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Chitimba: Mdokera’s Beach Campsite – A Bed in a Tree
Posted by daveb on July 23rd, 2008
(This is Part 3 of our stay at Mdokera’s Beach Campsite. You should definitely read Part 1 – Introduction and Part 2 – Dance Festival first.)
Exhausted from the dance festival that Mdokera had organised for us, Claire & I retreated to our tree bed for the evening. Neither of us had slept in a tree before and so were quite excited about the prospect. It was nice to look up at the stars and listen to the waves sweep into the shore. We were a little concerned about cold from the lakeside breeze, but had brought our superb sleeping bags with us to complement the plentiful woollen blankets that Mdokera had laid out for us. Sadly, the bed was a bit too small for the two of us. This was worsened by the fact that there was scant support on either side to stop us falling fifteen feet to the ground, if one of us rolled-over in our sleep. As you can imagine, we jockeyed for position towards the middle of the bed and spent the night semi-consciously calculating our positional risk.
We awoke in the morning, quite relieved to find that the other was lying beside ourselves. This meant that either we (a) were both still laying on the bed in the tree as planned, or (b) had both fallen out of the tree and thus blame could not be apportioned to the other for causing the fall.
It was a bit of fun and has given rise to a new derogatory phrase: “It looks like you slept the night in a tree!”
We clambered down the Health and Safety unapproved tree-ladder to meet our fellow travellers, who had just returned from a Mdokera-organised photographic tour of the nearby fishermen and children. Mdokera appeared and revealed a frog in a cloth he was carrying. He set it down on the beach and insisted that I took a photograph. Children appeared and a table was placed in front of us, so that we could sit with the kids and play. As well as table drumming, I devised some basic Olympian challenges for the children, like high-jump, long jump, catch-the-stick and limbo. This was a lot of fun for both us and the kids, and I believe a very genuine experience too.
After half an hour or so, the kids were told to clear-off and we were called to the restaurant straw hut to eat. Over breakfast, Mdokera told us that today we would be taken to a local school to see how they were taught and to listen to his stories.
(Continues tomorrow.)
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Chitimba: Mdokera’s Beach Campsite – Dance Festival
Posted by daveb on July 22nd, 2008
(Continued from Mdokera’s Beach Campsite – Introduction)
“When you said that you were getting some dancers to come tonight, you didn’t mention that it would cost us anything. I’ve asked you several times how much it will cost to stay here, and you haven’t told us this either. We want to talk about this now.” I said firmly.
“Tonight you will sleep in the tree. Is 1,500 Kwacha”, Mdokera offered. This worked out to about £5/US$10, double the price in our recent guidebook — but hey, Lonely Planet almost always has incorrect prices and it was within our budget so we agreed.
“This includes meals?” I questioned
“No, meals are not included.”
“How much are the meals?”
“600 Kwacha, for both of you.”
“And, now, what about the dancers?” I pressed.
Mdokera severed all eye-contact. He drew the number ten thousand into the sand with a stick; about £40/US$80.
“You organised these dancers without telling us the cost. We don’t have 10,000 Kwacha” I faux-panicked.
A line was struck through the sand-writing.
“I have bought my own drums for them to use, so they cannot charge for this. I did this for you, my guests. And drums are VERY expensive. You should not pay more than half of this amount. These people have come from many different tribes from VERY far away. The money for the camping comes to me and my wife. But for the dancing, they get all the money”, Mdokera continued staring at the floor.
“We’ll pay 5,000 for the dancing. We don’t have any more. But we’re not happy with the way that this has worked out. We would’ve liked to stay more than one night with you, but we’ve now spent all our money on these dancers and so now you and your wife get less money — and we wanted to help you.” (Bam! There it goes, will he come back on that?)
“For me, money is not important. It is important that you see our culture and the dancing.”
