Kwaheri.

All good things (and rambling blogs) must come to an end.

Still.

We travelled approx 18-20 000 km of African roads. We travelled by boda boda, dala dala, matatu, rikki, public bus and private tour bus. We went by landrover, by ferry, by plane. We survived a dhow, a speedboat, a rubber raft and a bicycle taxi too.

We saw a host of animals, the big 5, 5 types of monkey, 4 or so national parks, Victoria Falls and 9 African countries.

We meet many people from many walks of life and had a conversations with them in rough english, gilted swahili and battling french.

Thanks to everyone who has read this blog over the last few months and a special thanks to those who offer encouragement to keep writing. My/our first Jeffari is now over and so I guess the blog updating is too. I just hope the next jeffari isn't too far away.

It was awesome.

Dubai, Aussie and Home

Hello.

Well before we hit Dubai we had an unexpected stopover in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This was totally part of the schedule but news to us. Still, we got a wee look at the city and it appears nice through the left hand side portal.

6 hours of comfy seats later and we land in Dubai. We had a fair idea what to expect (i.e heat and construction) but weren't really prepared none the less. We got through customs reasonably quickly only to spend 90 minutes between 1am and 230am queueing frantically in 38 degree heat trying to grab a blasted taxi. Kate had been expecting crushing efficiency and we were solely disappointed.

Anyways, we got to Dave's apartment quite happily around 3:30am. After a bit of a sleep we hailed a cab and headed to Madinat Jemeirah. This movement would be a familiar one for expats (i.e the A/C room, A/C car, A/C mall combo) This mall-etta is an upper class, smallish mall right next to the famous Burj hotel. Anyways, we partied there for a bit before hitting up the Mall of the Emirates. We shopped for ski gear, sports gear, fashion gear, shoes, perfume and cinnabons. It was a western style paradise. Greatest mall I've seen thats fo-sure. Cheap too.

At night we (Kate, Dave and I) headed into the gold souk for a looksee and a cheap dinner. We rounded off the hectic day with a nice impromptu dhow ride on the Dubai river. Good times!

Next day was more of the same but instead we hit the Ibn Battuta mall. He was some Marco Polo type explorer of Dubaian origin and we were again in awe. After much kerfuffle we finally managed to meet Dave who treated us to an Arabian meal of some note. Halloumi, Hummus, Shisha, Shish kebab, vineleaves and the obligatory cinnabon and we were in heaven. Big Special thanks to Dave and his massive hospitality. We both needed and appreciated it immensely.

Sadly after that was the trauma of a 4 hour sleep, a long day of flying, 45 minutes sleep the next night and finally an arriveal in Sydney at 7:50 am. It was great to see Jan and Bill and great to see a nice bed with innersprings too. We slept for ever that night and awoke happy but flu-ridden. It was raining :( Anyways, we also managed to catch up with Alex, Loz, Mike, Jess and Marcel which was excellent.

Saturday involved a quick flight to NZ, a bus ride and finally a taxi to home in Timaru. It is now tuesday and it hasn't stopped raining. I am still flu ridden but happy at home while Kate is now into her second day at Timaru District Hospital. She reports it is very nice. We are off to Tropic Thunder tonight on cheap Tuesday and really, it's like we never left...

Uganda, Rwanda

Hey Everyone.

Turns out I haven't blogged for the entire duration of the olympics. Clearly blogging and olympics watching eat into the tiny amount of spare time that I actually do have. Apologies for that. This post will cover our last few African adventures.

When we last reported in we were about to scurry off for the opening ceremony. We hit up the cafe next door, ordered a coke and sat down waiting for the action. Alas, there was none. Undeterred we harrassed the cafe staff to search all 392 channels of DSTV to find the ceremony. They couldn't and we were subsequenty furious. FURIOUS. We jumped on mototaxis and barrelled home to complain. Anyways, our mototaxi driver tells us it starts at 2pm. We find this odd as it is nearly 230pm according to us. Turns out nobody told us that Rwanda is an hour earlier than Uganda and we'd been living the wrong time for nearly 3 days. That of course explains why nobody else was at the restaurant for dinner the previous night.

Back at our hotel we discover the olympics on the TV in our room (like any decent 1 star hotel). We decided to forgo lunch and dinner and sat through all 4 hours of the opening ceremony. It was spectacular and all rather impressive. If only it were real...

The next day we headed out to the genocide memorial. This was donated to Rwanda after they misbehaved in the early 1990's by an apologetic European nation. It is thus a western style fancy museum. It is utterly fantastic and devastatingly sad. They chronicle the genocide and then compare and contrast it with other 20th century genocides in Cambodia, Yugo, Armenia and Germany. Let's just say that after it all we didn't really feel like speaking for a good hour or so and were generally peeved with the human condition.

To cheer ourselves up, we did as we are inclined to do, we watched olympics and dined out. For 3 straight days that is! We had chinese, indian, chez robert (pronounced shay roberrrrrrr) and watched more olympics than anyone. We even switched hotels to find one with more supersport channels. This cost us unnecessary extra which was recouped through missing meals in the pursuit of other peoples perfection.

Oh, as an aside, don't buy Hugo Boss Deep Blue aftershave from some guy on the street. No matter how well packaged it is, it is still toilet spray. I hope that $5 bucks made him happy. It was excellent toilet spray though. Country Garden flavour to be precise.

Next was the return trip from Kigali to Kampala. We were dreading this one as it was our last on african buses and we knew it was gonna be 9 hours plus. To mitigate our upcoming pain we decided to upgrade and book on the Jaguar Business Class coach. However, these people, they were not serious. Turns out the business class coach is broken and we have to go on the cramped regular coach. This didn't mean we got a refund for our higher priced ticket. It simply meant they could squeeze another 30 people onto the bus who were all paying the business class price. Grr. This bus ride was also amusing insofar that the first 3 hours are on the right hand side of the road and the last 6 hours are on the left. Admittedly the differences between the two sides of the roads are less apparent on that particular pot holed strip of tarmac. 9 gruelling hours later and we crack into Kampala.

To celebrate we eat fast and then run to the mall to catch Batman (we knew to adjust our watches this time). It was excellent despite not finishing til 1am. The next day was spent shopping and drinking coffee at the 1001 cups of coffee, coffee house. Excellent.

Next day - Rafting!!! We woke early and left Kampala for Jinja to hurtle down 35 km of the Nile on a 4.5 metre boat. Cool!! I was dressed in togs while Kate opted for a nice pair of my old boxer shorts. Hilarious. 2 hours later and we're sitting there practicing our stroke. After quickly learning how to unflip the boat we were off. First stop was a waterfall of grade 5 fury. It was awesome. Especially awesome was the bit where we suddenly flipped and got destroyed in the white water. He he. The rest of the day followed much the same pattern. Kate got progressively more terrified. It was great.

Sore and tired we got home late and slept in nice and good. After a couple of hours in the Emirates office sorting out our tickets we headed the 37km to Entebbe to stay the night in relative peace. We didn't count on a power cut and the squishiest bed in roll-together history...

Our last morning in Africa was spent in a wild life sanctuary. We visited injured chimps, eagles, rhino's, lions and shoebill storks. I photographed them all and plan to pass these photos off as genuine wilderness photos..

Our last act on the continent was to hire 2 dudes for 1500 shillings each ($1USD) to take us on the back of their scooters to the airport. We were one step up from the Kerrigans and happy as larry. 90kg of Jeff and 20kg of pack made the 50cc scooter struggle mightily though.

Next stop...Dubai.

Rwanda

Bonjour.

We are now in Rwanda, our ninth and last country in africa. Rwanda is made up of mountains (for Africa) most of which have some how been tamed with terracing and cultivation. The people speak French and Swahili and are generally very friendly. The other obvious thing is that there is a massive international aid presence here which, without knowing more, feels like a guilt trip over the events of the early 1990's.

Where we last left off was Fort Portal. We enjoyed our few days there including a lovely side trip to Lake Nkuruba(see left) where we were the only guests of their camp site. We saw heaps of colobus and vervet monkeys playing/battling each other which was cool. From FP we caught another (hopefully our last) traumatic bus. This time we traversed a million pot holes and ended up in Kabale in the south west. We spent a night there in the lovely House of Eridisa hostel before heading to Lake Bunyoni. This lake is a famous R&R spot in possibly the most beautiful setting we have come across. We planned to hang out there for a few days but ended up coming back after only one (got bored). After another day in Kabale we headed west into Kisoro.

