Thailand

Walkabout returns! I have just left Thailand for Cambodia and had a pretty awesome time although I have barely scratched the surface of this beautiful country. I landed in Bangkok after a thoroughly exhausting series of flights and bus rides, first the road trip from Capetown to Jo'burg via Durban followed by a flight to Mumbai and then another to BKK, Thailand.
Having done no research on Thailand and leaving my guidebook back in Gib I was pleasantly surprised to see that I arrived on the second day of Songkran, the traditional Thai new year festival. This is the setting for some absolute madness all over Thailand as one of the main rituals on these three days is effectively a country-wide waterfight! Not a bad thing as this is one of the hottest months here and a regular drenching is often a relief although all electronic gear needs to be kept well wrapped in plastic as even the word soaked feels like an understatement compared to what happens here. As well as walking around the streets armed with all manner of water pistols (or ice cold buckets of water) there are plenty of pickup trucks roaming the city making sure no person can miss out and stay dry. I met some lovely people in my first days in Bangkok and we spent a few days checking out the drinking in various parts of the city.



During my first week I also spent some time mooching around the ridiculously huge shopping malls - they are like nothing I have ever seen before, seven or more floors of shopping madness where you can find almost anything you could want (real or fake).
I used my time in Bangkok as a long rest after all the moving around I have had to do recently so I am sad to say I avoided seeing most of the sights that I feel I should have gone to. Rather I spent much of my time hanging around the Backpacker bar and having some very late nights out at Bangkok's night clubs some of which are very impressive. Two of note were Spicy and Insomnia both of which close around six in the morning leaving some very tired and inebriated people to find their way home in the heat of the morning sun.
One of my greatest joys was discovering that the Thais are also football obsessed and combining that with bars that are open 24 hours around Khao San resulted in some great nights watching the recent Liverpool resurgence under Kenny Daglish (19th to 5th place and suddenly we even have a chance of European football again!). Liverpool also seem to be the most supported team in Thailand for reasons I cannot really fathom - apart of course from the obvious fact they are awesome.



On one of my nights out I met an Israeli girl called Shia who has a lot of contacts in Pattaya and suggested that if I headed down there she would be able to get me a discount on the diving course I want to do. So there it was, after two weeks of doing not much at all it was time to move to Pattaya - possibly the maddest place I have ever been to in my life. Up until 1961 this was a small peaceful fishing village, however that year a group of about 100 American GI's went there for some R&R during the Vietnam war. This trend continued for some time resulting in a den of iniquity that now attracts some four million visitors a year. There are many retired Europeans living here and it seems the Russians have moved in big time with every second sign in Russian.



The night life is absolutely insane with many gogo bars and nightclubs and it is hard to find anywhere to have a quiet pint! I would have left after a couple of days I think except for one thing, while wandering around the first night I popped in to a bar with a pool table and challenged a very cute girl who was playing there to a game. We started talking and it turns out she is a manager of one of the places there. After a fun evening we agreed to meet up the next evening and then the one after and. . . Anyway there went my touring of Thailand! Before I knew it my first month in Thailand was up and it was time to head out so I can fly back in at the end of May to get another month visa. I picked Cambodia as my next destination and by the 12th was in a shared van on my way to Aranya Prathet on the Thai-Cambodia border. I will have to make up for my laziness with some serious travelling when I get back next month!

The Run South

I return! It has been quite a while since I last updated this site - I simply could not be bothered sitting around for hours on end waiting for pictures to upload and then having them fail anyway in the last few seconds! However, now that I am in Bangkok there are WiFi signals in nearly every bar and not only that but they are nearly all free and very fast.