The drums started. About fifty people had shown up and were now botty-shaking to the rhythm. I’ll be honest. The dancing was great. It appeared that everyone, young and old, was having a great time and really wanted to be there. In fact, it was almost a little frenzied. About twenty minutes in, things started to get a little weird though. Claire and I were pulled out of our wicker-chair thrones and invited to dance (we were uncomfortable sitting in chairs anyway; everyone else was sat on the floor, tribal chiefs notwithstanding). I was taken to the outer edge of the circle and bounced between various ladies who laughed at my inability to wiggle my bottom like an African tribeswoman can. I glanced around to check how Claire was getting along and was slightly surprised to discover that she was the centre of attention, closely dancing with one of the more frenzied women and Mdokera was stroking her hair. Claire seemed to be smiling, so I didn’t think too much of it. It was only once the song had ended that we both realised how weird the last five minutes had been, particularly for Claire.
As I write this, I still can’t tell you whether this is a cultural oversight on my part, or whether the hair-stroking was plain creepy. In fact, at the time Claire whispered to me that she felt as if she was being groomed for something quite sinister and, having been there too, I can completely understand what she meant. Our minds casted back to the ‘advice’ from the reckless STA travel consultant about the dangers of travelling Africa as a non-indigenous couple, and my Chief of Security internal alert system went to Defcon One. Needless to say that Claire and I spent the rest of time dancing with an invisible elastic band between us. It didn’t help when one of the tribal chiefs came over to me, completely blotto from booze, and said that if anyone in Malawi gives me any hassle, then I must send them to him. Presumably, so that the he can breathe on them. Happily, some American travellers (Andrea and Nate) arrived at the campsite and came over to observe the free festival. Mdokera was keen, no insistent, that we all took as many photos and videos as our memory cards would allow. At one point, disgruntled with my lack of photographic quantity, he even took the camera out of my hands and waltzed around the dancing, tapping his itchy trigger-finger on the shutter-release for about fifteen minutes of his own accord.
The dancing wound down and, inevitably, money changed hands. From mine to his. I paid Mdokera the 5,000 Kwacha that we agreed and he went off to pass the money onto the dancing tribes. Unbeknown to me at this time, Mdokera also approached Andrea and Nate to top-up the contribution; after earlier telling them that we were paying-in-full for the event. Rather than simply thank the exhausted tribeswomen and hand over the dosh, Mdokera seemed to be delivering a sermon whilst waving a fistful of notes at them. Claire and I went over to find out what was going on, under the ruse of wanting to thank the dancers, personally. A little surprised, Mdokera invited us to address his audience. We tried to make eye contact with as many of the villagers as possible–there were a lot of them–and thanked them, with open-hands touching hearts. Not even a muted response. Silence. And stares. This wasn’t quite what we had pictured. Perhaps they were upset at the amount that we had agreed with Mdokera to pay: 5,000 Kwacha. I looked down to his hand and noticed that he only had four notes in it. Just a minute ago, I had given him ten. I asked him, what happened to the other 3,000 Kwacha and he told me that he had given the money to the other tribe, who had already left. He was looking me in the eye, but I didn’t believe him. With nothing we could do, we retreated to the refuge of the restaurant straw-hut.
We had a great time chatting with Andrea and Nate about our various travel experiences. It appears that our less than stellar experience in Mbeya, was not unique: Their hotel room was busted-into by a gaggle of unpredictable armed-police who shouted at their touts and escorted our unsuspecting travellers to a ‘safer’ hotel elsewhere! Crikey.
Mdokera was keen to tell us his stories, but wouldn’t do so during dinner (too many distractions) and without his wife at the table. It was getting late. After dinner, his wife Estine joined us at the table and promptly fell sound asleep in her wicker chair. Rather than begin his stories, Mdokera sensed that we guests were now probably a little tired to take it all in and so would tell us tomorrow.
Gratefully, Claire and I retreated to our accommodation. When we read “a bed in a tree” in our travel guide, our presumptious Western minds imagined a tree house. Brilliantly, we had assumed way to much. The bed in a tree was just that. A bed. In a tree.
