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(13th May)
Down again in the 4th. This time it’s in Zambia. Things were floating serenely past me as I pushed on from the capital of Malawi, Lilongwe making record time to get there from Lake Malawi in just three days. I took a truck filled with road workers across the Nkotakota Reserve as our bikes were not allowed to pass through, sadly we missed the animals there. Before we set off the driver, and what must of been the figure of responsibility, shouted at the workers to behave, keep their bad language in check as well as to not touch our stuff. This was picked up through the odd English word and we were showed every possible Malawian courtesy as we whipped through the park at ungodly speeds by the same driver. On the bouncy truck we made medicine on the back with the workers and Martin, an incredibly hard drinker, who very nearly fell off and was described as ‘trouble’ by his compatriots. This was a major highlight as we laughed all the way through the reserve and I could practically smell the Oxford Sandy Black smoked streaky back bacon. I was beginning to think the war would be over by Christmas and would be back in Blighty without further ado. Alas, how wrong could I be.
Quickly, I hate to do it, but I have refute some of my readers opinions. Many (my family) are reading through these write ups with a red biro and picking apart my flowery soliloquies. The word ‘malapropism’ has been thrown at me - incorrect and hurtful - you know who you are, Bupa! I am dyslexic after all. Another call out, can my editor pull his finger out? It seems he is too busy editing his next instagram picture of his pregnant wife. Editor, the baby and the solar stuff can wait whereas my readers appetite cannot. A quick defence of this tripe I keep putting out - I have read many other TRAVELLERS ‘blogs’ in my preparation for this trip with others kits and routes etc. These are the same blogs, that put Lady Clare and many other travel journos out of business with their vanilla twaddle. It does not take much mental strain to realise no-one wants to hear what you had for breakfast or where the best place to get a Nutella crepe in Timbuktu is. ‘Yummy!’
Back on script, I cycled to the border between Malawi and Zambia with the Arrian Jesse Pinkman and my new cycling brother in arms - Daniel, the Dane. He was incredibly ill during our passover to Zambia. I am not sure what was worse for the two of us, actually suffering his illness or having to listen to it. We travelled 130kms to the visa control to a chorus of hucking, spitting and generally disgusting respiratory noises. It did act as a kind of spur and felt mostly downhill, for me at least, and we eventually arrived at the border. Another country to wipe off the board and then we were on the ‘Great East African Road’ of Zambia. Well named to begin with. The buttery tarmac had my bike purring along as rubber met road. I have become entwined with my bike like a poacher to his whippet, and any new noise, feel or sensation - I instinctively know if it is a good or bad.
In other news, I have a new favourite gear - Speed 1, gear 2. There you have it. My bike and I now alloyed together and newly christened, 'Black Dominika’ (TC ft Jakes - Rep), were getting on well, our early honeymoon troubles in Kenya and North Tanzania were things of the past. Then I felt the dreaded rear wobble of a flat tyre. It can be emotional and exasperating, but sometimes therapeutic to change a flat. However, in the dry and arid heat of Zambia, it was not serious, but with the great tracks made in the last number days of cycling with no problems at all, it was frustrating and time consuming. Maddeningly, it happened over and over again for the next 3 days. Eventually, we arrived 140 kms on, at the guesthouse and community centre run by an eccentric German widow. Here, I had another strange cycling coincidence: on arrival we met two other saddle bound adventurers and by chance, they were one of my very small number of instagram followers. Equator to Cape. Great people, extraordinary to meet them after unconsciously following each other virtually and physically out here in the wildernesses of Africa.
