The one speed bike trip turned out to be a victory. On that bike I covered around 1400 km through Malawi and Botswana. My buddy Octavi and I battled through the challenges together and bonded as brothers. Everyday followed a routine: we would wake up with the sun and be on the road early. At around noon we would try to find some village food room and obtain rice and maybe some meat, otherwise get out a can of tuna and put that over bread. Octavi loves his ciestas, and we would rest for an hour after lunch out of the worst heat of the day, then continue onwards, making about 70-100 km every day. No rush, pole pole, and pushing up the hills with the locals when it got steep. It was such a connected way of traveling: locals from the villages would greet us, perplexed about what we were doing going past on bicycles, and if they were biking, we would go with them for a time before some of them zipped off, sometimes even carrying a person on the back rack.
In two days, we made it to the great Malawi Lake, which is so big. As we entered Malawi, I couldn't find my WHO yellow fever vaccination proof book, but Octavi was in the guardhouse showing his documents and working his charm on the guard, adding him on Facebook. Then he said, "It's ok if Kaiwen doesn't have his yellow fever book because we're friends now, right?" And it was fine, they let me into the country. Octavi is a master of that kind of schmoozing, having made it through West Africa without paying a single bribe. If you're friends with the right people in Africa, you can escape the bribes, get discounts on the market, and even the guesthouses. We would arrive and say, "we come from Tanzania on these bicycles!" And the receptionist would be so amazed, and end up giving us a discount. After admiring the lake at Karonga, we headed of south, staying 2 nights in Livingstone, and meeting up with 2 bikers, Neil and Shosho, we had met earlier who were going all the way from Taiwan to Cape Town, and 3 overlanding travelers in their Land Rovers. We braaied with Neil, a South African, braai being the South African all day style barbeque, then all of us cyclists caught a ride with the overlanders up the sizable mountain down the road, which was lucky, since it probably would have made for half a day of pushing, or more.
Then we all arrived in Muzuzu, one of the three bigger cities in Malawi, and one fateful night, my entire bag was stolen from underneath my tent flap while I was in a lodge's campground. I awoke, to find 80% of my worldly possessions gone. That was a blow, but luckily, I still had my camera, passport, and money. I would have to recover with local materials.... and that included Shoprite, the South African Walmart, the only supermarket I had seen in over a month, and the market. In the market, they sold only second hand shirts (this is what happens to our donation T-Shirts: we donate them, they get to Malawi, and some person receives them and sells much of them for money. They make their way to the market, along with second hand bags, hats, pans, etc. It kills the local market for producing or importing these items). And so I bought random shirts, including a University of Oslo shirt, which attracts the attention of all Norwegians who happen to be nearby whenever I wear it, and a duffel bag which used to belong to some bakery somewhere. I was going light from now on: I would renounce all unnecessary worldly possessions. And I filed a police report, which the police didn't charge me for, because "I was the victim" and I guess they felt bad for me? Not like anyone who files a report isn't a victim. Octavi stayed with me through this dark day helping me get back everything I needed and haggle with the market salesmen, a true hero!
And so I came to Nkata Bay, truly a paradise by the great Malawi Lake. Everyone had told us to stay at a place called Mayoka Village there, and we were not disappointed. It was situated on the shores of the lake, with free canoes for use, and a pontoon platform for sunning on the water. We swam everyday, ate, took the canoe across the bay to reach the village, and relaxed. The atmosphere was great - volunteers from the surrounding hills would descend upon the place on the weekends and there would be great merrymaking. So many characters passed through Mayoka Village. There was Javi, who had travelled for 11 years already, and the last 4 on his bicycle. He had just passed through the DR Congo on a great bike trip, discovering how the trucks make on average 50 km a day journeying thorugh that wild land. There was another Javi, who came with Christina and Maria, Spanish volunteers in Kenya we would joke with and play games with all night. Then the peace corp volunteers would also come hang by the lake, Zambia being the largest peace corp operation with over 250 members in the country. The days went by so fast, time didn't even seem to exist. Octavi compared the place to Neverland.... just in the water all day (though no pirates).
