Elephant for Breakfast – Snake for Dinner…

Posted on by November 16, 2016
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In the time we’ve been away from Zambia nothing has changed, and yet so much has.

There’s been a Presidential Election and surprise, surprise, the incumbent was re-elected. Despite very few people seeming to have voted for him. 

Electricity prices have increased 200% in the last 3 months alone (the few people who have it are going to struggle to be able to pay for it). Diesel and petrol prices have increased 60% (so that it’s now more expensive than the U.K.). The cost of basic foods in the markets has risen 25% due to reduced government subsidies & increased transportation costs. Wages haven’t increased at all. 

Add to that the impact of ‘Brexit’ on the $US exchange rate (to which the Zambian Kwacha is linked) and the whole place has become about 40-50% more expensive for us. However, for the majority of the Zambian population, living simply on less than $2 a day, times are getting tough.

Still the rains haven’t come. Historically they’ve always been expected to start on Independence Day, in late October. If they fail again this year the situation for the subsistence farmers and average householders could become really serious. A large majority of the population’s diet is made up of what they can grow in their own essential, spartan, parched but well-tended patches of dirt around their huts or compounds.

There have been quite a few promising loud thunderstorms and some serious lightening displays, but only about an hour of light rain over the last two weeks. The people here take a philosophical view though. ‘Don’t worry’ they say. ‘The first showers are just the rain knocking – giving us a warning that it’s on its way, letting us know we’ve still got time to search for our umbrellas and coats.’

Still, from our perspective it’s a good job it’s stayed dry. We’ve spent the last couple of weeks alternating between cleaning & repacking all of the equipment we had in storage before it can go back into the car, and meeting with a couple of community groups who had heard about Helene’s briquette-making training and wanted to know more.

We asked Makafute at Maramba to make us up a couple more steel piston-presses so that we could show people how they worked and he came up with some good ideas for improving them further and making them out of scrap metal. The presses below were made from an old shock absorber from a car.

We were asked to go up to Mukuni Village on the Zambia / Zimbabwe border by Gladys Mukuni (Chief Mukuni’s daughter) and spent a morning with a group of about 30 women and their Pastor showing them how easy it would be to make briquettes.

We asked them to prepare some basins, a fire and something to crush the charcoal pieces with, then all we had to do was pop into the local market to pick up some waste charcoal dust and some cassava flour to make the binder paste.


It can be a pretty mucky job and they were determined that Helene shouldn’t get her ‘beautiful clothes’ dirty, insisting that she borrow one of their Shetenga (wraps) to protect herself. 


Within a couple of hours, they’d fully grasped the whole process and had made over 100 briquettes from scratch. Given a bit of practice, each group of 2-3 women should be able to make two or three hundred when they meet a couple of times a week.


Back at Maramba River Lodge, the staff had also heard something about what we were doing and asked us to show them more, so we organised a couple of training sessions during their lunch breaks where we met with the maintenance, security and housekeeping staff to demonstrate.


Firewood and charcoal for cooking can burn up 20-25% of family income. Even more in the rainy season when fuel is scarce and expensive. Forgetting the health and environmental benefits, making free fuel briquettes can significantly change people’s way of life, freeing up budget for children’s education, medicines, food, etc. 


We also had the chance to get feedback from the large community group that we met earlier this year, when Helene demonstrated briquettes at the compound where Febby’s mother lives. 

They’ve taken off like wildfire! All of the women are making them for their own use and some of them are now looking to create a small income from selling them at wholesale to local shops. Febby was delighted: she hasn’t had to spend any money on firewood or charcoal for over 6 months!

So, it’s all been pretty hectic one way or the other.

Other than that, we’ve been lazing around, trying to avoid the wildlife and the blistering heat back at camp. Daytime temperatures have been 36-39 Celsius and overnight it rarely drops below 24. Pretty unbearable when it’s still over 30 degrees at 9pm (nearly 3 hours after sunset).

Within only a few days of being back we’ve had the opportunity to sit and watch Jacanas, Fish Eagles, Egrets, Vultures, Heron, Kingfishers, Cranes, Dassies, Jennets, Monitor Lizards, Hippos, Crocs, Scorpions, Snakes, Velvet Spiders (as big and pale as a Mzungu’s fist) and, of course, Elephants.


Almost all the wildlife we’ve seen has been without having to leave our camp chairs…or even sometimes our beds.

Often, from our beds, we watch the elephants and the hippos silhouetted in the moonlight as they wander round the camp. It’s amazing how they can move so silently when they want to and just materialise out of nowhere when you least expect them. Sometimes the only way we know they’re around is when we hear the first ‘prrrip’ of a twig being pulled by a trunk and then the telltale ‘crrraaaack’ of the elephants pulling whole branches off the trees. 

We had been staying in one of Maramba’s ground tents as we hadn’t got our roof tent back in order yet. Actually, they’re called ‘Dome Tents’ although we were starting to wonder whether the Maramba people knew something we didn’t…


Although we had been watching an elephant before we went to sleep and were listening to it intermittently overnight, very early the next morning we had a large bull elephant for breakfast. 
View from The Penthouse:


A bit closer than we generally would have liked. Still, the trick is, once you’ve spotted the elephant, keep an eye on it so you can take some sort of action if you need to. 


The thing about elephants though is, while you’re busy keeping an eye on one, you sometimes need extra eyes in the back of your head…


Overnight there had been 4 bull elephants around our tent and in the light of day it was easy to see how they had kept themselves amused.


By mid morning, they wandered 30-40 meters away and were wading about in the water-hyacinth choked river, enjoying a light snack…


…but when they tried to come back into the camp, up the bank next to our tent, the guards (who are conspicuously shy and nowhere to be found if there’s any Game in the camp at night, but a bit braver during the day) quickly chased them off.


That same day, we also had scorpion for lunch. A small but pretty dangerous looking blighter in the camp sink (big pincers = the sting isn’t generally too nasty: small pincers = the sting is usually vicious).

To round the day off, we had snake for tea. As we came back to the tent, something dropped of the table onto the ground next to the shower block. We only caught a brief glimpse of it as it scuttled off into the bamboo wall and roof structure but it was clearly a snake. We went around rattling the walls a bit and making enough noise to chase it off, then saw it slip from the side of the shower wall into one of the adjacent trees.

Still, as with elephants, the thing is to keep your eye on where it is. As all the books say – ‘it’s more scared of you than you are of it’. Right! We think it was possibly a Boomslang, but the staff seem to think it was a Green Mamba (they think every snake is a Mamba of some sort). They’re terrified of them and we weren’t much comforted by the thought of it being either.
Top Tips:

I think I read somewhere that if you’re bitten by a Boomslang it’s essential to try to slow the blood supply at the wound, keep as still as possible to slow the heart from circulating the blood further and find immediate medical assistance (assuming they’ve got some anti-venom serum). With a Mamba the principle is slightly different: find a shaded spot somewhere, lie down calmly and either cross your arms over your chest or put them at your sides. It’s much easier to get you into the box that way!

While I kept an eye on the snake in the tree, Helene went for a shower. 

The showers for the Dome (Doom?) Tents at Maramba are rather nice. One of them is outdoor, with no roof and therefore breezy, refreshing, free from mosquitos and an all-round pleasant experience. A great way to relax at the end of a hot, sticky day after a disrupted night’s sleep.

Unfortunately, Helene didn’t get much chance to relax this time round. 

