Traveling Cat

another group email from Susie since she’s better about sending updates!

Hello everyone!

One week in Mozambique, and we have covered a small distance but have been able to see so much. Travel here is much more rugged in comparison to the other countries we’ve been in, but the efforts we’ve made to get from place to place has been completely worth it. I’ve updated photos up through where we are now, so check out the photo site and see what there is to see.

To give you a taste, during our last week of travel, Cat & I have taken the following exciting modes of transportation:

-Bike taxi (hanging on the back of a bike, heavy packs and all)
-Minibus (typical mob of people in a small converted van)
-Bigger minibus (exciting to have more head room)
-Pickup truck (a miraculous feat – 3/5 of the truck bed full of baggage, supplies, a bike or two, and at least one live chicken; 2/5 of the truck bed full of a huge stack of blankets to sell at a market, and at least 14 people and all of their little bags. 10 hours of fun on that one.)
-18 wheeler beer truck (my first, and our cushiest ride by far – we got to sit on the bed in the back and take an easy ride to Pemba)

To say the least, travel here is much different than other countries we’ve been in, and defines a bit more our experience in Mozambique!

From the beginning…We crossed through Malawi (we’ll be heading back there next) and then headed into Mozambique through the Milange border crossing. From there we headed to Nampula and then straight over to Ila de Mocambique, which was the former capital of the country until the late 1800s. An unbelievable place, full of crumbling buildings and a ton of people living amongst a mix of what are basically ruins and the occasional renovated building. So colorful, so relaxing, and very far off the typical tourist track, which was a great break from the norm. Photos tell more than I can. My photos show very few people, but the people were the best part of being there – tons of kids all willing to play in the street (the Monkey walk was a favorite), and adults who put up with our babbling to them in broken Spanish and parts of Portuguese we’d picked up. Just gorgeous. From there we headed up to Pemba, where we are now. It is more touristy here and defnitely more developed as more and more people make their way up to this northern oasis in the country. Beautiful beaches and we hope to get to the nearby Quirimbas islands, just north of us.

First we’ll be taking a break here to nurse Cat back to health, who is going through her second bout with malaria – poor thing! Luckily there are plenty of places we can crash here, so we’re going to get ourselves out of the tent and into some beds and hopefully a place with a fan to let Cat recover in a more peaceful setting. She’s doing pretty well at the moment, but will go through some tougher days as the medication courses through her body to make her better. Send some positive vibes over to Cat, and we’ll hope to be on the road again in a few days.

From here we’re heading back into Malawi to take a trip up the lake, and then up into Tanzania. After doing some dedicated planning (we actually pulled up a calendar and a map…the whole works!), it turns out we have less time and more ground to cover than we’d like. We are halfway through our journey, and we keep thinking of more places we want to see! Depending on what our pace is, we will definitely head to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and then to Zanzibar. There may be a trip out to Western Tanzania after that, and depending on time we could swing through Rwanda and Uganda as well. If not, we’ll head straight up to Kenya to begin our explorations from there.

That’s the plan for now – always subject to change. Know that we’re doing great and are staying safe, and will be getting healthy shortly. More to come soon…

Me, me, me

Malaria Relapses
In P. vivax and P. ovale infections, patients having recovered from the first episode of illness may suffer several additional attacks (“relapses”) after months or even years without symptoms. Relapses occur because P. vivax and P. ovale have dormant liver stage parasites (“hypnozoites”) that may reactivate. Treatment to reduce the chance of such relapses is available and should follow treatment of the first attack.

What Happens

When you’re bitten by a malaria infected mosquito, the parasites that cause malaria are injected into your blood and invade your liver cells. The parasite reproduces in the liver cells, which then burst open, allowing thousands of new parasites to enter the bloodstream and infect red blood cells. The parasites reproduce again in the blood cells, kill the blood cells, and then move to other uninfected blood cells.

The time from the initial malaria infection until symptoms appear (incubation period) generally ranges from:

• 9 to 14 days for Plasmodium (P.) falciparum.
• 12 to 18 days for P. vivax and P. ovale.
• 18 to 40 days for P. malariae.

Symptoms can appear in 7 days. Occasionally, the time between exposure and signs of illness may be as long as 8 to 10 months with P. vivax and P. ovale, because these parasites can survive in the human liver for a long time.

The incubation period may be longer if you are taking medicine to prevent infection (chemoprophylaxis) or have developed partial immunity due to previous infections.

