Gabon - the next one which, errm, got away

Anyone who knows Rose or myself knows that neither of us are great planners. Sometime in July, a few months before our trip was due to begin a mutual friend happened to speak to both of us within the period of a few days. Both of us has clearly put responsibility of the other one to make the plans and both of us were certain that the other was doing it, it transpired.

When we met in Windhoek, just a matter of days before departure, and in between ever more frantic visits to the Angolan embassy to secure our visa, we finally managed to set in stone our one and only certainty of the trip - we would visit Gabon. "We have to see the lowland gorillas", said Rose "and Gabon sounds like the best place to do it". "Gabon." I replied, in complete agreement, "its a plan".

It was somewhat of a surprise, therefore, when we failed to turn left in the Congo, instead continuing north on our pleasure cruise towards Cameroon. There was method to our madness, however, and that method was the opportunity to see one of only two groups of habituated gorillas in the world. Those few days proved to be a veritable feast of jungle excitement and a whole lot of learning about the fascinating world of gorillas and the people who research them.

If, like me, the phrase "habituated" throws out for you images of gorillas living in a neat house, with freshly cut grass, the smell of baking coming out of the kitchen and the kids playing on the swings in the back garden, think again. Habituation means that the gorillas allow people to get close to them and not bother them. In order to do this, the researchers and guides have had to go through a two year process which staggers the mind. There is a multiple step process of behaviours which the gorillas go through before finally accepting that these pesky people are colming every day, whether they like it or not, so there no point in worrying about it really. The first few of these stages, needless to say, involve agression. The researchers just have to stand, unflinching, as the gorillas roar, charge, chest beat and even take swings at their visitors. Having seen the size of these fellas up close and heard some of them roar, I doff my hat to each and every one of those brave people who go through that on a daily basis.

The group themselves, and a non-habituated group which we were very fortunate to see in one of the jungle clearings, were nothing short of incredible (a group consists of one adult male, a few adult females and their offspring). Cliché though it sounds, it was a real pleasure to observe their human-like features, behaviours and interactions.

If this wasn`t enough, the trip also threw in our first beds in two weeks, desperately needed clothes washing, a marvellous evening of wine and stew with Hannah, the English director of the park and her Congolese co-worker, Patrick, and the small matter of being shocked by an electric catfish and chased for several hundred metres through the jungle by a rampaging elephant.












Gabon, I'm sorry to have missed you, but you would have had a hell of a lot of living up to do to beat this.

A brief note on BO

Sadly I could talk for quite some time about my Body Odour over the past few weeks (which I thought had peaked ont the trip North through Congo, yet surpassed even those levels on a bus journey in Cameroon the other day when the smell I thought was the live chicken under our seat followed me outside when I got off).

However, the BO I would like to briefly mention is the same BO that everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, is talking about - Barack Obama. It has been a truly incredible experience witnessing the aftermath of the US election out here. Prying into local conversations in bars or on buses and the name keeps cropping up. Walk along the streets of remote parts of Congo or Cameroon and people smile at you with thumbs up and shout "Obama!". The markets have Obama DVDs and people walk past in Obama T-Shirts. I've never known anything like it (obviously I wasn't here eight years ago when bush won, but methinks it may not be the same)

I once heard that the most commonly recognised phrases in the world are "ok" and "Coca Cola". I would add "Barack Obama" to that list now and even suggest that he has surpassed the might of "Coca Cola". Whether he is more than "ok" remains to be seen.

The Republic of Congo - sometimes the gamble pays off.

Choices you make whilst you are travelling are more often than not a bit of a gamble. This hostel or that one, this taxi or that one, this country or that one. As with any gamble, sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn`t. Congo gave us a fair few options and made us gamble with more than just a night in a comfy bed.

