No Stopping for Lions (20 page)

The Foxes Ruaha River Lodge is right on the Ruaha River and we arrive to find the family and staff standing on the bank deciding whether to abandon camp and move to higher ground. Although it's not raining here the river is brown and swollen, fed from the catchment valleys further upstream. The river rushes past the dining room and laps at the steps of the chalets, covering grass and foundations. We all stay put as the height of the water drops in a matter of hours, and over the next few days we witness this constantly, the rising and ebbing of the river, unrelated to any rains we're receiving at the camp.

That first day brings other excitements. We park in front of reception while we check in. A staff member is hovering outside and when we've finished our business he informs us that a snake has just slithered down the passenger's side of the Troopy from the sleeping capsule and dropped to the ground. ‘But don't worry, it is heading towards the water and it is only this big,' he adds, opening his arms as wide as they can go.

Ruaha is the country's second-largest national park and it has a reputation for being remote, wild and bursting with a great diversity of both flora and fauna, particularly predators. We're keen to go out exploring, but the land is sodden and we're advised that we'll be limited to areas of high ground where game will be difficult to find. That doesn't bother us, so a young guide comes along to escort us around flooded roads and overflowing rivers. Instead of searching for wildlife we drive around at will on the slippery tracks, admiring the view from these elevated positions and chatting to the guide about his life and ours. The Troopy crawls up over a rise and there reclining in front of us is a handsome young leopard, trying to dry out in a sunny patch on the road. For a second or two he continues to lick the water off his sleek flanks then suddenly there's a flash and he's gone like a puff of smoke, and we're left asking ourselves if he really was there.

As predicted the more remote corners of the park are inaccessible but we've seen enough to make us want to come back in a more accommodating time of year. We'll soon have no use for our copy of a guidebook to birds of Central and East Africa, so the day we leave we donate it to the young enthusiastic guide to whom we've become attached. He is overcome with gratitude and tells us softly, tearily, that he would never have been able to afford such a book. He asks us to write in it that it is now his, so that others won't steal it and management won't accuse him of theft.

Kisolanza Farm sits by the TANZAM Highway in the southwest of Tanzania. This region is called the Southern Highlands of Tanzania and we comment several times on how similar it is to the S outhern Highlands south of Sydney. There are eucalypt and pine plantations, and European-looking farms scattered about over rolling green hills. Kisolanza itself covers a large tract of land, an attractive cross between African bush and English country garden. It's the home of a second-generation white Tanzanian family and they offer tourist accommodation within a working farm. We take a cottage which sits in a field of wildflowers on the edge of an orchard and it is so comfortable, and the weather so cool after all the heat, humidity and rain we've passed through, that we stay on a little longer than we had first planned. After two days we've still not ventured out to explore the farm, but are happy to just loll around the cottage, sit in deck chairs on the yellow-flowered lawn and wander up to the restaurant when the drums announce the next meal. Well, the warning from our hostess about the presence of many snakes on the property could have been a contributing factor.

Further down the TANZAM Highway is the town of Mbeya, where we'll turn off and head south for Malawi after an overnight stop. The English manager of the hotel we stay in has spent most of his working life in Tanzania but has been trying to retire to the United Kingdom for many years. He explains his prevarication by likening Africa to a worm that makes its way stealthily into your being. Sometimes it sleeps and sometimes it wriggles about, but it's there, just under your skin. He says that he's fought it, and tried to ignore it, but has had to accept his destiny, for now the worm is not only under his skin but also in his blood. Neil and I exchange a look — we've heard that one before, but now it's making a lot of sense.

The manager convinces us to visit Matema Beach on the northernmost shores of Lake Nyasa before entering Malawi. Hard to get to rather than remote, it really is a beautiful spot, with the Livingstone Mountains to the east, rising jagged and steep straight up from the water's edge, and the huge blue–green expanse of Lake Nyasa lapping on the beach where dugout canoes lie about and locals wade. The hotel, really an R&R hostel for the Evangelical Church, is staffed by young boys with little English but good intentions. They look after the place well. They rake the sand every morning and are continually cleaning, and they provide unexpected luxuries such as thick towels, good bed linen and the toilet paper folded into a V.

