Blog 36 by Tan: Battling FOMO and the Black Lung

After saying our goodbyes to Mark we rode north in the attempt to make it to Nkhata Bay but only got as far as Kande Beach before the light started to leave us. We had heard Kande Beach Campground was a good place (Ewan and Charlie even went there), so we followed the sandy track ignoring our instinct to just get a cheap local place in town. While it was a great looking place with good views and facilities it was a bit of an exclusive foreigner compound with expensive camping and food and drinks.

Don’t get me wrong – it was a nice place with nice people, we were just frustrated we fell into the same mental trap that has gotten us a few times now. It is almost like a feeling of obligation to do something that you don’t necessarily feel like doing. As a person travelling through, you sometimes feel like “I can’t possibly leave (insert country here) without seeing (insert attraction here)” or “we have to stay at (insert accommodation here), (insert referee here) recommended it to us”. So you end up wearing yourself out and blowing money on something you didn’t really want to do in the first place.

In this case, it was late in the day, we were tired and just wanted to park up and sleep.   But then this voice comes into your head “Oh but we really should stay on the lake. It is Malawi after all. Malawi is famous for the lake. We can’t not stay on the lake. And this place was recommended to us, it is supposed to be great.” Then you get there and fork out almost $14 for camping and have to share a too small for two pizza for dinner which still costs $10 and all you want to do is go to bed. Then your brain switches arguments and is like “why ever did you come here? – look how much money you spent – you should spend the next few hours thinking about it.” Anyway, a silly winge but worthy of mentioning.

Kande Beach – a nice looking place

Anyone who does a trip like this will find themselves suffering from FOMO – ‘fear of missing out’. I learnt of this condition from a RTW biker’s trip report who is incidentally, a doctor (www.greatamericantrek.com). FOMO manifests itself by leading you to travel vaster distances than planned, spend way more money than intended and will lock you into a constant unwinnable battle of trying to do everything or at least trying to know what is worth doing and what is not. We have no advice for how to mitigate against FOMO as we are both chronic sufferers of it. As the cool kids these days like to say ‘the struggle is real.’

From Kande Beach we headed the short distance to Mzuzu where we intended to stay for the sole purpose of eating Korean food. As lovers of South Korean food I couldn’t help but notice an advertisement in the last backpackers for a place called Joy’s Place and Korean kitchen. We tracked down the place like a couple of bloodhounds on the scent and liked it instantly. It is more of a house than a traditional backpackers and is immaculately clean and comfortable with amazing food on offer. It is run by an American-South Korean couple and is worth visiting if only for the food. We only intended to stay one night but we hadn’t eaten every item on the Korean menu yet so extended our stay. The food was that good that we tolerated sleeping in a full dorm – our least favourite thing in the world with the exception of camping next to army of noisy teenagers.

Didn’t expect to get authentic Korean food in little ol’ Malawi

We finally tore ourselves away from the place and set about leaving town. First up was a trip to the petrol station where we experienced our trip’s first-ever significant rip-off-the-foreigner moment (that we were aware of anyway). We always fill our bikes up together and pay just the once. We asked to do the usual fill both together but one of the cheeky lady attendants tried to get one over us by filling the one bike then hanging up the fuel hose and picking it up again before we could see the total. She then informed us how much to give her. Cheeky, very cheeky.

However she didn’t know Mick tracks our fuel consumption like a supermodel tracks calories. She tried to say that Mick’s bike took what worked out to be 29L while my bike took 21L. We explained that that is simply not possible as the bikes travel exactly the same distance and use the same amount of fuel (in truth I tend to use ever so slightly more). She protested hard but she saw Mick was supremely confident and he suggested that we would only pay twice the amount of fuel my bike took – truth be told he actually only said that after threatening to only pay my bike’s fuel and just riding away, to strong protests of course.

She started to get nervous and in the end we figured it wasn’t worth fighting too long over and negotiated a sum that was about $2, about a litre, more than it probably should have been. So we were probably still ripped off but called her on the scam and made it an unpleasant $2 for her to have earned. It was clear the two ladies had the system down pat at that busy station. It is the first and only time we’ve had something like that happen. Usually the station attendants are really good and excited to fill and check out such foreign looking bikes. Africa is, after all, in the throws of an epic love affair with motorbikes.