The train across Congo, from Pointe Noire to Brazzaville, was a bit of a gamble. Still reeling from our forced flight from Angola, we were determined to continue overland and that meant the prospect of taking the train. Despite choosing the First Class option, we never really expected luxury (though Rose did pack her PJs just in case), but I didn`t think that expecting a back on my chair was too much to ask. Alas, a backless chair I got. However it was the prospect of meeting the ninjas which played on our minds as we boarded and headed out of the relative comfort of Pointe Noire. The Ninjas are a group of rebels who still are dominant in a small part of Congo, the Pool Region. A region which the train had to pass through.

Pointe Noire Train Station

Despite my backless chair, the driver`s desire to stop for an hour at random places on the way, and the undesired attention and intimidation tactics of a group of lads, our journey was progressing smoothly but slowly. Then we got to Pool. The police, who had been wandering up and down the aisles up to this point on the journey, summarily disembarked. the train proceeded about a kilometre, at which point the ninjas embarked. But funnily enough, the train got a sudden air of calm. The boys who had been pestering us for much of the journey were firmly sat in their places. In fact everyone firmly sat in their places. The ninjas, it would seem, had been given the task of securing the train for their section, and that was a role they seemed keen to play out. Yes they were heavy handed. Yes they were intimidating. Yes they did request a "donation at the end". But I did have an admirationn for the way they clearly took their roles seriously. At its head was a Congolese Chuck Norris lookalike. He assigned a ninja to babysit "les blancs", clearly feeling we were stupid to be on the train - a crime waiting to happen, but one which wasn't going to happen on his watch.

At one of our random stops the driver, obviously feeling a bit twitchy with rebels in tow, decided to cut short his usual hour long break and moved away with half the train still squatting in the trees. Cue panic on the train and a mad dash by the rebels to signal the driver to stop. By firing out of the windows. We stopped soon enough. I turned to Rose and said, "You have to admit, they do look out for people". That was one step too far.
"Feck off Ant." came Rose`s reply in her dulcet Irish tones, "I think you`ve got that Stockholm Syndrome or something. These people shoot other people don`t forget."

And I had to concede the point. They probably do shoot other people. But I still gave Chuck Norris a secret wink and a nod when he got off and Rose wasn`t looking.

And so we found ourselves safe and sound in Brazzaville and headed for gamble number two: seeing the gorillas. Our plan had always been to do this in Gabon, yet suddenly we discovered that we could possibly do it right here in Congo and get to Cameroon all in one minor leap of faith. This meant heading to the far North of the country. No rebels on the way. What could possible go wrong? A mere 600km - Windhoek to Tsumeb. And its the main road. This was gonna be a doddle.

Hmmm. To say the roads up North in Congo aren't that great, is probably akin to saying a sumo wrestler is a little bit chubby round the edges. It all started so well with tar road for 300km and a rather pleasant 4 hour bus journey. The remaining 300km took three days, two breakdowns, three rescues, a lorry crash, a night on the equator, a night "sleeping" on logs, a 10km hike as part of the standard bus service, a canoe across the river, a missing boat, several bribes, being pulled out of a tent at 01.30 by an army officer, some pretty grotty food, and a not so friendly insect who found warmth and lodging in my ear for a couple of days.

















Yet once again the gamble paid off and the gorillas and Cameroon transfer were ultimately a rip roaring success. But that remains a story for another time.

The Republic of Congo. In a nutshell, a gamble worth the wait(ing).

Democratic Republic of Congo - the one that got away

Sometimes the Angolans were a bit too helpful. Sometimes they told us things that weren't true, not out of spite I don't think, but because it is better to say something than admit to not knowing. That is why we ended up yoyoing up and down the main promendade for three hours one hot Luanda afternoon looking for an office. It is also why we ended up bypassing the DRC on our journey.

Actually, that is a bit of an exagerration. We decided in Luanda that given the slightly volotile circumstances in the DRC, an uncertain route to get from the boredr to Kinshasa on public transport, to save some of the pennies which Angola had sucked out of us, and to save a page in our passports, that we would catch a ferry up to Cabinda (the separated Angolan territory between DRC and Congo), or even more ideally to Pointe Noire in the Rep of Congo. "No problems at all" we were told. "Boats go all the time" we were told. "But you have to go to Soyo" we were told.