Kisoro is a nice, small town 12 km from Rwanda and about the same from the (purportedly) evil DRC. It is home to a million motor bike taxis and a large, cheap market. We stayed at the rather average Virunga hotel before heading into the hills. We decided, perhaps unwisely to make the 37km trip on motortaxi. Nice plan but after 90 minutes of bump, bump, bump I had sore legs and a massive bruise on my tailbone/backside. That night we stayed in the tiny Nkuringo campsite in the middle of nowhere many meters above sea level. It was very basic but cool in it's own way - picture two single beds in a little hut thingie with a tin roof. At about 4pm it decided to hose down with rain - maybe 6 inches or more and thunder continuously all night. Twas indeed crazy. Unlike the food there which was horrific and, it turns out, full of bugs.

Righto. So we rock up to the Nkuringo wildlife office next morning excited to track real life mountain gorillas in an impenetrable forest. The first hour was great as we left civilisation and followed a nice wee track. Soon after though our guide told us the Gorillas were only 2 hours away. Little did we realise this meant descending through thick foliage down a steep mountain pass. All 6 trekkers ended up on their butts numerous times with injuries abound. One trekker was a 68 year old lady with a replacement knee and it must have been tough for her. Anyways we finally reached the Gorillas and let me say, it was awesome. Kate was trembling with excitement. We had imagined them to be sitting still in a group where we could watch. Instead we spent an hour scrambling up and down tiny wee paths after the Gorillas as they moved around and ate. They were magnificent creatures and so very human like. Great photography too (see right). We only had an hour with them but were exhausted by the effort of tracking the blighters.



So now all we had to do was get back to basecamp. The simple task of retracing our steps was made an absolute ordeal by the rain which suddenly became torrential. So picture us freezing, absolutely saturated (goretex schmoretex) and trudging through thick mud/morrain straight up hill. Then, of course, the dodgy beef struck and, well, enough said...

The cure for the aforementioned exhausting struggle came in the form of some lovely gentlemen on our trek. They climbed the tortuous mountain ahead of us and returned to their fabulous resort called "The Clouds," This resort had been open 5 days and is spectacular/pure luxury. These nice chaps invited us and the gorilla guides over to their "place" for high tea. So we turn up saturated, covered in mud and frozen to be greeted by massive fluffy white towels, a hot fire, comfy sofas and an enormous afternoon tea. The hotel even gave the older lady a t-shirt to get dry in! Needless to say we love that place!! Jam and Cream Pikelets, Meatball thingies, Jam rolls, individual pots of tea and so much more. Glorious.

Next day we headed into Rwanda on motortaxi. We scurried through immigration and headed on a nice wee minibus to Gisenyi or as Lonely Planet calls it "the Costa de la Kivu." This was possibly a tad generous but we did have a nice meal at the Stipp. Interestingly enough the pleasant atmosphere was often disrupted by large planes taking off from nearby Goma airport (in evil DRC). Apparently this is the Congo govt restocking in their war against rebels! Scary.

Yesterday we headed into the capital town of Kigali and today we are sipping Bourbon Coffee - an attempt to make Rwandan Coffee into a luxury item that we were too happy to support. This arvo we hope to catch the olympics opening ceremony and then tomorrow we're off to the Genocide Memorial. Contrasting aspects of humanity I would imagine.

Congratulations to Dave and Mary (little bro and his new fiance). Also Congrats to Ro and Jo who also got engaged recently.

Finally, we changed our flights again. Off home late next week! Hurrah. Visiting Dave in Dubai and people in Sydney before getting to Timaru in a fortnight.

Party on.

Jeff and Kate (who, sadly, isn't feeling 100% today)

PS duelling monkeys....

The Zip Off Pants Update

Confession time.

First some background: Picture a naive, (extremely attractive) bachelor called Jeff who during the season of Xmas 2007 was tempted by his upcoming adventures and a 20% off sign into buying his first pair of zip-offs.

In a fit of excitement he got them home and marvelled over their quick drying temperament and zip off ease - surely would be perfect for travel.

Imagine then the disappointment when after 3 months on the road the zip-offs are rendered surplus to requirements. Here is why:

1. Who actually zip's off? In all the days I wore them I never once needed to zip off and only once zipped off for the fun of it. If you want to wear pants, wear pants. If you want shorts wear them. If you want to change then change. Also, it's way easier to regulate your temperature by switching between shoes and jandals or removing a jersey then zipping off.

2. The place where zips are needed is not around the knees. It's on the pockets. The voluminous pockets would be perfect for carrying a litre of water (if i didn't have hands or a backpack that is) or a quick meal ration. They are useless for securing your wallet though. Thus if you happen to be buying zip offs for travel I suggest you check this closely before purchasing.

3. They are, lets face it, not built for glamour.

So there, I discarded them in favour of my jeans - a sure fire travel no no. Except that jeans don't show dirt, they are good at night and look good.

Roger Kabisa.

Jeff.

U see a nice country. Uganda.

Hey World.

11 days down the track and we find ourselves in Fort Portal, East Uganda. After rudimentary inspection we can find neither a Fort nor a Portal. If there is a case to be made for this being a portal then the case is that this area leads into the Rwenzori mountain's. That is silly though or else every second town in the South Island would also be a portal.

Anyways, before we left Kisumu we had the doubtful pleasure of the Kisumu musuem. We were optimistic as we had heard that they had a real "stuffed lion eating a wildebeest." We turned up full of this optimism to find out prices had trebled since our guide book was written. Undeterred we pressed on and saw a range of highlights. The most magnificent of these was perhaps the aquarium - (worse than an average pet store in NZ) or the turtle sanctuary (small square fenced off area with zero shade and 30 turtles. very sad) The funniest part is that these were way better than the snake park (where the snakes were actually plastic) and the authentic tribal village. The taxidermied lion was very impressive though. I can only imagine how much more impressive it would have been if it wasn't missing an ear and a significant part of it's flank.

Right, so from Kisumu we had a delightful day of minibus torture and headed into Jinja. Ugandan visas now cost $50 each which is frustrating. Obviously the rationale is that it's way easier to collect revenue from tourists at each border than have a taxation system in your country. Jinja was nice. The hostels were overpriced and underclean but the location was superb. We got a little exercise there and visited the source of the nile which was sourcy. nice. We wandered to Bujugali falls one day and had wild rice salad another.

From Jinja we headed onwards to Kampala. Getting there was easy but oh man, the bus depot was incredible. So many people yelling that you could barely think and could only really join in the yelling as a method of coping. Needless to say that Kate doesn't enjoy being yelled at and thus the stress levels peaked. We ended up taxiing on out of there and heading to a hostel called the Red Chilli. We ended up in a tent there which was cool. From there we got a room next day in mighty Dewinston St at the Hotel City Annex. We explored Kampala quite a lot over the next few days. We made it to the movies twice, an irish bar, a thai restaurant and generally overspent and overindulged. It was nice.

The best part of Kampala was the fact that we scored Gorilla permits. Previously we had been told this was not going to happen since they were booked out til November. Undeterred (we are undeterred a lot at the moment) we went to the actual offices of the permit people. There a nice lady took a shine to Kate and promised to help out. The next afternoon she rang to say she could find two for as at Nkuringa, Bwindi on the 5th of August. Hurrah. Double Hurrah. Once we stumped up with a thousand fine USD we were secured.

To celebrate we came to Fort Portal. From here we need to fill in 5 more days between here and the Impenetrable forest. To fill this in we'll prolly play cards, read books and drink Nile Specials which at 5.6% have quite a kick. We'll then head from the Gorillas into Rwanda for another fortnight. Then it's back to Kampala and eventually home in just under a month.

Congrats to Casey, Julia and their new arrival. Love it.

Jeff and Kate.

The megatropolis of Kisumu

Well. It's been less than a week since I last posted but when you gotta go, you gotta go.

