slop shops and pharmacies

ja... so anyway. time for a final update. we're home now. what a relief. urban africa really is a shithole. honestly. no lies. every wall is a urinal. every sidewalk a garbage dump. every house a chicken coop. we couldn’t stand it anymore. we had to get out. yahweh bless durban. the land of milk and honey. the cleanest and most organised place in the whole world ever.

first stop in durbs: kfc. praise the lord. double crunch meal. heaven on a plastic tray. we’d been gagging for kfc since cairo. a quick learning for all you budding politicians and future leaders out there: a country cannot, under any circumstances, call itself a 1st world country until it has kfc. good old colonel saunders. goddamn the 3rd world.

second stop: a place on essenwood road called nomad’s backpackers. a german chick with an extremely deep voice and big flappy feet attempted to charge us more because we were south african. we sure did show her. made her hairy armpits sweat. there’s no room for discrimination in the new south africa. this is the rainbow nation. a first world country with fuckloads of kfc’s. how many kfc’s you got in germany? goddamn backpacker nazi!

third stop: swing chair by the pool. windhoek lager in hand. some spacey philosophical dude opposite me. an argument waiting to happen. and it sure did happen. and it sure did end abruptly when he seethed: the difference between you and me is that you are negatively minded and i am positively minded. he then turned his back and stormed off to his room. i suppose i should explain myself. and i will in good time. (a serious rant to follow at some stage). but if i’m honest with myself, he sure did sprout a whole lot of bullshit. goddamn spacey positive-thinking bullshit.

quick note: we had some quality (drunken) arguments on tour. all the trivial stuff. god and life. a lot of it centred around noah’s ark and scientific evidence and faith and the highest truth. we also had some quality discussions regarding parallel lines which we never quite resolved. can parallel lines ever meet? hmmm... puzzling. anyway, i love a good argument. especially now i’ve become opinionated. allah bless thee who is opinionated.

anyway, i’ve strayed from the path. africa. okay. so where were we last? malawi. blantyre. blantyre wasn’t too bad actually. one of the better east african urban centres. it contained a big flash standard bank and some sort of fake-chinese-rubberband-nando’s-type-restaurant. but no kfc. we had some beers at doogles with residents ryan and leon and talked about pissing into the wind and the strong breaking wind in africa. we then bumbled off to a place called twiga (giraffe in swahili). we are obviously before our time as once again the big-bushy-babe-pulling-ginger-tach failed to pull. but what can you do? i guess a lot of it is about education. and the current education system sure had failed your normal everyday african.

malawi was good to us. but we had to leave. the giant prawns in mozam had our tach’s smothered all over them. so we caught a series of brutal minibus-taxi’s down to tofo. the land of sand, sea, sun, and scando’s. except there were no scando’s. goddammit! where have all the scando’s gone? they used to fall out of the palm trees as soon as i so much as put one toe of my speedo-clad ass on the beach in an exotic location. oh well... can parallel lines ever meet? hmmm... puzzling.

there were however some beautiful young inebriated austrian girls around. but i didn’t fall in love. because i’m hard now. errr... well... no... not right now... and not hard like that... but hard... like errr... like sylvester stallone. sylvester stallone with a tach. can you imagine anything harder in the whole world ever (other than hobson’s six-pack)?

anyway so we lived in a three man cottage on the beach for six days. it sure was sandy. but we got to dive (with huge manta rays), and eat (not-so-giant) prawns, and drink cocktails, and stroll along the white silky shoreline at sunrise, and frolic and play-wrestle in the waves. it was like the most romantic holiday you’ve never had with two of your best masculine tach-wearing mates.

but the weather got bad. so again we had to move on. south to the giant prawn capital of the world. with it’s mediterranean-style architecture, flame-tree-lined avenues, sidewalk cafe’s and waterside setting, maputo is easily one of africa’s biggest shitholes. we’d had enough of shitholes... so we sampled the giant prawns (pretty good to be honest) and then we caught one last minibus-taxi home. it was our intention to buy all four seats in the three-seater row. fuck the “what you need to do is squeeze” mentality of eastern african transport. but south african minibus-taxi equals huge mercedes benz sprinter. three seats, three people. hallelujah! god bless the civilised south african minibus-taxi community. so at last we had some good luck. buddha knows we deserved it. would have preferred the tach-seeking scando’s. but we couldn’t complain. what an awesome last journey home. beeg smile.

it sure was a tough trip. glad i did it. wouldn’t do it again.

ps. pics to follow... sometime. when miguel gets his ass in gear. i don’t have any pictures cos my camera got mowed down by... i’ll stop bleating now.

the birds sang in the wet trees
and as i listened to them it was a hundred years from now
and i was dead and someone else was listening to them.
but i was glad i had recorded for him
the melancholy.

- patrick kavanagh

eish

the first picture of us back home - crossing the swaziland, sa border. pay special attention to the tach's... real veterans now... awesome!

miguel's site (the easy life) has further details and pictures of our trip.

mozambique

“pete had disappeared some time before, so ian cycled home alone. he went slowly, wanting to hang on to the feeling of detachment that had taken him over. a state of not-being. a state of no-time. no past, no present, no future. no decisions. he thought it would be good to stay like that for the rest of his life.”

- the other side of the bridge

at this early hour everything is one. the most beautiful harmonies on every level. as if nature is resting. renewing herself. the sparkle of the last of the evening’s stars are fading slowly in the purple western sky. the wind is just a whisper. the sea soft and smooth and cool. the dark swells, that had originated hours ago and miles away, out in the infinite ocean somewhere, back in somebody’s past, roll gently to shore.

the water rushes over your head and slips down your cheeks back into the sea. and it washes away all the world and all certainty. all truths slip through your fingers. you’re just an observer. outside the natural order of things. you’re everything that’s not. and nothing and nobody could ever know. and you hope with all your heart that they could understand. but you know they never will. you’re so isolated. and it’s so beautifully sad. and you wish it would last forever.

and then, sometime just before the end of forever, the sun of the new day peeps over the horizon. red and pink and orange and yellow. and you catch a distorted glimpse of yourself in the silver sea and you remember. and the warmth and the colours lift you and replace you into the one that is everything. and joy, great, high, as wide as all the world, swells inside your heart and brings a smile to your face. and you hum to yourself: the weight - the band. and you just know everything will be alright.

home

"huck never returned from the territory, as far as we know. yet captain gulliver went home, wiser but also alienated and revolted not by the trip but by the domestic scene. unable to stand the yahoo smell that adhered to his wife and the sight of his savage-looking family, he comforted himself by talking to his horse and finding companionship in the stable. travel had changed him. you go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back. you think, i is someone else, like rimbaud."

- paul theroux, dark star safari