The first Europeans who went there pointed to the lake and asked what it was called to which a no doubt confused local told them “Nyasa”. The lake then on became known as Lake Nyasa until someone figured out ‘nyasa’ means lake. Lake Lake was then changed to Lake Malawi.

From Mzuzu we headed to the famed Mushroom Farm in Livingstonia. The road on the way north from Mzuzu to Livingstonia is very scenic and affords a great view of the lake from on high. On our way down we noticed some signs for some small underground coal mines and I remarked to Mick on the intercom ‘Jeez imagine what an underground coal mine in Malawi would be like.’ Little did we know at the time that we’d soon find out. On the way down the winding range we came across our third person cycling through Africa. We love these guys – they are bloody nuts and in comparison make what we are doing seem highly sensible. This guy was from Denmark and was cycling from Copenhagen to Cape Town and it was slightly embarrassing (and supremely impressive) that he was making faster progress through Africa than we were.

He was travelling very light on and his heavy tan and thin frame reminded me of a stringy piece of biltong. He was only part of the way up the huge mountain and I rather absent mindedly became that jerk (you know the one) that says to you when you are battling up a hill ‘whoa – dude you’ve got so far to go still’. Whoops. Sorry for being that guy, I was just stunned by how far he had come. We offered to give him a tow to the top but he resisted saying he wanted to do the whole way on his own.

Why doesn’t your bike have a motor, bro?

He told us how he had contracted typhoid in Sudan (he believed from the free jugs of water available all throughout the country). He vividly described the fall out of typhoid and we couldn’t believe it. He said how he was so… errrm… out of control of his….errrm toilet functions that he was going all over himself, all the time. There was blood. It was wrong. It was so bad he was at one point lying completely naked, outside his hotel entrance, too unwell to feel ashamed. No one would take him in their cab to the hospital. In the end he got on his bike naked and in that state cycled about 50km to the hospital, fouling his bike in the process. Once there he responded instantly to treatment and was soon good to go again.

I hope that wasn’t a private conversation as I just showed his picture and told the world he shit himself. Moral to the story – this Dane is tough, be wary of ALL water, and be clear to me if I am not to share your stories. We showed our solidarity to a fellow two wheeled traveller by giving him some rehydration sachets and a small tube of mosquito repellent before parting ways and wishing him well. But man, he had sooooo far up the range to go still.

One the track up to the famed Mushroom Farm

The view. It was nice

The road from the highway up to the Mushroom Farm is a rocky, winding track up a mountainside. It was most excellent and a very good introduction to the place. The Mushroom Farm has such a lofty reputation you had to wonder if it could live up to it. We were happy to report that it did. It is owned by a brother and sister in their late 20s/early 30s from America who purchased the place as they were after something different to occupy their lives with. Bravo I say. The place has views and food to die for and is almost confusingly reasonably priced. Anyone planning to go should budget to eat every meal there. The food is that good.

It was just awful staying here

Our campsite – not suitable for sleep walkers

In between meals we managed to get some bike chores done such as changing my worn front tyre, and front brake pads. While changing the pads we noticed for the first time that the caliper had gotten out of alignment and that the holes that locate the slide pins that hold the caliper to the caliper mount had become badly worn, to the point the pads got so out of alignment the brake pad pin got bent. It was a shitty Chinese caliper adaptor plate to fit the supermoto 320mm rotor so we shouldn’t have been too surprised really. Mick greased the slide pins to slow the wear and swapped out the bent brake pad pin with one from the caliper rebuild kit he was carrying (see, spares for everything!) and we hoped that would help things in the short term. Longer term it looked like we were going to have to get a replacement caliper mount. We had a parcel of stuff we planed to send to Nairobi and a new caliper mount looked like it would be making the journey too.

It was a day ending in ‘y’ so naturally there were bike chores to do

We try and be pretty vigilant in the upkeep of our bikes and aim to never let our gear get to in too bad a state. You’ll never see us posing proudly with metal fibres showing on overworn tyres. For us this was pushing things. For others they’d squeeze another 1000km – each to his own.