The last I saw, the snake had headed up into the canopy of one of the other trees. Once you loose sight of them they are indistinguishable from any branch or vine in the tree. One blink and either you can’t see them at all, or every curving twig looks like one. 

What Helene saw, immediately before she exited the shower in a bit of a hurry, was the snake looking down at her through the open roof, extending its body as it tried to slip back into the shade of the shower block. 

Fortunately she made a bit of noise and a fuss as she rapidly decided her shower was over, and I saw the snake retreat back into the tree. 

I didn’t bother with a shower that night.

Trigger’s Broom sweeps back onto the streets of Africa …again.

Posted on by November 6, 2016
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Preparing to head back to Zambia, we had started to get our frame of mind out of the cosy lifestyle of the UK and back into the flexible, patient, tolerant, frustration-proof, complex but simpler mindset we would need for living ‘on the road’ in Africa.
We didn’t expect the hassle to start as early as Heathrow Airport.
Like many airlines, South African Airways allow you to check in online 24 hours before your flight. Which we did. 
At the airport there are a series of self-service machines for completing the checkin process, printing boarding cards and attaching luggage labels to bags. 
Once that’s all done, the idea is that you avoid the queues by simply taking your bags to the ‘Bag Drop’ desks and load them onto the conveyor. 
Unfortunately, this well thought out, time-saving innovation has been ‘thought out’ even further by some clown in the SAA management team who insists that everyone who has been through this process must then join the same meandering ‘Disneyworld’ style queue with everyone else, including those who haven’t checked in or been to the time-saving self-service machines. 
After 45 minutes of painstakingly snaking our way towards the only one of 5 SAA check-in desks that seemed to have a queue that was diminishing, we made it to the front, handed our passports & preprinted boarding cards to the attendant and put our bags on the scales.
We were so close. I could almost smell the chilled glass of Sancerre and a nice plate of smoked salmon I had planned at the airside bar. 
The attendant asked to see our return tickets and I explained to him that this was in fact the return leg of our journey, since we had originally flown back to London on the first leg. 
“So how will you be coming back from Africa?” he asked. 
“Essentially we’re driving back, or shipping from Namibia / South Africa, after we’ve done some touring.” I told him. 
“I’m sorry sir, you can’t travel to South Africa without a return ticket.”
“Unfortunately, because we’re touring, we don’t yet know which country we’re returning from”
“But you can’t go to South Africa without a return ticket.”
“We’re not heading to South Africa. We’re only in Jo’burg airport for 50 minutes. We stay airside and you can see from our speedily-issued, automated check-in, personally-printed luggage labels that our bags are already checked in straight through to Livingstone in Zambia.”
“I’m sorry sir, I can’t let you travel to South Africa without a return ticket, showing when you’re leaving South Africa.”
“We will be leaving it, for an onward flight to Zambia (which is part of our ticket) 50 minutes after our flight lands in Jo’burg.”
“But you must have a return ticket for South Africa.”
“Look: I’ve used our tickets and passport details to check in online; then (just over there) we’ve printed our boarding passes at your amazing machines that scanned our passports and tickets; those highly efficient machines printed those ridiculously sticky luggage labels that leave adhesive all over our bag handles; we’ve had our boarding passes and labels inspected at the start of your amazing queueing system; we’ve queued for 45 minutes to meet you; you’ve weighed our bags and stuck even more bar-coded labels on them; and now you tell us we can’t fly to South Africa. But I’m not even entering the country. I’m flying to Zambia. At no point will I use my passport to enter South Africa.”
“The computer says no, sir. You’ll have to buy a ticket for a return leg to your journey. If you go to the queue over the other side of the concourse, you’ll find an SAA ticket desk and you’ll be able to purchase your additional tickets there.”
“Right. Then what. Do we come back here? Can we leave our bags with you since the bag checkin is completed?”
“No sir. You’ll have to take them with you, then check in again at the end of the queue.”


Twenty minutes later we were at the front of the ticket sales queue and explained our predicament to Eve, the very helpful SAA ticket clerk. 
She sympathised but said there was no way round it. We would need a ticket to prove that we planned to leave South Africa – even tough we weren’t entering it. 
At this point I knew my hoped for smoked salmon supper was a thing of the past.
Eve explained that if we each bought a fully flexible, one way ticket back from J’burg back to London, we would be able to cancel them once the transaction had gone through, before the planned travel date, and should be able to get a full refund. Yes, she knew that this made a mockery of the regulation, but she was doing everything she could to help. She even sent an email there and then to the SAA Ticketing Manager confirming that she had advised us we could cancel the ticket for a refund before its expiry date.
“Excellent” I said “Thanks for all your help Eve.”
“You’re welcome. Sorry for the hassle. One way, fully flexible, J’oburg to London. That will be £1,360. Each.”
“How much! American Express?”
“That’ll do nicely.”
Smoked salmon was definitely off the menu.
Feeling pretty shabby, 15 hours later, we poured our cramped, rumpled bodies off the steps of the Johannesburg-Livingstone flight into the sweltering 37 degree Celsius air in Zambia and across the 71 Celsius runway temperature to the Immigration / Customs hall. 
All proceeded smoothly. We got our $50 single entry visas (no one asked to see our £2,720 return tickets!) and wheeled our trolleys full of surplus shirts, T-shirts, dresses and baseball caps (gifts for the staff at Maramba River Lodge, donated by Caroline, Charlotte & Luke) through the Green Customs channel. 
Fortunately no one asked to inspect our luggage as we would never have got the vacuum / compression bags back into our jumbo hold-alls. Nor would we have got away without a fine for bringing in all the additional rolling-tobacco we were ‘importing’ since amongst the luggage since we can’t buy it here. 
Only 20 minutes later we were checked into Maramba River Lodge, sitting on the deck with a cold Windhoek Draft beer and a soda, drinking in the pleasure of being back. The car would not be ready to pick up for another 4 days as Nick Selby of Foley’s Africa had to fit a couple of bits we had brought out with us and it was also Independence Day Holiday weekend. 

View From The Penthouse:



Fortunately Peter, the manager at Maramba, gave us the use of one of the dome-tents adjacent to the chalets for the same price as camping. That meant that there was nothing to do except sit around the pool, watching the elephants, crocs, hippos and numerous bird life for a week.   
Nick called to say the car was complete. I think he’s done a great job! It’s amazing what a skilled mechanic and local tradesmen can do in Africa…

.

We were looking forward to getting hold of Trigger’s Broom again. 
We weren’t sure exactly what to expect when we came back, given the state we left it in…


Nick had sent us a couple of progress photos as he prepared the new body. He had the entire inner rear rubberised to reduce dust, noise and leaks…


…had replaced the ‘Brandy-Snap’ bulkhead completely…

…and, after a thorough overhaul of everything mechanical, fitted additional electrics…


…plus LED lighting and an external electrical hookup for us…


…and a new body, doors, etc. 
Now that Trigger’s Broom is back on the road, she’s looking pretty damn good again. 

Nice job, Foley’s Africa.

My First Bath in 16 Years…

Posted on by October 18, 2016
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We’ve been temporarily back in the UK for a few months and, although it seemed like we had all the time in the world to catch up with everyone we wanted to see, typically we’ve run out of time before we fly back to Zambia tomorrow.
Nick Selby at Foleys in Livingstone has finished the refurb of Trigger’s Broom and we’re really looking forward to collecting the Landy from him. There’s just a couple of parts that we’re taking out for him to fit (new diesel injectors, an external electrical hookup, lighting, etc) then we’ll be back on the road again.
Our time at home has been a tiring combination of lazy touring and busy little projects. 
We spent a few weeks at Helene’s brother’s place on the border of beautiful Perthshire and Angus in Scotland.

