Making Tracks Across Africa

A look at the calendar makes my heart pound. Only two weeks to hurry down to Cape Town, and there is some serious distance to cover. The whole concept of "hurry" is laughable here in Africa. You just do the best you can and good luck.

Back in Dar es Salaam the Tazara railway, built by the Chinese in a year unknown to me, slices a path across southwestern Tanzania and all the way into Zambia. No cheetah express this, twenty hours take me to Mbeya, not too far north of Malawi, and it's not too bad a ride. The train staff do their best to keep the train tidy; a chicken and rice dinner in the buffet car is one of the best I've had in months, and the waiter even comes by with a bowl of hot water and nice liquid soap with which I wash my hands. The train groans and lurches, and people come and go in my four-berth compartment throughout the night. The weather has changed, too, from the hot and sweaty coast to freezing cold. I spend the morning chatting with some Zambian girls who are studying nursing in Tanzania.

Speeding across Tanzania

I overnight in Mbeya with yet another chicken and rice dinner that requires a hacksaw to get through. The hotel registration form asks me what my "tribe"is. I think about this for a while and decide the next time I see this I'll write down Californian. That's the closest, I think I am to a tribe. At 7:30 I catch a decrepit mini-bus to Kyela, which is right on the Malawi border. This takes over three hours. The road climbs up and up and up--into fog and freezing rain. People keep packing inside, and if there's any space left over, why the guys can heft in some humongous sack of onions or potatoes or apples or anything else they feel like moving down the road. At a town halfway along, most people get off, but there's a new crowd who wants on. I hear increasingly frenzied yelling going on outside. It seems some guys don't want a few others to board. They pick one guy up in the air and throw him so he hits the ground in a hard thud--literally. We speed away. The bus stops at the border, which is still a good three kilometers away. A hundred money changers meet me off the bus, and the only "taxis" are bicycles. I hire two: one guy to ride with my pack and another to carry me down the road.

My bicycle taxi (the other "driver" is off changing money for me).

Another border crossing, and by chance I meet an Irish NGO who needs to backtrack into Malawi to find dollars for a Tanzanian visa. He gives me a ride to the next town where I find a bus ready to leave for Lilongwe, Malawi's capital. I hop on for a twelve-hour jaunt down the length of the country. Essential equipment for any African bus traveler is a set of ear plugs to help drown out the non-stop, earsplitting music and videos (ear plugs also work when you have a particularly noisy group of touts to maneuver past. I never see people complain here; they just take it. The drive along Lake Malawi is beautiful, but soon it becomes dark and cold. I find a hotel in Lilongwe at 1am and pass out.

Lake Malawi taken from a dirty window on a speeding bus.

More roadside Malawi. They're selling French fries.