Mick then spent a bunch of time cleaning out his tool bag which was full of spilled engine and filter oil. Ahhh, the joys of bike travel.   We also got a nasty surprise when we discovered that our spare Funnelweb air filters had been destroyed beyond resurrection. In the panniers the constant vibration and rubbing had lead them to near disintegrate. In retrospect they would have gone better in the top bag, where they had successfully stayed until a recent reorganisation and repacking. Oh well – you live you learn – you drink beer and forget the loss.

One of Mick’s ‘hidey holes’ for the storing of his seeming endless supply of spares (both necessary and obscure). This is the ‘tool/spares box’ that the right hand side pannier straps to.   All packed in tighter than a hipster in skinny jeans.

That night at dinner we met an interesting couple from Zimbabwe named Nick and Dawn who lived nearby. We discovered that, like us, they were mining people. Nick was running a small underground coal mine about 20km away. He told us we should go and check it out the next day. We simply couldn’t pass up on an offer like that. The next morning we packed up and took the fun little dirt and mud track from the Mushroom Farm to the coal mine to answer my earlier question of what an underground Malawi coal mine is actually like.

The fun little track to the mine

Michael and I both have underground mining backgrounds but have never worked in coal. Underground coal is something innately risky, and to some, a little scary, even for people used to working hundreds of meters below surface. I had actually said that I would never enter an underground coal mine for fear of gas and explosion potential. Nick was adamant their mine was gas free and assured us the ground conditions are very good. With these two key risk areas out of the equation it was looking like more of an okay thing to do. Additionally all the mining is handheld with electric jackhammers and the only hauling equipment is wheelbarrows. With no heavy equipment to speak of it seemed safer again. However Nick did tell us ‘One thing hey, this is Africa – no safety here, hey.’

Pondering how clever it was to be going into an underground coal mine in a developing country

The mine visit was incredibly interesting and we wished like anything that we owned the show. While it was small scale and rudimentary compared to what we were used to it was HIGHLY profitable based on the unbelievably low inputs. I mean seriously, if you are paying a few hundred dollars a day for the couple hundred workers you have… how can you not do well out of a commodity? And despite only mining about 100t per day (less than 2 truck’s worth from the mines with used to work at) it was clear the owner must have been absolutely raking it in and was NOWHERE near its money making potential.

Black gold – riddled with arsnopyrite

Where ladies were removing the rocks and ash by hand.

The coal is in fact pretty shitty in quality on the whole and although it did have some nice bituminous stuff there was a lot that was full of sulphides and some significant stone bands. In Australia no one would probably mine the stuff as operating costs would be high due to the thinness of the seam and constant fault offsetting, and they’d incur large penalties due to the high ash and sulphide content. Here in Malawi though, you can simply pay a bunch of ladies to hand pick out every chunk of rock and high sulphide coal and remove it from the good stuff.  And that is what we saw. It was a total mind bender for us to see this type of mining which is by far the global ‘norm’ of mining – not the high capital cost, high technical input, high volume, highly mechanised stuff we were used to. Shit, I’d never known it was possible for a miner to move a single rock if he didn’t have a speed boat in his garage, a time share in Bali and an unlimited supply of free meatpies on hand.

Adits into the mine

Pay dirt – Notice the timber sets (the timber props and bearers used as ground support) showing no signs of weight bearing. It was like that all through the mine. Very nice. Mick commented that compared to the handheld timbersetting he had seen in underground mines in China, this work was quite nicely done.

Mick checking out the gear. There was some nice vitreous coal near the roof

The happy looking guy in the foreground was one of Nick’s supervisors named Happy, and he referred to the mine as ‘his house’. He had been working in coal mines for 15 years and was very proud to be a coal miner. He knew his business inside and out despite a lack of education he seemed a master of his trade.

The mine itself was shallow with all of it well less than 100m, so stress was negligible, and there were no need for shafts as access was from adits, i.e. tunnels straight into the mountain side. The other benefit of the seams daylighting from the mountain side was that the gas had leaked out eons ago. Nice. Geologically it was more interesting than the average large scale coal operation that we see back home. While overall the ground conditions were fantastic and stresses negligible there were reasonably frequent faults with offsets of a couple metres to keep things interesting. Ventilation was ok but Mick suggested Nick install some plastic vent walls to easily and cheaply improve airflow to the face, something Nick had previously considered. The ground support was very good and from cursory inspection even looked like a bit of overkill with very few of the wooden ground support showing any signs of load.