My route south from Rwanda back to South Africa was pretty much taken at a snail's pace. I would take bus after bus for two to three days at a time, snatching sleep while on the move and then follow such stints with several weeks of laziness. My first main stop once I got back from Tanzania was in Malawi. I headed straight to Nkhata Bay where I spent a few weeks trying to get a little fitter after my body decided to eat itself while I had Malaria! (I am down to 68kg from a stunning corpulent 85kg that I weighed in at as I left Gib.) The guys at Aqua Africa - where I did my PADI courses - were great with me and I popped over every couple of days to take out their kayak for a little paddle. Life was pretty uneventful other than one very sad incident that brought home some of the reality of the troubles people face in parts of Africa. I had a local friend called Simon who worked at Big Blue Backpackers, one of these people who is inspiring when you see how hard they work. One of the nights about a week after I arrived he was working late behind the bar and had agreed to cover security overnight for some extra cash. He was complaining of a bad headache at about 9pm but did not want to tell the boss as he did not want to lose the extra shift. When I popped in the following morning, the guys told me that during the night it had got much worse and at around 3am he went off to the hospital. By about an hour later Simon had passed away from cerebral malaria. There is not really much more I can say other than that he was one of the nicest people I had met on my travels, always with a smile on his face and checking that everyone was doing all-right.
After a few weeks I moved on via Lilongwe into Zambia on my way down back to Zimbabwe. I decided to take a few days break in Lusaka where I met up with a lovely lady called Alice Zulu who I had randomly spoken to on Facebook a few months earlier.
She gave me the guided tour of the area local to where I was staying which is always a massive help especially in the cities. After a few days it was time to move again with the next stop being Livingstone - just across the border from Vic Falls in Zimbabwe.




Once back in Zim I managed to organise a day out in the bush with the Lion Encounter people so I could see everyone again and especially the three new cubs that arrived just after I left last year. These young ones are much more docile than any of the other lions I have met, to the point that when you put your hand near the face they will sometimes lick it. I would have loved to go a few more times and get to know them better but at the moment my spending is right on the mark and I need to be sure to save cash for Thailand and of course any unexpected problems that may crop up.
My plan after Zimbabwe was to cross Botswana into Namibia although I would only have had a few days there before I had to head on south. I woke up at 5am to try and avoid the problems I encountered with lack of buses on my last attempt. Getting a taxi to the border however took some time as we needed to wait for enough people to fill it and by the time I had crossed the border it was already gone 0830 meaning that I had


missed the buses yet again. There was no turning back however so I sat on the side of the road to try hitch a lift and after a couple of hours finally a truck driver called Obi stopped and agreed to take me to Nata (my plan was to then move on to Maun on my way to the western border with Namibia). We trundled off down the road being wary of elephants that like to cross the roads in Botswana, but the run down was much slower than I had anticipated. Rather than arriving in Nata during the early afternoon as I had envisioned, we got there around nine in the evening. By this time I was more than a little tired and looking forward to the convenience of being in South Africa so after some discussion with Obi we agreed I should stick with him until the SA border some 400km north of Johannesburg.



We drove into the night with a nap stop at about 3am and hit the border by ten in the morning where I bid Obi farewell and set off to find out how to move on south. I got sucked into a conversation with one of the border guards where we managed to discuss religion AND politics, two subjects that I love to chat about but really are not always the best topics in most of Africa for someone as outspoken as I am! However I must have navigated that potential minefield decently as when I started to worry that I had left it too late to get to Joburg in a timely manner, the border guards told me not to worry and that they would get me a lift south. Within about fifteen minutes I was in a lovely BMW with a businessman Afrikaaner called Willem who not only took me to Joburg, but also dropped me off at the front door of the Hostel I wanted to stay at. Air conditioning and about 200kph all the way signalled my return to the easy life!



I had two weeks to kill before the flight to Thailand so I decided to visit Karina in Capetown again where I am not ashamed to admit we spent more than a few days sampling every takeout place in the area and playing Burnout on the console! A week of fattening myself back up and I took the bus over to Johannesburg via the coast for my flight on the 13th of April. So long Africa and thanks for the precious memories, too much has happened for me to write much more than a small taster but I hope that one day I can return and see some of the many things that I had no time for. Onwards to the land of smiles and lots of noodles - woohoo!

Uganda - Gorillas and waterfalls!

Once in Uganda I settled down just outside Kampala in a hostel called Red Chilli Hideaway. It was time to start work on getting my gorilla tracking permit. I headed to the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) and began checking things out - luckily I was being careful as the first date they tried to give me a permit for, the only accomodation in the area was a massive $60 per night! The UWA people insisted I should be able to pay this (being a muzungu of course. . . no problem!) so eventually I gave up for a bit and decided to nip over to Jinja while I thought about the best way to approach this expensive part of my trip.

Jinja is about 70 kilometres northeast of Kampala and famous as the source of the Nile where Lake Victoria's waters start the long journey to the Mediterranean. While there I found a very quiet relaxing place near the Bujagali falls where white water rafting was being offered for a very decent price. Having not done much of note for a while I decided to give it a go resulting in an awesome day, some new friends, muscle ache and sunburn!


