabe’s reign, but many still enjoy circumstances completely unavailable to most Zimbabweans. They live in the suburbs, surrounded by walls and guarded by dogs and alarm systems. They have gardeners and cooks. They dine at restaurants that -- while cheap by Western standards -- are nevertheless prohibitively expensive for most.

One day, I went to the Harare city center and began to walk. I wandered around the main downtown, then followed the people toward Mbare, a huge, trash-littered high-density area near downtown. I wandered for over two hours and never saw another white person.

Another day, I went with some friends to a bar in Harare. Two guards tended to the front gate. I was told it was a “members only” bar -- a requirement that could be overlooked at times. We proceeded down a private road through a small walled community -- apartments, shops, and the open-air bar, complete with a roaring fire, comfortable couches, and an odd collection of people, nearly all of whom were white. But for the accents, we could have been in a swanky lounge in Chicago.

Even with this separation, I experienced nothing but kindness from people of all races during my two weeks in Zimbabwe. In fact, Zimbabweans of all colors and in all neighborhoods were as friendly, kind, and helpful as I’ve encountered on my journey. It’s just frustrating to think of living in a place where people of different colors and classes rarely interact.

The Indian Ocean

I touched it for the first time in my life this morning. (At least I think I did. That's the Indian Ocean, right?)

I am in Beira, Mozambique, trying to find a boat to Tanzania. Wish me luck. In the meantime, over the next couple of days, I'll say a few more things about Zimbabwe...

Mushrooms

A year or two ago, when stores had little food on the shelves, a group of people went to a restaurant. At those times, you didn’t get a menu and order off it; the waiter told you what food was available, and you ordered from those options. That evening, the waiter said they had grilled mushrooms and mushroom soup. Fair enough. Everyone in the group ordered one or the other, or both. About 10 minutes later, the waiter returned with a rueful expression and said: “We are out of mushrooms.”

Hike in Harare, Part 2