Elke, the German Widow who ran the Tiko foundation and lodge got us together for a glass of cava. She regaled her life story to us, 20 years living in Zambia. She was a fascinating individual and had lived a rich and full life. She described Zambia as ‘almost medieval’ in parts and I suppose this covers swathes of Africa. A severe opinion, you might think. She described the great issues facing the rural population: their lack of jobs, motivation and with no education to rectify the hand dealt to them. We heard about the witch hunters who arrive in villages to solve the ‘mysterious’ child deaths, disenfranchised young men tapping into the zeitgeist of witchery that is so prevalent in Africa’s most remote villages. They carry with them a bag of witch paraphernalia at hand ready to be presented to the chiefs. In Suffolk, the equivalent would be ‘the Mole Catcher’, who has five dead moles in the back of his van ready to present conveniently after hours of fruitless trapping. Five moles in one garden; that is sorcery. It was an enlightening, although at times, saturnine conversation as we learnt that the main language of Malawi and Zambia, Cheywa - only has numbers up to ‘six’. Africa has been blighted by NGO’s and missionaries as well as much more, often with good intentions and outcomes, but this has left much of it scarred. In Malawi and Zambia, you arrive in villages with large signs or flags saying this town has been helped by such an such organisation only to find the inhospitable people sticking out their arms saying ‘give me money’. The villagers have been poisoned by a grasping avarice, their situation and the resulting help; it is like they do not know what they are doing when they stretch out a hand, but only know it can bring them something/anything without work. If you stop in such places you nearly always find the male population drunk regardless of the time of day while the women tirelessly work: cooking, fetching huge amounts of fuel on their heads and looking after countless children. Rather then medieval times, it reminds of what the Wild West must have been like, loafing hard-drinking men and mostly hard-working puritan women. Here they drink because there is nothing else.
Malawi is an incredible country, a small one at that, and filled with a huge variety of people. I met the craziest and the kindest; the most pathetic and the most generous. It is a country of extremes, both in its landscapes and inhabitants. To qualify these claims, there were two incidents that help sum up my time here. The first dramatic episode was when a minivan sharply pulled in front of me, there were shouts of ‘this is my country’ ‘get off the road’ , ‘what are you doing here’ and much more, with a threat of ‘I am going to push you’. What followed was an out of control mini bus gunning at me and then into my bike. Jumping out the way in the nick of time, there was a sickeningly loud crunch. I thought that was it, my bike was done for. Luckily, it was only my helmet tied to the back of my bags and nothing else. The driver was stricken and tremulously said sorry before he sped off. It was a shocking incident as he essentially squashed 50 dollars and my life saving helmet. It was my first taste of anti-white sentiment since Kenya and well over 2000kms on the road.
The next remarkable incident on the other side of the coin, involved leaving my wallet at a small roadside shop. To half justify my mistake, there is the story retold my Saint-Exupery of Henri Guilaumet - who crash-landed his Aeropostale plane in the Andes and walked for over a week back to civilisation with only the thought of his wife and his lack of life-insurance to keep him warm. He continually dropped vital belongings on his desperate walk to save his own life for the sake of his family (‘I have done things no animal would have done’). So, in a ‘similar’ exhausted state I abandoned my wallet there. After setting up camp a fair few kilometres from the town and when the dark African night had enveloped me, I realised what I had done. I set off to walk all the way back to the town, hitch-hiked some of the way, and eventually got there. You have probably guessed, but I got my wallet back and everything that was inside. Everything. They had even wrapped it up like a newborn and left it safely under the counter awaiting my return. I have often heard you cannot leave anything in Africa unless it is nailed down, I know it was a lucky escape, but somehow it made perfect sense with those hardworking shopkeepers with just a few dusty un-perishable goods to sell in there shop and a half-empty cool box, scratching a living were decent honest folk.
Fast-forward now and I am a few days into Zambia. It has been punctures on punctures, with day after day of huge mileage along the then not so ‘Great East Road’ - it was blood, sweat and gears. After taking a circuitous route to get to an over-priced campsite, we (still with the Dane at this point) knew our then fourth day ahead was going to be tough - 130kms of uphill cycling over an increasing altitude of over 1000 metres. After getting back on the main road from the out-the-way campsite; the onslaught began. Pitiless climbs in a dry Zambian heat. We knew it wasn’t going to let up and so when a truck slowly made an appearance behind us, we made ready to grab onto it. When it got close and passed us; we saw it had barbed wire on the back to stop vagabonds jumping on, so instead we took hold of the cargo-netting on the left-hand side of the truck. At the time it was a sagacious call, but it felt like we flew up the hills.