Since they got the new house Philip and Caroline have wanted Highland Cows. We decided to make him one for his 60th birthday…


While we were up there we helped them clear out the old house in Aberdeen and decorate some of the new place near Blairgowrie on the fringes of stunning Glenshee. 

After a week of balancing 14 feet up a ladder painting lounges and sitting rooms, my feet and back ached to the point that I decided to treat myself to a bath. I’ve not had a bath for at least 16 years, but millions of people apparently do it so I thought I’d give it a whirl. 
I just don’t get it.

 

Where’s the attraction in sitting in a gradually cooling pool of your own scum for 30 minutes or more. Give me a shower any day – even a cold African one. 
As far as I can see, there are only 3 good reasons for having a bath:

1. you’re having a beer or a cigarette (it’s not easy to take either one into a shower)

2. your wife, Halle Berry or Claudia Cardinalle are in the bath already

3. all 5 are in the bath waiting for you


At the foot of the field next to Philip & Caroline’s house are the beautiful Reekie Linn Falls. They may not be quite as dramatic as the Mosi Oa Tunya Falls (The Smoke that Thunders) to which we are returning in Zambia, but there’s a surprising similarity in the names.


Reekie Linn is a waterfall in natural gorged woodland. Its spume effect accounts for its smoky (reekie) description. The falls throw up clouds of spray and it is from this that they got their name. The word ‘reekie’ means smoke or mist, while ‘linn’ is Gaelic for deep or dark pool. 

Cool coincidence, no?

The rest of our time at home we were helping our daughter Charlie and husband Luke prepare to move house and planning a new kitchen for our pals Judith & Paul (although we sensibly kept our head down and out of sight once the strip-out and building happened).

Helene & Judith disappeared for a couple of weeks with the AmahaWe Uganda team and flew out to Uganda for a quick visit to the Fuel Briquette and Street Kids projects.

 

I wasn’t able to go but got stuck into helping my brothers to sort out their garden, which hadn’t been touched since the house was refurbished a year or so ago.
There’s a garden in there somewhere…

… and, although there’s a way to go yet, it’s gradually starting to take shape…

It wasn’t all hard work. While Helene was away Charlie treated me to a great evening horse racing meeting…

… which was concluded by a really excellent Brian Adams concert.

When Helene got back from Uganda we did manage to get a little while off from manual labour and took off for a few weeks touring in south-western France in the old Volvo (yes, yes, I know – a Volvo!) that we bought as a temporary run-about while home. 
Beautiful weather, lovely Pyrenean views and fresh food from French street markets. It’s certainly not the same as touring The Rift Valley in a beaten-up old Landy. The way the locals live is a bit grander than they do in Malawi for one thing.

So, we’re off tomorrow night. Really disappointed to be leaving family and friends behind (especially those we didn’t get round to spending time with) but really looking forward to getting back to Africa.
The only thing I’m not looking forward to is the return flight. We booked with South African Airways and the flight back to London was without doubt the tattiest, most cramped, uncomfortable and unfriendly flying experience I’ve ever had (and I’ve racked up almost 1.5million air miles in my day).
We seem to have a huge amount of stuff to take back with us, including 2 large bags of T-shirts, baseball caps, skirts and tops donated by Charlotte, Luke and Caroline. There’s so much of it that (although she’d rather we didn’t leave) Charlie offered to help us pack.

Fortunately we found out in the nick of time why one of the bags in particular seemed to be way over weight…

From Folly to Foley’s…

Posted on by May 27, 2016
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A lineup of some of the best looking overland vehicles in Africa… and our donkey.
We’ve temporarily left our (t)rusty steed with Nick Selby of Foley’s Africa in Livingstone.
It’s amazing how much stuff we had crammed into nooks and crannies; tucked under seats; wedged into cargo nets; and shoe-horned into storage boxes – and that was after we had given away at least a cubic metre of the least essential items.
It took us 2 days to empty the car, load everything into some dustbins we bought for storage at Nick’s workshop and get it tucked away for a few months under lock and key.
This is just half of it…


Four hours after we had dropped off all of our worldly possessions for the last 3 years, we were on a flight back to the UK via Johannesburg.
It was the first time we’d flown with South African Airways and the 2 hour hop from Livingstone was outstanding. Like being in a limo: almost unlimited legroom, great food, comfortable seats, a sparklingly clean, modern plane. “Wow, we’ve got to this more often” I said to Helene.
I should have kept my big mouth shut.
The connecting overnight flight from Jo’burg to London with South African was something Peter Kay could have made a whole TV series from.
The seats must surely have been Victorian deckchairs salvaged from Blackpool beach. I was wedged in tighter than a leg of lamb in a shoplifter’s pocket. There was so little legroom that even Helene spent the night with her knees round her ears (easy Liz, say nothing!).
The food looked like it had been eaten before it was served to us and the inflight entertainment system’s latest releases included Mary Poppins, Superman and The Godfather (mind you, you can’t watch The Godfather too many times I guess).
I can’t wait for the return trip. I may have to buy myself a sack of polystyrene packaging beads, a packet of garibaldi biscuits, make a thermos of tea, then build myself a crate and see if I can travel in the hold.

So, what’s all this got to do with Folly, you ask?
Folly: noun 

(plural) –follies

Pronunciation: fol.i (British)   or   faa.li (USA)

Meaning:

1. The state or quality of being foolish or rash

2. A popular name for any costly structure considered to have shown folly in the builder

3. So extravagant that it transcends its originally intended use

Derivation: Ancient French (c13th Century) , ‘folie‘ meaning silliness or madness (from ‘fou‘ meaning mad). Modern meaning, ‘delight‘ or ‘favourite abode‘

Although I didn’t know as much 5 years ago when Nene Overland sold us this particular dog of a car, having now pretty much uncovered everything they so painstakingly covered up before they sold it, I think our car qualifies pretty well as a ‘folly’ on all counts.
Don’t get me wrong, we’ve grown very attached to Trigger’s Broom (more attached than most of the body was to the chassis, or the paint was to the bodyfiller beneath it at any rate).
For that reason, we really don’t want to be parted from it and would hate to have to give up on it. So, we decided to ask Nick Selby of Foley’s Africa to give it a proper once-over for us while we’re temporarily back in the UK.
“Apply a bit of thorough spit and polish, and give it a couple of tweeks here and there…that ought to do it” I said to Nick “I know Nene really covered up a lot of crap before we bought it, so maybe see if you could strip it back to the good bits and then fix it up from there?”
I knew that many of the panels were a bit rusty. The doors were falling apart…


…the B-posts had buckled, after the paint holding the rust together finally decided that it wasn’t really it’s job to try and hold the car in one piece structurally…


…and the structural bulkhead (fire barrier between the engine bay and the passenger compartment) was as fragile a Gordon Ramsey Brandy Snap…


Well, the first thing to go was those rotten doors…


Then, one or two of the most rotten body panels…


“It’s a real wind-in-the-hair Safari drive now Scott” was the text Nick sent us with this picture.