We are in Kisumu. Kisumu is not exactly tourist central. It is however home to 353 000 friendly kenyans and thus is the third largest city in this fine country.

Our last day in Tanzania was remarkably Tanzanian in tone. We huddled outside the Moshi Hilton at 6:00am waiting for the luxury minibus we splurged for to turn up. 6:10am and it arrived right on time and it was nice too. Comfortably relieved we sat there in the bus, in the dark as it started to rain heavily. Our nice large shuttle drove us across town back to their depot where we were dumped into some leaky old minivan and hauled to Arusha. Obviously some logistics weeny had taught them how to consolidate a load. Needless to say I was nonplussed about sitting there in the dark, getting dripped on clutching my bags for 90 mins. In Arusha they transferred us back into a coach which was nice. 3 hours later we are through the border having picked up a Kenyan transit visa. Unfortunately though, our delightful bus decided it was not going to Kenya and promptly broke down. The driver and conductor being nice guys then decided to transfer all our luggage to a new bus. Problem was that they missed my book and glasses sitting on my seat. Thus picture ungainly Jeff sprinting (well running as fast as possible) back over the Kenyan and Tanzanian borders with 40 locals laughing and looking on. It was kind of like the reverse of the olympics .. you know...slow Mzungu running with fast Locals sitting and watching..

Anyways, with glasses in tow I settled into my comfy new seat only to endure 4 more hours of roading hell. We arrived in Nairobi petrified of Nairobi (thanks guide book) and dishevelled. Help was at hand though in the form of a random aussie guy we met who hailed from Newcarstle. He took us to some random lodging house and showed us the pizza restaurant where we managed a small pizza each for lunch and another medium one for dinner. In between we graced the Nairobi cinema with our presence and endured the Incredible Hulk for 2 full hours. Nairobi was bustling and interesting. Not exactly what we'd expected.

Next day we rose early again to catch the train. Except that the train was cancelled due to corruption ruining the entire service. Thus we caught Easy Coach instead. This would have been easy had the coach had suspension but alas it didn't. After 7 hours of this and some of the worst roads we've seen we crawled into Kisumu peeved and bone shaken. Luckily though we met another lady who took us to a nice hotel called the "Sooper" lodge. This is where we've been holed up for a couple of days now and it's really very good. Kisumuins are nice people and we've had a great time here shopping at the market, eating cheaply and having coffee's at the mall.

Tomorrow we're heading to the little used border crossing of Busia by catching a minibus that has Busia written on it. Could work! From there we head onwards to Jinja where I hope to have a spiritual connection to the locals.

One last thing. If it is in lonely planet it now costs double and isn't very good. If it isn't in lonely planet but is recommended by someone you meet then it costs less and is generally alright.

Ciao.

Jeff. (Kate is busy)

Tanzania Revisited

Hey World.

Pole Sana.

This morning mum and dad departed after spending nearly 2 weeks with us here in Tanzania. It was sad to see them go but I was also glad knowing that their time with us went well.

Anyways, since our last post we've been little travel bunnies hopping around everywhere. Our last few days in cape town were cool. We went to Stellenbosch for some wine/brandy tasting and meals out which was cool. Stellenbosch is one hell of a nice place complete with too many cafes, bookshops and art thingies to deal with. We also treated ourselves to a plush wee B&B for some time out from dorm rooms. The beauty of this move was that the place was otherwise vacant and so we ended up with our own personal chef. Hurrah. Cape of Good Hope was also cool and anothe beautiful spot. The rest of our time was spent in kurdish restaurants, cuban restaurants, hip hop cafes etc etc. Next stop was back to dar.


Going back to Dar seemed a little like going back to the dentist. We knew what to expect and after the niceness of Capetown knew it would hurt a little. In reality though it was sweet. We got through customs easily though and quickly found our meagre swahili and a cab driver. Unfortunately though we couldn't find accomodation for quite a while until we ended up at a rather overpriced dive known as the "Durban." Humpf. The next morning we trudged around and ended up in Kariakoo at the Keys Hotel which was quite fine. After a tilt at the casino we met mum and dad at their hotel. It was great to see them and to sample the chocolate they had bought from home...

Dar with parentals was different. We wandered a lot. To spice things up a little we went for a dala dala ride. Make that an illegal dala dala ride. The four of us and 23 locals...

Next morning our rented landrover turned up and it's driver (Ibrahim) escorted us to Pepone's and Pangani. It was nice going back and seeing our friends and the ocean side spots we've come to love. Mum and Dad enjoyed Pangani a lot and it was nice to be able to show them parts of Tanzania well off the beaten track. Next stop (other than various police check points) was a German cottage in Lushoto called Mullers where we were, quite simply, spoilt. No mozzies either. This spot was high in the hills and a glorious place to rest. Lucky too, cos early the next morning we were getting a ride down into town when our taxi driver flashes his lights at an oncoming bus/rustbucket. Turns out our bus decided to leave 30 mins early and wasn't going to wait for anyman. Anyways the bus ride was flat out hairy. At one stage Kate, Dad and I had random babies on our laps. Also, amusingly, a man got on holding a chicken by it's feet. This was fine with me but mum has a wee chicken phobia and was not totally stoked. Needless to say the locals got a giggle..

So yeah then it was Safari. Our driver turned up early one morning and quickly whisked us off to Lake Manyara National Park. Within 20 mins of entering the park we'd spotted Buffalo, blue monkeys, baboons, giraffes and a rare spotted turtlebird. That night we stayed at Bougainvillea lodge in Keratu (named after a flower? maybe?) where we were pampered. Some nice chap even came and lit a fire in our room. By this, I mean he lit a fire in the fireplace using wood and meths.

Next day we drove into the serengeti via a Maasai boma village and the Olduvai gorge. These stops were mandatory for anyone who's read "The White Masai" (grrrr) and studied genetics. We checked out Homo Habilis! Then around 4pm we got game driving. We spotted us our first 3 lions, some elephants, buffalos, punda's and the odd twigga. Special. Our accomodation was teh Sopa lodge where I spotted a giraffe 30 m from our bedroom window.

The next day was more of the same but the highlights were lions on the prowl, a cheatah on the hunt and a leopard on the sleep. It was amazing. The leopard in particular is a prized thing to see and so we were rather lucky. It was the best leopard siting our guide had had in 4 years. That night we stayed in a tented lodge where we saw gazelles prancing around. They even had guards who use bows and arrows as to not wake the guests if an animal stays too far at night.

We then game drove again the next morning on the way to the crater lodge. On the last morning we ended up down in the Ngorongoro crater with the carnivores. We saw countless wildebeest, buffalo, zebra and around 30 lions down there. Speechless. It was one of the great things to see. We even saw a secretary bird destroy a snake. We all agreed it was the best thing for that snake. Some quotes:

Dad - "11 o'clock - thompson's gazelle! 9 o'clock it's a not-thompson's gazelle"

Kate - "3 o'clock i think it's a lion"
Jeff - where?
Kate - "the other 3 o'clock i mean"
Jeff - nice rock.

Mum - "I hope we get to see a Cougar"

Anyways, it was awesome. I have 490 photos from those 4 days and many more memories. Turns out Kate pulled a lion troop sighting out of the bag on the last morning too so i eat my hat.

Now we are parent-free and catching our breath/darning our socks in Moshi. Kili is not far from here but the urge to climb it has gone. Overrated by all accounts.

In other news we have rebooked our flights and are coming home Aug 28. We stop in Dubai for 3 days and Sydney for another 3. We fly into Chch on the 5th Sept I think. Hurrah. We'll be around Timaru etc for about a month before making some sort of shift to Sydney...

These next 6 weeks involve some time in Kenya, a month maybe in Uganda and a trip to Rwanda. Hee hee.

See you all soon.

Jeff and his trusty master game spotting sidekick Kate.

PS this is my lion photo.

South Africa

Hey Sportsfans,

Well we're now here in capetown with a latte in one hand and typing furiously with the other. The waistline is expanding in an inverse relationship to the bank account but hey! it's party time.