We've had to bring our own food and we eat light lunches and pasta for dinner, and the boys turn a blind eye to us cooking on a primus ring on the cottage floor. In the evenings the locals gather in little family groups at the water's edge to bathe, kids splashing about with the soap while the adults socialise and gossip. In the heat of the day the sand, shimmering big brown crystals, is almost too hot to walk on, and when we go for a swim the warm water sits on our shoulders like a favourite cardigan. We sit on deck chairs under a tree, trying to catch a breeze, dozing and reading, and the boys drift over to us from time to time with offers of fresh fish, cold beers or handmade pottery for sale.

With a little haggling and some difficulty because of the language problem we negotiate a price for a canoe trip to the pottery village, via the Saturday morning market in a village at the end of the beach. We're quite pleased with ourselves for getting the price down from 25 000 to 15 000 Tanzanian shillings, about US$10, which we feel is fair and just for a canoe trip for three to four hours.

At eight o'clock the next morning our canoe is waiting on the beach. Philip, its owner, is a thin, dignified man who speaks even less English than the boys, but he has a steady oar and a strong paddling technique and we steam across the mirror-clear water racing our reflection. The market is crowded and full of life:
Jambo, hello mama! Welcome and welcome again!
Big happy mothers breastfeed chubby babies; women looking expectant and bored at the same time sell onions and green tomatoes, fancy headscarves and bright
kangas
; and everywhere clay pots are stacked in neat piles forming great walls of pottery.

Back in the dugout, heading towards our next destination, Philip doesn't miss a beat and the rhythmic splash splash splash of his oar would have lulled us into a doze if it wasn't so uncomfortable sitting cross-legged in a little pool of water on the hard canoe floor. We disembark again at the village and lots of little children run down to meet us. They hang onto our fingers and jostle for prime position closest to us, but Philip turns around and scatters them with a few words. The tour of the village is a bit disappointing as Philip, without English, can't explain anything, and of course all the women who are the potters are back at the other village selling pots. Whenever we meet someone younger than Philip they are deferential, exchange very long courteous greetings with him, and the women curtsey. Young girls also curtsey to Neil and me. It appears that Philip is a man of importance, despite his ragged clothes.

After a good hour of solid paddling we're delivered back to our beach and Neil hands over the money. Philip accepts it quietly but politely, and as I walk up the beach I turn around to see him sitting on the lip of the canoe with his head in his hands. Either it's not the amount the boys had told him to expect or he was hoping for a much bigger tip. He looks
very
disappointed. Neil is philosophical and mutters something about people never being happy, but when Philip follows us to our cottage and hangs around outside we both begin to feel guilty, and then downright mean. We decide to give him one of Neil's shirts and I retrieve it from the back of the Troopy. It's accepted gracefully and Philip is obviously pleased, but then after a couple of minutes he calls one of the boys over and they hover around outside, deep in discussion. Neil and I are now seriously troubled but stay indoors, trying to ignore them. They drift off and we later see Philip walking off down the beach.

A couple of hours later Neil and I are out sitting on deck chairs under a tree on the beach. I read to Neil from a current guidebook, which says that a canoe trip to the pottery village should cost no more than 1500 Tanzanian shillings and we agree that, even allowing for inflation, Philip should have been more grateful. A well-dressed man walks up purposefully, and shuffling, half bowing, shakes our hands.
Thank you, thank you, Sir. Asante sana mama. God bless you. God bless you, Sir
. It's the shirt that makes us twig that this is Philip, scrubbed up, in clean trousers and his new shirt, and it takes but a moment to realise that we've paid him ten times the going rate and he's been wrestling with his conscience ever since, wanting to tell us but so needing the money. His solution is perfect for him, but it leaves me uncomfortable and embarrassed. It is more than simply feeling like the Queen dispensing waves and favours; it feels like paternalism of the worst kind, being able to determine a person's happiness with a cast-off shirt and a few dollars.