A few days later it was back to Kampala for my second attempt at co-ordinating my gorilla tracking permit with accomodation availability. Kampala is a beautiful city with some pretty insane traffic. The best way to get around is on the Bodabodas (bike taxis) which can be pretty scary. Helmet laws do not exist as far as I can tell, and while I love bikes, I do much prefer to be the one in control when squeezing through rush hour traffic! Every tree in the city seems to have Marabou storks nesting on them - they look pretty weird and not unlike modern day pterodactyls watching over the city. As I was there over the weekend I took the time to check out Kampala's famous night life and was not disappointed. There are many massive clubs dotted around the city, with a great many of them located in an area known as Kabalagala. There were a few crazy nights with some other people staying at Red Chilli - on the Saturday we left Kabalagala at about 7am and the party was still going strong!



A few days later I had managed to get my permit to track gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest near a small town called Ruhija. There was a new campsite that had opened up with very reasonable prices of ten dollars a night for a small room. I caught the first bus I could down to Kabale near the Rwanda/Congo border and found a Bodaboda driver willing to drive the two hours it would take to get to Ruhija. Within twenty minutes we were on a dirt track and heading away from any signs of civilisation. The variation in plant life in this area is pretty incredible and I started to understand why it is called the 'impenetrable' forest. Everywhere you look there are miles and miles of trees covering a very mountainous area. Between the trees are smaller plants of every variety and covering all that a mass of vines and creepers. Even with a small army of people and machetes it would take hours to get anywhere in this kind of landscape if it wasn't for the one track that we were haring along. I was almost at my wits end from hanging on to the bike when we finally saw the sign indicating we were at Ruhija and I went to settle in for the night.



The morning brought the realisation that I was now in new territory. It was raining lightly and the valleys were filled with mist as I enjoyed some tea and toast before setting off to the UWA post a kilometre down the road. On arrival there were six other tourists there (a Swedish and Danish couple, two Australians and two Americans) and once the briefing was over we set off down the road. The guides were in radio contacts with the trackers who had set off an hour earlier and we soon turned off the road and onto a small path into the forest proper. Within minutes we were trekking up and down hills as the trackers gave us directions and we got slowly closer to the gorillas. They would stop to eat fruit at one location, then double back on themselves while we were negotiating our way round the thick undergrowth and avoiding the really steep areas. After about four hours we found them relaxing in the bottom of a valley. Our first sighting was a silverback sitting with one of the younger males in a tiny area they had cleared.



They pretty much ignored us and it is very clear they are used to people popping by to have a look. One of the most interesting things to me was hearing the other gorillas grunt to alert each other to their position. It was clear that there was a few of them around but due to the foliage one can only see a few metres in any direction if that so they remained just sounds to us. A few metres further on we found another silverback and the oldest male of the group who was heavily scarred on his head apparently from fights for dominance. The one hour we had was over before we knew it and we headed back.



At this point I got a lucky break as I was discussing the tiring bike ride from Kabale to Ruhija when Jurgen and Anita (the Danish gentleman and Swedish wife) kindly offered to drive me back to Kabale in their hired 4 wheel drive. We left at 9.30 am the next morning and before I knew it I was back in Kabale ready to find transport to Rwanda.

Malaria and cargo boats

The story of how I got to Uganda and discovered the real Malaria! I left Dar Es Salaam around the 24th wanting to cover some distance. The bus trip was a good eleven hours and it was about half way through that I started to feel the chills. Having not slept much the night before I have to admit to thinking I was simply overtired. The first real warning signs started an hour later when I started to feel what can only be described as serious muscle-ache in my neck which quickly spread to my lower back. Now anyone who has driven on the roads (those that have tarmac) in Tanzania will probably be able to tell you they really like their speed bumps, and these are not gentle ones, oh no! Every bump was acutely felt in my back and neck and together with my feeling cold resulted in the sulk of all sulks on the last few hours of that run. Eventually we arrived at Arusha where I forked out the extra for a normal taxi cab and was taken to a very nice place called Maasai camp.