Finally he managed to get rid of the worst body panels, and get it down to just the good stuff…


Actually, that’s not wholly accurate. The only remaining panel in the above picture is the structural bulkhead and that’s the rustiest (Brandy-snap) panel of the lot. Once the steering is removed and the engine separated, Nick will be able to get rid of that panel as well and we will (hopefully) have got Trigger’s Broom down to the bits we can actually save.
It may have taken us nearly 5 years, but we’re finally graduating from folly to Foley’s.

Fuel Briquettes in Zambia…

Posted on by May 7, 2016
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There are few better ways to spend a couple of weeks in Zimbabwe than at Hwange. It’s hard to beat sitting around a waterhole with a cold Zambezi beer watching elephant, kudu, crocodiles, giraffe, impala, buffalo etc as they play out the daily ritual of grazing, hunting and looking for water.
A group of three young kudu hung around the camp for a while. They were very timid as the waterhole is quite exposed but I guess if every step could be your last, you’d be on your guard all the time as well. 
Kudu have the most beautiful ears. They’re huge, relative to the size of their heads, and they constantly swivel them, seeking the sound of predators as they stay alert to every footfall or rustle they hear. 

The elephant on the other hand are content to throw their weight around and chase away anything that’s going to disturb their enjoyment of a quiet drink and a chance to paint themselves terracotta in the mud baths.
Perhaps the oddest thing we saw around the waterhole was a couple of mzungus out for a bush walk with a ranger. They arrived at the waterhole about 15 minutes after a 40+ herd of elephant left.

I’m not sure how much luck the bush-walkers had spotting Game…

Looking a little bewildered, they wandered around the bush for about 30 minutes. I think they spotted the big bull elephant that shadowed them, but I’m not certain.

We had a date with a couple of community groups back in Livingstone so, all too soon, we had to leave Ivory Lodge and head back to the Zambian side of the Zambezi. 
Helene had promised Limpo and Febby (2 of the waitresses at Maramba River Lodge) that she would show them and the community leaders from each of their districts how to make Fuel Briquettes. 
We weren’t sure how many people would show up at each of the sessions they had arranged, but had left them with instructions to collect as much charcoal dust as possible and round up the few simple pieces of equipment they would need.
When we arrived at Febby’s compound we were welcomed by about 40 local women, business people and Community Chairmen. I guess word had spread faster and further than we initially thought.
This was going to be a bit of a departure from our previous Fuel Briquette making in Uganda. We were focusing here on making them by hand or using a small, steel, single-piston mould rather than the large timber presses we had built for the Rwenzori Mountain groups. The timber presses cost about $150 each to assemble. This new-style steel, single-piston mould cost $5 for us to make 2 out of scrap metal.
We got stuck straight in and, at each community meeting, had a wonderfully enthusiastic and interested audience. 

Everyone was keen to get hands-on as quickly as possible. 

The process is essentially very simple – and cheap.
First, break up charcoal dust and small, unusable pieces of charcoal (‘charcoal fines‘) either by crushing it in a bag…

…or by pounding it in a pestle & mortar.

The ideal pieces of ‘fines’ to use for the briquettes are about the size of rice grains. Larger lumps can be removed with a simple sieve or by shaking the collection basin so that the largest pieces rise to the top.

Quickly sort through the dust and fines to remove any bits of plastics (toxic when burnt) or pieces of glass / metal (could cause injuries when moulding & mixing by hand).

In the meantime, make up the porridge binder that will be used to set the briquettes into the finished shape. The binder is made like a porridge or nsima / pap / millie-meal (the staple diet of people in Eastern Africa). It is made by mixing either cassava or maize flour with cold water until it is dissolved into a paste…

 …then adding the paste to hot water…

…and cooking / stirring it until it is the consistency of porridge. At this point it should be sticky to the touch if rubbed between your fingers (be careful, it’s hot!).

We have found that the best consistency for the binder is to use around 300g of flour to about 2.5 – 3 litres of water. If cassava or maize flour aren’t available, any starchy substance such as banana, plantain or potato could be used as an alternative binder (but it’s not as good).
Before the porridge cools too much, pour some of it (maybe 30%) into a basin half filled with beaten charcoal fines…Mix the porridge into the charcoal with a spoon at first (the porridge is hot!). 

Then, as it cools slightly, get stuck in with your hands to ensure every bit is mixed thoroughly…

Feeling the mixture by hand is the best way to get to know the correct wetness and balance of porridge to charcoal.

If the mixture is too dry a little more water can be added…

If it’s too wet, add more charcoal dust…

The ideal Fuel Briquette size is simply what can be moulded and compressed in the palm of your hand…

Once the briquette has been moulded, it must be handled with care as it is very fragile until it is dried. 

It will become much stronger as it dries over a 3-4 day period in a warm (but rain-sheltered) place. It is best not to have to move them and to lay them out either on a piece of sacking or an old metal sheet…

A simple steel piston-press is our favourite way to cheaply speed up the moulding process.

Makafute (one of the maintenance guys at Maramba River Lodge) made these presses for us for around $2 each from scrap steel pipe…

The pipe is left open at one end, but welded onto a base plate with a hole in it at the other end.

Two piston rods that fit inside the pipe are made from metal rods with a round plate welded onto one end of each. One rod will be used to compress the charcoal when the pipe is filled, the other rod is used to easily push the moulded briquette out of the pipe.
To use the single piston press, put the shorter rod through the hole in the base of the piston…

Scoop charcoal & porridge mix into the pipe until it is about 2/3 full. 

Put the piston onto the wooden block, with the bottom rod inside the hole that has been made in the top of the wood…

Put the flat plate of the 2nd, (longer) rod into the top of the pipe and hit it a couple of times with a hammer, stone or piece of wood. 

This compresses the charcoal and binder.

Lift the cylinder out of the hole in the wood block. Rest the bottom rod on the top of the wood block…

…and push down on the cylinder. The bottom rod will then carefully push a beautifully moulded briquette out of the top of the piston. 
Voila!!

This type of simple press is cheap to make and simple to use. Our experience is that a group of 3 or 4 people grinding charcoal fines, mixing binder and moulding briquettes can make 600-1,000 Fuel Briquettes a day using this system. For free!



This is truly remarkable and can be life-changing. A sack of wood-charcoal for cooking costs the equivalent of 3-7 days’ wages. However, once thoroughly dried, 6-8 home-made Fuel Briquettes can be used to boil water for drinking and cook an evening meal for a family – including beans (notoriously the longest and most fuel-expensive food to cook). 

At their first attempt, even given the chaos of teaching, learning , laughing, chatting and experimenting, this wonderful group made 280 Fuel Briquettes from a standing start in a 3-hour lesson! 

Outstanding. 
And great fun.

I don’t know who enjoyed it more, us or them.


Top Tip:

We’re making up a small photo-manual which will show in detail how to make Fuel Briquettes, plus how to make your own charcoal from farm / agricultural waste and how to make mud rocket-stoves that will improve the efficiency of charcoal cooking fuel by about 50%. This will be available as a download PDF document on the ‘Community‘ tab of our website and on the AmahaWe Uganda website (amahaweuganda.org) in a few weeks. 
In the meantime, if you want a copy, send an email to us at helene@amahaweuganda.org and we will forward the manual to you.

Hwange…

Posted on by April 8, 2016
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We’ve made a decision about what to do with about ‘Triggers Broom‘ – the Land Rover.