And so it was a day and a half later that we found ourselves in Soyo somewhat bruised, battered and really rather pungent from a minibus journey which included two breakdowns, the loss of both our wallets and a rather painful hour holding onto an axle. "There's no boat from here" came the answer we really weren't wanting to hear from a security guard at the port in between mouthfuls of the lobster he was devouring. "Fiddlesticks" I said (though that might not be wholly true).

Fast forward an hour and we had been offered a "legal" trip to Cabinda on a barge that evening which we felt was one step too far even for adventure seekers such as ourselves. Three options remained. Fly, turn back, swim.

The twenty miute flight was unpleasant for all the other passengers on board I have no doubt. But we covered the distance it had taken the previous 18 hours to do in 20 minutes and landed in Cabinda where we promptly hightailed it out of there to arrive, quite unexpectedly given our situation just a few hours earlier, in the Republic of Congo.

So that was that. We turned down the opportunity of "legally" canoeing through without valid visas, but that was as close as we came to the DRC.

Angola - money matters

Picture the view. Peering out to an oceanic vista with millionaire yachts docked on your doorstep. To the left is a 7km stretch of beachland called the Isla. To the right is the centre of town - a multitude of giant buildings and construction sites on their way to becoming giant buildings. At night, the skyline is more reminiscent of Hong Kong - electronic billboards and lazer lights - than the stereotypical image of Africa.

But there is a twist (there's always a twist). Our vista was affectionately known as "monturo de beuena vista" roughly translating to "rubbish dump with a nice view". You see it is nosebleedingly incredible how expensive it is here. The dump was actually the car park of the Luanda Yacht Club who very kindly allowed us to pitch tents much to the bewilderment of Zirka, our taxi driver, whose jaw almost hit the floor when he saw that we weren't like the usual punters he drops off at the Yacht Club (I thought at one point, in fact, that he was going to offer some of our fare back. No such luck!)




Angola holds a bit of a mystique when you are in Namibia. Off limits, down talked and yet so close, it wasn´t a hard decision to want to find out what really goes on here. And what we found was a country which truly does seem to be putting its war years behind it, rolling up its sleeves and building for a bright future. The amount of construction work throughout the country had to be seen to be believed.

By using public transport, we figured that we would be doing things on the cheap, yet even packed minibuses were mindnumbingly (not to mention bumnumbingly) pricey. How the local people afford such prices is beyond my comprehension. One person we spoke to simply said "we Angolans are very innovative". And from what I saw I can't disagree. The people, in fact, were brilliant. I read somewhere that if a journey through East Africa is about the landscape and wildlife, the West Africa is about the people. Angola has really started to live up to this. It wasn't just the innovativeness of the Angolan people though, but more the fact that people seemed willing to spend money. In Namibia I often felt like people were reluctant to part with their cash. In Angola, people bought things on the street, got their shoes shined and generally seemed to be happy to contribute their money elsewhere. And noone seemed remotely interested in us. Anywhere. Angola is very very untravelled and white faces are seldom seen, especially in the rural areas. Yet noone took a blind bit of notice. It was fantastic. We would converse, barter and pass just like anyone else and that anonimity really made you feel safe and, in a strange way, very welcome.

Of course there are many sides to a picture. I can't for one minute say that its all sunshine and roses here. I think I read that the GDP is still amongst the lowest in the world and certainly the slum areas were in a very bad state indeed. And there were children everywhere. In Benguela we took a long midday walk along the beautiful beach and there were hundreds of Angolan children revelling in the sea. It was wonderful to see, but you realised that the children were out because there are no schools for them to go to. I hope that the future is bright for these people and the money which is clearly pouring into the country gets down to those who need, and deserve, it.



