Its been, I believe, more than two months since I last sent an email of substance about our trip. My eyes have been filled with so many sights and my head filled with so many thoughts that my pen hand has been frozen, like a boy who has taken too big a bite of an apple, whose jaw is stuck clenched around it.
Whereas the first few months of our trip can be described as nomadic and arduous, the last several weeks have been marked by the slowness of time and seeming randomness of events. However undirected our travels initially appeared, they were, in fact, pretty direct. We travelled northwards through South Africa, straight into and through Zimbabwe, meandered around Zambia and then entered Malawi. Look on a map and you'll see that it's pretty straightforward. But everything changed once we hit Malawi. We were tired. No, let me rephrase that. We were haggard. Months of spartan, itinerant living had taken its toll. We reached beyond the breaking point days before when we got stuck driving across a river purportedly infested by crocs and hippos. Forced to set up camp, we spent that night alone in the bush among the animals of the wild.
Fortunately, we were towed out the next day. We are not, and never will be, the same. Thus, we looked upon passive little Malawi, known alternately as the “Warm Heart of Africa” and “Africa Light”, as the cure to our ills. We welcomed with pleasure the conveniences of Blantyre, Malawi's largest commercial city, and the soothing atmosphere of Doogles, Southern Africa's hippest backpacker lodge and Blantyre's coolest pub. Like Cheers, everyone knows your name and they're always glad you came. With tracks of David Gray (our new favourite crooner) playing in the background and good food served all day, our frayed nerves slowly eased.
The list of characters flowing in and out of Doogles runs long: there was a merry band of travellers calling themselves “Hot Rocks” in the midst of a 3-year expedition circumambulating the globe in a enhanced Mad Max-style truck from England (check out their site at ; there was a British couple riding their BMW motorcycle (the ride was so smooth, claimed the husband, that his wife could read when sitting behind him) around the world, financed by rental payments received for the use of their home; there was the lycra-clad professional journeyman on a continuing mission to circle the earth by motorbike who likened himself to James Bond, carried little other than albums containing clippings from travel magazines depicting his life's work, and never tired of describing his latest blaze through the pre-truce Congo (days after I last saw him, I caught the tail end of a Travel Channel episode telling his tales); there was the lanky used car salesman born and raised in Blantyre who showed up every night for beers and conversation; there was the British med student who came alone but quickly found company; there was the reunion with Maria and Oliver, a German couple with whom we formed a quick and comfortable friendship days earlier in Zambia – they beat us in Pictionary 🙁 – there was a British jack-of-all-trades who rolled in to Doogles with three 18-wheelers and stacks of used tires, all shipped over from England and ready for sale to any interested buyer; there were Swiss travellers, Dutch, Irish and Israeli, French travellers, Aussie, American and Kiwi, just to name a few, checking in and out, dining by the pool and quaffing beers in the moonlight; and, of course, there were Souli and Servanne, two of my favourite travellers and half of our meandering quartet.
Travelling is as much a skill as it is an art and Servanne ranks among the best travellers I've encountered. Always upbeat, forever a team player, she has an unquenchable thirst for the sights and sounds penetrating the world. A Frenchwoman, she also speaks English, a smattering of German, Spanish, and numerous esoteric languages that she has picked up from travelling in, out, through and around the world's most unique places. At about 5'1″ and 103 pounds (just a guess), she may be, pound for pound, the world's strongest traveller, and, I can assure you, the most energetic.
Souli, short for Souliman, is a Lebanese-born German dentist who is the oldest of ten children. When we met him, he was stuck in Blantyre waiting for a parcel containing a headlamp to make it through Malawi's lethargic postal system. This guy was finishing up a nearly 14-month bicycle journey from Germany to South Africa (check out his website at www.radflimmern.de). Why, with less than two months left on his trip, did he suddenly need the headlamp? I never could understand it–something about needing it while he rode through the bush in Botswana–but it kept him hanging around, so that was good enough for me.
For me, Souli was a breath of fresh air. As a German, he proudly rooted for the plucky U.S. soccer team when the two countries faced each other in the World Cup. Germany advanced, so he cheered wildly for the heavily outmatched South Koreans in the semi-finals. Why root against his countrymen? Those soccer stars were too cocky, he told me. Souli's soft-spoken affability combined with a limited attention span for all things outside the domain of his interest left me continuously in stitches. To dismiss someone as a nuisance while making him feel good about it is a skill the guy has mastered. I don't mean to sound callous, but in Africa locals approach foreigners for various reasons. These encounters are precious to all travellers, but they also tend to be draining. Souli had a knack for pleasantly nipping those unpleasurable encounters in the bud. Perhaps most of all, I was fascinated by his physically challenging and mentally gruelling trip that brought him, ever so slowly, out of Europe, through the Middle East and across Africa. Along the way, he re-established family ties in the country of his birthplace, found spiritual rejuvenation in the kindness of strangers and dealt with uncommon frustrations like flat tires in the Sudanese desert and rocks thrown by children in certain locales.
The four of us–Servanne, Sali, Souli and I–made a good team. Sali and Servanne enjoyed conversing in French, pondering things European and talking of literature. Souli and I shared an interest in poorly played Chess and laughter at life's trifling events. After a few days together at Doogles, we set out on a camping trip in Malawi's Shire Valley. Uninterested at the time in anything touristy, we pitched our tents in a dry riverbed on the outskirts of a simple village. We spent three days cooking, sunning, laughing and interacting with locals in what were very ordinary conditions–lots of sun, no electricity, a borehole providing freshwater one kilometre away, villagers with small plots of land that produced a variety of vegetables, a population rapidly diminishing in numbers due to the onset of AIDS.