The road into Malawi and down to Lake Nyasa is spectacular. It descends quite rapidly from an altitude of 2500 metres to just a few hundred metres, and passes through tea plantations, fields of bananas and maize, and forests of pine and eucalyptus, all with the magnificent backdrop of steep mountain ranges. As soon as we enter Malawi I'm reminded of something from our last visit 30 years ago: umbrellas are very important to the Malawian psyche. Then, it was in imitation of British dress and the brollies would be black, always rolled up and carried by men in dark woollen suits. Now everyone carries one, on their bikes, hooked over one shoulder or balanced on the head. You see them for sale on the side of the road in neat colourful rows and in a great variety of sizes — there are ones with wooden handles, hooked plastic handles, small ones, checked ones and golf-course-strength ones. They're used as much as sunshades as they are to keep the rain off and many times we've driven past women walking in the rain with their umbrellas carried horizontal on their heads, still unfurled.

Mzuzu is the main city in Malawi's northern region, situated between the lake and the high Nyika Plateau to the west. Driving around the streets in search of an Internet café I notice a young thin boy running up the street behind us, but I'm distracted and pay him no attention. We drive to one location, find no café there so cruise around the corner to the next hopeful place. As we're peering into the shop a face appears at my passenger's window. He introduces himself as Peter, and although he's out of breath from chasing us, he explains that he and a friend make greeting cards and sell them to tourists to support themselves, so would I like to buy a card. No? Then would we like a tour guide to show us around the town? If not then perhaps he could guide us down the road to our next destination? He's eager and naturally friendly, and his eyes are trusting despite his sad life, which we learn about shortly.

Peter is an AIDS orphan and one step above being a street boy. He was taught to make greeting cards by some NGO, and he and his friend Elliot set up a little business. Elliot paints the scenes on the cards and Peter sells them about town. They make enough to afford a shared room in the township. Peter hustles for business relentlessly in a town where few tourists visit. Maybe because of their determination there seems to be a level of acceptance of the boys among the townsfolk and after we buy some cards from him we see Peter go into a 7-Eleven, buy a Fanta with the proceeds and sit on a bench alongside local businessmen eating their lunch.

We come across Peter again when we're passing through town a week later. He seems distracted and asks if we could lend him some money for a public phone call, about 2 cents. Someone he's been close to is being buried today and Peter is desperate to find out where and at what time the funeral is. He finds us later to give Neil change and tells us that he got through with his call; although he was too late for the funeral, he's spoken with the family and so has done his duty. He's lost a bit of his spark so Neil buys him a Fanta and he comes with us to a café where we order lunch. The proprietor wants to kick Peter out, thinking that he is annoying us, but when we indicate that Peter is our guest, he sits sipping his Fanta with great dignity before thanking us and quietly slipping out the door.

Right up on the plateau in the north-west of the country, Nyika National Park is different to anything in Africa we've seen so far. It's at an altitude of over 2000 metres and strikingly attractive, with rolling green hills, bushlands of proteas, over 200 varieties of native orchid, pine forests planted back in the 1950s, and a few patches of original forest draped in moss and staghorns. It is home to plenty of animals, too, although not a great variety: roan antelope, eland, bushbuck, reedbuck and mountain zebra, and apparently the highest concentration of leopard in Central Africa, although we are not lucky enough to see one of these elusive inhabitants during our stay at Chelinda Lodge. The weather is cool, cold even, and a great relief to Neil from the humidity of the lake. But there's still plenty of rain about and that is the cause of the Troopy's first real challenge.

Late one morning we're driving on a firm, clayey track when we come to a bad patch, washed away by the rain. Neil thinks he'll go off-road to avoid it, but just as he starts to drive onto the verge the road gives way under the back wheel and the Troopy lurches over sideways, stuck. Luckily the wheel is sunk so deep, right down to the axle, that it prevents the Troopy from falling over completely onto the driver's side. Fearing that any shift in weight might topple us over we very gingerly vacate the Troopy on the passenger's side. Because of the tilt it will be too dangerous to use the Hi-Lift Jack, and there are no trees and no rocks for miles around that we could use as packing. The Troopy is in a tight spot. By a stroke of luck we have the phone number of the lodge stored in the satellite phone, and it is even greater luck that Neil is able to connect and summon help.