To recap the last week:

Since Swakopmund where I last wrote from we shifted the setting south to Sossuvlei(pronounced soft souffle) . This is a desert area with sand dunes approaching 400m high. They were large, orange and sandy. Pretty cool to see, hard to climb up but hilarious fun to tumble/run down. It's an awesome part of the world but amusingly enough it rained on the day we were there. The local chap who was our guide was a San man and he was 37 years old. This was the third bout of rain fall for 2008 and the first time in his life he's seen rain in June. He didn't know why and we didn't have the heart to explain why global weather patterns are changing. Sad.

Next from Sossuvlei was the desert/dessert (omit one) . I could decribe for the entire world the inside of our bus which I studied intently during thes time but i think not. We eventually ended up at fish river canyon which is the second largest in the world (the quite grand canyon) and took many obligatory photos. It was actually really pretty though and a nice spot to hunker down.

From there we basically drove to Capetown. We did stop in cederburg for an im-port-ant night of rest but didn't do much else. Next stop was the end of our tour in Capetown...

Capetown is glorious. It has a harbour 10 times that of the viaduct and long street is a much cooler, larger and more amazing version of Cuba Street. It also has rather a lot of violence and a few large townships/ghetto's but nowhere is perfect. The mountain is also spectular. We've so far visited ~6 cafes in two days to get a statistically significant cross section of the Capetown coffee's. Not bad. Kate bought jeans and I've acquired such interesting stuff as camera batteries. There is an "investment car dealership" which I find amusing - obviously their cars don't depreciate like all other ones.

Yesterday we made the obligatory trip to Robben island. It was quite an experience. Our tour was approximately as follows "HI, I AM YOUR FRIENDLY GUIDE. I AM VERY FRIENDLY. ASK ME QUESTIONS. MORE QUESTIONS. DAMMIT PEOPLE HARRASS ME. BLAH BLAH YELL YELL" etc. The other funny thing to me was that he presumed we were interested in parts of hte island unrelated to the prison where the political prisoners were kept. I couldn't believe it when he pointed out the lighthouse (it's 30 metres high - the tallest point on the island). Needless to say some people took photos of said lighthouse. After exactly 45 minutes (THIS VERY FRIENDLY TOUR IS EXACTLY 45 MINUTES HA HA HE HE OR ELSE I GET FIRED HAW HAW) we were delivered to the prison proper where an ex inmate met us. He had a fantastic voice, an interesting/sad story and 45 minutes also. Anyways, Mandela's cell was rather small, his story rather inspiring and the tour was overall excellent. The oppressiveness of Apartheid is not the best legacy I can safely say.

Anyways. We have 4 more days here before going back to East Africa/Dar es Salaam/the third world. It'll be a shock to our increasingly pampered systems but that's okay. In the meantime we'll go wine tasting, go to simon's town for food and latte ourselves stupid. Hurrah.

Congrats to Dave, Pete Reeves and other people who have things to congratulate. I love news from home. Who on earth is Adam Thompson? Casedog must be beside himself that Tanerau Latimer is getting talked about (and don't forget that he is about to be a dad).

The situation in Zimbabwe and South Africa's treatment of it is in the news here a lot. Grrr. Richie McCaw's knee dominates the sports news headlines here though. Funny.

Party on.

Jeff

Zambia, Bostwana, Namibia

Well.

I can' believe it's been 10 days since our last post. We've been flat out on tour. Today is a bit of a down day so I finally get a chance to catch my breath and type gibberish on the internet.

I can't possibly run through all the stuff we've done and quite frankly it would be a tad boring and mired in too many details. Instead i'll just talk about the odd thing here and there.

First of all Botswana - this country has all of 2 million people, a massive desert, a strong currency and fluent tourism. We loved it there and especially loved Chobe National Park. We also spent 3 days on the Okavango delta including 1 night bushcamping on an island in the delta. Interestingly enough, the island had lions, elephants, zebra, kudu and snakes on it. Thus our position seems a tad precarious - a restricted geography with carnivorous predators who have a dwindling source of food looking favourably on maybe a nice thigh of Jeff or arm of Kate, but it was fine... We even managed to find ourselves on a Cessna 206 (7 seater) on a scenic flight over the delta. Stunning view and semi-mad english pilot who delighted in terrorifying us with his tricks...

Botswana though has quite a lot of sadness too - mainly in the form of a mile high HIV rate and the slow eradication of the Kalahari bushmen. These people were awe inspiring and despite the highly touristy nature of our encounter with them it is safe to say they left a strong impression on all of us. Fences are also strangling the Kalahari which is terrible.

Namibia - amazingly german, clean and sausage ridden place. It's very western and treats us to Windhoek lager, Herero women and treats such as strudel. This country is very much first world and the areas we have been have been awesome. We camped a night at Spitzkoppe which is a rocky outcrop in the Namib desert. Very flintstones...

Right now we are in Swakopmund. It is again delightful. Anyways, the coolest thing here are the sanddunes. We went yesterday and jumped on quad bikes to explore them. Wel;l I thought it was an exploration trip. INstead though I was put on a 350cc quadbike and after 30 seconds of induction we were driving straight up 30 metre sanddunes at maybe 50-60 kmh. It was frankly terrifying and the only reason we kept going was a small touch of male ego! Twas like skiing on steroids! Very cool and luckily we weren't injured.

ANyways, onwards and downwards from here. We are off to see some dunes that are 100 m high which should be cool. Then through down to fish river and into capetown in only 6 days. Better leave now and google me up a place to stay.

Poor NZ cricket. I wonder if Dan Carter can swing a bat? Seems he can do most things.

Ciao.

Central Southern Africa

Hey World,

Man, I cannot believe it's been so long since we last blogged. So much seems to have happened. I'll try to get through it chronically although rambling may be permissable so we'll see.

The end of our time in Nkata Bay was excellent. Kate qualified as a diver which was great. We also spent most of a week helping the staff at Butterfly Lodge with the opening of their information centre for the local community. It was cool to head out into the community and meet local NGO people who, despite being poor themselves, were fully committed to helping others who have AIDS etc etc. We also managed to attend a concert of a band called "Souls of the Ghetto" who are a Malawian Reggae Group touring Europe soon. We had a great night dancing with the locals. One other thing I managed was a night dive in Lake Malawi. Pretty scary but worthwhile. The dolphin fish are apparently rather famous (think BBC documentaries and english accents describing their incredible lifestyles) and I certainly enjoyed watching them hunt.

After all this action it was time for some bussing. We cracked into it with a nice wee 8 hour ride on the bus from hell. The first four hours were spent standing in the aisle. Not merely standing comfortably either - more contorted and funky like. At one point I thought a little kid was touching my leg. Turned out it was a chicken. A couple of police inspections and a couple of litres of sweat later and we arrived in Lilongwe at dusk. We stayed at Mabuya camp which was rather cool. We had the following day for rest but typically spent it shopping. This time though shopping involved heading to the Lilongwe markets where we each got a zip up sweatshirt. Kate managed to get a "Vegetarians are more fun" tshirt and I scored a sweet chocolate brown vest. These items should keep us warm as the temperatures plunge in the desert. Total cost of the 4 items was $5 bucks. Thanks to whoever donated them to their church back home.

Next was a 530am start and a minivan to the border of Malawi and Zambia. We managed this without a hitch and found ourselves in Zambia by 8am. We promptly hired the first taxi we found only to learn that we'd hired the passenger seat. That's right - the "nice" man expected both me and kate and our backpack to sit in the passenger seat. We packed a sad and so Kate was allowed in the back seat which was good. Bad though was this meant the guy from the backseat attempted to share a seat with the driver. Thus picture 2 guys sitting in the drivers seat, cracked windscreen and potholed road going 90 kmh. Good times. The saving grace of all this was that the taxi driver abruptly pulled to a stop next to a large bus. This bus happened to be going to Lusaka and so we jumped on (much to the annoyance of the driver who'd had to stop when our taxi driver parked infront of him). Luckily we had scant quantities of US cash with which to pay for our tickets. The next 9 hours were spent in relative comfort driving through Zambia although to be honest it looked more like the set of the flintstones movie.

