Coming Full Circle

(Written a week ago during my layover in Nairobi)

I find myself back in Nairobi having come full circle since the start of my trip 7.5 months ago. As I think back to when I first arrived, it is really funny to compare my state-of-mind now vs. then.

Man, talk about being nervous when I first set foot in Africa. I didn’t really know what it would be like but I was hoping all of the bad press I had heard about the place would just be your standard fear mongering. Even still, the fact that I was totally on my own and on the brink of a huge life undertaking was a daunting feeling. Walking to baggage claim was when I had the distinct “holy shit, this is it” feeling. There was no period of time when I was waiting for everything to sink in. It was immediate.

I won’t ever forget the entire series of events. Nearly missing my flight despite a 6-hour layover in London, my conversation with a Kenyan guy on the flight, the pilot alerting the passengers to a herd of giraffe upon our approach, walking past scattered men sleeping on prayer mats in the various prayer rooms at the airport, receiving my first African visa, fumbling around with my bags while cursing myself for packing too much, awing at the throngs of people walking along the streets on my way to my guesthouse, making mental comparisons of African things to things from home, the warm welcoming I received at my guesthouse and finally crashing into my bed to let my brain soak up and sort through all of the new information it was receiving. It was a lot to take in.

Now that I’m back, I find nothing to be really new or surprising. Well, except for maybe the lady blowing snot rockets into the sink in the bathroom. That was a new one. Anyway, I’m still fully aware that everything around me is very different from home but I’m used to it all now. Cows, goats, chickens, pigs, etc lining the streets? Hole-in-the-ground toilets? Bucket showers? Minibuses overflowing with people? Kids waving, yelling and swarming around me? Navigating jagged sidewalks amongst ladies with water jugs on their heads, vendors shoving things in my face, beggars crawling on their hands and vehicles careening around corners? Ending each day rinsing my dirt tan down the drain? Pfff no sweat. Bring it on. It’s funny how much my perspective has changed. Now that I’m officially seasoned I see, appreciate and interact with things here in a completely different way. It makes me a bit nervous about how I’ll view things when I get back home.

Anyway, I’m sitting here waiting on my flight to Ethiopia and slowly coming to terms with the fact that my time in Africa is more or less over. It’s a totally bittersweet feeling. Sweet in that there won’t be daily TIA* moments, but bitter in that it is these same TIA moments that invariably have led to some of the most memorable adventures I’ve had in life. They are what make Africa one of the toughest yet most memorable, interesting, inspiring, heart-breaking, heart-warming, amazing, mind-altering, lovely and life-changing places to travel.

So I have 3 weeks to go before I head to Asia. I’m off to Ethiopia for the remainder of my time in Africa where I expect much more Middle Eastern and Indian influences. It’s supposedly one of the most unique African countries in that it was never really colonized by the West so it has held on to most of its culture and traditions in a way many other African nations haven’t been able to. The food, music, time-keeping, calendar, language, alphabet, tribes and entire structure of the place is unique in its own right.

More on this later, gotta catch my flight. Here we go, Ethio!

*TIA = “This is Africa.” It is a term used regularly by travelers to explain away all of the ridiculous things that happen and stuff that doesn’t go your way. Examples: random power cuts, random water cuts, ferry brakedowns, cattle traffic-jams, sleeping donkey speedbumps, goat fights in the middle of the road, massive transportation delays, lady at the hotel wiping bed bugs & other creepy crawlies off the bed before looking at you like, “see, everything’s totally fine now”, getting super excited about a 3-page menu only to find out when you try to order that they only serve 2 things: rice or maize-meal, the ubiquitous public urination displays, cars driving around with loudspeakers strapped to the sides with a dude shouting about who-knows-what, something that sounds like midnight marching band practice, etc, etc, etc.