So country number two, Angola, a big thank you. You have proven that a book should not be judged by its cover and I will be watching with interest. I can't think of any place where I've been more intrigued about going back in five years time to see how it changes. I'll just save my pennies before coming back and hope for a room with a view next time.

Namibia - the rediscovery

As I have said before, when you live in a place for a while - nomatter where that place is - it becomes normal for you. Namibia was normal for me. Day to day routines of work rest and play had become thoroughly set in and were very comfortable. And then the 30th of September came about and I had finished my job. The thought of uprooting myself and discovering new countries became a scarily imminent prospect which I was both excited and pertified about.

But Namibia - my home - was about to do its last favour for me. It was about to prepare me for what lies ahead. It started throwing problems at me and I strongly (want to) believe that it was Namibia´s way of saying, "Ant. Thanks for helping me out the last few years. Now I´m gonna toughen you up for a couple of weeks for what lies ahead." And in a Micky training Rocky Balboa style it did. Visa problems, transport problems, money problems and homelessness helped me to find the fighting edge that will hopefully get me through the next couple of months as I wade up the West Coast. Even the Windhoek taxi drivers made us wait an age before we could get to the bus station.



And it succeeded. The visa worked out in the end. The transport got there in the end. The money came in the end. And people housed me, for which I am ever ever so grateful especially given my rather distracted and absent mindedness as I rediscovered myself and Namibia.

So thank you Namibia. I know you were only being cruel to be kind and I will never forget that.

Arise sir blogalot

So. There we have it. My time in Namibia is pretty much up and it has come just a mere six months (give or take) after my blogging life came to a slow grinding halt.

This is the thing. The problem with trying to write about different experiences when abroad is that if you experience them for long enough they stop being different. And hence stop being blogworthy. I have started writing quite a few times and just stopped again because I think they stopped carrying the conviction and surprise of my first experiences here.

However good news is on the horizon. Life is soon to take a new blog friendly twist and hopefully you will be the benefactors of this. After a slightly drunken conversation and an inability for either of us to pluck up the courage to step down and admit a terrible idea, myself and a fellow VSO volunteer, Rose, have decided to saunter our way back home (UK and Irelend respectively) and take public transport back up the West Coast of Africa. Roughly this way:



I do plan to go back and add more stories about life in Namibia as I think and reflect on them, but for now you can keep updated with our findings as we embark on the slow journey home.

The Culture Club

Before I came out to Namibia, I undertook a number of training sessions – organised by VSO – to help prepare for the new life which was to be brought upon us. In one of the courses we undertook a very clever little exercise giving descriptions of various exotic “cultural” scenarios and we all had to give our honest reactions as to how we felt or would feel presented with such a situation. I can’t quite remember them all (something to do with taking your clothes off springs to mind for some reason) but the one which I do remember described a type of edible delicacy enjoyed locally - albumen of bird, lightly cooked so that the juice still flows freely, eaten with pounded wheat mixed with water cooked over a flame and cut into pieces.

The thing was though, those little tinkers at VSO has called our bluff. Whilst we were there debating the merits of closing your eyes, holding your nose and anything aka “I’m a Celebrity…” food trials, it turns out all of the exotic scenarios were from no further afield than Blackpool or Peterborough. They were all perceptions by other people towards British cultural practices, you see. The delightful sounding recipe above is none other than soft boiled eggs with soldiers.

I bring this up now for two reasons, 1) It was interesting; 2) I want to talk about culture and it seemed a nice way of introducing it.

A while ago I helped out with the national immunisation campaign for children. Teams of people went to outreach posts with cool boxes containing vaccinations, a clipboard, paper and pen and packed lunches. It was actually a very impressive undertaking and something I should write about one of these days. However, it is the latter of these items which is the purpose for our cultural difference demonstration for today – my lunch. Most of it went without a hitch, but then came the orange. Now, for me, I’ve been brought up on football and rugby pitches eating my oranges in quarters, rinds still on and sucking the life out of that piece. So there I was, quartering away, lost in my own world, sucking away, when I became all too aware of an ominous silence. I looked up to see six African faces staring at me in a conjoined bewilderment. All I could do was muster an orange gum shield smile back.