At the coalface – literally. The guys were discussing how this was a nice seam of good coal but was offset by a fault so Nick was still deciding how they were going to go about accessing and extracting it.

Back out in the real world. Happy was still happy. His mum named him well

I think Mick has been missing the challenge of work based on the way he went into full mine manager mode – crossed arms, wide stance. I’ve observed that the wideness in the stance of a miner is directly proportional to the level of interest/concern/anger at what was in front of them. Mick was busy identifying bottlenecks, costs reduction opportunities and areas for optimisation despite himself. Nick was full of knowledge and ideas but had an owner and boss set in his ways – that old chestnut. I think Nick appreciated someone who understood things to talk with.

The owner of the mine was a German and he had imported a few old Mercedes G-Class as mine cars

The gate and turbine controls for the mine’s small hydroelectric plant, it was only a little one but it supplied all the power needed for the operation and for basically zero operating cost. Schweet.

The plant has no voltage regulator to control the voltage output, the operators just come and check the voltage and then open the gate a bit if it is below 400V, or close the gate a bit if it is above 430V.

High Voltage Rock and Roll. Generator to run the crusher in times of drought

Mick describing a really good hamburger he once ate….. actually he says he was racking his brain from uni 15 years ago to describe the mechanisms for spontaneous combustion. Nick had lots of coal fines with high sulphide content laying around his crushing circuit, not an ideal scenario.

Part of the separation plant. The stones sink to the bottom and the coal floats (or more accurately, doesn’t sink as fast)

Feeding the crushing circuit that had a far higher capacity than the washing plant, and bottlenecked the entire operation. There was also no surge capacity after the crusher, so when washing the crusher had to be on, even though it crushed far more than could be washed. It wasn’t ideal by any stretch, and Nick was scratching his head to try and make the best of a bad hand

Controlling the flow of crushed product off the screen into the washing plant. This bloke had to stand there and open and close the gate as needed

Wash wash wash

Typical surveyors… Same all over the world it seems. At least these ones knew how to use crayons

We parted ways with Nick and Dawn; we were really happy for having met them and had to opportunity to see the operation. The mining industry is a small one so we couldn’t help but wonder and hope that we’d get a chance to meet again on some mine site in Africa. We told them if we ever came across 3-5 million bucks (our 2 minute back of the envelope valuation) we’d buy the mine from his boss and come work with them.

Riding out. Lots of dirt tracks

We found this sign next to a school which we thought was great

A fun little ride indeed

Mud…..not a fan

We had been chasing some non-tar riding and had identified a bit through the Nyika National Park following very close to the Zambian Border. When we first had this idea I was of the mind we should do either Livingstonia and the Mushroom Farm OR the dirt roads of the park. Mick was pushing to do both. In the end we both decided to be time conscious for once on the trip and get moving to Tanzania as we had done some scheduling and realised we were at serious risk of not making it to Sudan in time to use our Sudan visas. When you are on an open ended trip such as ours it is easy to convince yourself we have so much time and forget about visas expiring for future countries, especially when you don’t even know what day it is in your current country.

We had planned to leave my old tyre with Nick and Dawn at the mine as it was better than most tryes getting about in these parts, but forgot. In the end we asked this fella if he wanted it.

He did and was extremely happy – he’d be able to on sell it for a decent price…eventually

On the way down the track that leads to the Mushroom Farm and Livingstonia

Some fun little switch backs

Malawi – its been swell albeit lazy time – Now onwards to Tanzania for a bit of action, hey!

We’d been having such a good time we sort of forgot we had places to be and deserts to cross before the height of summer. We resolved to pull our finger out and pass on the no doubt lovely area of north-western Malawi. It was time to cross to our next country Tanzania. This represented a significant milestone in our FOMO battle. We chose NOT to do BOTH things we wanted to do. We did ONLY ONE thing. And while we would have loved to have done the off-road routes through the parks we made a decision to leave it for another time… and survived.

Blog 35 by Tan: The Warm Heart of Africa

I woke up the next morning having slept poorly. I had a number vivid dreams about our bikes being stolen from the enclosed courtyard of the hotel. The dream was so real I had to get up and physically check the bikes were still there. After returning to bed I went straight back into another dream of the same vein. However this time thieves had stolen just one bike but all the luggage off the other. Once again I got up and checked the bikes were still there. I must say Mick was disappointingly unappreciative of all my efforts to protect our bikes from the marauding bike thieves of my subconscious mind. While we do constantly worry about the security of the bikes – this was just ridiculous.