(Continues tomorrow)
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Chitimba: Mdokera’s Beach Campsite – Introduction
Posted by daveb on July 21st, 2008
We spent only one day and one night at Mdokera’s Beach Campsite near Chitimba, and yet there’s just way too much to write in one post. Over the next few entries I’ll try hard to capture the essence of our experience in my writing, although in my heart I know that I will never be able to do it justice. To begin with, let’s review the Lonely Planet’s description:
Mdokera’s Beach Campsite (camping US$2, beds in tree or tent US$4) About 5km north of Chitimba, this place is close to the road and the beach, run by a friendly Malawian couple and comes complete with a bed in the tree and a tree shower! Meals in the simple and clean restaurant range from US$1 to US$4, and there’s a visitors book of hints and comments, which your host will proudly show you.
The chance to sleep in a treehouse? A bit of fun, we thought. The minibus dropped us off just under the sign proclaiming that we had now found paradise. And a tree shower. We sauntered down the sandy path to the site which comprised of a few straw huts and a beautful, big tree right on the beachfront to Lake Malawi. Lake Malawi is so big, that it’s easy to mistake it for a borderless sea. It even has waves.
Mdokera is the name of the campsite owner, but it was his wife, Estine, that we met first. She greeted us and sat us in the restaurant–one of the beach straw huts–and produced a full-to-bursting photograph album and a guestbook for us to peruse. As you see from above, our guide book had mentioned the visitors book, so this was not completely unexpected. We read a handful of the comments that others had left and flicked through the photo album showing all things Mdokera; familyman, community builder, sportsman, hobbyist, host, volunteer, an apparent all-round-nice-guy. We both had a really good feeling about this place. After three days of buses and two nights of really disappointing hotels, we were excited to be in the hands of a host who cared.
We asked Estine about accommodation availability and rates, she asked us to wait for her husband who would be with us shortly. Mdokera appeared. Dressed more 1950’s prohibition, than Africa beach: White, patent leather shoes. Grey, woollen trousers, white shirt with chaulk-stripes. A not-insignificant bum-bag and a fraying, knitted fedora on his head. After vigorously shaking my hand, he hugged me. Not a fakey hug either. A squeeze that lasted a full two seconds longer than is expected; just like the ones I give to close friends and family. Claire received the same.
“Now you are here, I must go to the Chief and organise the dancers”, Mdokera chirped feverishly, “I get so excited when they dance, sometimes I dance too and forget that I am in Malawi.”
From stage-left, he produced a bongo-style drum, about a metre tall. “I got these drums. They are very expensive. VERY expensive. But I did this for you, my guest, so that the drummers do not bring their own.”
“Go to the beach and walk around. See the fishermen and the children. Take your camera. You must photograph everything and everyone; you do not need to give them money”, he continued, “Now I will go see the Chief. It is important that you have this cultural experience.”
In the time he was gone, Claire and I kicked-off our shoes and meandered along the beach, stopping to wave at the fishermen who mostly waved back. We played games with the children, who flocked towards us and performed endless somersaults into the water for our amusement. Unconventionally, the children mostly didn’t beg for money. A couple of them did put their hands out, but then quickly withdrew them as the watchful fishermen shouted at them from afar.
Over lunch, Mdokera told us of how he started the beach campsite fourteen years ago after the government bulldozed his home to lay a road. He never received any compensation, other than for his banana tree, which was destroyed in the process. He showed us letters from the government, which essentially said that his “money was in the post”. But it never arrived. He had been trying to get enough money to build a home on the beach ever since. His mother had died in April. He showed us a comment in the visitor book, from a guest offering his commiserations. His father, sister, brother- and sister-in-law had also recently passed-away; the dates were given. This was a man whose life was filled with sadness.