Swazi, Mozi, Rats & Bats

So here’s the deal - this frickin’ entry is a beast.  I am going against everything I promised myself that I wouldn’t do in keeping a blog: ramble on about meaningless travel stories for 5 pages.  How douchey.  Well, poo, because look at me now going all hypocrite and stuff.  So I have no expectations here in terms of readership, because at the very least I had fun writing and re-living it.   BUT, if you choose to read till the end, you’ll get a peek into what it’s like backpacking throughout Africa.  I don’t think I’ve really gone into much detail of my day-to-day experiences, instead focusing on major events.   If you don’t make it past this intro, just know that in general travel in Africa is 10% planning, 90% improvising.

Public Transport in Africa
The thing about independent travel in Africa is that it is difficult. Distances are long, rides are cramped and sweaty and there’s no official system.  You basically have 2 choices in regards to public transport: minibus taxis or long-distance buses. 

•Minibus Taxis
Remember that game you played in college where you tried to see how many people could physically cram themselves into a phonebooth?  Add some wheels, chickens, luggage, BO and a numb bum and you have yourself an African minibus experience.   They only leave when completely full, so the average waiting time is between 5 min-3 hours depending on who’s already there when you show up.  Although they have a set start and end point, they can make any number of stops in between.  People are constantly hopping on and off every kilometer or so.  You generally need to double or triple the estimated journey time when taking a minibus.  Also, I’ve come to learn that shin-guards would be a nice protective accessory for this type of transport.

•Long-Distance Buses
LDBs are basically Greyhounds minus AC, plus a mini-church sesh to set the bus on its holy way and African jams and/or Celine Dion blaring through the PA system.  My general rule of thumb is to opt for an LDB for any ride over 8 hours. 

Logistically speaking, no African bus companies have any kind of marketing budget and there are certainly no timetables dictating stops or schedule.  Hence, finding out how to get from A to B always involves a solid amount of detective work. 

Case in point: I needed to get from Durban (SA) to Maputo (Mozi), two large cities about 280 miles apart with a good road linking the two.  You’d figure finding a way between the two would be cake.  Wrong.  After some futile internet research and asking around I found out that the only way I could make the trip was by minibus.  A hot, sweaty, 10-hour journey jammed in with 20 of my new closest friends and chickens.   

Fortunately, somewhere along my way I met a South African guy whose son lives in Mozambique and frequently makes the trip to Durban on a long-distance bus.  Ok! Great!  So there IS an actual bus.  After a bit of goose-chasing, he tracked down the phone number for the bus company.  I called.  They (gasp) answered.  I booked myself on.  Heck yeah! 

Swazi
Knowing that the road between Durban and Maputo cuts through Swaziland, I figured I’d stop off there first to hang out for a few days before crossing into Mozambique.  Getting to Swaziland wasn’t going to be a problem; getting myself where I needed to be IN Swazi was.
“Do you cross Swaziland to get to Maputo?”
“Yes.”
“Do you make any stops while in Swaziland?”
“We stop at the border”
“Is there anywhere for me to hop off and catch another bus to Manzini?”
“We can drop you on the road that leads to Manzini.”

Flash forward 24 hours and there I was on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere Swaziland watching my bus pull away and wondering if this was the best decision to have made.  Although this is a frequent question I’ve asked myself over the past 7 months of travel, so it was really nothing new. 

I looked around and saw some ladies sitting under shaded wooden stalls selling a handful of shriveled fruits and water in plastic bags.  I walked over to them and they immediately started giggling.  Sure, the sight of some white chick getting dumped out of a bus with a bunch of bags strapped to her back in 100 degree heat must have been a funny sight around those parts.  I parked myself alongside them and tried to make some small talk (mostly consisting of me smiling and them giggling) and played with the little toddler running around in his underpants.  One of the ladies spoke broken English and told me there should be a bus to Manzini coming soon.  Nice!  Since “soon” could be anywhere from now through early evening I prepared to settle in for a while.  Not a minute later she jumped to her feet, grabbed my daypack and started running like a madwoman.  Befuddled, I looked up having no idea what was happening to see this rickety old school bus barreling down the road towards us. 