Malaria can begin with flu-like symptoms. In the early stages, infection from P. falciparum is similar to infection from P. vivax, P. malariae, and P. ovale. You may have no symptoms or symptoms that are less severe if you are immune or partially immune to malaria.

Common malaria symptoms include:

• Fever.
• Chills and a rapidly rising temperature.
• Headaches, nausea, and extreme sweating.

Symptoms may appear in cycles. The time between episodes of fever and other symptoms varies with the specific parasite you are infected with. Episodes of symptoms may occur:

• Every 48 hours if you are infected with P. vivax or P. ovale.
• Every 72 hours if you are infected with P. malariae.
• P. falciparum does not usually have a regular, cyclic fever.

After the early stages, life-threatening complications develop rapidly with P. falciparum and, if untreated, may result in irreversible complications or death.

If untreated, you may recover in a week to a month (or longer) after being infected with P. vivax, P. malariae, or P. ovale.

Malaria can be a more serious disease for a pregnant woman and her unborn baby (fetus), and for young children. Medication choices are limited for a pregnant woman or a child. Infection with P. falciparum can lead to death for a pregnant woman and her fetus. For these reasons, a woman should not travel to an area where P. falciparum malaria is present while pregnant. Visit the CDC Web site (http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/travel/index.htm) to find out whether malaria is a problem in the country where you will be traveling.

Malaria recurrences

Malaria caused by P. falciparum may come back (recur) at irregular intervals for up to 2 years if treatment is not complete.

Malaria caused by P. vivax and P. ovale may recur at irregular intervals for up to 3 to 4 years, but medication treatment can prevent relapses.

P. malariae can remain in the blood of an infected person for more than 30 years, usually without causing any symptoms.

Hitch hiking in Moz is too entirely easy and fun. Makes me want to try it in the States… if only it was considered just as safe back home.

Stretching out in the bed of the cab of the 18 wheeler

Susie’s loving the ride

After many long days of travel, we made it to the tropical paradise of Mozambique!
- 14 hour bus ride from Lusaka, Zambia to Liliongwe, Malawi (with the exception of police threatening to shoot out our tires, it was an otherwise lovely ride)
- 6 hour bus to Blantyre, Malawi the next day
- 7 hour 1940s leaky very crowded school bus to Malanje, Mozambique the next day
- half hour boda boda bike taxi ride across border from Malawi to Moz
- wake at 4am for minibus to Mocuba, was to leave at 5am, but didn’t leave till 10am, arriving at 3pm
- same day continued on to Nampula in the back of a pickup truck that smelled like fish with 13 passengers, one chicken, and piles of luggage, arriving sun burned, cold, tired, and wet. Left at 3pm, arrived at 2am. Feel like a true traveller roughing it!
- 7am minibus the next day to Ilha de Mozambique – successfully arrived by 1pm!
- 4am minibus to Namiala a few days later, then managed to hitch a ride on an 18 wheeler the rest of the way to Pemba. It was the first time I’ve ever asked a trucker for a ride and I’m proud to say it worked out great! Susie then offered him $2 for the 6 hour trip and he accepted! I got to stretch out in his bed, take a nap for a while, read, chat, and enjoy our most spacious ride yet!

We’re now at the beach and I’m enjoying life. Just finished reading “St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.” It was reviewed in Bust magazine last year, and I found it in hardback at a book swap in Livingstone. (Pretty amazing to find good books at book swaps, much less new books still in hard cover!) Great read for anyone who likes short stories and likes to laugh! Otherwise I’m well and spending my time sweating tons. My brain is sweating too… it’s in overdrive trying to speak Spanish to native Portugese speakers after a year of trying to speak Swahili. All in all, life is good and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Gorgeous!

You can buy anything out of the window of your bus… bread, soda, corn, live
chickens, etc…

You’d never know how much this peanut selling dude squealed with delight upon having
his photo taken. It’s a rare treat and something to look very serious for!

You can see the kid in white trying not to smile… pretty funny!

Sunset in Wimbe Beach near Pemba (northern Mozambique)

Top 10 Reasons Traveling with Brett is Great!