Leaving it here in Zambia to have Nene Overland’s rusty old bodywork replaced will give us an opportunity to fly home for a few months and getting it restored here in Africa will be much cheaper than using UK workshops charging £70-£100 an hour ($100-$150).
Fortunately there is a specialist in this part of the world. Foleys Zambia is owned by Nick Selby and he’s done some good work for us over the last couple of years each time we’ve passed through Livingstone. Nick’s got replacement doors, bulkheads and body shells that he can use so, having had the chassis replaced in Uganda, Trigger’s Broom is now going to have the body replaced in Zambia.
That decision made, we had a few weeks to get ourselves organised and the opportunity to head back down to Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe for about a week. That also meant we would be able to re-enter Zambia on the new ADAC Carnet and therefore discharge the expiring RAC Carnet.
We’ve amused ourselves recently lazing around the Maramba River, fascinated by the industrious ant colonies as they continually stock their larder… 
 
…enjoying the full ‘Sense-around‘ experience of hippo pods farting & chomping their way through the water grasses, stalked by crocs menacing the camp’s riverbanks… 

 
…and we’ve spent hours watching the numerous birds and butterflies that visit us constantly. 

 
  
A few of the staff here at Maramba have expressed an interest in the Fuel Briquette project that Helene developed with AmahaWe Uganda in Kasese and they pressed us to meet with some of their community leaders in the villages and compounds of Livingstone.

We made up some quick, simple literature and selected some photos to show people on the iPad. Thinking we were just going to meet one or two interested representatives, we set up meetings over a couple of days and were surprised when each of the groups we met ranged from 12-35 people wanting to learn more.  
 
They certainly seemed really keen. For the poorest of the communities, that exist even within the wealthy district of Livingstone, a sack of charcoal costs the equivalent of 5-7 days wages (if they’re fortunate enough to have paid work!).

Whilst we’re down at Hwange, each of the groups we met are going to collect the materials needed and some basic equipment so that as soon as we return we’ll meet again for a couple of sessions of training in Fuel Briquette making.
That’s certainly something to look forward to.
One last night in camp at Maramba River Lodge and as a crashing thunderstorm passes over us, we’re left with a beautiful sunset.
View From the Penthouse: 
 
Getting across the border to Zimbabwe was a breeze – as it has been each time we’ve crossed at Vic Falls. Less than 1 hour to exit Zambia and enter Zim. However, good old Uncle Bob (Mugabe) has raised the visa prices 10% to $55 dollars each and the KAZA visa (combining Zambia & Zimbabwe, with plans to include Botswana and Angola within 12 months) has been scrapped, after being launched only 10 months ago at a cost of $2.5m. Even the multiple police roadblocks on the route to Hwange National Park didn’t give us any real grief.

Arriving at Ivory Lodge, Hwange once more feels like arriving home. Like Maramba, it’s certainly one of our favourite 10 places to camp. At this time of the year, during what’s supposed to be the tail end of the rainy season, we had the campsite to ourselves.  
 
Most of the time the lodge itself was almost empty – like having exclusive use of our own private game park.

There’s quite a lot of maintenance work going on and new ablution blocks being built (even though the existing facilities are amongst the best we’ve encountered). Like most places, it’s the staff who generally do the building…  

  
…and there’s no 1-year maternity leave options around here…  

Manager Jame has ‘inherited’ a Cape Buffalo calf. It’s mother was killed by a lion that’s taken up a territory around the lodge, as many of the local prides have been reorganising themselves since King of The Hill, Cecil, was hunted and killed by the dentist last year.
Jame is reluctant to let the buffalo calf get too attached to her and is working hard to reintroduce it to a herd asap. In the meantime, although only 1 month old, it’s still quite a big beast and follows her around like a dog whenever it gets the opportunity.  
We didn’t have the lodge entirely to ourselves the whole time we were there. One afternoon a group of 16 tourists from Singapore arrived. 

They never took the time to enjoy the place: straight off their tour bus, they changed into perfectly ironed safari gear, then mounted up onto safari wagons for evening game-drives at $100 a head.   
 They went straight to bed when they returned at 8pm and left the following morning, desperate to get to another location where they could tick another box on their itinerary.
Meanwhile we sat quietly in our camp with a fire and a glass of wine and had Giraffe, Kudu, Elephant, Impala and a herd of 100+ buffalo walk right through. No charge.
We’re getting quite used to elephant and, although they can be dangerous and unpredictable, we’re always suitably wary of them and they’re always fascinating – especially up close. 
 

 Buffalo, on the other hand are always a bit worrisome. There’s no accounting for what they might do next and they have a nerve-wracking way of looking at you like they’re about to go psycho. 

 
That night, alone in the campsite, we slept with the sounds of lion and hyena close by (lion ALWAYS follow the buffalo herds). 

Another night, we shared the campsite with a ‘meat waggon’ that arrived. A typical Overland Tour truck with 12-20 guests ‘doing’ Southern or Eastern Africa in 14-28 days. After 15 hours on the road they arrived after dark, unable to do anything without making a noise. None of the 15 people on the tour are really sure whether they’re in Zambia or Zimbabwe. The truck is full of bickering couples, and loud ‘singles’; guys 1.88m tall in 1.8m long tents; girls concerned that there’s nowhere to plug in a hairdryer; wondering how long they’ll have to wait before they find a bar with Internet access; all shit-scared of leaving their tents once they’ve been told by their guides that this is a real park, not a zoo, and they must watch out for lion, elephant buffalo, etc when going to the loos overnight! 
Fortunately we don’t see many groups like this on our travels. Like the last group, they left by 6.30am the next morning – just long enough after sunrise to get a quick snap of the waterhole and tell each other (loudly) how beautiful it was and how nice it would have been to stay longer.
The following few nights were wonderfully quiet and we sat round our campfire listing only to game noises. Elephants wandered past us while we sat and ate dinner and, since the campsite is outside the electric fence of the lodge, the staff warned us about a large Black-Maned lion that had been spotted 24-hours earlier in the bush around the waterhole. 
Since there was no one else at the camp we were pretty jumpy. 
The following morning we got up and found we’d had a visitor overnight, wandering around within 5-6 meters of our tent and where we’d sat (alone, in the dark) eating dinner. 
 

Bird Calls & Chocodiles…

Posted on by March 14, 2016
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We’ve had a nice, lazy couple of weeks on the Maramba River, half way between Livingstone and The Victoria Falls at the Zambia / Zimbabwe border. The weather has been a bit changeable, and the rains have hit us with some tremendous downpours and thundering storms like a skip full of cymbals falling from the top of a towering cliff. But that just means (thankfully) that the humidity has dropped a bit. It’s easier to sleep at night and we get some wonderful skies.
View from The Penthouse:  
Top Tip: if you need a Carnet, use ADAC in Germany.

We’ve been waiting to see what would happen with the Carnet we ordered from ADAC in Germany, to replace our RAC Carnet when it expires in April. 

Sure enough, with typical German efficiency, it was dispatched from Munich only 1 week after we deposited the money in their account and sent in our application form by email (the RAC historically took up to 6 weeks to issue their Carnets); it arrived in Livingstone via DHL 1 week later (the RAC typically took 2-3 weeks to send theirs out); it cost only €190, plus a €5k refundable deposit (RAC cost us around €4,000 of which only about 50% is refundable); it’s valid in all countries throughout the world, including Egypt (for which RAC charge a 400% premium!); and it’s post-dated for a month in advance so that there’s no wasted period while they courier it or any unnecessary overlap with our old document (something the RAC refused to do).
Personally, we’ve had some very good service from the RAC regarding Carnets in the past, although we know of many people who seem to have had a terrible time. However, by comparison, the typically German efficiency of the ADAC service has been outstanding. 
While we’ve waited for our Carnet, I guess we could have made ourselves busy. Instead we’ve read books, listened to loads of music that we downloaded from Ed & Carmen’s collection back at Chitimba in Malawi, drunk too much Windhoek Draft lager from Namibia and just generally watched the world go by. 
With very little Big Game wandering around the camp at this time of year, we’ve focused on the smaller visitors we get: 
A caterpillar that we’ve named Dougal… 
 
…who, I assume, retired to Africa and is living off his royalty cheques from The Magic Roundabout. 