Bottom line, malaria sucks. Never skimp on your anti malarial tablets and definitely go to the doctor the moment you suspect it may be an issue. Needless to say I failed on both of these, false sense of security from hanging around with the locals who never take prophylaxis and I have the bad habit of trying to ride out feeling ill instead of seeking medical help. Unfortunately malaria hits pretty bad, you sleep through the good parts leaving you wide awake for the fever. That and the inability to eat or even drink much really messes you up. On the 30th I came to my senses and went to the clinic where I was given a small bucket of tablets and told to take them after meals (hurr hurr funny doctor). The nice surprise was that I started getting my energy back on the 1st January, a good omen for the coming year?!



The next few days I toured around Arusha with the help of a bike taxi driver who had no problem with being my passenger instead. I was still grumpy over being ill so decided to get my bus ticket to Mwanza on the south shore of Lake Victoria and leave all the bad mojo behind! By the 4th January I was on the road again and had a nice surprise as two friends from Malawi (Jakob and Ola) boarded the same bus. The ride over was fairly horrific to be honest. There was no tarmac on the majority of the road and the driver had taken to screaming around corners and over bumps as if he was a rally driver. We had all managed to get in the back two rows of the bus so every time we hit a bump we all literally flew into the air. Eventually the driver had to slow down slightly as angry passengers started complaining loudly yet even that did not prevent a tyre blowing out half way through the journey (third one this trip!).



We arrived in Mwanza battered, bruised and very glad to be off the death trap. We found a nice cheap guest house in the centre of town and spent a few days doing as little as possible apart from finding nice restaurants where we could and being guided around by a very kind young local guy who took a shine to us. Having strangely enough tired of using buses I visited the port to see if I could hop on a cargo boat to cross the lake to Uganda. There was a boat leaving on the Friday called the Sukhmani and I managed to get the price down to $40 from the $80 they originally wanted. It was a slow trip taking a total of 38 hours but I had a bunk and was fed with the rest of the crew who were very accommodating and interested to talk with me about anything and everything. As we got near Uganda I was offered a sample of the cargo (lots of beer).



I received no exit stamp from Tanzania as the immigration guys bunked off early and was quite worried when we arrived on the Sunday the 9th as it appeared there was nobody in customs at Port Bell to sort out my visa with. After a few discussions with the local police and me pointing out I really wanted to avoid sleeping on the boat again if there was any way, they called out an immigration official who arrived after an hour and processed my visa quickly. I apologised for the call out - I had been hoping to just be allowed through leaving my passport and then return to sort the visa on Monday - and finally was free to enter Uganda.



One hectic Bodaboda (bike taxi under new name) ride later and I was at Red Chilli Hideaway, a very nice backpacker hostel outside Kampala. This is it! I shall travel north no more - now the plan is to go see the source of the Nile at Jinja and see if I can get a gorilla tracking permit. Ciao for now peeps, this has been Bryan reporting from the equator - hurrah!

Tanzania (well, mostly Zanzibar!)

After waking up in Tanzania I headed back to the border to get myself stamped out and obtain my visa. It cost me $50 but seems to be for three months - the customs official also advised me that I should be able to cross into Uganda and Rwanda then back without getting a new visa (my experiences at borders so far tell me that is a damn lie but I will live in hope!) I walked the two kilometres to the bus depot, not really fun at 11am in Tanzania, but I made it a sweat drenched mess and jumped on the next minibus to Mbeya. Now came the race to get to the train station before the scheduled departure at 1400. The trip took a couple of hours and after hopping into a couple of local buses I was finally at Mbeya train station with thirty minutes to spare. I managed to grab an economy ticket for a seat - the only tickets left - and suddenly spotted some friends who I had met during my stay at Nkhata Bay, Paul from Canada two girls, Marilee and Eva, who were dozing while waiting for the train. We sat down in the shade and eventually it was boarding time four hours later (the Tazara train is reknowned for breaking down regularly and is pretty much never on time as far as I can tell).