10. He showers quite a bit, which can be good in a traveling companion.
9. He has a serious sweet tooth, so we don’t feel so bad about our own ice cream & chocolate habits (since he’ll always eat more).
8. He can spot a lizard from 100 meters, and then run to catch it.
7. He’s not afraid to eat insects.
6. So dedicated to his fabulous girlfriend at home, he sleeps with her teddy bear at night. Awwwww…Way to go, Leah!
5. Has an unstoppable ego, but can back it up: he cooks (pancakes even!), he cleans, he has business plans in Panama, and is hella crafty.
4. Has an astonishingly lightweight backpack, enabling him to run even faster from rebel troops in Sudan. Doesn’t mean he’s carrying anything of substance, but man is his pack small.
3. In an attempt to delve into local experiences, Brett often walks barefoot, showing off some seriously disgusting oozing wounds on his feet and shins. Local comments never slow him down, and in fact encourage him to continue on: “Brad Pitt! Brad Pitt! Where are your shoes? I will sell you my shoes, Brad Pitt!”
2. He is spreading the word about “Rule #1″ (and #2 and #3…). Ask him about them and he’ll tell you: nacokiwi [at] gmail.com
1. And the best thing about Brett is that he put up with us for an entire month of travel, no matter how hard of a time we gave him for all of the above traits.

We miss you Brett!
Susie & Cat

Brett chowing on a giant millipede

I don’t know tons about her, but I love live music so I went to check out her concert in Lusaka last week. What I do know: She’s from islands off the coast of Madagascar. She sings in French. She roles up one leg of her pants. She can get the whole crowd dancing. It was a fun show and I recommend her to anyone who gets the chance to check her out.

Strangers continue to impress me with their generosity. Bob, Michelle, and Danielle offered us a free place to stay at their program’s flats, so Brett, Susie, and I moved in the next day. We each get our own rooms and their flats are fancy (house keeper comes daily, braai pit, hot showers with great water pressure, even a washing machine!).

We did dinner with them on Saturday night and ate some fabulous Indian food. Despite the fact Lusaka feels more expensive than Nairobi, the Indian food was much cheaper (and better!). Mains were only $5 at the place on Great East Road by our Cha Cha Cha backpackers). Sunday we did brunch then met up for the craft market and a free concert (Patricia Phillipe, part of the Francophone concert series). Sunday night was a braai at the flats where we’re staying where we met lots of cool people. Most of the guys were Zambian, but one of the guys was Greg, a kid from Houston who worked as an intern for Arthur Andersen back in college, just a year before I did the same. Seems we were both business majors, both did training in St. Charles, both went to the same night life, both lived in Houston, and both ended up sitting next to each other in Zambia at the same party Sunday night. Odd, odd world. (I might try to meet up with him later today… he’s offered to hook me up with black exploitation music from India and other fun stuff from his music collection).

All of our new friends work together at an HIV research project here in Lusaka and have their weekends on Sundays and Mondays. Monday we rented out a minibus and drove out for a day in the sun. Believe it or not, but Lusaka has a water park that’s fancy and plush even by Western standards. Adventure City was completely empty when we went… we were quite literally the only guests in the entire place. It was as if the giant park, all of it’s pools and slides and volley ball courts were all there reserved for our private party. How much did we have to pay for this wholesome goodness for the private park? A mere 20,000 Kwacha (less than $5 each)!

The eight of us set up our braai (bbq) by the water slides and had a grand old time. Most entertaining were our attempts at group slide formations after lunch. We’ve get Brett, Bob, Michelle, Susie, Danielle, and I to all hang on and slide down together. We did it forward, backwards, sideways, on our backs, and all kinds of other ridiculous and painful formations that seemed like a good idea at the time. (Flipping over in the middle – a great trick! Going down separately but at the same time – painful as all get out!). We all recognize it was a bit ridiculous to be having so much fun at a water park, much less to be at a water park in Zambia in the first place, but my goodness… if you were there, you’d have had a great time too.

Americans love s’mores!

Adventure World Water Park!

Real frogs at Adventure World (perhaps inappropriate to post, but still kinda funny to see)

Two braais in two days, two opportunities to eat s’mores!
Danielle, Bob, Brett, me, Ty, Amanda, Michelle, Susie

Water slide madness!

This week we’re staying with generous new friends in a lovely flats in Lusaka – Zambia’s very modern capital city. We met them Saturday night and they invited us to move in the same night. We opted to come the next day, and they’ve generously filled our social calendar for the remainder of our stay in Lusaka. How did we meet these lovely people?