“Come! You must come now! The bus is here!” she hollered back at me while in a panicked, wobbly shuffle trying to run while clutching my heavy daypack.  I threw my big pack on and followed suit.  I caught up with her in the middle of the dirt turnoff just as the bus came bursting through.  She yanked my pack off my back and gave it to the conductor to throw into the bus bowels and she insisted I board the bus immediately.  I can now understand her frenzy as the bus never really came to a complete stop before they launched my bags on board and I hurled myself through a cloud of dust and into the open doors. 

Upon arriving in Manzini, I shuddered once I caught a glimpse of the taxi rank.  It was the standard mess of small, medium and large buses creating a neverending maze through which passengers, loiterers and vendors shimmy their way.  Before getting off my bus, I asked where I could get transport to the Ezulwini Valley.  The conductor motioned for me to follow him and he escorted me through the hordes.  Once we found the right minibus, I jammed my luggage under and in front of my seat, giving me just enough room to squeeze myself in with my legs overflowing to the side.  After about an hour of shooing away the vendors asking, “Sissy, sissy, cold drink? Ice cream?” through my window, the minibus finally found its final passenger and we set off. 

Thirty minutes later and I again found myself getting dumped on the side of the road.  After aimlessly hiking around for a bit I eventually found my backpackers and by the expression on the guy’s face when I arrived, I probably looked like the hot, sweaty lovechild of Swamp Thing and a hobo.   But I made it. 

The next week in Swazi I did a bunch of bartering with the curio vendors at the market, visited the capital city of Mbabane, arranged for my Mozambique visa, toured an amazing Fair Trade organization and spent some time with a few new friends relaxing at the Royal Swazi Hotel pool.

My final night in Swazi the sky released its buildup of rain wrath on the earth and sent water gushing down uninterrupted for at least 18 hours straight, all the while making sure your pants were properly soiled after each massive thunder and lightening strike.

I was still camping at this point and although I knew my tent was only rated for “light drizzle,” I had confidence that I wasn’t going to wake up in a puddle of mud.  I was right about the mud part, but I spent most of the night curled up in the fetal position, freaked out about the thunder and trying to avoid the walls of my tent that were at this point fully soaked through and dripping rainwater inside.  And that officially marked my last night of camping. I ditched my tent before setting off again to catch a series of minibuses to Mozambique.

Mozi
After another full day of minibus travel with a watermelon rolling over my toes and the obligatory marriage proposals, cow offerings and my favorite game of “guess my age and marvel at my single & childless state of being”, I made it to the Mozambican capital city of Maputo and met up with my Couchsurfing host. 

I stayed with Lucas, a Brazilian expat who was transferred there for an international stint with his job.  His company hooked him up with a nice air conditioned apartment overlooking the Indian Ocean and a sweet 4x4 to drive around in.  We decided to put his 4x4 to the test on my birthday when we set off to Macaneta beach.

To get there, you drive about 1 hour north of Maputo before loading your car into a ferry, crossing a river and 4x4-ing it on a sandy, rutted road while dodging stubborn cow herds.  We spent a great afternoon on the beautiful, secluded beach and ate delicious guavas and cashews, both of which are grown locally and sold ridiculously cheap by street vendors and/or kids.

At around 4pm, we made our way back to the ferry where a massive line of cars had already formed.  We calculated that we’d be on the 3rd ferry, which would get us to the other side in about an hour and a half.  Our optimistic bubble was burst once we realized the ferry had broken down and we wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon.  As the sun set and the moon rose, we could only imagine how long we’d be stuck waiting in vain for the ferry to reappear to take on a fresh load.  One guy capitalized on the situation and started charging people to row them in his canoe to the other side. 

We ended up teaming up with some other 4x4 drivers and began scheming ways out of this predicament.  One of the locals knew of a road that could get us around the river, but it would be on even rougher, sandier road and there was a chance we’d get stuck.  But his cousin just called and said it was ok.  Which brings me to another African rule of thumb:  if someone’s cousin says it’s ok, it’s definitely a good idea.  Knowing how things in Africa work - or don’t work, rather - we figured we’d have a better chance of escape by taking matters into our own hands than waiting on this ferry.  And hopefully we’d be back in time to do some evening birthdaying in Maputo.

