My Travel Adventures

I had arranged to leave for the airport at ten o’clock in the morning, which I figured would get me there with time to spare. The road was bumpier than I remembered it being on the way to Cape Maclear, possibly because on the way back we took a different route, but probably because this time I was trying to read a book. We made four stops altogether: two for the driver to pee behind the car, one for us to buy lunch, and one for the driver to buy two giant sacks of rice. He explained that since it was a Sunday, most stores were closed, and the price he had seen from the road was a real bargain.

I arranged for a boat ride yesterday, and the boat was ready at nine o’clock as we had agreed. The guide, John, quickly introduced the crew with whom I would spend the morning: besides himself, there was the captain (John had to repeat the captain’s name twice before I accepted that the man was named “Comment”) and Moses, a tourism student from another town. John did most of the talking, making many oblique references to his appreciation of a potential tip. The profits of his tours, he said, do not go directly to him but are divided among several dozen official tour guides in the area. Furthermore, the people who own hotels in the area are foreigners and keep their earnings to themselves; John complained that the Afrikaners were especially tough.

Today was a workday, so I very dutifully checked my emails and wrote up my research findings from the hotel bar overlooking Lake Malawi. The sky and the water were both perfectly blue. My lunch break took longer than I expected, as the restaurant I visited across the road made all my food entirely from scratch. Still, it was interesting to taste some of the local vegetables whose names I no longer recall. I also had some time to chat with a boatman repairing a catamaran on the beach by my lodge. He offered me one of his tour packages for an acceptable price.

Direct flights from Nairobi to Lilongwe are not scheduled for every day, so I was lucky that Ethiopian (which owns a large stake in Malawi’s national carrier) just so happened to have an itinerary perfectly suited to my needs. My plan for Malawi was the following: On the first day, I would see the Chongoni Rock-Art Area en route to Lake Malawi; on the second day, I would telework from the shores of Lake Malawi; on the third day, I would explore Lake Malawi; and on the fourth day, I would return to Lilongwe and then Nairobi. I would need to take no time off for this, as I had planned my itinerary to begin with the Labour Day holiday, which falls on a Thursday this year.   

One of my friends is leaving Kenya for the foreseeable future, and since we have been talking about going on a safari together for the last two months, we decided to make it happen this weekend. I did most of the planning for the journey, beginning with the all-important decision of where to go. Although the rainy season, which lasts from March to May, is generally considered to be Kenya’s low season, there are several reasons why to go on a safari during that time. First and foremost, hotel prices tend to be lower during the low season and accommodation is easier to find on short notice. Second, there are fewer tourists (though the weeks around labour day see a large influx of Chinese visitors). Third, some parks are genuinely worth the visit during these months. It is said that the view of Kilimanjaro from Amboseli, which is the park I ended up choosing precisely for this reason, is clearer during the rainy season because there is less dust in the air.

With my flight back to Dar Es Salaam scheduled for 13:45, my options for how to spend the morning were limited. However, having found the national museum closed yesterday, I did not have to rack my brains to figure out a programme. The visit took less than half an hour, but I spent another fifteen minutes waiting for the building to open, for although the museum’s official visiting hours begin at eight o’clock in the morning, only the most assiduous employees arrive at that time. I came at around 8:20 myself, when only one of the three ladies who served the ticket booth was present, and she asked me to wait while she turned on some of the electronic information panels.

Having toured Moroni and a few of the villages north of it, I turned my attention to the southern town of Iconi. This sleepy town was once the seat of the Sultanate of Bambao, which also encompassed the country’s present capital. Until the arrival of the French in the late nineteenth century, the island of Ngazidja (or Grande Comore) was divided into ten sultanates, with the sultanate of Bambao and the sultanate of Itsandra occupying a preeminent position among them. Rulers from these two lineages selected the Sultan Ntibe, who crowned the other rulers and theoretically held authority over all but one of the other sultanates.