I met a cool guy Mike in Windhoek who’s taking 2 years to travel around before going back to another engineering job. Mike knew a woman in Lusaka who was leaving, but suggested he show up on another friend’s door, and that friend ended up being Danielle. They decided to do a trip together in Namibia and I met her there and we exchanged emails. When we decided to come to Lusaka I sent her an email and we made plans for dinner. When we met her, she brought coworkers with including Bob and Michelle, two kids from Seattle. Bob who used to work at SPU in the same department as my friend Clare, and used to eat lunch with my friend Rod. Bob, who also happens to be friends with a guy named Roque, who’s friends with a girl named Jenny, who works with our friend Jim back in Seattle and was a regular at the weekly Sunday Dinners. Woah. Pretty wild to show up for dinner with a woman we don’t know to find people both Susie and I know through different connections back home in Seattle. The world continues to feel like a very small, connected place.

As the old man next to me on the minibus so accurately put it, “It is too much hot.” And he wasn’t kidding. It’s been in the 90s or higher every day we’ve been here. Our guide Mac in Namibia is from Zambia and he invited us to visit his family in the village (without him) and so off we went. Our first stop was Livingstone, a nice little town that felt a bit like Kakamega. We stayed at a super backpackers for a few days (Jollyboys) and then made our way to the village.

Village boys pick bananas to sell

Susie with Mac’s family

Always fun to see what other people get in their local markets. In Chirundu you could get dried okra.

You could also get mopane worms (catepillars) next to the tomatoes

Public health campaign, though AIDS rates here are still very high

Brett tries to carry water like a girl

Homemade village toys are always cool

Three year old Angela gets a bath

Group photo with the whole family… my new “African mom” on the right with me

Should it be so difficult to find plain/salted potato chips in countries in southern Africa?

As usual, Susie’s much better at taking time to send email updates, which I go the lazy route and just post a few pictures and captions from each place. Read below for her update to get a sense of our travels right now. Hope everyone is well!

Greetings from Lusaka, Zambia!

As I’ve begun typing this update it has become pretty long (not a shock), so I’ll give a brief sum-up here up front. After doing quite a bit of research and talking to as many people as we can here in Lusaka, Cat & I have decided to forgo our return trip into Zimbabwe for the time being. Considering the last week’s events (please check into them if you haven’t heard – the recent events are just another example of the complex and painful political experience going on in Zim right now), we have been told that this time in particular is not safe to be in Zimbabwe, and especially Harare where we were heading next. For most of our journey we have been told that although the situation in Zimbabwe is difficult it is safe for tourists, but this past week we have been told that even as tourists it is not smart for us to head there. So I am sad to say that we will not be heading down there as there was so much I wanted to see, but it seems safety first is going to be the rule of the day.

Instead, we are heading straight through Malawi to Mozambique, to explore the northern part of that country for the next couple of weeks. I’ll elaborate on that more below, but for all of you with little time on your hands to read the entire update, that is the game plan for now. We hop a bus to Lilongwe on Thursday morning, getting us into the city around midnight. Then Cat & I will head south and east towards the Mozambique coast, and Brett will head north. We will be sad to lose our traveling partner for the past few weeks!

Now on to the longer version of the update…

Cat, Brett & I have been here in Lusaka for the past three days, checking out the city and being lucky enough to meet up with some wonderful people doing HIV/AIDS research in the area. They have offered us beds at their place, so we have been able to rest easily and free for the past couple of nights. Huge thanks to Danielle, Bob, Michelle and the rest of the team for their kindness and hospitality! The group even took us out on their free day to a nearby water park (can you believe that?) to spend an afternoon sliding and enjoying what would have been a sunny day. Instead in the clouds and threatening thunderstorms, we spent the afternoon making braai (bbq) and making various 6-person configurations heading down one of the big slides. It reminded me of summers in New Jersey. A pretty surreal experience seeing as that we are in Zambia.

Before we arrived here, we were thrilled to be able to spend two nights in a small village outside of Chirundu, which is on the boarder with Zimbabwe. Our guide on our Nomad trip invited us to come and see his family if we were interested, and all three of us were eager to get a taste of a more local experience. The journey was wonderful – our family welcomed us into their home and spent an entire day showing us around their family’s banana farm, the “convergence” where the Zambezi River meets the Kafue River, visiting the local market, and relaxing in the oppressive heat. We were thrilled to meet the family’s grandfather, who is not sure how old he is, but everyone thinks he’s somewhere in his 90s (OLD for Zambia). He was slow to come out of the house, but sat down with us for a while to talk a little bit, smile a lot (grinning to show us his two teeth), and thank us for coming to see him. He is now living alone after his wife died, and the family is having tough time figuring out how to continue taking care of him as he does not want to leave his home.