We spent the next 2 hours in the equivalent of a washing machine on wheels, getting jostled and churned around in our seats. The guy leading the way was flying around the hairpin turns and careening over the shittiest road imaginable.   I doubt anyone had driven that way in a decade as the overgrowth on either side left barely enough wiggle-room for a car to pass unscathed.  This was true African bush.  If anything were to happen to the car here, you’d be completely screwed.  There were no towns, villages, or signs of life in general aside from the occasional flash of a human figure watching us pass from the side of the road that we were convinced must have been ghosts.

We didn’t make it back to Maputo until 10pm, a full 6 hours or so after having left the beach.  Determined to keep the ridiculousness alive, we cleaned up and hit the town for some more birthday celebrations, visiting a few bars and restaurants and meeting up with Lucas’ friends along the way.  It was probably one of my more memorable birthdays outside of that time I went to that live Double Dare show back in ’89.

Rats
After hanging with Lucas in Maputo for a few days, I decided it was time to head up the coast to do some of the famous diving in Tofo I kept hearing about.  After another bus journey and 8 hours of watching my bag get successfully trampled into a dirty, blue pancake as it resided in the aisle at the front of the bus and the only way people could get on/off was to step on it, I made it to Tofo and parked my stuff at Fatima’s Nest Backpackers.  I had heard of Fatima’s through the backpacker grapevine, and the consensus was that you’d either love it or hate it.  Honestly? The only saving grace for this place is its bar scene because outside of that the place is a legitimate dump.

I consulted with my new friend, Ema, from the bus ride up, to decide whether we felt like walking around to find another hostel.   We figured we’d stay a night and see how it went because all we wanted to do at that point was jump in the ocean. So we settled in and immediately a number of red flags went up.  Ominous warnings that we should have heeded.  The first one being the obvious dumpy state of the hostel, the second being an army of ants swarming around the stove area, and the third being conversations with other travelers warning about a mouse infestation.  Apparently people had woken up in the morning to find their backpacks, clothing, jewelry and soap chewed through by mice throughout the night.  Fan-frickin-tastic.  So off I went to fish out my soap and beaded necklaces and set them in the fridge - the safest place I could imagine putting them. 

At around 4am that morning, everything came to a head.  I woke up with a fright to Ema shaking my bed and calling my name.  She had run into my dorm after being completely traumatized by a dozen mice scurrying about her room.  There is no way I can describe with as much hilarity the situation she found herself in with these mice, but I will try my best.

She had been peacefully sleeping most of the night when the noise of a plastic bag rustling woke her up.  She shot up and listened to the mysterious noises for a while before realizing what she was hearing were these mice I had warned her about.  She remained prisoner in her bed for a solid 30 min before mustering up the courage to set her bare feet on the floor and run over to the light switch to see what was happening.  As soon as she flicked the light, she saw at least 7 giant mice frozen in place, all 14 beady eyes on her.  Not a second later they broke their silence and continued on scurrying about her room, climbing around the rafters and falling down onto the floor.  Sick.  She grabbed the sealed container of peanut butter sitting on the dresser, ran out the door and chucked it as far away into the darkness as she could while booking it over to my dorm.  And that’s when she shook me awake in a panic and in utter fear that the mice were going to touch her and bite her toes off.  Not an unreasonable fear by any means, but at 4am I honestly just brushed it off and tried to soothe her fears enough for her to go back to sleep.  “They won’t touch you, it’s going to be fine.  Just use your mosquito net as a shield. They aren’t going to get in.”

That next morning I woke up to holes in my jean shorts, laptop case and miscellaneous bags…all chewed up by these damn mice.  And there was Ema with a big, "I told you so" grin on her face.  Touché, touché.  

Being that I have a zero-tolerance policy to rodent infestations, I packed and trucked my ass down the road to move into Bamboozi backpackers, by far a much nicer and cheaper place to stay (I will say, though, that Fatima’s at least sympathized with us and gave refunds for our night’s stay.  So cheers to them for that).  Later that morning Ema joined me at Bamboozi and after a night or two of paranoia associated with any kind of rustling noise, we settled in nicely.  That is until the third night. 

