Twenty five days to go

So, we shall be back in Blighty in a meagre 25 days (26, but Edd’s an accountant so what does he know about counting?), so we thought we should share 25 things we have learnt/mused upon.

Always ask a woman for directions, never a man.

Treat the poor like children and children they will remain (whilst treating you like a chump).

Coke is better in 600ml bottles (although that may have been the 40 degree heat)

Africa isn’t always hot. In fact, Nairobi is freezing most of the time. Bring a hot water bottle.

 
Getting angry gets you nowhere.

When the sun shines every day, how can you be grumpy? (This does not bode well for England).

Don’t trip over a paving slab whilst carrying your too expensive camera. (that was Jo’s comment, the b…)

‘Stuff’ doesn’t make one happy. Red chickens do. And wireless broadband.

Being an African Bishop can be more lucrative than being a Colombian drug lord.

Chapaleau makes one fall over…

Germans are extremely grumpy on holiday (Italians are awful too…)

Aid doesn’t work. It just fosters greed and corruption. Having said that, how do you walk past someone starving and not help?

People living in the slums share everything (although not often voluntarily…)

A handshake is your most useful companion, although a digital camera comes a close second.

It is difficult to take photos of sad African children. This is because they are always happy.

All African choirs are awesome, even if they only have 6 people.

Zebras are just stripy donkeys. No, they really are.

Edd wants a monkey more than ever now.

It is possible to see nothing on safari. Even when this does happen, one feels guilty when one falls asleep.

Ugali doesn’t grow on you (neither does uji).

Pintard, sauce arachide and fufu are a little foretaste of heaven (if anyone knows how to make these please let us know.)

The thrill of using public transport is akin to the thrill of Russian Roulette (although Russian Roulette is safer).

Orphans are better off at home with their parents than in an orphanage.

 
Having white friends is nice, as they have lots of money to use for church repairs/just boost ones street cred.

The crap they sell in curio shops remains crap, no matter how many shops you look round. Please learn from this Jo.

The places in Dapaong with air conditioning are the bank, and the Post Office.

Buy an extra big wallet to put the wads of money you need for a brownie and cup of coffee (and remember you can only get 40 notes out the ATM in one go).

Lions are more scary than coming home!

We’re loving Lusaka

We should start with an apology for our lack of blogging commitment but we are afraid you get none. We are too busy chilling out, maxing and in general relaxing all cool. You do get a really long and probably quite boring rant though. Yippee.

We have arrived. The last leg of our African Odyssey starts NOW. Here we are: Lusaka, Zambia.

For those that don’t know, Lusaka is the capital of Zambia and has been since 1935. Like Nairobi, the site of Lusaka was chosen because it is quite high and so relatively cool. We wholeheartedly approve of this decision – the climate is heaven. 30 degree days with not a cloud in the sky. Bliss – but not if you are a farmer. It won’t rain until the end of November.

Okay, so you know we are staying with the Arkkilas. What you don’t know is what we have been doing. That is why you are reading this…

One of the things Jorma did when we first arrived was whizz us off to Chanyanya, a village with  (extremely unlikely and weird we know) a harbour. LEAF has provided a loan for a local group to buy and operate a fishing boat. Sounds simple right, but the locals don’t quite get this here micro-finance and still kinda think of it as LEAF’s boat. Don’t get me wrong, they are working hard, looking after the boat and making a profit. It’s just that they don’t see why they should pay for the fishing licence… The people were, of course, very friendly, and delighted with what they had achieved.

Another thing that Jorma has had us doing a lot is swimming. They seem to know all the pools that are not frequented (well, at least two of them) by people, and we have a very happy time playing games, watching Jorma throwing his kids around (and boy can they fly)  and generally misbehaving in a way that would make even the most laid back life guard throw us out of any UK pool in seconds.

