We all slept in, waking to a very cold morning.
I fell asleep again in the truck, hiding from the cold and uninteresting scenery, and woke to a panorama of green hills folded into jagged creases striped with waterfalls foaming down sheer rock. This valley was heavily planted with a lush green carpet of banana palms, the whole scene brightly lit by sunshine pouring from a clear blue sky.
We noticed a slight change in the huts even from yesterday, with square mud bricks and thatched roofs rounded at the top, and far fewer corrugated roofs. A hilly drive took us into Mbaye where we spent the last of our Tanzanian shillings.
I headed off with a young lad who offered to guide me to the post office, envisioning a long, colourful hike through the market. But rafter some roundabout footwork through mud he stopped suddenly at a tiny, darkened window in a solid brick wall, a sign indicating its status as post office. I wonder whether my postcards will make it home from unlikely place.
Spent the leftover food kitty shillings and managed to fill the food lockers despite some nimble fingers lightening my pocket by 100 shillings. Drove a short way to get diesel near a crowd of youngsters. One was performing tricks of contortion and ended up with his heel over his head and in his mouth!
We lunched out of town near a wide and sandy riverbed running with fine trickles of muddy water. Preparations took on the air of country life with local goats under the truck and around our legs and raid our garbage bins. We attracted a huge audience who stood in rows to watch us eat but ran away when Julie offered them her corned beef sandwiches. Three gorgeous kids stood with their arms around each other’s shoulders, two of them wearing pink diaphanous shorts, a portrait of fascinating.
The afternoon was a rerun of eastern Zaire and Burundi, with heavily cultivated hills, patchworked in green and brown, tattered green banana leaves, maize, thick eucalypt plantations and, later, expanses of rolling hills planted in rows and stretching back in a clipped coarse carpet towards rugged mountain ranges. Tiny huts peppered the scene and it looked like a child's model set, with miniature children, cows and goats. This beautiful country exuded a peacefulness that the cities do not. Drove through a long stretch of vegetable farms, the roadside lined with mounds of cabbages, some onions and carrots, and every pedestrian carrying heavy baskets.
Stopped for water at a fast-flowing stream partly dammed to direct the water to crops. Established a chain of people up the bank - I stood near the top this time! - and handed up bowls of slightly bitter water that we filtered through one of Kel’s t-shirts. Truck full, we all washed, in water nowhere near as cold as I expected. Another huge audience, packed onto the bank and the bridge, laughed riotously at our naked white bodies and made comments we couldn’t understand. They play-panted as we climbed back up to the truck, deliciously clean and refreshed.
Drove on before camping on a soccer field, on a peak between two valleys leading down to Lake Malawi, one valley dotted with huts among never-ending bananas, the lake just visible, the other a rugged "V" between highlands, slopes green with tea rolling to a horizon of mountain ridgelines in layers of blue. A spectacular sunset that painted the clouds orange and purple silhouetted another rapt audience.
The soccer goal frames proved excellent clothes drying racks before a small local contingent used our ball for a soccer game between tents.
After a delicious dinner I retreated to the truck to write this diary but ended up discussing Asia with Nikki. A sudden storm prompted frenzied throwing of things into the truck from outside, dropping the sides and acceptance that we would just have to sit and wait for the downpour to end. Bob’s attempt to save his gear from an unexpected flood in his tent revealed that his sleeping bags had been stolen. Suddenly we again felt besieged and had to lock everything away. We have relaxed and become less paranoid over the last weeks so were unprepared for this and very disappointed.
Photo by Idrisa Shaaban on Unsplash
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