That first day was pretty boring so after a short nap I headed up the train to explore and found the restaurant carriage with Paul and company at a table, I joined them and we got our food after about an hour and a half - hardly surprising as the tiny kitchen was trying to feed the whole train. The girls suddenly dragged out a load of sachets they had brought over from Malawi - possibly some of the cheapest booze in the world - and being bored witless that was the rest of the evening planned out! We sat in between carriages (the only place we could smoke) on some lovely 70s spinny seats we had 'acquired' and talked crap until the early hours when satisfied we had passed enough time everyone retired hoping to wake up in time for passing through Selous National Park. The next day we were back in the restaurant car just in time and while munching away were treated to the sight of the usual impala by the dozen as well as a few sightings of elephants and zebras - Hurrah, free game drive! No big cats, but that is hardly a problem since my time with the lions in Zimbabwe I think I have had my fill. We arrived in Dar Es Salaam in daylight and headed to the YMCA, a nice clean hostel in the centre of town. After a shower and shave the guys wanted to go out so we found an awesome restaurant serving every kind of food we could imagine, ate ourselves silly and went out to paint the town red. Dar seems a nice place, you can strongly feel the middle eastern influence is much stronger here through the architectural style as well as of course the abundance of mosques. One of the nice surprises I hadn't thought about was being able to smell the sea again!

After a couple of days in Dar I decided it was time to see Zanzibar (locally known as Unguja) and meet up with Shawn who was relaxing on some beach in the north of the island. A very modern fast ferry had Paul and I there in a couple of hours and after meeting Xabi from Barcelona at the island's customs area we headed to a hostel in Stonetown where we managed to convince the guy there to let us take the last twin room and shove an extra mattress in. Stonetown is lovely and reminiscent of the old town areas of Gibraltar as many of them were when I was a child but the streets are thinner and the Islamic influence is much stronger.

In the evening we found our way to an open air food market where fish such as snapper, barracuda, shark, tuna as well as various types of prawn, crab and lobster are sold cooked in various ways for relatively decent prices. After that we found a bar called Mercury's (Freddy was born here you know!) for a few drinks before we decided to retire and plan our trip north to the white sandy beaches in the north.






The morning saw a quick tour of Stonetown followed by some haggling to get a decent price for the one and a half hour drive to Kendwa Rocks, a place on the beach near Nungwi in the north of the island. The drive up was picturesque with the road flanked by palm and banana trees on both sides and on arriving at the beach I was greeted by white powder sand and azure blue seas like I have never seen before (in real life
anyway). The place we stayed at, while the cheapest around, was a real money eating place. The bar worked with cards that you have to top up with cash the net effect being that it is much harder to keep track of your spending.



I found Shawn (my fellow volunteer from Malawi) laid out on the beach in his shades turning himself as brown as possible. That day we set to finding out where we could obtain drinks and food that were closer to our budget. Shawn showed me a restaurant where the prices were great and all the fish was awesome and fresh - cue lots of tuna for me over the next few days - and we soon found a Rasta run bar where the beers were slightly less expensive than at the beach side.



The next few days were spent doing very little other than eating fish, lying in the sun and drinking beers. All great fun but even that started to pale as the christmas runup ramped up and the carol playing at the beach bar became constant. While the location is stunning, this area is still very much a resort style place with plenty of honeymooning couples and young wealthy families on the beach. A far cry from the backpacking Africa I have become used to so on the twenty third I decided to head back to Stonetown and prepare myself for the run to Uganda. Tanzania itself just didn't interest me enough as a lot of it is geared around game runs for many many dollars and klimbing mount Kilimanjaro (only around $1000 dollars - much cheapness, not). By the 24th I was back in Dar and buying my ticket for Arusha in the north of the country.

North to Nkhata Bay - Malawi

Hi all, I am now in Zanzibar so it is time to recap on my last few weeks in Malawi. I left Monkey Bay on the Ilala - a 50 year old ferry that does the lake run from Monkey Bay to Chilumba in the North. I decided not to take a cabin as the prices were pretty high and I had my sleeping bag for dozing on the deck. At first the ship was not too full and the weather was good for nearly the whole trip. When we arrived at Nkhotakota the ferry was unable to dock due to a build-up of sand by the jetty. The lifeboats were lowered to ferry people to and from the shore and small boats from the beach came out to join the madness.

Soon the boat was significantly fuller with people, huge boxes of fish, a bed and two sofas. After about five hours we were off again to repeat the process at the next port on the coast of Mozambique where this time the transfers were done in darkness. The top deck was never too busy however so it was easy enough to sleep and I was woken up by the sunshine slowly roasting me on day two of the boat trip. Food was the usual Malawian fare of either chicken, beef or fish with a choice of rice, chips or nsima and prices were reasonable. We stopped at two islands in the lake - Likoma and Chizumulu - that are Malawian although they sit on the Mozambique side of the lake and then it was time for the final stretch to Nkhata Bay. We docked at a jetty this time and I soon found my way to 'Big Blue Star' backpackers and booked my dorm bed for 700 Malawian Kwacha (4-5 dollars).