Mdokera has started a football mini-league in his village, but they don’t have a football. Instead, the children make footballs with condoms and plastic carrier bags, but they break often and so he has told a child to make another condom-football today, so that we can play with them. This story brought a silent tear to my eye and I decided that I would get Mdokera and his village the football that they so needed and deserved. Some point later in the conversation, I asked whether Mdokera had a postal address. I didn’t mention why, nor mention the football. I wanted it to be a surprise. I wrote down the address in my jotter pad. “You know, sometimes it’s easy to lose addresses. You should also write it down somewhere else”, he offered earnestly. I duplicated the note and put a copy in my wallet.
About 3 o’clock, a few people started to show-up at the fringe of the campsite from the road. Actually, there were more than a few. More like twenty.
“Are these the dancers?” I asked.
“Yes, they are starting to arrive. They have come from very far away. VERY far away” Mdokera responded.
“I didn’t realise that there would be so many. I thought there might be, like, four.”
“It is a VERY important cultural experience for you. And they have come from VERY far away you know.”
“But there’s only the two of us here. Are you paying for all of this just for us?”
Another twenty or thirty dancers arrived.
“Mdokera, who is paying for this?”
Mdokera sat down on the beach and ushered us to do the same. He picked up a stick and began to draw in the sand.
“This is a VERY important cultural experience for you. You will not believe it when you see it.”
(Continues tomorrow.)
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Quiz: My first travel theft
Posted by Squiffy on July 18th, 2008
I’ve just suffered my first theft since travelling began almost 11 months ago. Let’s have a little fun and see if you can guess what was stolen from my bag — two items in total. Leave a comment with your guess below and, in the tradition of all TV/Radio quizzes, don’t forget to clearly state your name, age and location.
I’ll announce the answers in a week’s time, along with the name of the winner who will be quite famous for a day and can brag to their friends about having their name mentioned live on the Internet.
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Malawi: Walking the border
Posted by daveb on July 17th, 2008
From Mbeya, we caught a ‘coastal’ bus to the Malawian border. Curiously, the buses don’t go all the way and so one needs to walk the last stretch. Local boys with bicycles offer a service whereby they will ride you and your luggage to the border for a fee. As usual, there was so much nonsense with touts grabbing bags, etc. from the bus as we disembarked that we decided to go it alone on foot; although in the midday sun, this probably wasn’t our finest decision to date.
Arriving at the border, we were greeted by lots of ‘helpful’ illegal money changers who wanted to give us ‘a best rate’ to convert our Tanzanian Shillings to Malawian Kwacha. Squiffy was half-drawn, worried that we’d soon have no opportunity to change our money — the Shilling is a closed currency and export is illegal! Common sense prevailed, however, as I reckoned that there must be a foreign exchange office at the border. There was, and the rate was nearly thirty percent better than the faux-money changers.
A couple of passport-stamps later and we found ourselves in Malawi, “the warm heart of Africa”. We took a shared-taxi to the nearest town of a reasonable size and decided to retry another mid-range hotel, given that last night’s attempt at a quality hotel in Mbeya turned out so dismally.
The Lonely Planet states that the Club Marina in Karonga is an “excellent, upmarket place” with “classy chalets”. Escape the City would describe it as “looks nice enough from the outside, but the overpriced rooms are dim and very disappointing. The bathrooms are grotty and its taps have no water in them. The two receptionists are the rudest, grumpiest duo with whom we’ve had the displeasure of dealing, certainly on a par with the miserable train ticket saleswomen in Barcelona. The barman and restaurant waiter did make an effort though.”
When it comes to accommodation, we mostly pick budget offerings. When we pay little, we expect little. But when we pay more, our expectations suitably follow. For two nights now, we’ve lucked-out with expensive hotels that don’t live up to their promise. It could be argued that we should’ve just moved on and tried somewhere else — and, in this case, we would have done, had we known that there was no water to be had (which was the final straw). We always look at rooms before agreeing to stay, in this case Claire had asked the receptionist whether the bathrooms had hot water, to which the answer was in the affirmative. most probably, had there had been any water at all, it would have been hot.