We walk a kilometre or so in heavy rain up to the top of the nearest hill so that the rescue party can locate us, and three and a half hours later a battered Unimog, a big, solid and slightly lopsided rough-terrain vehicle, comes trundling along, loaded up with workers. Neil has slung a snatch strap around the Troopy and these guys all swing on it so that the Troopy doesn't fall over with any extra movement; we connect up to the Unimog's towline and in a flash we're pulled out. What an anti-climax. Neil and I are wet and muddy, but we're light-headed with relief and drive back to the lodge, where we eat a huge lunch at 4.30 p.m.

From its position on the fringe of a pine forest, Chelinda Lodge looks out over rolling grasslands of alternating green and amber. The buildings are constructed entirely of pine logs and stone, and each of the cabins has a log fire, and steaming hot water from huge beehive-like donkey heaters outside. Skittish, pretty bushbuck wander out of the thicket below the lodge to nibble thick grass by the walkways, and families of roan antelope graze the slopes beyond. Up here on the plateau the night sky is so clear that it could be a computerised image, and the stars so bright and so close that they seem to be hovering just above our head. From our first days of camping, when Neil taught me to locate the Southern Cross, we often sit outside in the still and quiet of night, marvelling that the African sky could be this perfect. With neither pollution to cloud it nor illumination to confuse it, the sheer volume of what can be seen is overwhelming. ‘All the consternations of the Universe,' as one enthusiastic but misled guide once told us.

What interesting people we meet on our travels. An English honeymoon couple flew into the park on the day we arrived. They are young and in love, and probably still a little drunk after three straight days of celebrations and travelling. She is pretty and wellbred, with pale peaches-and-cream skin and vibrant blue eyes. When her husband complains that the tsetse flies and mosquitoes always target him she nuzzles his arm and murmurs, ‘That's because you're delicious, darling.' On a game walk she is attacked by red ants so straight away pulls down her jeans. The African guide dutifully picks the ants off her hips and thighs while her husband laughs that it's just as well she's wearing her horse-riding knickers and not a thong. It turns out that he is Irish, a fact which becomes apparent when his accent drops from plummy English to lilting Irish after he becomes comfortable in our company. Down to earth but slightly eccentric, he's been a jackaroo in Australia and a cowpoke someplace in the United States. She's been around, and a more perfectly matched pair would be hard to find. Totally uninhibited and with the confidence of youth, the world is their oyster and their company brings sunlight into every day.

The road we take south runs parallel to the shoreline of the lake, now called Lake Malawi by Malawians, and passes through acres of rubber trees, spooky and sinister in the afternoon light. I've read that no native birds inhabit rubber plantations so this might explain the empty, lifeless feel to these woods. Unhappylooking boys hold out handmade rubber soccer balls for sale, and as we approach they throw them on the road to demonstrate their perfect bounce. We're tempted to buy one just to cheer the boys up.

Makuzi Beach is a lovely spot. The lakeshore is very picturesque, the water's warm and calm and it's hippo and croc free, so everyone spends a lot of time in or on the water. Set in a little rocky cove between two fishing villages, the Makuzi Beach Lodge is very small and family run and we decide on the spot to stay a number of days. According to their passports the owners' two young boys are just the thirteenth and fourteenth white indigenous Malawians to be registered, which goes to show what the native white population is. We go swimming and kayaking every day and the young boys and their dog attach themselves to us, all three desperate for outside company. The oldest boy's hero is Steve Irwin and when he talks about Steve's adventures he unconsciously takes on Steve's persona and Steve's daring feats become his. His goal is to grow up quickly so that he can fill the gap by Terry Irwin's side made vacant by the untimely demise of her husband.