The next day I went exploring and soon found that counter to all the advice I had found, there were actually banks with ATMs in the town. Walking in town was a riot of colour activity as it was market day with people selling all sorts of clothes and grains as well as the usual fare of mangos, drinks, Usipa (small fish a bit like whitebait) and Batala or Butterfish as many know it. I found the dive centre 'Aqua Africa' and booked myself in for the PADI open water course starting the next week having recently met Jakob from Germany who was travelling with his Polish girlfriend Ola and was in the middle of doing the course himself. The dive instructor was a Canadian called Rob being assisted by Sam, an English dive master in training.


Having completed my 'work' it was time to settle down for some well earned relaxation so the next few days were spent meeting travellers and locals, and checking out the bars in the area as well as finding out which places had the sattelite channels for watching football. On the Friday I had a bit of a shock as I ran a fever all night and was sweating heavily for an hour followed by some intense shivering the next. This continued all night and by morning I was asking the advice of Sarah the proprietor who figured she had malaria and I was suffering from the same. That day was better but I found myself lethargic to a degree I have never before experienced. I wandered over to the hospital but it appeared there was no-one who could help me that day so a return to Big Blue was on the cards where I munched on some mangos and practised my Bau game. That evening was similar to the last as regards the fever so the next day an American Peace Corps worker called Greg recommended I head over to a nearby private clinic. Once there the test came up negative but I was advised that my anti malarial drugs could be masking it. Regardless, the doctor asked me to leave it one more day after which he could get me what I needed to treat it. I had another non-day at Big Blue where the only excitement was when a crocodile decided to swim by on it's way south prompting a mass exodus from the water as people realised. I asked around and it appeared that it was the first croc spotted in the area for many years.
The next day was much better and while still tired I regained my appetite somewhat making me very glad as the dive course was due to start the next day. Thanks mum and dad for the genes, as if it was malaria I appear to have kicked it in record time!


On the Monday was dive day one so it was off to Aqua Africa where it turned out four other people had signed up - a couple from England, John Moon from the US and Bianca from Canada. Visibility was 7-8 metres and the lake water was a lovely 27 degrees. The week flew by and by Friday Bianca and I had decided to continue with the advanced course over the next week. Saturday evening was our first night dive with the couple who had been on our course. As part of the advanced course we did some navigation where you swim off in a direction counting fin kicks and using a compass for orientation - we did make it back but I have to say the few minutes where we could not see any torch light had me quite nervous. During the night dive we also did some pass throughs where the rocks formed small tunnels and we saw dolphin fish which are great fun.

They like to follow the torch beam and woe betide any cichlid that gets caught in your beam away from the shelter of the rocks as they get snapped right up. The next Monday the advanced course continued with our deep dive where we went to 30 metres and tested out the effects of nitrogen narcosis - this is when divers go past twenty four metres and generally results in the diver acting as if he/she is drunk. Obviously awareness of these effects is pretty important and I highly recommend NOT attempting maths problems at such depths! Other parts of the course included navigation, peak performance and buoyancy (swimming through hoops) and finally search and recovery which was fun and immensely satisfying when we found the anchor and returned it using a lift bag. Hey presto we are now advanced divers wooohooo!



After the course I moved into a friend's house in the bay - a simple afair with no electricity or running water where a new daily ritual evolved. First act of the day was filling our buckets with water from a tap at a nearby house, followed by going down to the lake for a wash and to say hi to everyone who would either be doing the same or washing clothes at the shore. Next came a trip to the shops in order to find fish, charcoal and any other necessities.

Then was the day's cook up generally consisting of Batala, nsima and some vegetables followed by a visit to Big Blue to see what was happening that day. Sagi, the Israeli barman at Big Blue told me one day that it was Chanuka so I nipped off to find some candles while he made a Chanukiya and Eshkar (an Israeli girl who also got stuck there) made Latkes!



I stuck around a little longer having switched from learning Chichewa to learning Chitonga - the main language of the villages around Nkhata Bay area. After four weeks at Nkhata Bay I finally decided I was settling in a little too much and the time came to move on up to Tanzania. A shared taxi got me to Mzuzu, the third biggest city in Malawi, followed by a bus up to Karonga and another shared taxi to the border. I arrived quite late and not finding any place to stay I wandered over to the border post even though I knew it was closed. There I was told by one of the security staff that I should cross the border anyway and come back in the morning to stamp out and get my visa. Being in need of a bed I did that and after a 200m walk taking me over the Songwe river I was finally in Tanzania.