A while ago, we were at the beach-club area in Casablanca, Morocco, following the Lonely Planet’s description of it being “the place where the young and rich go to see, and be seen”. It was a sh–hole. At the time, I assured Claire that the authors had never even been there; Claire defended the publication. Of course, a few weeks later, the story of Thomas Kohnstamm broke. I don’t reckon that they poked their heads inside the rooms at Club Marina either. I still think that The ‘Planet is–on the whole–an valuable guide, but not invaluable. From hereon in, we’ve decided to ignore the accommodation sections almost completely. They often read a bit like a job reference from a previous employer, who is too worried to write reality for fear of legal action. Who knows, we might start writing a warts-and-all travel guide…
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Free swahili lesson for money
Posted by daveb on July 16th, 2008
Squiffy had a really authentic local experience the other day. We reached Morogoro bus station and we needed to buy tickets for our onward journey. Doing this whilst wearing our backpacks makes us obvious targets for the inevitable touts, so instead we have devised a cunning system to increase our agility and reduce our exposure to these annoying lot: Squiffy and bags take refuge at nearby cafe whilst I set-off alone in search of the tickets. You can probably imagine that buying the right ticket, from a real company, is a bit of a minefield over here and the whole process seldom takes less than an hour.
Upon return from the successful procurement of tickets, I was delighted to find that Squiffy had apparently made friends with some local women, who were excitedly flicking through the English-to-Swahili chapter in our Lonely Planet guide book and giggling their way through various useful phrases. How nice, an impromptu Swahili lesson, I thought. I joined the table and waited for the ladies to finish the chapter before suggesting we re-instate our backpacks and search for a bed for the night.
As we stood-up, the local ladies’ arms fell open-palmed to the table and one chimed, “give me money”. Ahh, an authentic experience indeed.
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Moshi to Mbeya: Two bad days on the bus
Posted by daveb on July 15th, 2008
We had been nearly a month in Tanzania and it was time to move on to countries new. Rather than take the seemingly direct road to get from Moshi in the north, to Mbeya in the South we were advised to dog-leg back via a place near Dar Es Salaam instead; because the apparently ‘straight’ road was anything but, the buses were guaranteed at least one lengthy breakdown en-route and the quality and quantity of the potholes would bring on a bout of piles.
We used the Hood bus company for the first leg from Moshi to Morogoro, under local advice. Lord knows what the other bus companies are like, because Hood was pretty rubbish: Take a old coach in reasonable condition, rip out the thirteen rows of 2+2 fabric seats and replace with fifteen rows of 3+2 vinyl seats (a 45% increase), disable the air conditioning, encourage your customers to throw rubbish on the floor (and out the windows), entertain them with VHS videos without properly adjusting the tracking, and you get the picture. Infuriatingly, the driver kept stopping at villages to take bribes from the locals to allow them to board the bus and flog their wares. This became very boring, very quickly. After seven hours of slipping around on vinyl seats at 120km/h (75mph) on rural roads we were quite glad to alight at Morogoro. The other passengers were glad too — we had hit something or someone a while back, and there were lots of shocked gasps, glances and heads shaking (I didn’t see what happened). We found a cheap hotel in which to put our heads down.
Next day we boarded a better quality Scandinavian company coach, which took us to Mbeya and worked quite well, except it started and thus finished an hour late. This made all the difference to us as it meant arriving in an unknown town after dark; something we try hard to avoid. Needless to say, Mbeya bus terminal was tout-o-rama and we had to push through a tight huddle of touts to even get off the bus, whilst their mates tried to ‘unload’ our bags from the luggage compartment into the car of a drunk taxi driver. Happily, as our fast-learning, self-appointed Chief of Security, I had padlocked our bags to the coach and so had a little fun watching the touts struggle to come to terms with why they couldn’t lift our bags.