The issue was that there was not much space between the truck and the hard shoulder. Dirty great African potholes shot by me as I sped alongside the truck. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t long until there was an incident. After dreamily ticking off another hill, we came to a rare long downhill portion and I was stuck on the wrong side of the truck as we both accelerated down. Suddenly, I could see one big round pothole. This would have been a best in show on www.pothole.co.uk . I was trapped headed straight for it at some lick. I clattered over it and miraculously made it over to the other side. Carnage ensued as I heard debris flying and metal on ‘mac as the I lost control of the back of my bike. Somehow I stopped, looked behind to see a neat snail-trail of my belongings and bits of rubber behind me. My tyre was toast and my left saddle bag as useful as marmalade. I realised it was a bike situation above my own and Daniel’s station and so I had to flag down a bus to the nearest town.
I have received some flak for this act of desperation when at my wit’s end. It was a choice that was out of my hands, and was not taken lightly as otherwise I would be still be pushing my bike to that town. For those who may feel like I should pay some penance for my sacrilegious acts of vehicular blasphemy, can rest assured that my bad cycling karma was soon to be repaid in kind. The coach dropped me off at the nearest town. I now at least thought ‘safe’ from those hideous hills. I found a bike mechanic and sewing machine for my baggage, so I thought that all would work out for the best. I arrived at 0930, the whole town was schoonered and at that point I should have realised that this was a town of half-wits - it again reminded me of Deadwood without the bustling industriousness of the Goldrush.
As they tinkered away for the next 5 hours with only a flat to change and to tighten a few loose screws on my bracket; they were clueless. Woe is me, that it seems I am trying to make this trip into how I want my Brexit boiled, which is rock hard. To his credit, Mr. Sewing-Machine did a sterling job. My mechanics were like Dr. Frankenstein as they went unchecked, tampering with my bike pushing her into something new and disgusting. At about 1450, they finally gave back what was ‘Black Dominika’, but it was more like being handed Frankenstein’s Monster. I set off, feeling very unconfident as my crippled whippet whimpered and made unfamiliar sounds; she felt like an entirely new bike after 2800 odd kilometres on her. But, then just as I was losing faith, the Dane reappeared and briefly took my mind off the old-girl. Then thud. I was suddenly at a stand-still. I looked down and saw that my derailer had wrapped itself around my chain. I wasn’t just on the ropes; my cheek was on the canvas. I thought that was it and everything I had done thus far was meaningless and the journey was over. The bike was finally as buttered as a crumpet thanks to those ‘mechanics’, and just two days from the capital Lusaka.
Or was it? …..
(20th May, update)
It wasn’t. The bike was mended in Lusaka after more considerable costs and with a great deal of help from Charlie and soon to be Emma Troughton. And so many thanks to them both for sorting me out and getting me back on the road. The bill from the mechanic has hit me hard as I am now buying slightly cheaper cuts of steak to braai each evening as I push through cattle country south of Lusaka. There has been much gristle and bone to get to this point. I have been benighted with even more punctures and general bike trouble. The days from Lusaka to Livingstone, have been a cycle through Dante’s 10th circle of puncture hell. Ceaseless and harrowing. The front would pop only to be patched, fixed and refitted for the back wheel to flatten a mile later. It was my equivalent of the first day of the Somme. My brave inner tubes were cut down by my shocking German Continental tyres, which are completely knackered and worn. I lost count of how many punctures I had, but it was well over double figures. I made it to Livingstone and was rewarded by the Smoke that Thunders in the distance upon my arrival. Here, I had another ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume?’ Moment with the Danish Jesse Pinkman and we will then go our separate ways again. Livingstone is a ‘nice’ town with supermarkets, banks, unauthentic gift shops and the like, but again is blighted with travellers. It has more hostels and lodges then street lights. The hostel guests look like the cast of Dazed and Confused, both now and then. ‘This is like the first time I haven’t been hungover for a week’. The bloke who looked like Slater gave me terrible advice at Victoria Falls - don’t bring a raincoat he said To wrap this up with some advice from the great Johnny Rotten - ‘never trust a hippy’.
