as you can imagine five months in Africa has tought me alot. Far more then i could ever fit into one teeny tiny blog post so here are a few of the things i learnt along the way... starting in South Africa because that's where we started....
South Africa opened me up to my family history. its where my moo is from and i never quite appreciated until recent years how it would have been like to grow up in apartheid south Africa i think i now have some understanding of the way things were. We went out to Robben island (Cape town) and to the Nelson Mandela museum (Mthatha) which stand to show us and the coming generations the many horrors of apartheid and educate to stop something like it ever happening again. I also learnt to ALWAYS carry our camera no matter how annoying it seems... in Tsitkamma after walking for an age and not seeing anything cool we put the camera in our tent and wandered through the campsite only to stumble across a massive male baboon just chilling on the grassy verge! argghhh how frustrating!....
Swaziland tought me that sometimes jandals just don't cut it...(not often)...when we were playing football against the locals (and that's the local football team not just kids! they had football boots and shin pads and i had bare feet!)shoes would have been a good option jandals don't allow for quick manoeuvring and turns out not only was the ground nice and hard there were also a ton of camel spiders hanging about oops!....
In Mozambique the lesson about reading instructions first was learnt as in "take one seasick pill at least an hour before activity" this would have been helpful instead i took it about 30 seconds before activity and so fed the whale sharks as well as snorkelling with them...
ALWAYS KNOW WHERE THE RHINOS ARE....seems simple but in Zimbabwe we were almost trampled by a big bull...We were sitting quite relaxed watching a group of four rhinos when suddenly (thankfully) someone spotted a fifth coming up right behind us lucky for us they have poor vision so the big beast probably didn't even know we were there!....
Now this ones for LP and it seems pretty basic...in the Okavango Delta we headed out to an island on Makouras (dug out canoes) and LP rolled his sleeves up to his shoulders without any suncream....he still has a funny tan line....so Botswana taught us to always SLIP SLOP SLAP...AND WRAP.....(Emily this may be Kiwi thing....ill explain when i see you )....
In Namibia we learnt that given the chance sand goes anywhere including places you didn't even know it could go. Much to the hotel cleaners disgust after a morning of sand boarding we filled the shower with sand collected in clothes in shoes, in ears, nostrils and mouths... (ill let you imagine where else).....
Zambia taught us to follow your gut instinct... even if it means getting up on new years day before the sun has woken up. Alas this was a lesson learnt to late we didn't follow our intuition and wake up to go on a game drive and so missed the wild dogs and the only spotting of them on our entire epic Odyssey...poo....
Malawi...oh yes lake Malawi... the lake of near death by drowning...it was here that i learnt that I'm really not to keen on small boats if i cant control it meaning i like kayaks and canoes but almost all other small boats are out...i also learnt that if it looks like bad weather to me then being in the middle of the lake on a small island is not the place to be....
In Tanzania we parted ways with some friends for a short time and in that short time i learnt i don't like being apart from sister wife,bandwagon Mark and old Sampson (although i am very proud they climbed Kilimanjaro ! yay!) and Zanzibar taught me about the durain the king of fruits a fruit that smells so bad that Zanzibar flights ban smoking and durain's...(they taste average so I'm not really sure why you would bother with this one).....
Nairobi in Kenya taught us NEVER TO RIDE IN A MATATU (mini-bus taxi) after one shattered through the wall to our campsite killing the driver injuring another and with all the passenger's taking flight before the police showed up. This incident also taught us that we are lucky to have free health care as in Nairobi ambulances will only turn up to an accident if they are paid up front to deliver the person to hospital so most people prefer to travel there by taxi.....
On our first trip into Uganda we were staying in Kampala at a campsite which had Vervet monkeys (as we learnt staying in campsites all over Africa they can sometimes be a pest as they steal food etc this is encouraged by people feeding them) the lesson learnt was that although people shouldn't feed them the one little guy did look cute as he stole a cracker right out of Sam's hand!....
Rwanda is a great country its beautiful, green, clean and the people are amazingly warm and friendly. Despite this it has a horrific past which we learnt all about at the genocide museum in Kigali. the museum aims to educate so that people understand the realities of what went on not only in 1994 but also in the smaller but no less important genocides that checker Rwandas past. the hope is that through education atrocities like this will never be seen again. its a harsh lesson to learn that humans are so fickle as to turn on life long friends and neighbours in a spree of needless killing.... we also learnt about Rwandas beautiful great apes the mountain gorilla there are currently less then 800 mountain gorillas world wide but efforts are in place to stop the decline, including the tourism industry although permits to track the gorillas are expensive a large portion of the money goes into conservation for these great animals. seeing them face to face in the wild was an amazing experience there is nothing like making eye contact with a Silverback male who weighs over 200kg and seeing in his eyes he understands that you are standing there just watching him its incredible....
our second trip into Uganda went a ways as to teach me about Patience as I've already said i do lack patience somewhat but when you are stranded at a hilltop campsite next to the Nile as your passport is being sent to Australia for an Ethiopian visa what can you do?...i did what i had to and so spent my days lounging in the sun reading and talking to friends see I'm not to bad at this Patience lark....
our second spell into Kenya didn't teach me anything profound but it is a skill that i can probably take with me for years and years to come...it is the ability to squat and pee behind a rock that is almost as flat as the rest of the almost completely flat landscape...that's right you heard me....Northern Kenya is stunningly beautiful and pretty empty of people but my gosh it is flat!....(i can also pee really quickly as people kept throwing it out there that there might be bandits in northern Kenya so every time i peed it was quick like a ninga just in case a bandit jumped out from behind an almost completely flat rock!...
In Ethiopia i learnt that mothers probably are always right i get told to try things that i didn't like as a child and that as an adult i might like them...we went to a coffee ceremony and it would have been beyond rude not to try it so i downed a whole cup... the first whole cup of coffee i have ever drunk in my entire life and whilst you may be expecting a revelation that actually i loved it ...(i didn't)...all i can say is that it wasn't completely revolting and i wouldn't be opposed to trying other things...(please note i still hate peas and corn with a vengeance)...
Sudan is a lesson that took several days to learn Close the tent doors and windows whilst camping in the desert!!! unless of course you want to be part of a Sand storm! No one likes sand in their sleeping bag its just not cool!...it did take us a few horrid nights to realise this as sometimes the wind picks up or changes direction in the night so even though its a lovely view of the stars and a nice cool breeze in the evening you WILL regret it in the morning...
and to finish off my lessons learnt in Africa we finish with Egypt where i learnt two things. First that sometimes what you see on the news isn't necessarily the case...the protests in Egypt where still happening when we where there but all the people we met where lovely and friendly to tourists (except the leery men who are just gross) we were told not to walk around at night but as long as you used common sense Cairo was perfectly safe. The other thing we learnt and the conclusion to this blog is that mosquitoes are much easier to kill in the mornings....when they are full of you blood!......