The end result of all this dangerous and foolhardy behaviour is that the baby Arkkila kids can swim much better than other kids their age, as we found out when invited to a swimming gala at their school. Please do not get me wrong, I am not condoning school galas in anyway. Watching small children fall off the side of the pool and proceeding to drown for 25 meters before banging their heads on the other side and bursting into tears 50 times in a row ain’t fun (well, the banging of the heads did prompt a wee guffaw). What was great was the pushy parent whose pride and joy was ranged against Sarella (the older daughter) in each race she swam in. She started off following her wondrous daughter down the pool bellowing encouragement (no one else did this, probably because no one else was watching). She soon stopped as Sarella wiped the floor. Great.

We have also visited the national museum here, an imposing and impressive building built with UN money. I know we gave the Nairobi museum fairly short shrift, but I am afraid it is better. The first floor was basically an art gallery and had some astonishingly brilliant paintings  - that part was okay. The second floor had some exhibits on the chachacha and culture here. It was entirely non-biased, with big paintings of soldiers shooting down unarmed and heroic protesters beside displays of rifles used by the rioters… It also had a sign basically saying that Lusaka deserved a truly brilliant museum, they’re just waiting for more UN funding…  Meanwhile, the present exhibits slowly yellow with age, having had no attention for a while. It struck us that no one could be bothered to keep the current museum good as they would be getting a spanking new one… Underwhelmed.

So what are we doing for our voluntary work? Well, one of my tasks has been to find out if the church properties have proper title, and so down to the council office we went. Scarily, no ID was requested (or offered) beyond asking for a Certificate of Incorporation, and no one could understand a word I was saying. Even so they did offer to start filling in paper work to transfer title. In case anyone wishes to acquire land in Zambia, you can get copies of Certificates of Incorporation from the Register of Societies here in Lusaka. Crazy.

Jo has been much more productive, painting pictures of Moomin on Joanna’s bedroom wall(smallest Arkkila, called Joanna 1. The Joanna we know is Joanna 2. But it might be the other way round, I am not sure). Moomins are very popular with the Finns, and so this has created tremendous excitement with family and visitors alike.

So a question. Would any African blog post be complete without a lion? We went to the Safari Retreat hotel, primarily to go swimming. But they did have an enclosure with four lions where you could walk right up to the fence and try, from two meters away, to stare down an animal to whom one is no more than a snack.  Lions are truly terrifying animals, there is nothing cute or cuddly about them. You only have to look at them to know they are killers. At one point, the male got up and moved toward the fence, and everyone recoiled about six feet (me the most, proves I am the most wimpy – I mean sensible). Let me just say that the fight or flight reflex is purely flight when you see them that close.

  

The hotel was populated by more friendly animals as well, with sitatunga (a small semi aquatic antelope, very elusive and seldom seen apparently) and kudu (yummy). I have to say I am more comfortable with a kudu thinking of how to joint and smoke it (to make biltong) than with a lion knowing it is not even bothering to think of the jointing and the smoking.

Finally, a joke. A missionary arrives in deepest darkest Africa, and on his first Sunday he is on his way to church when he sees a pride of lions in the distance. He gets down on his knees and prays ‘Father, please let these lions disappear. Amen’. On opening his eyes the lions are closer – and coming in his direction. So down he gets again and prays ‘Father, please make these lions pass me by. Amen.’ When he opens his eyes the lions are clearly coming to get him. Desperate now he once again kneels.’ Father, please don’t let these lions eat me without me converting anything to Christianity. If they eat me then me being here will be pointless. Amen.’ He looks up again and sees the lions gathered in a circle around him. The biggest takes a step forward, kneels down, crosses his paws and begins ‘For what we are about to receive…’

Windhoek to Lusaka

So we made it. We are in Lusaka, after a mammoth journey marked by both discomfort and tragedy. Let me warn you now, this blog will leave you reeling.