I can’t really put my finger on why I was so worried but suspected it was because of a mounting belief that we had been so lucky on the trip so far – too lucky even. It was a rather morbid frame of mind I found myself in over the next few weeks where I was trying to ensure against the calamity I felt we were owed. For all our time in Africa, we have had very few troubles at all. I was glad, but suspicious. And while I would hesitate to say things were easy, they were certainly not as difficult as we anticipated. Having said that if someone overly naïve and inattentive to travel like us in Africa they’d be chewed up and spat out in no time flat. Eventually I chilled out and accepted that our standard level of vigilance was working for us and I might as well get some sleep.

Knock, knock! Who’s there? Village…all the village

The awesomely named ‘Not Me But Allah Is Great’ Guesthouse

It seemed foreigners were rare in these parts of Malawi. The next morning we found what must have been the majority of the village in front of our hotel waiting to feast their eyes on the foreign bikers who made their village their home for the night. We were keen to see what Malawi had to offer but first had to deal with the paperwork issues of the day before. We headed back to the border post to see if the senior customs man was there. It wasn’t too much of an inconvenience and I sympathised with the junior customs guy as I recognised he was just trying to make sure he didn’t stuff up. I know the look – it’s the one I sported for the first couple years of my professional career. Boss man just wanted to sight our carnet de passage documents as it seemed he’d not seen one before and soon enough we were on our way. We just needed to get to the next sizable town to purchase road insurance and that was the bureaucracy done with for a couple of weeks.

Formalities sorted and on our way north

Lunchtime

Malawi takeaway = chips with tomato and cabbage

We were treated to some nice dirt tracks before hitting the tar which we were largely unable to avoid for the rest of our time in Malawi. Malawi represented a bit of a mental holiday for us. The riding was straightforward and with it being such a small country we didn’t feel the need to jump on Google Earth and find a remote tiny dirt track to explore.

Mikey and Markey

Mick decided it was time to try Mark’s KLR out for size and grant Mark the “thrill” of riding the DR. Mick found the KLR setup to be far from comfortable compared to our customised DRs. While he likes the KLR for what it is, he found the factory ergoes pretty crappy, the pegs appalling, and the suspension terrible. Over years of using our DRs we have got them set up to near personal perfection and have perhaps gotten a bit precious in terms of comfort expectations. I mean we have Airhawk cushions…. how precious is that! But seriously, if anyone was to steal our airhawks the trip would be over for me. Our bikes are basically the motorbike equivalent of one of those LayZ Boy recliners. Ever tried to get someone to give up their LayZ Boy?

An accumulation of kiddies come to gawk at the bikers

When it was time to swap bikes again Mick attempted to dismount the KLR in the same manner he usually does with the DR – that is, to standup on the left-hand footpeg and swing the right leg over the luggage on the back of the bike. However the KLR has a short little sidestand and Mark’s luggage is packed up quite high so what resulted was Mick’s leg hitting the luggage, the bike overbalancing, and a rather hilarious double somersault into a steep ditch on the side of the road. Now I have had some really silly falls before but I reckon that one took the cake. I kept this thought to myself until now. Hahahahahaha.

Buying our obligatory third party insurance. Fortunately Malawi’s was pretty modestly priced.

Cruisin’

Soon afterward we had our first run in with Malawi’s police that left us in a positive frame of mind for our future travels in the tiny country. Having not yet reached the town where we could buy insurance we were a little worried as we waved to the side of the road; police in Africa don’t exactly have sterling reputations. The lone copper asked where we were from and then asked if Mick had a driver’s licence for the motorcycle. Mick said ‘yes, I do’ and went to retrieve it but the policeman said ‘No, I only asked you if you have a licence. I did not ask to see it.’ Mick then said ‘Ahh ok, yes we have licenses, would you like to see them?’ To which he replied ‘No, that is ok, I believe you.’ It was pretty funny and after a couple more polite questions, plenty of smiles and shaking of hands we were on our way again.