 
There’s also a few of his 1980’s Punk cousins around… 

 
It’s come as a bit of a shock to me how many hours can be whiled-away just by baiting and watching ants. So far, we’ve discovered that they don’t care for carrot, onion or cabbage but they like chicken bones, banana, bacon, apple, and they LOVE Bombay Mix. 

 
We’ve got a huge colony underground at our camping pitch, with a series of entrances that are industriously cleared out after every rainstorm. Two of the entrances are used by the smaller ants whose job it seems to be to collect food. Two other tunnels are used by the Ninja Raiding Parties. These are the bigger tough-guys who head out in a phalanx every couple of days in a very well organised and determined column. 

 
Around 30-60 minutes later they return with their treasure: eggs from a rival ant colony (new slave workers) or eggs from a local termite mound (food supplies that can be kept almost indefinitely fresh). 

 
The monitor lizards don’t bother with the ants much. Surprising really as you’d think they’d provide a plentiful supply of food. 

 
And the little iridescent Skinks seem positively scared witless of the ants, they dart across the ground from one tree trunk to another as if petrified that the ants will pounce on them. 

 
The wet season is supposedly the best time of year for birdwatching. We’ve seen some beautiful Jacana, Fish Eagles, Owls, Giant Hornbills, Sand Grouse, Ibis, Storks, Woodpeckers, Weavers, etc. Just as we’ve been fascinated by ants, we’ve become interested in the beautiful bird life that hangs around the camp including the Open Beaked Stork… 

 
…and a selection of beautiful Kingfishers. 

 
In addition to the recognisable birds that we have pictures of, we’re even becoming quite expert at recognising the piercingly loud bird calls of some species that we haven’t actually seen yet. There’s the ‘Hoochy Koochy‘ bird, the ‘Go-Away‘ bird, the ‘Thanks For Doing The Dishes‘ bird, the ‘Monkey Business‘ bird, the ‘Che-Boiiing‘ bird that sound like a breaking spring on a cuckoo clock ….. and the Cartoon bird, that has the most outrageously, obviously fake, piercingly loud ‘TWEET‘ ever heard.

The hippos are much more easily recognised (& smelt). They are ever present around the camp, whatever the weather, day and night. One particular family have a calf that seems to have survived a pretty nasty encounter with something dangerous.  
 
It looks like it’s been grabbed by the neck at some point. Although it seems otherwise quite healthy and mobile and doesn’t seem to be in any distress, with a wound like that we can’t help thinking it won’t be long before some predator finishes off the job. Maybe one of the bigger crocs that hunt this stretch of the river?  

There’s a few crocs about, mostly around 2 metres long, but there’s one big boy in particular who lies out sunning himself in the heat of the day and then slips into the chocolate coloured Maramba River to majestically patrol his beat as the sun goes down. He’s over 3 meters long, probably around 40 years old and although he may look like a chocolate croc in a bath of caramel milk, I certainly wouldn’t want to get too close. 
 

These Shoes…

Posted on by March 4, 2016
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…are knackered.  
They’re Sebago Docksiders, almost 16 years old. They have been fantastically comfortable shoes.

They’ve been soaked (often hanging off boats) in The Pacific, Atlantic & Indian; drenched in The Mediterranean, North, Caribbean, Red, Arabian & South China Seas; awash in the Gulfs of Oman, California, Genoa, Mexico, Persia & Carpentaria.
They’ve wandered (rarely far, admittedly) around The Alps, The Pyrenees, The Rockies, The Cairngorms, the Antolian Mountains, The Dolomites, The Beacons, The High Atlas, The Peloponnese & The Troodos Mountains…
They’ve tramped across dunes and plains in The Namib, The Kalahari, The Kgalaghadi, The Sahara, The Arabian, The Colorado and The Mojave deserts
In the same day they’ve walked across salt pans in Death Valley (the 2nd lowest point in the Northern Hemisphere) and been soaked in snow on Mt Whitney (4,421m high) in The Sierra Nevada.
They’ve been bled on, sweated on, puked on, slobbered on, crapped on and peed on (all but one by me).
They’ve been stolen by dogs in the Western Sahara and lost in card games.
They’ve been re-stitched by beggars in Rwanda, apprentices in Uganda, and wood carvers in Malawi.
They’ve squelched through hippo, rhino & elephant dung, almost tripped over lion spoor and fallen (with me) up to my knees in the soak-away from composting toilets on the Nyika Plateau.
They’ve wandered Broadway and Ocean Drive, taken the Star Ferry across Hong Kong harbour, dined at the top of The Twin Towers, strolled streets of Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Milan, Hollywood, The Vatican, Dublin, Monaco, New York, Venice, Athens, Ephesus, Pompeii, visited Pullian Trullis, The Giant’s Causeway, the Catacombs of Paris, The Palace of Westminster, Big Sur, Checkpoint Charlie, The Louvre, The Alamo and been on stage at The London Palladium
They’ve attended The Ryder Cup, Ashes Cricket, Chelsea v Arsenal derbys, the Red Sox v The New York Yankees World Series, numerous F1 Grand Prix, mountain climbs of the Tour de France, Clemson v Duke American football, New York Knicks basketball, Cowes week & Antigua Week Regattas, the London Olympic road cycling, the World Waterskiing Championships and numerous dance festivals with my daughter Charlie.
They’ve not done too bad at all. In fact, they are outstanding shoes. But they’re probably now beyond repair and becoming a bit of an embarrassment – despite still being incredibly comfortable. 
All that just leaves me with a double quandary: what to do about the Land Rover AND what to do about my Sebago Docksiders? 
 

African Willy Wonka…

Posted on by February 25, 2016
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It was disappointing to leave S Luangwa, even in the rain…  
…but we set out 380km to Bridge Camp further down the Luangwa River for a quick overnight stop before heading the remaining 300km to Lusaka. 

There has been tremendous progress with building the new tar road from Chipata and all but approximately 50km of dirt track diversions onto are now in excellent condition. We got to Bridge Camp in pretty quick time and spent the afternoon chatting to owners Will & Lindsey whilst they griped and bickered between themselves (Basil & Sybil Fawlty without doubt). When Lindsey is not about, Will reverts to ‘Plan B’. 
 
Leaving early the following morning, our intention was to stay at Eureka Camp in Lusaka but, having completed our shopping on the outskirts of town by lunchtime, we continued south to The Moorings at Monze. Here we met Colin again, the middle-aged Scot who’s been doing pseudo-voluntary work in the region for the last few years. We shared a couple of drinks and left him with half a dozen packets of cigarette rolling papers (rare as rocking-horse manure out here). He doesn’t smoke cigarettes, but I have a feeling he’ll probably be very chilled and have a big smile on his face for the next couple of months.