Monkey Bay in Malawi

Hi all, long time no see for the usual internet reasons. I am now in Nkhata Bay so will try to sum up the last month before I start forgetting important details. When I left Blantyre it was time for the usual Combi van ride up north to Monkey Bay. The ride took about eight hours getting me there after dark but a quick call to the Malawi Volunteer Organisation (MVO) people got me picked up at the main road and I was at my new home for the next month by around 9pm. The power was off but as I arrived the lights flickered back on to a big cheer from the resident volunteers. . not a bad start!

I arrived on the same day as Shawn from Switzerland and the next day we were given a tour of the relevant schools, villages and Mangochi (the nearest big town with ATMs and internet - about one and a half hours away by matola). The matolas are very interesting, technically they refer to any unofficial form of 4 wheeled transport but most commonly refer to flatbed trucks that fit as many people as humanly possible on to the back, including their possessions, fish, goats etc. Luckily for me a previous volunteer had bought a Chinese made 50cc bike and left it there complete with insurance for any driver so I was able to cruise around the local area on my very own put-put even if it did overheat regularly and then needed a few minutes breather before it would go again!



The next day the honeymoon period was over and it was time to work. I went off to MVO primary school where I was to assist a great teacher by the name of George in his standard seven class - normally aged from 11 upwards. Starting time was about 7am with the learning commencing by half an hour later. I took over the maths and English lessons with George explaining how to do my lesson plans and before long I was really enjoying myself. The eagerness to learn shown by these kids blew me away and some of them were so bright, understanding the concepts rapidly and then churning out answers just how I had hoped. The main test for me was in dealing with the slower kids as I quickly found that while explaining concepts a third and fourth time, some of the class would start to get bored. Once the lesson was over I was torn between being flushed with the success over the clever kids and figuring out a way to get the less academic ones to understand their maths. Overall teaching has been very satisfying but the sheer size of the classes (45-50 in mine) is an obstacle in itself.



The volunteer group had several other projects that we worked on in Monkey Bay. There was a wound clinic for anyone in the area where help was provided to a local doctor in assisting with all manner of ailments including the usual gashes and scrapes gained in the course of physical labour in the area. We also would do talks in several of the villages within a 20km radius on medical topics of their choice. This was always well appreciated and sometimes brought up some very interesting local beliefs. One that always stuck in my mind was brought up during a briefing I gave on epilepsy - one of the ladies was convinced that if an epileptic releases gas during a fit, anyone breathing in the smell is at risk of becoming epileptic! These little meetings were one of my favourite things to do while at Monkey Bay as they gave a chance to meet many local people and chat with them at length.



One thing we were advised by in our guide books was the risk of Bilharzia, a parasite that lives in the lake near areas where there is a certain snail that lives in the reeds. In itself it is not particularly dangerous although repeated and untreated exposure over a long period of time can lead to some liver damage eventually. Luckily the treatment is simple and cheap in Africa - simply get the right tablets from the chemist and take them six weeks after last exposure to the water - so job done!

Weekends here are time off so the whole volunteer group tended to head up the coast either to Venice Beach or Cape Maclear where we could simply relax in the sun and if lucky we might even have an internet connection available at times. Drinks were somewhat expensive by normal standards but that didn't stop me being introduced to some very crazy drinking games. The favourite tended to be 'Ring of Fire' a game I first played while in Vic Falls which invariably leads to some very funny nights!



Watching football is always fun in Africa (results notwithstanding) and I soon found all the TVs in local villages where people would congregate for the match of the day. Access tend to cost all of about 30MKwacha (about 10p) and the atmosphere was always good for the Liverpool matches. Yeah the results have sucked but at least we are crawling away from the relegation zone now and lest I forget - IN YOUR FACE CHELSEA ;P

After four weeks my stint was over and I am now free to explore Africa to my heart's content with no timetables or planning. Nkhata bay is the next stop where I hope to do my PADI diving course before heading up to Tanzania with Shawn who finishes on the project two weeks later. My plan is to take the Ilala to get to the north as it should make a nice change from the usual buses and matolas.