Lusaka was nicer than expected but we were quickly on our way at 530 am the next morning again. This time though we were on the Mazhundu family bus - an exiled zimbabwe company who were unbelievable - movies, individual seats, a/c and cans of coke as part of the service. We arrived in Livingstone around 2pm. By 330pm we were on a "booze cruise" taking in the glorious sunset on the Zambezi river. This night ended with a little madness but was all good. Next morning was Kate's birthday. We celebrated this with a wee visit to Vic Falls. Currently gushing 10 million litres per second across a 1.7km expanse down 106 metres, the Falls are certainly cool. It's funny that you can only see water gush over the top of a tiny section at once. The steam/spray it generates means you can't see the bottom or across the whole falls at once. Doesn't much matter though as the roar, the sensation and the view are unreal. So unreal infact we went back the next day with the camera and got a few cool pics..

Zambia though maybe 3 times the price of Malawi. Beer = $3 a bottle for instance. Cigarettes still cheap as chips.

Anyways, 4th June and our Acacia tour starts. It seems like a cool group of people and the camp grounds we've had are nice. The water is now safe to drink and the beer is certainly cheaper here in Botwana. The infrastructure is on par with Zambia and thus light years ahead of Malawi and Tanzania. We are now staying in Kasane which is a really cool wee town on Chobe national park. Last night we went for a game cruise on a barge. We saw greater kudu, Botswanan baboons, fish eagles, hippo's a plenty and then elephants. The elephants were unreal. Around 40 of them showed up and drank from the river 5-8 metres from 50 wide eyed whities. The girls still managed to coo at the baby elephants and the boys were impressed with the large bull elephants... The only problem with the drive was that our bus and thus our camera were stuck at Zambian customs and thus we went without photos :( (guess you had to be there!) This was a real shame as the photography would have been so easy. Any fool with a half decent camera could produce a coffee table book.

Then this morning we were up at 530 again for a game drive in 4wd. This was cool although the game didn't really show up. To compensate for hte lack of camera last night I took 190 photos of mixed quality (like a fool) . Am still waiting to see most of the more famous animals but it's awesome cruising round at dawn. Can't wait for the serengeti...

So yeah, that's all our news. We are now living like kings, eating and drinking whatever we like and regaining much weight. The next few days see us driving to more national parks and the Okavango delta. Sounds cool to me! Hopefully it doesn't get any colder though as it's already down near freezing most nights. Our 12 dollar nylon sleeping bags are certainly gonna struggle.

Jeffo. (Oi Jeff, aren't NZers meant to be tough? I heard you were born frozen)

PS, if you want a postcard send me your address.
PSS got ma head shaved. la viva moce. doesn't look much different to normal to be honest. how odd.

Malawi

Hey Everyone,

Sorry for not posting in the last few weeks. Malawi doesn’t have the best internet access and besides, we’ve been waaaaaaayyyy too busy! (yep, busy, real busy)

Since our last post we travelled a solid 2 days of buses, taxis, minivans and bicycle couriers to get to Nkhata Bay, Malawi. We weren’t sure quite what to expect but we were quite surprised none the less! We stumbled in weary and tired at sunset into butterfly space. Unfortunately they were full. They did however lend us a tent although it was more of a nylon sack with a couple of poles and no tent pegs! None the less, the ever adaptable Jeff and Kate set up shop and unfurled our 0.1mm thick silk sacks onto the ground for sleeping. We quickly migrated to the bar next door to imbibe a healthy quantity of “local sleeping aid.” Anyway, many bottles of sleeping aid later and help from a couple of nice saffie guys(in the form of a single mattress) and we managed a full night sleep!

Two weeks later and we’re now living in a zebra motif painted hut approximately 2.5 metres from the lakes edge. It’s glorious. Each day we wake to the sound of the waves and either go for a swim, a cup of bottomless coffee or wander into town. Thus I am either feeling healthy, wired or inquisitive! We are helping out here with setting up a community resource centre focussing on healthcare, agriculture and income development. Kate is helping out with some local intellectually disabled children too which is nice.

There are over 800 species of fresh water fish in Lake Malawi. It is rumoured but generally considered untrue that one species tastes like cheese cake. The other great thing about the lake is that there is a really excellent dive school operating here. So without further ado Kate and I signed up and squeezed into our wetsuits last Monday! We had a great few days obtaining our Open Water Dive qualification although Kate fell sick and missed the last bit of the course. She is on catch up this week though! There are some cool things to see in the lake but my favourite is the upside down fish. These things have apparently realised at some point in their history that swimming upside down is a good idea and they do it quite often! Good for them. You’ve got to do something fairly spectacular to stand out from the other 800 other species!

Anyways, before I go a quick description of Nkata Bay. The people here are really nice. They also speak English which makes interaction a breeze! The tap water here is even drinkable! Having said that, Kate has been ill with Giardia so maybe we should revise that status slightly.(we are now zapping the water with UV everyday which is fun AND healthy!)

Also, congrats to Walmsley for mowing down more spare ribs than young Mr Mullin. Very Impressive. Now you’ll have even more ribs sticking out!

We are skipping off to Lilongwe, Lussaka and then Vic Falls over next weekend. Will post again hopefully from there although not if we are too busy celebrating Kate’s 27th bday!

Take care out there!

Onwards and Downwards

Hey Everyone.



We've managed to upload photos! Get to the photobucket link to check it out!!



Post-Pangani life has been interesting!! We've reduced our gear by 50% and are now travelling with only one pack and a smaller backpack! hoorah. Anyways, we left our beloved Pangani Saturday. We made it as far as Peponi's - a heavenly wee place 1 hours drive away from home and figured that was enough travel for the day. We checked in only to find out they were full and so we had to camp under the stars. Another Jeff and Kate romantic moment!!! Except that this time it was disrupted by a dose of weeping and gross conjunctivitis in my left eye!! The next morning I woke with it in the other eye so we decided to move into the resort next door (called "Capricorn"). This resort takes Visa so we felt like we were able to waste time and money with glee! Soon after we checked in Kate developed a nice little case of bung eye for herself. You can picture us sitting there eating our dinner in the most romantic setting yet of our holiday both red eyed and none too pleased!!



Anyways, we soon recovered enough to travel onwards back to Dar es Salaam. We have now been holed up here for a couple of days. On Friday we head to Mbeya in south Tanzania and from there due south into Malawi. We apparently head to Mzuzu and then hang a left and end up in Nkata Bay. We plan to spend a couple of weeks there because there is a cool backpackers hostel there that you can volunteer at. It also looks beautiful!! (http://www.butterfly-space.com/). From there we plan to be in Vic Falls, Zambia for Kate's birthday on the 3rd of June. THen on the 4th of June we depart Vic Falls on an Acacia tour that heads through Botwana and Namibia down to Capetown. We'll spend a few days there and then return back to Dar es Salaam in time for mum and dad's arrival on the 30th of June. Good times.



6 weeks in Africa have passed and we are still going strong!! Dinner tonight might even be lebanese!



Great article about bird flu in the national english newspaper this week: "hundreds worldwide have been infected by bird flu and millions more have died..." - brilliant!



Oh also - we saw a dude with a television on his head. Also another with a toilet bowl. This means we've seen a tv, a toilet and a fridge. It is our aim to see an entire apartment being carried around. Kind of like an african monopoly!



Take care. Tuliakachezi Ka Mandezi (Cool, Crazy like a Banana)



Jeff. Kate.



PS check out the jandal tan...

The Final Edition of the Pangani Daily Times

Hey Everyone,

Thanks for all the feedback on this blog/emails etc. We appreciate them :) comments are good too!

Anyways the mood has brightened since our last post and nothing major has gone wrong since! The ferry that was "broken" down on Zanzibar was of course not broken down so with some judicious payment methods we made it to dar es salaam as planned. We stayed at the dar YWCA which was okay and did nothing much of note for 3 days. Dar is nicer than we first realised and has the odd western aspect to it - meaning of course that it has pizza which is great for recovering from gastro...

One incident of amusement that will be exaggerated for years to come was my exchange with a pickpocket. A big scary one too(i.e maybe 50 kilos of scrawny local man). The story is that we were walking past the bus stand and some nice chap aggressively yanks on my shirt and accuses me of standing on his foot. Kate and I begin apologising like mad. All of a sudden I feel a slimy hand dart into my pocket and go for my wallet. With astounding speed i clamp my left hand onto his and shove/perform some crazy ninja move with my right hand. The lout falls down and the people around yell at him. We scurry away before there is any violence etc etc. Wallet saved!!

