World Rider Arrives in Malawi

S 14º 08’ 04” E 34º 55’ 96”

Having returned from the weekend at the lake, I decided to check on Allan, to see when he would be in Lilongwe. He was still in Livingstone, updating his website and generally making a nuisance of himself at the Jollyboys Backpackers… He would be heading for Lusaka on Tuesday, and hoped to be in Lilongwe on Thursday… I spent some time going through my various options: I could head for Dar es Salaam and meet him on the way back if I rode down the lakeshore, or I could wait for him to catch up, and ride all the way to Dar with him… I decided on the later option, which would also give me an opportunity to catch up on my writing and relax with Peter and Carol for a while…

My plan had always been to spend at least a week in Lilongwe, although I had originally wanted to do so on the way back from Dar… I sat staring at a large calendar that Carol had provided and ticked off the remaining days I planned to be on this trip, and tried to figure where I would be by the third week of February… I wanted to spend a few quite days in Mozambique, thinking about the future…

First order of business was to get my bike washed, and that’s where Francis came into the picture. He could speak a smattering of English, and together we set about getting all the dirt washed off the bike, and then with toothbrushes and sponges, even cleaned between the fins on the cylinder head!!! The “Big Fella” gleamed by the time we were through…

Francis assists with the cleaning of the bike…

It rained hard all afternoon and continued throughout the next day… By Wednesday morning, I estimated over 200mm of rain had fallen. Lilongwe was awash… Carol’s lawn could not handle any more water and became a small lake…. The weather forecast predicted rain for the remainder of the week, and I was glad I had not made the run to Dar, as there was as much rain falling in Northern Malawi and Southern Tanzania as there was down in the south of the country…

Carol looks on as her front garden is turned into an extension of Lake Malawi….

It was no better in Zambia, and Allan had ridden to Lusaka in pouring rain, dodging the potholes in the first section in much the same way as I had a week earlier… He had decided to fit new tyres on his bike, as he believed the existing ones would not get him to Dar es Salaam. Miraculously, he managed to find exactly the ones he was looking for, fitted the front one and decided to ride the back tyre to oblivion before fitting the new one he had bought… This was a decision he would come to regret the following day, on the road to Chipata…

I spent the rest of the day updating my journal and sending copies to my sister. Carol and I went shopping and I got behind the wheel of a car for the first time since I had ridden the little pick-up around Windhoek while the bike was being serviced… It was a weird feeling, and took a while to get used to… We dodged maniacal drivers in town, where I soon learnt that driving defensively was not going to get me anywhere… I adopted the Malawian method of “indicate and go”, assuming that any oncoming traffic had full use of their brakes… Later that evening, we had dinner at the Portuguese Club with Asa and Bianca, friends of the Kemp’s who we had met in Malawi in 2004.

That night I sent a text message to Allan to see if he had made it to Chipata. His reply advised that he had made it there, in pouring rain, but in the process, had lost the new back tyre which he had strapped to his rear pannier… He had spent an unsuccessful few hours riding back along his route to look for it, and had it not been for this delay, he would have made it to Lilongwe that night… The loss of this tyre was to cost us many days, as Allan could not leave Malawi without a replacement, in case his existing tyre gave up on him before we reached Dar es Salaam… We exchanged a few more text messages and I confirmed that I would ride through to the border the next day to meet him…

On Thursday morning, I woke the “Big Fella” from his slumber and motored out to the border… It drizzled for part of the way there, but I still made the 120km trip in good time… Once I reached the border, it began raining in earnest… I walked across to the Zambian side too look for Allan, and found him chatting up the custom’s officials… Surprise, surprise…!! While he rode through the gate and into Malawi, I stayed on the Zambian side to use up the last of my Zambian air time to call my folks and let them know that all was well…

Meeting Allan on the Zambian border, a week after leaving him in Livingstone….