A taste of things to come

We managed to find the insurance place with the help of some friendly locals and with that quickly sorted, were soon on our way towards Blantyre. Our GPS informed us that there was a KFC in town and we all decided a bit of ‘Dirty Bird’ (Aussie slang for KFC) would go down nicely indeed. When the Dirty Bird refused to show itself (it had closed or moved) we stumbled across an Ethiopian restaurant that looked like a good idea. It was the first Ethiopian food any of us had eaten before and it got Mick and I excited for future travels north. Mark, upset at missing out on the fun, forbid us to talk of such things.

Checking out the Foundations for Farming project

Izak, a biker we met way back when we rode though Baviaanskloof in South Africa contacted us and told us that we should drop in on his brother’s mission project just outside Blantyre. Izak’s brother and sister-in-law run a project that teaches farming techniques to people who then go on and spread the knowledge back in their home villages. We have never been the type to pass up on seeing something interesting and when he mentioned they make cheese there… well…. the deal was sealed. Unfortunately with our limited time we were unable to catch up with Izak’s brother who was stuck in meetings for the day but he kindly arranged for us to be shown around.

We were impressed by the enterprise which along with farming practices was promoting appropriate technologies such as bio-toilets, and water heating using black hose encased in used plastic coke bottles on roof tops and hoses run through mounds of compost. It was all interesting stuff. The highlight for us however was the cheese making. We had been without access to good cheese since leaving Zambia, admittedly not all that long ago, but the craving for the yellow stuff was significant. After inspecting their cheese HQ we walked away with a bunch of gouda and cheddar which we thought would be the only cheese that would tolerate unrefrigerated transport in a pannier bag.

They also made cheese! My favourite

We could only purchase the bike friendly variety

We headed towards our destination of Monkey Bay, which had been recommended to us by a bunch of different people. Riding in Malawi is slow going due to the shear amount of people walking and riding Chinese pushbikes on the road. It is a remarkably friendly country with people genuinely happy to see you and very cordial, the reason why Malawi is referred to as “the warm heart of Africa”, but it is very poor and heavily populated. 90% of Malawians live on less that US$2 per day. Until recently, Malawi was the poorest country on the continent on a GDP per capita basis; that shit-sandwich eating competition was recently won by the DRC who are always at the pointy end of the field.

The high population density means on some roads there is scarcely a break between towns so we were slowing down and speeding up constantly doing nothing good for fuel efficiency in this remarkably fuel expensive country, nearly US$2 per litre. We were quite surprised by the large numbers of mosques we had seen since entering the country from the south. They seemed to outnumber churches at least 2 maybe even 3 to 1. The CIA handbook says Muslims make up 12.5% of the entire population but it must be multitudes higher in the south.

The boys

The ride from the highway to Monkey Bay was a good fun winding dirt road and before we knew it we were at Fat Monkeys – a backpacker/campground just as the sun was going down. It really is a beautiful spot. First on the agenda was beer and sunset watching, next the chicken curry, then at about 10pm we finally got to putting up the tent. We found out the hard way that the beer at Fat Monkeys was really expensive so Mick and Mark decided that spirits and soft drinks sourced from the village was the way to go from now on.

The view we were greeted with on arrival

Not too shabby at all

With nothing to do but laze on the lake Mick and Mark set about drinking copious amounts of cheap brandy and cane spirit. The next day’s hangovers were to prove rather more challenging that previously expected when a literal busload of teenagers from an International high school showed up for a school camp. In one fell swoop paradise became purgatory as we were assaulted with the high enthusiasm and decibel levels of these school kids. What made the experience all the more unpleasant was that it served as both a reminder that we were once that obnoxious and a realisation that were are definitely crabby old bastards now. Why a cashed up International school would choose to accommodate their pupils at a backpacker/overland camp famous for drinking and the smoking of odd smelling cigarettes is a mystery to me. But one thing was clear – our private campsite was now riddled with noisy teens.

Dugout drag race

Our plans for a civilised wine and cheese night were laid to waste by prohibitively expense wine. We did a ghetto cheese night instead – Doritos, cheese and Power’s Brandy mixed with soft drinks

A not so refined affair

After a couple of days of putting up with them things came to a head in a humorous, almost inevitable, fashion. Mick and Mark felt (rather erroneously, I thought) that the only way to weather the onslaught was to drink more booze. Fine in the evening – less so in the morning. Sure enough on the kids last days the ‘cool group’ went full rebel and got up very early in the morning to sit on the lake, listen to music and squeal away the early hours. They made the mistake of doing this outside Mark’s dorm.