So after Dar we head to Arusha in the north. This is the town/city where all the westerners visit to go safari/climb kili etc. We were picturing maybe a Queenstown type adventure destination. While I won't deride Arusha it wasn't quite to this level. We saw the UNICTR - tribunal for rwanda which is obviously important. You can tell this in Africa by the quality of the 4WD's they have. This tribunal had white Merc's...

The purpose of this visit to Arusha was to meet with our charity to determine the future of our time here in Tanzania. Kate has been having troubles with her medical registration and despite having done everything we were meant to do we now know it'll take 3+ months, money and effort to fix. I have also been having troubles with my business volunteering in terms of the amount of work actually needed (very little) and the ethically "sub-rigorous" way in which they operate. We took this information to our charity and after some debate agreed that it would be best if we all shook hands and went our separate ways. This is a disappointing blow for our humanitarian intentions here in Tanzania but too bad.

We are now trying to decide how to spend the rest of our time and efforts here in Africa. We are currently planning a bit of travel and then we'll reassess. This travel plan is rather fluid and may involve heading to Malawi, Botswana, Vic Falls and down through Namibia to Capetown. The first step was to head home to good old Pangani and catch up with our friends. We are now doing washing like crazy (except that someone stole our pegs from our washing line) and eating our last Pangani Orange's (best in Tanzania) We'll shortly pack up our gear - except for the Wesley Snipes DVD which we have donated to the local library to file under the section "Quality American Literature," and head to Dar es Salaam again. From there we'll make a proper plan and hopefully execute it like the hard outs we are. After all, we still have zip-off pants and thus must travel!

Kate has taken over!! The blog is falling...

Just wondering if anyone knows of any companies who have money for charity lying around and would like to support an HIV based charity. TAWAHAESS (The team for assisting in the war against HIV AIDS and elimination of social stigma in Pangani) have just lost their German benefactor. They provide home based care, food and nutrition to very poor people with HIV, assist with transport to the hospital for people in the villages to get their antiretrovirals and give counseling to anyone who wants an HIV test. They also do a fair bit of community education. Their running costs are about $500 usd per month. I don't really know where to start looking but if anyone has any ideas that would be great. Unfortunately it costs $$ to set up a website so they don't have one to look at (nor do they have a computer). Cheers.

Righto, take care everyone down under. Talk again soon!

Zanzibar - " Nemesis Island"

Well I guess you have to laugh about it. This post is kind of like one of those stories you write when you are seven years old at primary school using the black crayon - "the worst week was when..."


We are having a few issues with our volunteering placement at the moment. To fix it (in Jeff and Kate style) we figured a nice trip to the alluring azure island of Zanzibar would work a treat.

Zanzibar held an aura of hope, of nice food, tourists to yarn to and an ease of life we desparately sort.

We departed Pangani last thursday at 5am on a motorized dhow. Yup. This sucker was made from mangrove and powered by an almighty 9.9 hp motor. Kate, myself, the boat captain, our rastafarian tour guide and 4 other unnecessary randoms transported across the open ocean on this thing. Anyways, despite the apparent hairiness of this mode of transport it worked fine. The guys even caught a 1 metre long fish of some description (yellow? with fins?) using no rod. Impressive.

So we land on the beach (well in the ocean next to the beach) and promptly get hit up by a cop. He was a real cop we have been assured (despite his casual clothes and photocopied badge/extortion permit). Anyways he wants us to get an immigration stamp. We refuse as we aren't immigrating and he packs a sad. Our rasta tour guide has a friend on the island who comes to help. His form of help was to take money from us and give it to the cop. This of course worked very well. It was of course annoying to see this cop and this "friend' sharing out the money 30 mins later. Crappy incident #1.

So anyways, we stay the night at premier beach resort the Kendwa Rocks. This was fine. We picked out our room and our rasta tour guide Ali decided to stay there too. Next thing I know we're standing at reception paying for our room and it becomes clear we have to pay for Ali's
room too!?! Apparently when he said he'd take us to Zanzibar he meant "I'll sit on the boat with you in return for a nights accomodation, food and money for me to get home!." So that night picture us sitting at our candle light table on the sand in a very romantic honeymoon style setting - just me, Kate and our Tanzanian Rasta tourguide. Funniest part about Ali is that he actually had never really been to Zanzibar before and thus had no idea of anything much at all. Just another hilarious situation we'd manage to find ourselves in. Thus I dub this crappy incident #2.

The next morning I wake around 4am feeling hot. I rewake at 7am and i'm feverish and feel terrible. We promptly bail from our beach resort and hire a taxi to boost the 55 km into Stonetown in south Zanzibar where a hospital and western ammenities beckon. Kate at this point secured us a minor victory in the battle against Zanzibar. She scored us a taxi for 20000TSH instead of 50000TSH. This was a grand saving except I think it meant that the driver decided to skip the procurement phase of our drive and thus we conked out of petrol half way up the first hill 500m from our origin. So we sat there for an hour. They feigned mechanical problems and took out the battery etc until reinforcements arrived. Crappy incident #3.

Anyways, we get to Stonetown a couple of hours late and promptly check into the Baghani Guest house. This place was nice and great relief for me. It had a tv, a western bog and an alright bed. It was here I spent 3 full days lolling around sleeping, sweating, feeling rotten etc etc. My efforts at going out were fascical and brief. Luckily though I tested negative for Malaria and merely had a mean bout of gastro. Kate during this time didn't really get much touristing done and generally had a bad time too. We dub this crappy incident #4.

Anyways when we go to leave the Baghani on day four we realise our small camera is missing. Cliche! Turns out that someone has clearly taken it during one of my brief sojourns out of the hotel. The safe in our room was broken so we'd been hiding our valuables etc etc and plus this place was actually nice so we weren't too worried about our gear. Management accused us of going touristing and losing it somewhere knowing full well we'd barely left the place in days. So you'll have to wait even longer for photos now. Crappy incident #5.

So anyways, after I began to recover we planned to do some tourist stuff. Some tour guide called Rasheed organised a tour for us. It was 70 000 TSH and sounded great - we had a private car to take us around and show us the industry etc. So we jump in the car which drives for 2 mins before stopping. Rasheed has to visit his aunty. After this brief delay we drive 10 mins to a plantation. We did have a good time there looking round all the sorts of trees and plants for tumeric, cardamom, vanilla, chilli, coffee, etc etc. This was nice. After about an hour though our tour finishes and the tour guide wants paid. Yup. So we have to fork out 10 000 TSH ($10 bucks) to pay for our tour. Rasheed then drives us to a "popular" beach for a swim. Kate had her togs and everything. Well after wading through sewerage to get to the ocean we see it's got all these sharp underwater rocks and swimming would be a tad unwise. We storm back to the car. Rasheed tells us that is the end of the tour. Rasheed senses our annoyance but can't work it out. We eventually tell him and so he refunds our 10 000 TSH from teh spice tour. We then have a blubbering apologetic Rasheed trying to appease us for nearly an hour. There is an encore but you've had enough of this one. Crappy incident #6.

So today we are leaving. We got up nice and early, got set for our 10am ferry but it turns out there is none. Dunno why. The 12:30 is broken and so we are now catching the 4pm. Thus I have time to share with the whole world our delightful Zanzibari experience. I am sure this island is alluring and exotic and delightful for most but it is certainly our nemesis island and one we will not be returning to for love or money...

The only real highlight for me was watching McCullum's 158* live on some random Indian cable channel. These things happen though. At 4pm we're off to Dar and then tomorrow on the 10 hour bus to Arusha. Onwards and Upwards.

Hmm. 3 more hours to kill. I wonder if Rasheed has something for us to do? or maybe Ali? or some other nice tour guide?...

Damn I'm looking forward to using our new toaster.

Pangani Daily Times Edition Two

Hey Everyone.

It's a lovely day today. It hasn't rained in 48 hours and the dirt roads are starting to dry out. The ocean breeze keeps the temperature at 30 which is nice.