I guess the point I’m getting at is that whilst I came out here expecting to be amazed, surprised, possibly a bit shocked by cultures, beliefs and practices here (and on many an occasion it has lived up to its bill), I’ve probably shocked and surprised more people by doing things which I consider perfectly normal. Of course, when you think about it logically it is to be expected – I’ve come away prepared for surprise, yet I’m undertaking bizarre behaviours on people’s own doorsteps here.

Jogging, for example. Namibians are on the whole very naturally fit – they cultivate their fields by hand, schoolchildren walk miles to school and back each day, girls pound the grain with giant metal or wood poles, boys herd cattle. When you do all this, why on earth would you undertake extra training? Whenever I go out for a run, people watch in astonishment, join in for the sheer uniqueness of it or just laugh and wave. I’m not offended or put off, its just that I realise they NEVER see anyone else doing anything like this. The concept of training only comes into the fore when it is associated with team sports. Silence and a look of bewilderment would proceed when I would tell somebody that I was running for the sheer sake of running rather than heading to play football or the like.

At the beginning of my second year, I was given a tortoise from a departiung volunteer to look after. The tortoise had been rescued from the cooking pot by said volunteer in exchange for 20 Namibian dollars (which I can only assume was subsequently spent on a KFC). Having a tortoise for a pet (granted, a somewhat exotic thing in the UK) was a source of shock and fear for my neighbours in Outapi. “Aren’t you worried it will eat you in the night?” said a good Namibian nursing colleague as we watched it slowly munch through a patch of grass. “No, no” I reassured, and proceeded to show her my photos of the chameleons I used to keep in England. She needed a ten minute sit down and a glass of water and if I’m honest hasn’t looked at me the same since.



The thing I have learned is that even though Namibians live amongst a truly incredible wide array of wildlife, they have almost no knowledge of any of them. It is quite astounding. Reptiles all fall into a ‘dangerous’ category where even the smallest gecko is highly venomous and capable of eating a whole human. Simple reason and logic goes out of the window. I remember in the hospital one time chatting with a couple of guys and noticed something small wriggling near my feet. On pointing it out, absolute panic ensued followed by a machete attack on said beast as I stood in slight incomprehension. “Its one of those dangerous ones – maybe black mamba.” Came the explanation. I’m pretty sure to this day it was a worm.

These are just two examples, but there are more. Many more. Little pecularities that I do that seem to surprise others. Perhaps it is just me?

Footnote: Have just read a book called “The Other Hand” by Chris Cleave which has some great examples of the weirdnesses in our culture as experienced by others. Recommended.

Hello. How are you?

Footnotes:

This is stage one of greeting. I’m at stage three. I don’t know how many stages there are.

This is for greeting in a morning only. Substitute “la la” for “uhala” in an afternoon and “tokelwa” in an evening.

Knowing who is a “tatekulu” and who is just a “tate” can be tricky. In general, tatekulus have beards and/or carry sticks.

Getting the Bit Between Your Teeth - a guide to food in Namibia

I bought a packet of green Mentos the other day and was surprised to find that they were “Chlorophylle” flavour. I must admit I can’t remember whether chlorophylle is the stuff they put on handkerchiefs to knock people out in spy movies, or something belonging in plant leaves. Either way, I’m pretty sure it’s not a first choice ingredient in chewable minty products in most places. But when it comes to food, Namibia isn’t like most places.