After the camping trip, we headed back to Doogles. Eventually, Servanne hopped on a bus to Mozambique, Souli cycled off to Zimbabwe and Sali and I set out for a hike through Malawi's Mulanje Mountains. We anticipated a 4-5 day trip where we would move from lodge to lodge each day, but the daily hikes were long and tiring and we were poorly prepared, not bringing enough food and failing to hire a porter to assist in the portage of food and supplies. After two days, we found ourselves in a gorgeous spot and too tired to enjoy it. That's when we met James and Hannah, lovebirds soon to be wed, who kindly left us some of their food as they headed down the mountain and invited us to stay with them once we returned. We decided to spend the next three nights in the same mountain hut, enjoying its tranquillity and scenic beauty, and then took a more direct route back to James' and Hannah's three days later.
The next couple of weeks are a blur. All I can remember is breakfasts on their veranda, long stretches of time spent reading, midday naps, fantastic meals, thoughtful conversations with our hosts, evening laughter and a rekindled relationship with television. James and Hannah opened their home to us and we just couldn't get enough. In fact, it soon dawned on us that the expatriate lifestyle (he's from the U.K., she's from British Columbia) in Malawi was not half-bad. As fate would have it, the stunning home next to them had just become vacant. With four bedrooms, two solariums, a swimming pool, stables and beautifully landscaped grounds, this house was nestled in the foothills of mountains, bounded by a nature preserve on one side and James and Hannah on the other.
What could we do in Malawi, we wondered. We floated our resumes around town, meeting several respected lawyers including the head of Malawi's bar association, leaders of their nascent stock market, foreign consultants and bankers, the police department's chief of criminal affairs (it's a long story) and the dean of one of the country's two law schools. After rubbing shoulders with these bigwigs, we became stuck on the idea of teaching at the law school. Encouraged by the dean to seek outside funding–he expressed interest in our services but lacked the funding to pay for them—we met with several development agencies funded by the British and U.S. governments in pursuit of a backer. We wrote letters, shook hands, issued pitches and submitted proposals. Sadly, the well of funds was dry. The mighty New Yorkers had struck out.
During our tireless fundraising campaign, we sought refuge in the crystal clear waters of Lake Malawi on two occasions. Here, the beauty and challenges of African life struck me more clearly than anywhere else on our trip. Warmed by the majesty of the lake's undeveloped serenity and the unbridled decency of its surrounding community, I nonetheless felt weighted down by the pressures of village existence–unceasing poverty in the face of an outpouring of tourist wealth; in the wake of the AIDS pandemic, too few elders caring for too many children; the youthful desire for fun in the sun against the practical need to earn and save; the inescapable fact that villagers rarely leave the at once inviting and confining land on which their parents', their parents' parents and their parents before them were conceived and reared, on which they founded their families and on which they expired.
Smarting from the burn of rejection, our hearts began to wander back home. Liz, Sali's blue-blooded high school friend, was engaged to wed Niels, a German gentleman living in D.C., at the end of August in Virginia. Jean, my former French neighbour in New York, was engaged to wed Caireen, a feisty Australian, in the middle of September in the French Riviera. We checked our budget, realized we couldn't afford trips to these far-off places, and then decided to go anyway. We bought round-trip tickets to the States with stopovers in London and connecting puddle-jumper flights to Nice, and we were off.
We spent practically every moment of our time back home soaking up the love and attention of our respective families, catching up on everyone's life, telling stories of our own, and fattening up on tasty home cookin'. In a certain twist of fate, Liz and Niels were married in a country French chateau nestled in a small Virginia town among their closest friends and family, while Jean and Caireen paired themselves amidst the glitz and glamour suitable to Hollywood's elite. While guests at the Brinton-Kusserow merger engaged in thoughtful, intimate conversations with the bride and groom and dined among a choice group of guests, attendees at the Bourlot-Shanahan extravaganza rocked the night away under the stars of Beaulieu Sur Mer.
And that, my dear friends and family, is nearly all there is to tell. There was our 3-night escapade through Mozambique and our continuing education on David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary who introduced much of Southern Africa to the European world while campaigning against slavery with every step (see www.nationalgeographic.com/features/97/lantern/), there is the sociologist/filmmaker who is tending to our car while putting the finishing touches on his documentary of Malawian street children, there was a week secluded in the Italian Alps following the French wedding (and the 4-train, 10-hour trip it took to get there), our inability to meet up with our Slovenian friends in Venice, the long journey by rail to meet Liz and Niels in Koblenz (Niels whisked his beautiful bride back to his motherland after the wedding), our recent lesson on German beer and sausages and our grand opportunity to sample Niels' famed plum cake (deeeelicous), but there isn't time for all that. In a few days we will have a reunion with Maria and Oliver and in a few weeks we'll be back in Africa steadily collecting stories for the next briefing. Until then, be well.
Wed in September 2001, Sali and Michael left their jobs as New York lawyers six months later and flew to Cape Town to begin a one-year travelling expedition. Without much of an itinerary, they bought a car in Cape Town and have been slowly working their way north through Africa, spending time in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and, currently, Tanzania. Always eager to swap travel tips, Sali and Michael would be pleased to hear from any travel enthusiasts and can be reached via email at mrakower@hotmail.com.