Lake at sundown

So, at 5:30am they invited upon themselves some unexpected schooling. Mark walked out of the dorm and asked them what time it was. One replied ‘5:30, did we wake you up?’ to which he replied ‘What do you think?’ Then one of the less cool kids said sorry and told the others to also say sorry. A bunch of them did but then a more cool girl with attitude said a very sarcastic ‘sorry’ and then laughed. Mark swiftly picked up their fancy little bluetooth speaker and threw it far out into the lake saying a highly sarcastic ‘sorry’ before walking back to bed.

The kids were utterly shocked and in quite the bind now. If they wanted to complain to the teachers they had to admit to breaking the rules and annoying the other residents which they had continually been warned against. Mark went back to the room and slept well as the ‘cool’ kids were acting decidedly less cool and trying to find their mates speaker in the bottom of the lake. We should mention that Mark played schoolboy baseball for Australia so I assumed it was quite the throw therefore quite the search area.

The warm heart of Africa

The best part of it all was that when one of the kids got the courage to tell the teacher what happened (no doubt expecting sympathy and for her to demand payment for the lost speaker) she made them go up and apologise to Mark for their behavior. One of the kids said a good apology and told Mark that ‘he had learned a valuable lesson.’ Then Mark told them that he accepted their apology and that ‘they were just lucky that they dealt with him and not someone else.’ He told them ‘every day of their life you have to be considerate of others around you otherwise one day you’ll upset the wrong person and they will really sort you out.’ Mark didn’t apologise for the speaker at all. The kids went and spent 1000 kwacha, about USD2.50, to hire a mask and snorkel to find it, which they did. Exactly how they thought they were going to fix it was beyond me.

Things were far from civilized in the campground when Mick and I were woken up that morning by girls YELLING at 6am. They weren’t upset, they were just yelling. I am a feral individual at 6am and not anyone you would want to interact with. Fortunately for them I am also gutless so my fury at being woken up in such a manner manifested in a rather pathetic semi-yelling of ‘SSSShhhhhhhhhh’. Anyway we survived but may not be having children ever.

Behold my new fairing in all its glory

My morning improved substantially when George, the local artist I had hired, returned with my beautified front fairing. After being brutalised by off-road routes in Kaokoland and a kamikaze donkey it was looking pretty beaten up. I figured a facelift was in order. I was very happy with the result.

Malawi is known for its artists. Here is a motorbike carving purchased by some other travellers. The really good guys can do even more intricate carvings

Leaving the campsite we first needed to return our used bottles to the local store

A cute little girl trying my bike on for size

Mark looking every bit the ‘dodgy bastard’

A cute little kid

It was time to leave and find another bit of lake to do precisely nothing on. We planned to make it to Senga Bay but first we had to try see about getting a replacement phone for Mark. He was clearly tiring of our conversation and had been missing his bevy of Tinder girlfriends so we had to try to get him a new lifeline to the world lest he throw some more peoples’ stuff into the lake. Unfortunately we’d arrived in the capital of Lilongwe on Sunday so there was no luck there. To add to his woes he then went and snapped his clutch cable. Fortunately Mark was considerate enough to do this in a shopping centre carpark that housed a take-away chicken joint and an ice-cream shop. After feeding our faces and teasing Mark for a while we broke out the tow rope and dragged his phoneless, clutch cableless arse to the nearby Mubuyu Camp.

We found out from a local that the bus had burned to a crisp a few days previously. Everyone escaped unharmed. No plans to move the charred carcass from the main road just yet.

Getting some ware on the spare tyre

A capital city is not the place you want to be towing a bike but the streets were largely empty on the Sunday and we got to the nearby campground without trouble.

Mark doing the walk of shame

The next day the boys went out to source clutch cable, first trying the Yamaha dealer, where they had no luck, then the local China bike shops where they also struck out. In the end their sourced a front brake cable for a small Honda that, back at Mubuyu Camp, they were able to modify to do the job. As far as we know that modified brake cable got him all the way through Malawi, Zambia, Botswana, South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and back to Zambia. Well done backyard fix!