We rode to Lilongwe in pouring rain, getting thoroughly soaked, but this was the least of Allan’s problems, because on reaching the Kemp’s house, he discovered that he had lost his dry bag containing his cell phone and notebook, which he had stuffed in his jacket pocket at the border… (See the above photo of us at the border…) Somewhere along the road, it had flown out… He was understandably upset, (actually, he was VERY pissed off, and the air in the garage turned blue with a few choice words, causing Carol to flee to the safety of her kitchen…) He mourned the loss of the moleskin book, which had the contact details of all the people he had met since arriving in Africa, as well as his fuel usage since riding his bike out of Cape Town’s airport…

“Doc” waits for Allan outside the Malawian Customs and Immigration office…

Getting Third Party Insurance sorted out on the Malawi side of the border….

That afternoon we went into town and he bought a cheap cell phone to tide him over until he could get a replacement flown out from the States…. The following day, we borrowed Carol’s car and took in the sights of Lilongwe, finding a small pub at the back of a non-descript hotel, and sinking a few Carlsberg “greens” to while away the afternoon…

By now we had developed a tried and tested method of taking the mickey out of as many people as we could, and kept in practice by giving the waiters a hard time… Today’s case in point:

Close to the restaurant we were sitting at, was a mosque… While we were drinking, a wailing cry went up from the Mullah calling the faithful to prayer…

“What’s that noise?” enquired Allan from the waiter…

“It’s from the Mosque, sah” he replied…

“Is that where the Mosquitoes come from?” I asked…

“I’m not sure, sah…maybe…” replied the waiter.

“Have a beer with us,” invited Allan…

“Eh, I don’t take alcohol, sah…” replied the waiter…

“You don’t need to take it,” I said, “Just drink it…”

“Are you a Muslim,” asked Allan…

“No sah, I’m a Christian…”

“Do Muslim’s like Mosquitoes?” asked Allan…

“No sah…the mosquitoes bite everybody…”

“Mosquitoes bite…!” shouted Allan…”Are you sure?”…

“Yes sah, I was even bitten last night…”

“A Muslim bit you last night??” I asked…

“Eh…..exchoose me sah?”

“This is Dr. Ronnie B.!!” exclaimed Allan, “Let him see where the Muslim bit you…”

By this time the poor waiter was in a complete state and called for assistance…

“Conversations” such as the above were made straight-faced, and we generally only had a laugh about them days after they had taken place… We would stop for a rest break along the road and Allan would take his helmet off and say, “We had that waiter in Lilongwe going the other day, didn’t we…?” We would then fall about laughing, while recounting our conversations with the people in whose minds we had wrought such utter confusion… Yes, yes…I know…we’re both going to hell…!!!

That evening we joined Peter, Carol and Paul, as well as Grant, Charmaine and Kelsey, at the Blue Ginger Indian Restaurant, and had a great meal… We shared what seemed like a table-full of starters and then enjoyed a variety of main courses… We retired to Peter’s pub at home and sampled his selection of liqueurs before heading to bed in the small hours of Saturday morning…

On Saturday afternoon while Allan updated his website, the rest of us went out to the Motocross track west of town to watch Grant and Paul put their KTM’s through their paces. I took the quad bike around the track, enjoying the feeling of riding a quad again, even though the handling of the Yamaha 350 Raptor was very different to the “box” quads I was used to riding in the forests of Pigg’s Peak… After only two laps around the track, Paul’s KTM developed a puncture and he parked his bike in frustration… Luckily he had his quad to ride, so the afternoon wasn’t a complete waste…

The track was built on a friend’s tobacco farm, and has a clubhouse and braai facilities and a makeshift kitchen… This was put in as an afterthought by the men, in an effort to attract their wives to the track, to spend the day there while they roared around it…

Allan unpacks his “toys” while we compare the local Kuche-Kuche beer to Carlsberg….

We passed this tobacco transport tractor and trailer on the way to the track….

On Saturday night, Peter and Carol invited a group of their friends to their house for a bash, to introduce them to the “Two Hairy Bikers” that had taken up residence in their home… We partied till 4.00am before finally calling it quits and heading for bed.