I loved our visit there – enjoyed rides in the back of the pickup truck and having conversations with folks to hear about some of the local issues that affect them. Land issues are definitely on many people’s mind – we learned that you can acquire land for free in many places in Zambia just by proposing your land use idea to the head man, who then conferrs with the local chief. If they agree it is usually confirmed by the land comission, and you are given your papers for your plot of land. This process seems to have worked well in the past, but it appears that frequently the process is taken advantage – whether by expanding their plot of land (and therefore pushing people out of their homes) without asking permission, or by expanding their land by paying off the head man. We were told that many foreign whites come into Zambia, get cheap or free land through this process then build on the land and sell it to the highest bidder, making them a ton of money and not necessarily investing into the local community. This makes for complex relationships between foreigners and locals. However, at the end of our visit, the brother (who had been complaining to us about the land use problems) told us that we should definitely come back to Zambia to get land and make some money. One day he was condemning the behavior and the next day he was suggesting we do just that.

We waved goodbye to the family in the morning and got on a minibus to Lusaka. In Lusaka we stayed at the Chachacha Backpackers, a friendly and clean spot we were happy to pitch our tent in for the night. There we met a bunch of other great travelers, including Jamie, who started the Peace Pedalers project. He is an incredibly interesting person who is biking around the world for a total of about 8 years (taking some time off to catch up at home for a bit) on a tandem bike. He is creating a “rockumentary” along the way, so he travels with video and camera equipment and does everything from record local concerts to record his own journey along the way. He picks up riders as he goes to join him on the back of his bike, with the hope of building peace through cultural understanding and experience. Cool, huh? You can check out his website at www.peacepedalers.com.

In Lusaka we were also looking forward to meeting back up with Danielle, a HIV/AIDS researcher based in Lusaka. We met Danielle in Windhoek, and we were glad to get in touch with her again when we arrived in Lusaka. Oddly enough, I was put in touch with another couple working in Lusaka before I left Seattle (thanks Jenny & Roque). When I got in touch with Bob & Michelle, it turned out they worked for the same project as Danielle! So even before we arrived in Lusaka we had been in touch with 3 of 8 of the project’s team. Wild, huh? After our first night here the group invited us to stay with them, which has been fabulous. We will be sad to leave them on Thursday morning!

Again, I am disappointed that we won’t be heading down into Zimbabwe, as I have been hearing so much about the wonderful people there as well as the interesting sights to see (was really looking forward to seeing the Great Zimbabwe ruins). But unfortunately as the government in Zimbabwe is pressing harder and harder against any opposition parties, and has recently become more violent in their oppression. The situation in Harare especially has been very hectic since the demonstrations held there on March 11. As we were planning to transfer through Harare to get down to Great Zimbabwe as well as some other nearby sights, it seemed to usthat we should rethink our plans to stay on the safe side. If you’re interested in reading some good blogs about the situation, you can link to them through this article written by the BBC – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6456027.stm.

Although it is sad to miss out on the other places in Zimbabwe, I’m definitely looking forward to Mozambique – the Portugese influence will be a very different experience than the places we have been so far. In planning to get to Mozambique, we’ve had to pick and choose where we want to head, as it covers a ton of territory and is supposed to be fairly difficult to navigate. Add in the recent flooding and cyclones that happened there in Feburary, and you make for a rougher road! But it seems the northern area of the country will be just fine, and I’m looking forward to a dip in the ocean sometime in the near future!

If you’ve survived the read all the way to this point – thanks! So much happens every day here and it’s tough to get even a few of the thoughts I have each day down to share with you all. But know that we’re happy, safe, and looking forward to the road ahead, as usual. Meeting such interesting and kind people along the way enriches the journey we have and ensures we are able to have a variety of perspectives of the places we are along the way.

More photos will come slowly but surely – keep checking the photo site – I hope to have photos up from Botswana and Vic Falls before I leave Lusaka!

Much love,
Susie

As Carl-Erich so aptly pointed out, I talked about Vic Falls but failed to post even one picture of the actual falls. Ooops. Thanks C-E for keeping me in line. Here are a few photos… enjoy!