We went up the river the other night to check it out. It's a magnificent place and we visited villages that haven';t seen white people in months. Classic african colonialist adventures. It was fun though and the village elders were all amusingly bug eyed on palm wine - palm tree sap fermented into some unearthly brew. We also saw a colobus monkey to go along with the wee vervet's we saw the other day.

Then sunday we spent the day making dinner. An adventure in itself! We went to the market and acquired tomatoes (50 cents for 6), lentils (50 cents for half a kilo from a sack), garlic, whatever else total cost = $1.50. We cooked on a wee kerosene stove for ages which was great but then i noticed small bugs crawling across the top of our pot. Turns out the curry powder we had bought was infested. This was massively annoying as it wsa the only "western" ingredient in our dish - i.e it came in a plastic masterfoods style shaker. Oh well. Luckily the bugs were black and we could see them in our yellow dahl. Kate spent 20 minutes picking them all out!! dinner was eventually tasty though. All's well that end's well.

Our bed is our newest problem. It's a slat bed with an inch of foam on top. The local shop will sell me a much better mattress if i give them $70 USD which is a massive ripoff. Humpf. Also, all the local beds are six feet long which is fine for kate but about 2 inches too short for me and when you have a mosquito net you can't touch the sides etc. Bsaically i have to sleep in a ball on our inch thick foam mattress! ah well. it's all good.

Another funny thing that's happened is that kate decided she needed more to do at nights so randomly she bought a 16 in 1 dvd off some street vendor. Anyways, the dvd of course doesn't go at all and the street vendor has moved to timbuktu or somewhere so a refund looks unlikely. THe funniest part though is that the dvd is a wesley snipes collection. It has blade one, blade two, passenger 57 and other essentials on it! Kate must really be battling to have bought that one!!

O well - enough frmo me. take care.

Jeff

Pangani Daily Times Edition One

Hey Hey from Pangani's intrnet cafe. This cafe is truly awesome complete with latte's, almond biscotte and a snotty metrosexual waiter!! (or so i wish)

Anyways, we've settled into life here in Pangani in a big way. We become a little more civilized with each day that passes and manage to find wee tidbits of western culture to cling to! For instance yesterday we managed to upgrade from silk sleeping sacks to a fitted sheet. Kate even made a fruit salad for breakfast (pear and banana chopped with pocket knife!)

We spent the weekend at a nice wee resort called Peponi's which has banda's, fans and chocolate brownies. You can only guess at the gluttonous uptake. They also had vervet monkeys which climbed on the neighbouring banda. pretty cool. From Peponi we headed up to Tanga for a day or so. We stayed at the gracious Malindi hotel which had A/C (not functioning) a shower (not functioning) and a bed with 4 broken slats (obviously functioned too well for some previous guests/kids who still live at home). We visited 4-5 aid recipients while in Tanga and we're suprised at how well they are doing and how easily they seem to be increasing the size of their small enterprises.

In the course of heading out to one place I experienced a daladala which blew the 19 people and a goat daladala out the window. This one had 31 people in it. Admittedly many of these were children but hey 31 is still impressive! no goats though. Thanks also to Bela for entertaining us/joining us on this skirmish.

So yeah, since then it's been more of Pangani life. We've had another 3 bean stews and another couple of doses of tanzanian bureucracy. In particular, young Kate has been sidelined by a surly chap at the hospital who insists that she have a certain type of registration. So while she waits she's decided to try her hand at teaching. Kate is now officially known as "Mrs Kate" the form 3 english teacher and form 2 biology teacher. This means she is teaching 15-20 year olds about the birds and the bees, and reading comprehension too. It might seem like a bit of a shambles but considering that the kids sit there with no teacher at the moment then Kate will be a massive improvement. That's right - they literally just sit and wait til a teacher is found from somewhere. Anyways, while Kate is teaching those subjects I will be teaching maths. This seemed like a great idea until i saw the syllabus and realised they had to learn matrices! i.e the matrices which were removed from the NZ school system some time before I started! so my weekend will be spent learning maths and Kate's will be spent learning the various parts of the ecosystem.

Photos - i would love to upload photos but the computers here aren't up to it .the first problem is that they have no resizing software. If someone out there could email me a small photo resizing program (<1mb) that would be super.

I think we'll spend the rest of the afternoon hanging out with some locals and maybe get to the beach for a swim if the rain holds off. Tomorrow we are heading up the Pangani river to drink coconut wine and check out the sunset. Hopefully it's awesome.

Time for a chungwa. party on.

Jeff (and Kate who is "helping" me today!!)

PS 50 cent is playing in dar es salaam on May 5th! shall we go? he's no Professor Jay (most famous tanzanian rapper by far) but it would be hilarious.

Africa!!!

Hey Everyone.

Africa!!! We've been here maybe 10 days now and settling in so very rapidly! I could write screeds on our experiences thus far - most good, some bad...

Let's ignore the flights, the taxis and dubai airport and skip to Dar es Salaam. It felt wierd to be landing there (esp. after dubai) where the trees were the tallest things and the international terminal was smaller than a supermarket. After an hour of sweaty customs forms we were met by a random who drove us through the streets to the man who was looking after us. Mr Mgoba was delightful and certainly helped us cope with our first tastes of Africa. He made it seem such an easy place and had us on a bus with ease.

We snaked north out of Dar on this reasonably crusty bus but were amazed by the greenery and the mud huts everywhere. It was an awesome feeling. Anyways, about 10 mins later i feel tiny hands running through my hair. I turn around to find a couple of 4 year old lads very fascinated. They even called out "simba simba" a couple of times...

Later that day (after surviving the horrid tanga bus station) we made it to Pangani. We were hoisted off the bus in the dark (no street lights) and pointed towards a house. Admittedly at this point we were v. tired and I was totally unable to see myself or kate surviving here.

Anyways, we are now 10 days into our time and things have changed. We've learnt to cope to some degree and are now having real fun.

For instance, we are doing rather well at learning Swahili. I can follow quite a few conversations suprisingly and count etc etc. Makes life easier.

The weather was initially hot (30 degrees day and night) but it's been more like 25 degrees since then. It varies between comfortable and uncomfortable but hey! it's meant to warm up soon after the rains (which pour for a couple of hours each day)

One problem we're having though is food. Pangani is very poor - most people earn approx 1000tsh a day (or $1nzd - don't laugh!) and so you can imagine what sort of things they eat. This lack of variety is tough to deal with. A typical day is a chapati for breakfast with a cup of tea. A couple of scrabble tile sized bits of beef for lunch with some cassava (root vege like spuds) and then maybe beans and rice for tea. We also drink heaps of soda. This fibre free, high fat diet is possibly not ideal but hey we'll make it through!

Volunteering has been admiteddly quite stalled as well thus far. My work is extremely slow due to difficult travel conditions, non-attendance of meetings and the nature of tanzanian business. Kate's is much slower still as she only starts next week! Still, we hope this aspect of our trip improves greatly over the next few months...

The best story we have is of the tournament we held here last week. We were discussing holding it towards the end of our stay but decided to have it early before Mary (the other volunteer here) left. This was just brilliant. They played soccer and netball. The netball was kates domain. Picture her blowing her whistle like crazy trying to control 2 teams and 300 African school girls who don't want a bar of it. Everytime there was goal there was a pitch invasion and absolute mayhem. Brilliant. The first 2 matches went quite well to be honest. There were rules and a general sense of calm prevailed. Then in the final the tension and excitement simply got too much and amusingly enough the two teams broke out in fist fights. Kate dealt to that by simply calling off the entire affair and declaring the match a draw (as you do) This lead to the local girls forming a victory parade around the school grounds for a good 30 mins. The soccer was possibly even more frenetic. The games were played on the quintessial african pitch complete with goats, cows and bicyclists everywhere. The final was a draw. We thus decided to have a penalty shootout. I found myself in the middle of a circle of African kids aged 5-17 blowing the whistle and hoping nothing would happen. THe shootout ended 2-2 and after much haranged consultation with the other Mzungu we called it a draw as well! you had to be there (or see the photos)

Then this morning we abandoned Pangani to get some western style luxury/recovery time.
We jumped onto a daladala (clapped out old minivan) with 19 other people and a goat and and headed to Peponi's - an idealesque (is that a word?) beach resort. They have toasted cheese sammies and steak. So very happy! we even got to see our wedding photos for the first time. They are superb.