Allan had entertained all with a few impromptu renditionings of Bob Dylan songs, as well as samples of his own music which he had written and sang… We saw a different side to him that night, and I felt more of a bond with him after he had shared his music with us… As eccentric and frustrating as he sometimes was, there were many things about him that I could relate to, and I was glad that I had waited for him in Lilongwe rather than pushing on to Dar on my own…

His wacky sense of humour had us in stitches and he kept all the guests enthralled with his take on life and travel… He showed us a video he had made of his trip through South America, which had us wanting to book tickets there immediately… It was a fun evening, one that all present would remember for a long time to come…

My trip was taking on some new meanings for me… Riding with Allan gave me a chance to talk about the internal struggles I was fighting, and getting a perspective from someone who hardly knew me, helped me understand some of my feelings… He had gone though a very similar divorce to the one I was experiencing, except that there were no children to complicate matters in his case… Still, many of his comments would stick with me through the following few days, while we rode our bikes on through the Malawian countryside, Allan seeking to experience Africa through the eyes of a visitor, and me trying to find that elusive thread that once held my life together…

I would’ve given anything to change places with him, his task to my mind being far easier than the one I was wrestling with…

© 2008 TBMH

Sunday, February 3^rd 2008 (295km)

Lilongwe to Zomba, Ku Chawe Hotel…   S 15° 23’ 10” – E 35° 19’ 19”

Our route into and out of Malawi, through the South and then along the Lake…

After a hard nights partying, (we finally got to bed at 4.00am…), I was up at 6.30am, took two Myprodol to stop the little man using the hammer inside my head, and made coffee for Allan and I… He didn’t move a muscle as I set his coffee down near where he was sleeping… I packed all my gear, and by 10.00am was ready to leave…. Allan was snoring gently when I went to see how he was getting on with his packing… It was going to be a long day…

Allan wonders what he’s going to lose next…his riding gear perhaps??

We finally managed to leave at about 12.30am. Carol had made a few ham and cheese rolls for us to take with us, our first “padkos”!! I ate one of them while waiting for Allan to get the last of his kit tied on to his bike… The Kemps gathered to say goodbye to us and we rolled out of their driveway. We stopped at the Crossroads Centre to refuel the bikes and by 1.00pm we were heading down the main street of Lilongwe… A nice early start…

At the bottom of the main road, we turned left onto the M1, at the sign that read “Dedza and Blantyre”, and crossed the bridge over the Lilongwe River. The river banks at this point were lined with litter from hawkers and squatters that used the bus stop on the far side of the bridge as their base of operations. This part of town is frequented by a pack of hyenas, who wander the area at night, cleaning up any leftover food… It is not surprising that there are not too many street-children here, as the hyenas are apparently very bold and are not afraid of humans… Wish one had popped in to wake Allan earlier…

A large mosque dominated the area just after the bridge, and this is very definitely the “Indian” part of town. It started to drizzle and I briefly considered stopping to don my rain gear, but having been on the bike for less than 15 minutes, I decided to take a chance and go without…

Paul, Carol and Peter bid us farewell in Lilongwe….

Once we had cleared the outskirts of Lilongwe, we were able to speed up on the stretch of road which was relatively free of potholes and traffic. I rode shotgun, hoping to chivvy Allan along at about 100km/h, and it worked… It was great to be on the move again, but it took about half an hour before I was happy with my rhythm, finally beginning to get the right lines into the corners and shifting through the gears smoothly…at one with the bike…

We began passing ranges of small hills, with little villages dotting their lower slopes and flanks. The clouds had lifted somewhat and patches of blue sky peeked from between them. In the middle of a long valley, we stopped to have some water and take a few photographs. In a matter of minutes, villagers and their children had lined the banks above us and were gazing in wonder at the sight of two madcap bikers… I had my I-pod plugged into my ears, Bruce Springsteen belting out “Born to Run”, and I couldn’t resist giving the villagers an impromptu air guitar demonstration… They loved it, whistling and applauding when at the end I threw my arms aloft and then bowed to all and sundry… I promised to return at a later date to give them an extended concert…

We reached the town of Dedza, with the huge Dedza Massif brooding above it. Clouds rested on the plateau at the top of it, making for a beautiful scene. We rode on, still on the M1, southeast along the border with Mozambique towards the town of Ntcheu. The border at times was literally just a hundred metres from the road. Allan was not going to make it into Mozambique on this trip, and I suggested we stop and walk across the small stream marking the border, so that he could say he had walked on Mozambique soil. He did not think it a good idea, although he did stop to take a few pictures of a village which was on the Mozambique side of the border, but close enough to see the people working in the fields and carrying firewood back to their huts…