The following day we drove to Livingstone and arrived at Maramba River Lodge. We’ve been here so often it’s starting to feel like our 2nd (or 3rd / 4th?) home in Africa. 
Our luck was in and, since there’s no one else here, we got our favourite pitch (camp H) next to the river. We’ve had this pitch every time we’ve been at Maramba and anywhere else just wouldn’t seem the same. Some of the staff have changed – Mary and Barbara have unfortunately left, but Titani (‘What Are We Going To Do Now‘), Kelvin, Precious, Dawa, Richard and Bonaventure are still here. We got a hearty ‘Welcome back Mr Scott & Mrs Scott‘ from everyone.
It’s very hot still. 35 Centigrade during the day and 20-25 overnight. Humidity is very high so it’s difficult to sleep at night and every morning I wake with pillow and T-shirt soaked. It’s so hot that when I left my iPhone in the car to charge one day it warped so badly the screen came apart.
The place is much greener than we left it… 
 
… and the Maramba River is higher than our last visit but, although there are some pools of clear water, the rafts of Water Hyacinth and knotted grasses are now up to 1 metre thick. What little rain there has been, has brought mud and sand into the river, turning it into a surreal African Willy Wonka’s river of hot chocolate. 

 
At sunset, next to our tent, the African Willy Wonka’s river turns into golden caramel…

View From The Penthouse: 
 
Despite the heat, it’s great to once again sleep at night with the shrill, deafening chirp of tree frogs, bugs and beetles piercing the dusk like an assault of wooden wind-chimes in a gale. 

 
Much of the day, and particularly at night, we hear Victoria Falls rumbling in the background. There’s more water in the Zambezi than the last time we were in Livingstone and, although it looks like the Malawi Lake Flies have arrived, it’s actually the rising plumes of spray from The Falls that can be seen clearly from 6-8km away.  

 
Even with the current relatively low water levels these plumes have been carried up after a 100m drop from the river, back to the level of the top of the falls, then risen a further 150m into the air. It’s no wonder they call it Mosi Oa Tonya – The Smoke That Thunders.

This time round there are no elephants terrorising (thrilling) the camp at night. The whole place is just too lush and there are easier pickings elsewhere. But we’ve still got hippos belly-laughing and farting next to our pitch and the occasional huge croc gliding along through the muddy water. 
 
In camp we sit and watch the beautiful Jacana birds picking their way across the water Hyacinth and mud flats with their amazing tripod feet… 

 
…and the Monitor lizards roaming through the undergrowth looking for bugs and juicy morsels.  

 
The lack of rain is going to cause real problems. ‘The Rains’ should have come about 2 months ago. On average they expect 20-30mm per day, up to 80mm some days, for a period of 2-3 months. Having had only a few showers and a couple of recent storms since Christmas, there are serious discussions about potential famine within the next 6-8 months. 

The maize crops planted by subsistence farmers will almost certainly fail since no one has any form of irrigation and boreholes / water sources are only available to the wealthiest farmers. Even those that have them are finding the water table so low that it is barely useable. Prices in the markets have risen substantially and the government doesn’t have the funds to be able to import the goods needed to maintain people’s staple diets. It’s a real worry, and a disaster waiting to happen.
In anticipation of the regular (failed) wet-season, there seems to be no one travelling. For the last 6 weeks we’ve only had other travellers with us for about 4 nights in any of the camps we’ve been to. 
There are a few people staying at Maramba River Lodge in the Safari Tents and Chalets – I guess Victoria Falls will always be a draw for tourists. It’s funny how perceptions vary: we’ve come here for a bit of relative ‘luxury and civilisation’ after travelling for so long, yet talking to some of the Americans in the lodge the other day they’ve come to the same place for the simple ‘roughing-it‘ atmosphere and to experience ‘Bush Life’ in Africa.
Having left home 3 years ago this week, we’ve got some serious thinking to do about whether we ship the car home when our current RAC Carnet runs out at the beginning of April, or whether we renew it, leave the car here and fly home for a short time, returning then to either continue travelling or (if we’re staying) look for some sort of work. 
We can’t keep doing this much longer without bringing in some money and it’s time to think about the future a bit. If we leave the car, we get to come back: if we ship it home it’s unlikely we’d go to the expense of bringing it back.
The Carnet for the car is a bit of an issue. The RAC in the UK have finally decided that they’ve pulled out of the Carnet business – after years of formally preventing anyone going to any of the other European Auto Organisations to get a Carnet for a British registered car! 

That means we’ve got to get the car transferred onto another Carnet or get it back to the UK asap in order to get our deposits / Bonds back. 
We’ve been emailing the ADAC in Germany about the possibility of them issuing a Carnet to us and, so far, everything looks positive. Very friendly staff, helpful, clear documentation and, although the deposit (or bank guarantee) that must be put up with the ADAC is considerably more than the RAC required, the cost of the Carnet itself is about 30% of what the RAC hit us for!
We’ve also got some big decisions to make about the car itself. Mechanically it’s good (unsurprising really, since there’s been so much work done over the last 3 years & 70,000km travelling!) but the bodywork it’s pretty shot. There’s little doubt that it’s had a hard life on this trip, but that’s really just exposed what a ‘pup’ we were originally sold by Nene Overland when we first bought it. 
I guess I was pretty green at the time – even greener than the metallic paint Nene used to cover up the filler and rust that they glossed over! Normal wear & tear we would expect and there’s no doubt that the 70,000km we’ve travelled have been hard on the vehicle.
Regular replacement of shocks, bushes, seals, belts, filters, bearings, etc we would expect and the bodywork has taken a bit of a battering from bush driving and the scorching effects of the sun… 
 
However, in addition to the many issues we had when we first collected the car after it was kitted out, the chassis was clearly rotten (subsequently replaced in Uganda)… 

 
…and over the last couple of years the doors have all but fallen apart… 

 
…the rust in the panel frames has been exposed… 

 
…the bulkhead has ‘blown’ round the door hinges & windscreen and has pretty much completely disintegrated in the foot wells… 

 
The ‘B-posts’ have rotted (and subsequently twisted) so that the back of the car has dropped slightly at the rear cross-member, and every time a door is closed the rust dropping off the inner skin is like metal cornflakes collecting in the bottom of a cereal bag.  

 
Kevin Mackman and the Overland guys at Nene who originally kitted the car out for our trip did a great job. They sold us what we needed, discouraged us from buying ‘toys’ and gimmicks, talked through how best to arrange the equipment and which brands best suited our type of trip. But I can only assume that the Nene sales guys who actually sold us the car – a car that had most of the rust and rot painted over – must have been laughing their rocks off. 

What to do???

Take it home and sell it? 

Just drive it to death, either in Africa or the UK? 

Take it home and restore it? 

Leave it here and have it rebuilt? 

I hate the idea of getting rid of it – other than the money we’ve ‘invested‘ in it it’s got a sentimental pull on us.

Entrance of Slag…The Pursuit of Large Adults…

Posted on by February 7, 2016
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Having had the car dumped at 2am in front of the main entrance doors at Woodlands Lodge we woke early the next morning, as the lodge staff walked round the car and tent to get to work. We apologised that we couldn’t move the car and explained that a mechanic, Joseph (who had help us on the Lilongwe Road) was arriving to help us fix it.

Over the next 3 days Joseph exhausted his expertise. He removed all the fuel pipes, he took the remainder of our cash and bought, then fitted a new Lift Pump (70,000 MK ie $90) and each night we put the tent up again and camped in front of the entrance doors. Living above our (hopefully temporary) workshop. 