Anyways. Hi to everyone and thanks for the texts and emails. We do have a cellphone here but can't think of the number - will post it soon!

Oh, finally, saw a dude walking down the street last night with a fridge on his head. I'm not even making that up.

Take care of yourselves and i'll take care of the steak i am having in an hour or so.

Jeff

God made man, We make gentleman (best suit shop ever)

Sawadee Ka,

Quick update from Pattaya. It's um, nice. Our resort is great. You can tell how good a hotel is in Thailand by the number of bottles of water you get each day. We're starting to use ours to shower, wash clothes, water the plant matter on our balcony etc etc. Oh, also, if you are planning to be lazy and lie on the beach all day then it's perfect. Some dude even brings you your beach towel (in case you accidentally expend calories doing it yourself)..

The rest of Pattaya is rather, um, interesting. Go go go and keep going. If you like old men with those great undercut ponytails and mesh singlets then this is your place!!! Pity if you like thai food. Great if you love German/Swiss/Sausage food. Starbucks here isn't as good...

You can see the sky tower from here (but not that crummy centrepoint two bit tower)...

So much culture. Off tomorrow back to Bangkok for our 130am flight. Can't wait to sit in that airport!!!

Party on.

Big Wedding Update

Hey World.



Well well well. Married aye. I caught my lovely bride handing out this blog address at the wedding so hopefully the readership is about to grow. Funny how she hates blogs!! it's sweet.


It's been nearly 3 weeks since I was last on here and a hectic 3 at that. They began with a long drive from Auckland through Hamilton, Palmy, Welly, Blenheim, Chch and the roo. I was home for a busy couple of days visiting people, selling stuff, drinking mum and dad's wine etc etc. It's all good. Thanks to Kate, Andy, Sandy, AJM, Dr Carr, Cathy, Becky, Gma and Gpa, Chrisso and of course mum and dad. :)

Monday morning and a flight to Sydney.. we finally got to castle hill around 11pm and crashed. The next day the lads (Weasel, Lilleypond, Pants, Grinder and Dingo and myself) took off down the beach. Many beers, fried chickens, swims in the ocean and beers later and the bachelorhood was well and truly extinguished.

Thursday bought wedding rehearsal and duffed lines, nerves and the reality of wedding finally hitting home. Friday involved a cool family lunch and the purchasing of my ring/haircut and what not. Made it to a restaurant in the rocks called "Pony" with mum and dad and their friends. Best restaurant ever!!! double marinated lamb, giant prawns, ginger creme caramel!

Then dawned Saturday. Game day! The photographers came at 11 and watched us get dressed. After 190239 photos of that they disappeared. Two hours later and we're at the pub with a calming beer and a nervous grin.

The ceremony itself went by in a complete blur. It was stiflingly hot, nerve racking but ultimately easy. We didn't duff anything and had a whale of a time. So special! Then came photos, more photos and a chance to hang out with the bridal party.

The reception was brilliant. L'aqua were perfect and the tables were fantastic (thanks Mrs Daniels and Abbey and co!) We had honestly the best night ever and seeing all those people up and dancing was just magic. The speeches were of the highest quality and the food was brilliant too. The Park Hyatt was fairly reasonable too ;) great champagne.

Sunday and Monday were a bit of a blur but i do know we went out for a couple of great meals. Bugalow 8 is awesome. (thanks again to all those people who boosted along).

Now here we are on Tuesday. We've only got a day til Thailand and we're frantically trying to finish off last minute details.

Weddings are great fun, extremely rewarding and i highly recommend them. Only do it once though! too exhausting otherwise!!

From here we have 1 night in Bangkok, 5 days in Pattaya at the Dusit Thani and then off to Dar es Salaam...

One final note: the presents we received were spectular. We were honoured and embarrassed by what we received. Thanks everyone for that.

I'll stop gushing now.

Next Post: Thailand? Dar? Crikey. This time tomorrow i'll be drinking dutch heineken and enjoying the best of emirates. Best of all i'll be doing it with my lovely wife (cue violins)

Jeff

Last Day at Work

Hey Team,

With 1 hour to go i've decided to prudently update my blog. I've deleted thousands of emails, wrapped up some projects and finally tidied my damned desk! Bit strange to think i won't be here come monday...

My delightful colleagues just presented me with the following going away card...

How nice is that?!!

Next post: from timaru next week.

Doors and Windows acting in contrary fashions...

Righto, now the blog is up and running. We've got 73 hits (of which maybe 20 are me but anyways...) including some from Fonterrans, AJParkers, Family, Penpals, Ozzies (your country rhymes with genitalia) Robin and what not. Robin Robin Robin.

Um, nothing much to report. Some guys came and took away our couch today, booked thailand accomodation, booked dentist, sorted out the bank... I've never been so organised in my life! Except of course tomorrow when i up the organisatino factor to a new and more retentive level...

Kate is officially leaving Auckland today. (at 730 incidentally) She is off to Hamilton hospital for 7 days of work, then 2 days back in Auckland next weekend, then 5 more days of work in Hamilton. She then has 2 more days in auckland on the 8th/9th March before flying away on the 10th... It's a symbolic thing that she is departing ex AKL and i'm departing ex CHC. i.e after marraige we'll "fly together." - am upping the cheese factor in honour of my former employers and because that's what Maria Van Trapp would do...

Anyone want to buy my car? it's awesome and have never missed a beat. I love that car but it has to go... otherwise it's gonna be a trademe fest.

Am dawning on the following facts:

i'm gonna miss during the remainder of 2008

• national winning the election (despite helen being glorious)
• nz winning 3 gold medals (single sculls men, some other rowing thing, women's bmx) at Beijing
• inflation (how will i cope??)
• the US elections (Obama sweeps to power with Hillary as VP)
• Birth of Jamina.
• ?? hopefully some new engagements and other announcements...
• Ski season.

Anyways, use the comments thingie. Will Rouse did and look how cool it made him. I loaded up one photo on photobucket. jeepers i'm clever.

Tanzania fact: over 50% of the government budget comes from foreign govts. Divided loyalties anyone??

sweet.

Humpf. Last Friday I resigned from the Supply Chain Strategy dept of Fonterra. This fact was insignificant until I realised there were only 11 days of work left before i depart. Equal parts yay, equal parts ut oh. Will officially finish with Fonterra after 40 pay days. Not a bad haul for a first dig at the crease. My last day of attendance will be the 29th of February.

The sheer number of small things we have to organise is almost beyond estimation (36?37?). However, I'm not going to bother with that stuff. Instead I'll outline our plans.

In some ways our trip started when we moved into a shoebox at the top of Symonds St with the express purpose of condensing our worldly possessions into roughly one car loads worth. This was/is liberating but tramautic. Thanks to those people on trademe who buy random crap.

Anyways the trip is:

1. Drive to Timaru stopping in Palmy, Welly, Blenheim and Chch to catch up with the scoundrels i know.
2. Fly to Sydney. Stress a lot. Get Married. Have awesomest day ever. Resume stressing a lot. Depart.
3. Fly to Bangkok for 5 days of Huahin doing very little and beaching very lots.
4. Fly to Dar es Salaam. We'll arrive mid afternoon utterly shagged from travel. We are to be met by some guy who we'll stay with for a day or so hopefully.
5. Travel north to Pangani. This is apparently 300 odd kilometres of "road" north of Dar Es Salaam. During our time there we'll work hard, travel a lot and hopefully conserve funds a bit.
6. During October, November, December we are free to do ????
7. Fly Home 12th December for some much needed Christmas Cake and fattening up (with a bit of luck).

I want to record my pre-impressions of Pangani. So far I've heard from Mondo challenge that it is a nice place, from some tourists that it is wonderful and from some past volunteers that the bugs/animals and people are horrific. Lets hope it's a combination of all of these things and truely memorable. Let's also hope it's not too hot, not too malarial and not too insurmountable!! The photos i found on google are spectacular which is good. There aren't too many things that a good swim at a spectacular beach can't fix...

Humpf. long first post. hopefully it'll be one of many!!!