Brief stop on the road to Dedza, among green fields and rocky outcrops… Bruce Springsteen came out to play…

Shortly after 2.00pm., we passed Binwiri, and a little further on came upon Ntcheu, a collection of dilapidated shops and mud huts lining the road. A few tall trees helped to make the scene a little less dreary…. We wanted to stop to eat the rolls Carol had made but there didn’t seem to be any suitable spots to do so, as the shade of every tree along the road was occupied by groups of locals, have their Sunday “chin-wag”… We continued east along the M1 until we came upon the Chikondi Stop Over, a kind of Ultra City without the petrol!!

It had a restaurant and a bar, and a few thatched structures in the courtyard, complete with concrete benches and tables… We sat and ate our rolls and drank a few Fanta’s, brought to us from the bar. We were amazed to find that such a place existed in the middle of nowhere, and complimented the guy who seemed to be the manager. An off duty policeman, who used to be a liaison officer with the American Embassy in Lilongwe, chatted to us about the times and experiences he had with the Marines stationed at the Embassy.

It was here that I began to notice the peculiar trait that Malawians seem to have with regard to pronunciation… They tend to mix their “l’s” and their “r’s”… For instance, the policeman spoke of us “being on a wrong lode”… Allan and I looked at each other and confirmed that this was the road to Balaka, but the policeman insisted that it was “the wrong lode”… It was then that I realized he was actually saying “long road”… It was to be the first of many such utterances by Malawians, some of which left us in stitches… We immediately began copying them… When in Lome…er… I mean Rome…

Allan chats to interested locals at the Chikondi Stop Over….

We continued south-east to the town of Balaka and onward towards Liwonde along the M8 and crossed the Shire River, where it exits Liwonde National Park. This river “drains” Lake Malawi, and runs due south all the way to its meeting place with the Zambezi, about 300kms downstream from the town of Tete.

The bridge over the river was clogged with bicycles, trucks and pedestrians, and we had to wind our way through them. Dugouts floated in the lagoons on each side of the bridge, the fisherman in them watching their lines intently. I rode ahead of Allan, pushing to get to Zomba before the sun went down. We passed through Machinga and Domasi, now travelling along the M3, heading directly south. The Zomba Plateau reared up from the flatland around it to the west of us, its slopes covered in Pine forests. The village of Ku Chawe was up there somewhere, and we needed to get there before it rained or got dark, or both!!

Just before Zomba, we came across a huge open-air market, straddling the road. Allan went ahead and all I could see through the crowd was his helmet… Thousands of people haggled over what was mostly second hand clothing and vegetables. A few animal carcasses were strung from the trees lining the road, large chunks being hacked off to offer to passers-by… The noise was amazing, and Allan asked me to drive ahead so that he could take a few photos. Most of the people took no notice of us, as we jinked between them in an effort to get to the far side of the bedlam and on to the town of Zomba itself…

Zomba is Malawi’s fourth largest town, and once there, we stopped to draw money from an ATM. Being a Sunday, Allan was disappointed not to find an open bottle store to buy wine from… We had decided to try the Sunbird Ku Chawe Inn, situated at the top of the Zomba Plateau to spend the night at, and turned off the M3 which splits the town, and began the 7km climb up through the many switchbacks it takes to get up to the plateau…

Allan “tops up” in Zomba, on the way up to the Plateau…

The road was narrow, slippery in places where little streams fed from above crossed over on their way down to the valley. Logging trucks passed us on their way down to a lumber mill situated on the lower slopes… Pine needles covered the road in places and I stopped to warn Allan about the effect they tend to have on driving conditions. We continued up, a car narrowly missing Allan up ahead of me, as it came tearing around one of the sharper corners. This whole area reminded me of Pigg’s Peak in Swaziland…the hills and valleys, the smell of pine essence in the air, the damp roads and plantations…