 
Woodlands Lodge Manager Ian was very understanding. We couldn’t even push the car round to the campsite as I was concerned that, if we eventually needed another tow truck, they wouldn’t get it back up the slope.

By day 3, Joseph (and his pal Steve) had drained and removed the fuel tank completely, breaking the fuel sender and pipe in the process.  
 
By this point I was getting pretty frustrated with Joseph, but couldn’t get hold of any other workshops due to the holidays. By the time the workshops finally opened on Monday, I was scouring Southern Malawi for a new fuel sender. 

The official Land Rover dealer was useless. Not much surprise there. After promising, but failing, to phone me back 6 times over 4 days, they finally said they could get me one within about (!) 21 days. 
I spoke with the excellent ‘Landy Parts 4 Africa’ in Durban, South Africa. They said they could get one to me by DHL in about 4 days, but that the freight would cost about $50. Very helpful people, but I said we’d get back to them.
In the meantime, we had met Jason, the manager of Central African Wilderness Safaris in Malawi, who mentioned MA Motors, a workshop that they occasionally use for some of their safari Land Rovers. 
I spoke with the boss, Mr Moya, and within 90 minutes he’d sent round workshop manager Ignacious, with a tow truck to take the car away. These guys immediately gave me much more confidence than Joseph had of late.
MA Motors are a very professional setup, with helpful staff and probably the best setup workshop we’ve seen in Africa.  
 
Ignacious towed the car away around lunchtime to investigate the problem and, since I’d said that we couldn’t afford to stay in rooms at the lodge (about $130 a night) they towed it back again at 5pm so that we could camp. 

This time, we managed to put it just to one side of the main entrance, but still at the front of the lodge in the main car park! They had reconnected all of the pipes that Joseph had dismantled, but hadn’t yet identified the problem.
For the next 2 days they towed the car away in the morning as soon as we’d packed up the roof tent, went through it thoroughly at their workshop, then towed it back to us the same night.
By Friday 22nd we were getting a bit desperate. Our Malawi visas had been extended to 28th Jan and there was no way we’d get a further extension, without applying for Residency! 
We’d even sent a message to International Rescue (pals Liz & Frank of The 4×4 Service Centre in Paphos, Cyprus). 
Fortunately MA finally identified the problem as a faulty ‘regulator’ in the diesel pump (one of the possibilities International Rescue had suggested) replaced it and returned the car on Saturday 23rd. I had no money to pay them but, trustingly, they said to relax for 24 hours and bring the money in on Monday morning. 
Total bill for all that daily towing, their labour and minor parts: $150. A bargain. 
Unfortunately, having been trapped, bored at Woodlands for some time, our camping, bar and restaurant bill there was $400 (they have a excellent Indian restaurant!).  
It’s amazing what you find to read when you’re really bored… 
 
On Monday 25th Jan I set out to take the money to MA motors and there was a really miserable grinding, ticking sound from the drivetrain somewhere around the rear differential. 

Needless to say, I ended up leaving the car with them yet again and they set about more investigating.  
 
On the 26th they took the half shafts out, the axel apart and opened up the diff, but that all looked fine. After replacing the rear prop shaft Universal Joint the noise seemed to have stopped. By 27th Jan we had little choice other than to head out of Malawi for Zambia – with an ominous parting comment from Ignacious at MA Motors that he thought the problem may have been caused by our propshaft being out of alignment. 

Great. Still, with only 24 hours left on our Visa we had no choice other than to leave – in case they wouldn’t let us back into Zambia, that would still give us 12 hours or so to drive 400km to the Zimbabwe border.
The car drove fine along the 130km to the Songwe / Chipata border and the border formalities were a breeze. 
We used our new 2nd passports to enter Zambia, as we’d exhausted our entitlement to visas in our main passports when Judith & Tamsin then Philip, Caroline & Muriel had come out to see us. 
Costs: $50 each for 1 month Visa (the KAZA joint Zambia / Zimbabwe visa can’t be bought at the more far-flung borders), 150 Zambian Kwacha ($15) Carbon Tax and 50 Kwacha ($5) Council Tax. We still had a Road Tax document signed by the Manager of the RTSA after the fuss when our last one was confiscated by the Traffic Police, so we blagged our way through the border crossing stating that it was still valid, saving us another $30.
Top Tip: always check exchange rates on Google before approaching a border and dealing with money-exchange touts. When we arrived in Malawi the rate was 520 Kwacha to the Dollar. By the time we left, it was 706.
We tried 9 banks in Chipata but couldn’t get any local currency at the ATMs. Fortunately we had a few Zambian Kwacha left from our last visit (enough for a couple of days of fuel) and were able to pay with $US for an overnight stop and an excellent pork chop dinner at Mama Rula’s Camp. Pork chops – it’s years since we’d tasted a good pork chop!
Although the weather has turned, and the rainstorms seem to have arrived, we decided not to head straight for Lusaka, but to treat ourselves to four nights up at South Luangwa. Last time we stayed at Wildlife Camp and loved it. This time we stayed at Croc Valley. Perhaps not as picturesque, but still on the Luangwa River and a nice place to hole-up for a few days de-stressing. Camping $10 each, beers $2. Hot, clean showers and a camp pitch with shelter and electrical hook-up right on the riverbank.
View From The Penthouse:  
 
This is more like it. Although the whole place is pretty wet, we had a great four days of watching the baboons, vervet monkeys, buck, crocs and hippos by day… 

 
…then experiencing the huge storms and listening to the wildlife round a campfire by night.  

 
It’s hard to beat lying in bed listening to the shrill preeeeep-preep-prep of the Fish Eagles, the whoooooo-up of the hyena, the hrrrrrooough constipated-cough of lions, the belly-laughing grunts of the hippos and the chain-saw growl of leopard.

Over a 24 hour period, with such heavy rain, the river level has risen about 1 metre. Half the enormous splashes we see or hear are hippos sliding off the riverbank, the other half are huge chunks of the riverbank collapsing into the river.
Floodwaters further upstream send lumps of foamy river water, fallen trees and even the occasional dead hippo (closely attended by half a dozen crocs) past our camp. 
 

  
South Luangwa is a beautiful park. Unfortunately, although there are some all-weather tracks, the sodden, flooded plains and swamps mean that at this time of year we weren’t able to explore as much as we’d like.  

 
We were in the park one afternoon when a huge storm hit.  

 
In contrast to most of the bone-dry parks we’ve been in, it’s beautiful to see a place as lush and verdant as this place in the wet season. 

 
However, even on the all-weather gravel surface driving was tricky and we had to take great care to pick out the track direction. To stray even 1 metre off the track would have put us in a serious bog, and we’d been warned at the entrance gates that if we got stuck it was unlikely anyone would come and get us in these conditions. 

When we were stared-down by a bull elephant in the middle of the track as he took up sentry duty at a river ford, that made backing up 500 metres a bit of a challenge as he advanced on us. 

 
Back at Croc Valley Camp each night, the monkeys and baboons were relentless, bold thieves. 

 
The baboons in particular are large, strong and totally unafraid of women. Although they can be chased off with a stick or a few stones from the catapult, they’re bold enough to come and take stuff off the table whilst you’re seated at it. 

Over the four days we were there we lost eggs, bananas, an unopened can of tomato & onion sauce and a packet of Boerewors sausages that I was particularly looking forward to.