After what seemed like too many nights in unclean, shared-bathroom, budget hotels, we had agreed to spend a night in the ‘midrange’ section of the Lonely Planet accommodation listings and got whisked into a dalla-dalla (mini, minibus) and taken to the supposedly upmarket Mbeya Peak Hotel. It was rotten. The room was awful, the bathroom was worse and the chef had been sent home early so we couldn’t eat there (meaning that we would have to go back out into the unknown darkness, or go hungry) and the price was twice that anything in which we had stayed before! It was all a bit much for us, Squiffy cried and I asked to speak the the manager, so I could share with him some things that were on my mind…
In all fairness to the guy–and quite unexpectedly–he immediately apologised and admitted that “not all hotels in Mbeya are like this” — although I reckon that something got lost in translation here! Apparently, the previous stuck-in-his-ways manager had passed-away just two months ago leaving him to pick up the pieces and try to rejuvenate the place. He offered to pay for a taxi to find a local restaurant to our liking, which we accepted. The first two places were closed, but we managed to pack into a plastic-tables Asian-cuisine restaurant.
Squiffy ordered vegetable fried rice and I ordered vegetable noodles with a couple of samousas. It took over an hour for anything to come out of the kitchen. I got vegetable noodles alone. When asked about the samousas, the waiter shrugged that they had none. Thanks for telling me earlier! “Chicken rice for you, the chef made a mistake”, as the plate came down in front of Squiffy. “Umm, but I ordered vegetable fried rice?”, she piped-up. “Yes, but you get chicken rice. I just told you that!”. So we both ate, samousaless and picking-out the chicken.
The bill came and the waiter had billed for chicken fried rice, not the cheaper vegetable option:
“Um, you’ve charged for chicken fried rice here, not vegetable”, I inquired.
“You had chicken rice”, he countered.
“Yes, but I asked for vegetable fried rice!”, chimed Squiffy.
“Yes, but you got chicken”, came the stern reply.
Sterner still, I offered “if you correct this bill to vegetable, then I’ll pay it.”
Another bad day, we were glad to see the back of it. We put our heads down in our grotty room (Squiffy slept in her silk sleeping-bag liner and used her own travel pillow, in preference to touching any hotel-owned nastiness.)
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Out of the Tanzanian tourist loop
Posted by daveb on July 14th, 2008
We’re heading out of the Tanzanian tourist loop now (Zanzibar-Mt. Kilimanjaro-Serengeti). I expect the travel to get more tricky from hereon. Additionally, Internet access becomes more scarce and certainly more expensive — our Lonely Planet pegs a hour’s Internet access at $10/hr for some locations we are due to vist over next couple of weeks which means we may update the blog less often to conserve cash.
Why not subscribe to our full RSS feed or register for free e-mail updates and allow the posts come to you, rather than having to keep checking back?
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Moshi: Tailor needles my crotch
Posted by daveb on July 14th, 2008
Anyone that has worked with me knows that, for reasons unbeknown to me, I go through trousers like hot dinners. (‘Work’ trousers tend to have the highest failure rate.) My previous travel trousers had already been crotch re-stitched three times, so before coming to east/southern Africa I decided to buy a couple of high-quality replacement pairs to take me through the sub-continent. To my horror, the thread of the crotch on one of them has started to unpick itself and so I had to move swiftly and get a local street tailor to fix it before I got arrested for public indecency (again).
In Moshi, there are street tailors everywhere you look; whilst people slum around in off-the-peg clothes for everyday life, it’s traditional in Tanzania to have something hand-made using a unique fabric for special occasions, church days and social gatherings.
Of course, this tailor thought it was hilarious that a mzungu’s hi-tech travel trousers were coming apart at the seams. She did a fine job of re-stitching the critical parts and I can continue to do star-jumps without the fear of another wardrobe malfunction!
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Africa Insight: (Un)International Symbol for the Bill
Posted by daveb on July 11th, 2008
So after enjoying a meal in a busy restaurant, I raised my hand, caught the attention of the waiter and did The International Symbol for The Bill. You know, the one where you sign your name with an imaginary pen onto the palm of your other hand?
The waiter brought me a pen.
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