Bats
So there we were doing a bit of reading before heading to sleep, Ema at the desk and me in my bed.  I kept absentmindedly noticing the lights flickering, but paid no attention to it.  Just as I realized the flickering was actually some sort of night-creature darting past the lights, Ema started shouting at me:
“Oh my God, bats! Cover your hair!! Cover your hair!”
“What? What? What? What the hell? Bats?! What? Why are they in here?”
“Cover your hair!!!”

We frantically sought shelter under our mosquito/bat nets simultaneously screaming and laughing our faces off.  Ema proceeded to warn me about some sort of membrane in bat’s feet that if it makes contact with your hair will get stuck.  And the bats will freak out and you will freak out and then you’ll have to shave your head.  So, great, the only thing preventing us from imminent baldness and a potential bout of rabies is a flimsy, hole-pocked piece of mesh.  After a futile effort of scream-laughing for help, the bats spared us and flew away, but not without leaving us reverting back into our state of nocturnal and disease-laden animal paranoia. 

Etc.
Our days were spent in a much more peaceful state.  Beaching, surfing, walking, bargaining, souveniring, ocean safari-ing and scuba diving.  One of my favorite things was snacking on the fresh cashew nuts grown locally in Mozambique.  You could get a huge bag for 1/3 the price you’d pay in the States.  Totally raw, unprocessed and delicious.  I pretty much ate them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  It was only after my face and eyes puffed out so much that I looked like a human goldfish did I find out that I am allergic to cashew nut skins.  The fruit that cashews grow on produce an oil related to that produced by poison oak/ivy.  And seeing as though full-bodied poison oak rashes were a huge and dark part of my childhood, my evil, oily arch nemesis had obviously resurfaced.  Lesson learned.  I’m just happy to know that if I actually had permanent elephantiasis-face, people would still be my friend.  Or at least they’d pity me enough to be nice to me.

To top off the comedy-of-errors trip to Mozambique, I was having THE worst luck seeing any of the major big-game sea-life that these waters are known for.  Mainly giant manta rays and whale sharks.   Tofo is renown for being one of the few places in the world spot these creatures.  Not only that, but it is also supposed to have one of the highest concentrations, so your likelihood of seeing these guys is very good.  So after 4ish days of failure and being told by others that they’ve seen nothing after 12 ocean safaris and dive trips, I nearly gave up hope.  Not until my final 2 days in Mozi when I decided to go for broke and blow all my cash on a last-ditch effort trying to see these frickin’ things did my luck turn for the better. 

I booked myself on a dive to Manta Reef, named so for obvious reasons.  The dive was amazing.  I love the negative-entries you do in Tofo where as soon as you roll off the boat, you bomb it head-first to the bottom.  So fun.  Except I just end up sucking down my air way too quickly, so I need to work on that.  Anyway, like I said, the dive was amazing.  No, we did not see any mantas that time, but the reef itself was beautiful and teeming with life.  More fish than I’ve ever seen in one place, a big, crotchety old potato bass, massive lobsters and a moray eel that could have literally swallowed me whole.  That thing was massive – I’d guess 3ft around.  

That afternoon, I headed out on an ocean safari.  The sea was super calm and the sun was beating down from above – the perfect conditions for spotting the massive grey shadows you look for as telltale signs of a whale shark.  After maybe 30min of searching someone shouted “mantas!” and we were in the water snorkeling with these guys.  Not even joking, they had at least a 6ft wingspan.  Once the mantas out-swam us, we headed back to the inflatable to continue our search for whale sharks.  We didn’t even make it back before out of nowhere this big 11-meter mama appeared with her beautiful grey and white speckled body. I swam with her for about 10min and watched her suck in gallons and gallons of zoo-plankton through her behemoth 6ft wide mouth.  Dang, those things are absolutely amazing. 

So after all was said and done, I successfully saw 3 mantas, 4 whale sharks and of course that ridic massive honeycomb moray eel thrown in.  In each case, I remember gasping in amazement each time I caught my first glimpse.   Unreal experiences and no better way to end my time in Mozambique!!!

OMG.  The End.  Finally.  Thanks for making it.