I suppose I should get the disaster out of the way first. The first rule of disasters is that you should not talk about disasters, but this one is so disastrous I can’t help my self. Simply appalling. It is my sad duty to report to you the death of Nigel, the Nikon lens – he found a name (much like Bob Lebowsky) in death, an opportunity cruelly denied him in life. Upon arrival at Victoria Falls I tripped over an uneven paving slab. Nigel was undone by his own awesomeness, the torque produced by hitting the ground being enough to break the mount. He is otherwise unmarked. I hereby open ‘Edd’s orphan children missionary camera lens replacement fund’ (disturbingly, the money would be better spent than most ‘aid’). Nigel would have wanted it that way.

So we said goodbye to the Millwards (with much blubbing by the lassies – us men are far too tough for such sentimentality) and travelled from Windhoek to Livingstone, on the Zambian side of the Victoria Falls. We had picked the Intercape bus, a South African company which was reputed to be brilliant. It wasn’t. The bus stopped the first time with the warning ‘10 minutes, and if you are late we go without you’. After that the bus stopped with monotonous regularity, at which point the conductor and driver would disappear with us being left to wonder ‘do we have time to go to the toilet?’ And even though there was no traffic on the road whatsoever we were 5 hours late! This meant that (irritatingly), the Millwards arrived in London before we arrived in Livingstone. We were very grumpy by the time we reached our destination.

We had a very happy time pottering around the Falls,  which are remarkable. Apparently there was a large volcanic eruption which laid down a huge, massive, beast of a slab of basalt (wouldn’t be allowed these days due to global warming). This cracked as it cooled, just like the Giants Causeway in Ireland – but don’t think for a moment that the Giants causeway even compares because these cracks are 100m deep, 100m wide, and a kilometre or two long. So, as cracks do, they eventually got filled in by mud/sand/other rock, and it is the length of one of these cracks that makes the falls (the river runs perpendicular to them). As all the cracks are linked by other cracks, a whole series of zigzagging and nearly parallel 100m wide gorges have been carved out over the years through which the river, which you should remember is 1km across above the falls, runs (and yes, it really runs, boils, etc – in fact whatever adjective you care to use). To add to all this, the narrowness, height, and just sheer volume of water flowing over the falls creates clouds of spray which ascend many meters into the air and restrict visibility to a few hundred metres along the  falls, making them disappear into the distance and adding to the cracks general awesomeness (and this is the dry season, in the wet season there is 10 times as much water). In case you are wondering, the Zimbabwe side is better, having more water (but no monkeys or baboons – have they all been eaten?).

And I know you are all dying to ask me - ‘what is better, Iguacu or Victoria Falls?’ Well let me answer you now – and my answer is that they are both different and so both amazing in their own right.

But Iguacu has toucans. QED.

We also went for a cruise on the Zambezi. And I am sorry but we went for the more refined sunset cruise as opposed to the booze cruise. It is complimentary drinks on both, but the description we were given of the booze cruise rather put us off (‘it’s brilliant. Everyone got so drunk that we couldn’t find our way home and we all got lost’). This is a simile for ‘we are getting old’ – and on the same token we didn’t do all the exciting activities, such as bungee jumping, white water rafting, or helicopter rides that were on offer. That and general poverty (I mean $145 for 2 hours rafting – are you kidding?). As befits our geriatric status, we found the cruise ‘relaxing’.

And so (regretfully – Jo stated after we booked the bus tickets that she would have gone rafting if we had stayed for another day) we travelled to Lusaka and to a warm welcome from the Arkillas, another Finnish family, but this time with only two children. Jorma (dad) gets unreasonably excited over remote controlled helicopters - just like me. We also get to cook for ourselves (!), and we find we have forgotten what to do.

But the really telling difference between Namibia and Zambia is the toilets. Now this might sound a strange thing to say but the toilets are almost a metaphor for both countries identities in their entireties.  In Namibia, an old German colony and a desert with permanent rivers only on the borders, the toilets are utilitarian and functional and dispense the barest minimum of water with a startling and parsimonious efficiency . The Zambian toilets on the other hand – wooah. Chaos and profligacy. The flush flushes with such force and power that one is obliged to leap out of the way in order to maintain podiatory dryness. It’s good to be back in ‘the real Africa’.