Senga Bay is a big fishing centre

In the village

Goats reign

The next place we’d been recommended to visit was a campsite called Cool Runnings in Senga Bay. This was probably our favourite place we stayed on the lake. It wasn’t as beautiful as Monkey Bay/Cape Maclear but it was more of an authentic little village. It was extremely poor but the people were open and friendly. They don’t call Malawi the ‘warm heart of Africa’ for nothing. We sourced lunch from the local market – chips with cabbage and tomato which is available everywhere. While on a daily chip run to the village a woman running a simple restaurant next door told me that we should come there for dinner. She had such a way about her and beautiful English that I couldn’t refuse. We had the best meal we had had in a long time with her and it cost us a few dollars, drinks included.

At our local restaurant. She apologised for the plastic cups and plates and said ‘I hope they aren’t a problem…this is Africa after all.’

People in the village were eating fish and hoarding grain

Piecies

The next morning she arranged to open shop early so that she could make breakfast for us. Once again it was great and she was so happy for the business. It was the most simple of places, just a dirt floor, a sort-of roof and no walls but it was immaculate. They worked non-stop, and scrapped by on so little that the oil they used was purchased in tiny 50ml plastic bags on an as need basis. Imagine having so little in the way of profit that one of your key consumables cannot be purchased in a proper container so as to save money.   We enjoyed our meals with her and were happy to give her some business.

They worked non-stop

We were sad to discover that despite things appearing normal and in spite of the cheery disposition shown by the locals, Malawi was veering head on into a looming famine. A few months before we arrived there had been devastating floods that had taken out bridges and roads throughout the south of Malawi and into Mozambique. A famine has an insidious slow burn quality about it. On the surface everything looked fine but the floods had disrupted a crucial farming period that people were predicting would soon devastate the country. There were subtle signs of it already visible to the initiated and informed, namely in the rising food prices and the reports of stockpiling of food supplies.

The government were doing little to prepare for the oncoming calamity and are instead adopting the tried and tested ‘wait until it is at its worst then roll over and show your belly’ method of crisis mitigation. You can’t blame them really. It is hard to get money for people that are starving, but considerably harder to get money for people who are not yet starving. The money only comes in response to a watershed number of deaths and a certain level of conscious inducing footage having gotten out. Then by the time the money comes it is too late to do anything preemptive. Generally it is often too late to do anything reactive even. By the time the money is raised and released and the logistics of emergency food provision underway the famine has largely wreaked its havoc, leaving in its wake a slightly lower population of people used to riding this wave to start over again.

Malawi after all, gets an unfair amount of practice with weathering famine. Agriculture is Malawi economic backbone, propping up 3 out of 4 Malawians in the good times yet rendering 3 in 4 unable to function in the bad times. With only 3 percent of the county’s farming area under irrigation they live (and die) at the whims of mother nation. And like just about every bloody impoverished nation on this continent they are further afflicted with having a money grubbing autocratic president in charge of their wellbeing. This guy saw nothing inappropriate about hiring his brother as foreign minister (now the current president) or with purchasing a $20 million long-range presidential airplane in the wake of yet another famine in 2002 (their worst in history).

As long as I live I will never understand how these people can engage in such audacious corruption while generations of their countrymen are relegated to an utterly impoverished existence. It fits with my long held view that anyone wanting to be a politician should be banned from such a pursuit. In the face of such knowledge, we could do little but find excuses to spread a little bit of wealth in the local run businesses and hope somehow things would be different this time.

Lunch of chips and coke at a local servo

This fellow biker carried a megaphone and happily obliged our request for a personalised megaphone message

Our stay in Senga Bay involved very little beyond chilling and socialising. It was time to head north but we were putting it off. You see, here is where we were ditching our buddy and riding companion Mark as we headed up Africa and he ventured southward. It had been great having him around even though he was nothing but trouble, was teaching Mick bad habits and rode a Kawasaki. We tried our best to convince him to sell his house in Oz and become a permanent irresponsible hobo and blat up Africa with us. All to no avail.   If anyone sees an Aussie guy with a bad haircut picking on teenagers and charming good looking backpackers like a man possessed, buy him a drink. He’s one of the good guys.

‘I’ll get one more day out of it (riding shirt), it stinks but not vomit stink, it’s bad but I’m not gagging’ – Markey Boy, 2015