The parents get a kick out of Neil's unique interpretation of where we've been and what we've seen and their frequent ‘
What
was that again, Neil?' leads many times to splutters of laughter. Like Estonia National Park instead of Etosha, Neil has also been to Sangria Bay, not Senga Bay, but didn't have time to visit Fish River Gully (Fish River Canyon, just the second-largest canyon in the world), although at Lake Nakuru he saw plenty of flamencos on the shoreline. Our hosts are particularly tickled to learn that Japanese use shit cakes (shiitake mushrooms) in their cooking and all of us, including Neil, have a good chortle when Lake Chilwa becomes Lake Chowder. But Neil is unrepentant and says later that the obvious food theme must be a subliminal reaction to the general standard of dining we've experienced throughout our travels.

A half day's drive down the lake we find the Livingstonia Beach Hotel, a lovely old whitewashed colonial building, a poor cousin to the Victoria Falls Hotel in Zimbabwe. We're the only guests staying here and have the pick of rooms. We choose a cavernous one that has TV and a little garden and the staff fuss about fetching extra pillows and re-hanging droopy curtains. We return from breakfast one morning to find the room attendant has left ‘Feel at Home' spelt out in little flowers on a napkin by our bed.

To get to and from the Livingstonia we must pass through the town of Salima, a dishevelled, bustling place surrounded by maize and tobacco fields. Its main road is full of donkey carts and bicycles jostling good-naturedly for space, and on the footpaths a number of coffin-makers compete for business. One has a selection of very expensive-looking lacquered and brassed coffins on display while another, the Comfort Coffin Shop, has a billboard offering 24-hour service and a cell phone number. It's noticeable here in Malawi that there seems to be no stigma attached to this most necessary of industries, or to the reason for having the industry in the first place. In other countries we've passed through the coffin-makers often run their businesses from behind other shops, or just have a display of their wares alongside more domestic furniture. One exception was in Uganda, where we were alerted by a slightly alarmed American Christian Aid worker that he'd seen coffins with windows. So what, I thought, until I too saw them displayed by the roadside. The windows are in the sides, not on top, and no one has been able to give a logical reason for this although I'm sure there is one.

Malawians seem a practical bunch. As well as embracing the coffin shops and umbrellas, they give their children descriptive but totally unromantic names. We've met Trouble, Simple, Danger and Memory, and when Neil asked Trouble's friend how he could have got such a name the answer was perfectly reasonable: he might have been sick or difficult as a baby and his parents foresaw trouble ahead. Reasonable as well as obvious, by the look on the friend's face.

Throughout our travels we've come across myriad objects carried on heads — umbrellas, hoes, metal beams, a halo of bananas, a Medusa spray of spinach, Bibles on Sundays, schoolbooks on school days, a suitcase, a metal bucket with a suitcase in it — but on the road out of Salima we come upon the best of them all: a shiny tin bathtub with a baby sitting in it. He's enjoying the ride and has a goofy smile on his face as he gently sways about to the rhythm of his mother's steps.

Our next stop is at the southern end of the lake in a very nice Italian-owned place, Club Makokola. With 36 rooms it's quite a bit bigger than we're used to, but because of the rains we're the only guests once again. The chalets are set in grassy flowering gardens under baobab trees, and there's a long white beach and a long white cloud that settles by lunchtime over the mountain ranges on the far side of the lake.

The managers are a white Zimbabwean couple, in Malawi to make some money and to escape the sadness and madness back home. They take us with them on a social outing to visit another Zimbabwean couple; these ones have left for good and are biding their time before migrating to Australia. They are a most eccentric couple. They live in a magical rustic cottage nestled on a peninsula in the lake, surrounded on three sides by water and on the fourth by an orchard carpeted in thick green grass. The house is under thatch and has leadlight windows and low dark rooms. And dogs. At present there are about twelve of them but the menagerie started at more than 30. There are little ones, big ones, smart ones, playful ones and a blind one, mostly strays or abandonees but all now living out a happy life. The owners brought some of them from Zimbabwe in a specially chartered plane but inherited the rest from the previous owner of the property, where the deal was that the dogs came with the house. When the dogs have all died the couple will be free and on the first plane to Perth. The family's devotion to the mutts is total, and the dogs are allowed to eat biscuits and scones and sit on the best sofas. It's a beautiful crazy household full of love and laughter.