Actually, that last sentence is a lie. It just sounded good. I have to be honest and admit that my diet here is pretty similar to the one I enjoyed back in the UK. Today, for instance, I’ve enjoyed cornflakes for breakfast, followed by cheese on toast for lunch and I just made a pretty tasty sausage casserole for my dinner. Not exactly stuff which makes for the witty, original and wild musings to which you are accustomed from these blog pages (though I did add a bit too much Cayenne pepper to my casserole and I’m half expecting some pretty wild and exciting bowel action over the next 24 hours. I’ll keep you posted).

Fear not though, help is at hand. Whilst on the whole I eat a plain ordinary diet, I have partaken in the consumption of local foodstuffs here which have left me a mixture of disturbed, non-plussed and sometimes smitten.

Food seems to be a key ingredient, if you’ll excuse the pun, of any worldwide travel experience. I don’t think I can recall anyone who has returned from a distant (or not so distant) country not having at least one culinary related story to tell.

My first “story to write home about” was probably the mopane worms I ate in week 2. They call them worms, but actually they’re more like fat caterpillars in a cocoon. So that’s alright then. Not bad – a bit salty – apparently very good fried with peanut butter. Mine were served with extra salt.



A standard local northern Namibian meal will always consist of a number of certainties – oshithima, meat, oshikundu and sand. I’ll take each one in turn.

Oshithima is a porridge made from the flour of the local wheat grown here – Omahangu. It’s a little bit bitter, really rather sticky and an acquired taste. But I’ve acquired it and do enjoy a good plate of the stuff from time to time (though eating it as the sole ingredient for meals on end, as many people here do, may get a bit much. Then again so might strawberries). What really gets me about oshimthima though is the incredible process it takes to get a plate of it. To understand that, we have to go back to the beginning and to something which is happening about this time – cultivating the land. Mahangu is not bought in shops, you see, people grow it themselves. Lots of it. And then store it in giant baskets at their homes to sustain them for a year. In order to do that, many days of backbreaking (as a physio I can vouch for this – January is one of my busiest months) cultivation is performed – all by hand – to prepare the land for planting. Planting is then done followed by an agonising wait for the perfect rains – too much and the crop drowns, too little and not enough grows and is taken by birds. Eventually picking can be done – again by hand with machetes or pangas as they are known here. The seeds are pulled off manually and then need to be crushed into flour – you’ve guessed it, by hand again. To crush the seeds requires a thick wood or metal pole (I guess about 10-15 kg in weight) and two people who take turns in lifting said pole and pounding it into the seeds. For hours on end. The “pounders” are often children once they have finished school. That yields the flour and from there you’d think it was easy – add some water, boil it up and bish, bash, bosh. Alas no, this method doesn’t work. Believe me I’ve tried. The cooking process is a bit of a guarded secret but involves hot and cold water at the right times in the right amount and a LOT of elbow grease for the 20 minute stirring process. Then, and only, then can you put a large dollop of off-white porridge onto your plate and call it oshithima.

Meat is inherently Namibian. A country which has had such divisions over the years seems to have total harmony in their love for meat. In the North the choice is largely chicken (isn’t it everywhere?), goat or, on special occasions like weddings, beef. The chickens are about as free range as it gets which means they are lean, tough but highly flavoursome. Goat is like mutton and beef is like, errm, beef. The choice cuts for Namibians are the innards and I learned that the hard way. Interestingly though, whilst an Ovambo likes nothing more than gorging on tripe or stomach, when it comes to the classic meat pieces to which we are more accustomed, rare is not an option. I love a good bloody steak, but found that they are difficult to come by in local circles – you really have to do your own.



Oshikundu is a drink made from mahangu and sorghum and omulovu is its alcoholic brother. Thick in consistency with bits floating around (not too infrequently bugs), this is the “Slimfast™” of Namibia in that you can take it as a meal and it keeps you full all day. And it really does fill you up to. Namibian culture seems to dictate that any visitor to your home must be given refreshment and more often than not that refreshment comes in the form of oshikundu. And its great. Simple as that.

Sand is sand. And it really does get everywhere.

Only one other item is essential – a toothpick. Never go anywhere without it.