We stopped where the road was slightly wider, to take a photograph of the view down into the valley below… I could feel that smile on my face again, the one which sits there when I come across an amazing view such as this, and thank my lucky stars that I am here to see it… Privileged to be a witness to the scene unfolding below and above me… There are two views up here with an interesting history… The first is “Queen’s View”, named for Queen Elizabeth after her visit her in 1957, and the other being Emperor’s View, named after the visit to Malawi by Emperor Haile Sellasie of Ethiopia in 1964… We are expecting two new views to be named shortly…

We continued up the road, passing the Mulunguzi Dam, and going deeper into the Pine forest, the turns sharper than ever, making it even more difficult to handle the big bike underneath me… Allan skipped ahead on his lighter Dakar. On every straight bit of road, hawkers held out baskets of granadillas and bananas, but we were too busy to even acknowledge them with our usual nod of the head, as one misjudgement would see us over the edge and falling hundreds of feet to the valley below…

The road finally levelled out near a sign indicating a trout farm, and a little further on we turned another corner among the trees and came to the entrance of the Ku Chawe Inn. I was pleasantly surprised by the size and extent of this hotel, up here among the clouds… It was built from red face brick, with wide arches between each section of the hotel, giving it the look of a sprawling wine cellar…

We stopped on the edge of the Zomba Plateau to gaze down into the valley below….

We were taken aback by the cost of a room, ($140.00 for a double), but it was too late to look for cheaper accommodation, and it would have meant a ride down the hill in the gathering dusk. We set about negotiating with the management and agreed on $102.00 for the room. We lugged all our kit into the room, and retired to the terrace to have a well deserved “green” and take some photos of the setting sun…

Bats flew between the trees on the edge of the terrace, hawking moths just a few metres away from us, as we slowly began the unwinding process after the day’s ride… Although we only covered just on 300kms, it had taken us over five hours to do so, and I began to realise that doing over 700kms a day would not be possible here in Malawi, unless I was in the saddle at sunrise, and rode until darkness set in… It’s that kind of riding, you’re never sure about the quality of the road surface around the next bend, and need to be constantly alert. And then there’s Allan…

We had dinner later that evening, consisting of pulverised chicken, pieces of broken bone in each mouthful… Neither of us managed to finish this uninspiring dish, and headed for bed and an early night. I was up early the next morning, walking the grounds of the hotel, among terraced gardens, watching a troop of baboons clamber through the large trees and onto the roof of the hotel…

Out on the terrace, I looked to the east, and could just make out the shimmer on Lake Chilwa, a large body of water popular with duck hunters and ornithologists. Far to the south, a dark smudge indicated Mulanje Mountain, the highest in this part of Africa, and a spot that I had planned to visit, but would not manage this time around… Many people had told me that this was one of the most beautiful spots in Malawi and Central Africa, and a hike to the Plateau at its peak was an experience not to be missed. The views over the main tea growing areas in Malawi, and on into Mozambique were apparently spectacular… Next time…

View from the gardens in front of the hotel, taken at sunrise…

There were a number of places that I had not been able to see on this trip mostly due to the rain and tricky conditions that came with it, but I know that I’ll be back before long, in the dry season this time to see those “specials” that I had missed out on this time around…

I wasn’t sure why I felt a constant restlessness, the need to push on to the next destination… I often looked across at Allan and marvelled at the calm he projected. I can only assume that he had been on the road for so long (since July 2005, to be exact!!) that he had learned to take things as they come… Part of the reason for my need to keep moving was because I was already two weeks behind the schedule I had set for myself before I left Johannesburg… I had intended to reach the Indian Ocean at Dar es Salaam on the 20^th of January, and was now heading in the opposite direction!!! I wanted to be sure that I could get back to South Africa and home before the end of February, and the weather was by far my greatest fear of not being able to do so…

Ku Chawe Inn, Zomba Plateau… Doc and the Big Fella share a parking space, but not the tarpaulin…they’re not that close…

I couldn’t deny I was enjoying myself though, and tried to “chill” as much as possible… Allan’s constantly grinning face and sense of humour, combined with our need to cause as much mischief as possible, helped me through the “darker” times on my journey…

Zomba lies in the valley below, as we make our way down from the Plateau above the town…

© 2008 TBMH