Yet all good things come to an end. I had planned to be there 5 days at first, but that stretched into 2 weeks before I left. I took a ferry to Likoma island, an island in the Malawi Lake, full of very nice and chill locals, before I left on another ferry, the MV Illala, an old German built (probably) formerly steamer which still sails up and down the lake. These ferries probably epitomize the concept of African time. I went to the port to ask when the ferry would leave, and the harbormaster doesn't really know, one of the ferries is under repair and not sailing, the Illala comes sometime Tuesday morning, and the private ferries leave anytime they want. And so I ask him exactly when the Illala will leave, and he pulls out the log of the times it has left in the past: 8:13, 8:26, 8:18, 8:45..... and so I deduce I should be at the port around 7:30. The bay is too shallow for the Illala to come in, and so it moors offshore, while the lifeboats, which are equipped with motors, are sent to shore and people dump their cargo on and climb in after it, getting ferried to the Illala, where we climb up the ladders onto the lower deck. That day, we didn't leave port until maybe 10:30, because there was a shipment of extra concrete that week that took hours to ferry to shore, boat by boat. And so we cruised down Lake Malawi, with us travellers sleeping on the top deck, under the stars.
We arrived at the port of Chipoka, and Octavi and I began our two day journey to Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. We biked down open roads, and didn't hit the hills until the second half of the day. The hills were sparsely populated by villages, and along the way, there wasn't a guesthouse to stay in. There was, however, a huge church that had been built by a Scottish mission over a hundred years ago, and so we approached the church elders, and asked them where we could camp for the night that was safe and allowed, perhaps around the church grounds? After some discussion, they accepted, and even allowed us to sleep inside the church itself. And after that night, we finished the last distance to Lilongwe. It was to be Octavi and my last bike ride together.... he sold his bike in Lilongwe. He had been missing home and wanted to speed up on the way to Cape Town, since the end was so near.
We ended up busing to Lusaka together, since I didn't want to spend a week on that long road, much of it which was under construction. And so in Lusaka, I geared up my bike for my planned journey through Botswana. There villages were going to be an average of 30-40 km apart, the sun scorching, and the landscape flat and dry. This was going to be the semi-desert, far away from Tanzania, where I could buy bottled water at almost any village I wanted to. So I bought a 10L water tank, replaced the silly basket at the front of my bike for a rack to carry additional supplies, and had a guy weld on two platforms sticking out from my rear wheels so that I could carry the water. Furthermore, I contrived of a stove, so that I could cook my own food if I were to be in the bush. The stove consisted of a coke can that I had cut in half, cut out the top, and crinkled the top and shoved it into the bottom. If I then pour rubbing alcohol into the can and light it on fire, the thing actually burns really well - the heated can begins to vaporize the alcohol in the chamber, feeding the fire something like a gas stove.
So I arrived in Livingstone also by bus, and hung out there for a week with friends, Octavi, and 5 Londoners I had met in Nkata Bay earlier. They were 2 brothers, James and Ed, and 3 doctor students on break before starting work - Esther, Katy, and Vanessa. They were wonderful cooks, and we had many a good night hanging out, and seeing the impressive Victoria Falls. The falls are so wide, and it is possible to walk right in front of them on a strip of land, getting showered by the spray. They were carefree days, but soon the girls were going back to London to begin jobs, and Octavi and James moved onwards. This left Ed and I, who I had convinced to come with me to the Botswana border, cheers to him for such a lengthy send off!
The last bit of road through Zambia was not like the onces I biked before. There were only one or two town for 70 km, when before the roadside was so densely populated. There were many large estates using big agricutural equipment and machines when before there were only subsistance farmers. In fact, this southwest corner of Zambia was stunningly different from East Africa - the cities dominated by malls and wide streets (that are decently clean and have trash bins!), where I can get a pizza or a salad or some other western food at whim. In East Africa, I knew what was on the menu before I even walked in - rice chicken, rice beef, ugali chicken, ugali beef, and french fries. It was just a matter of what was not being served that day, and it was the same all day every day (ugali is this tasteless mashed corn meal stuff that is also called nshima, nsima, popo, porridge, etc. I think most of Sub Saharian Africa eats this as a staple). However, upon arrival at the border town at Kazungula, the African village scene greeted me again, perhaps one last time as I head towards more and more developed places. Nigerian music blasts through loudspeakers, the same song over and over again. Mamas are selling fried dough and coke on the side of the road. A dusty road leads through town, a smattering of houses, wandering chickens, people towing baaing goats, village shops, and people gathered around pool tables. That night we were able to find a hot food shop selling sausages, fries, and a number of chicken pieces, and Ed, the hungry lion, and I, nearly buy out his food in our hunger rampage. A local girl boldly demands that Ed buy her a beer, which quite offends his British sensibilities.
Ed was holding up quite well after his first day of biking on his rented mountain bike, and the next morning decides to cross the border into Botswana with me for "banter". And so we boarded the pontoon ferry headed across the mighty Zambezi river, and banter our way through the Botswanan border guards, amazing them that we had biked so far all the way to Botswana. That day, we spent at Kasane, the Botswanan side of the border, and went on a safari drive into Chobe national park just along the river, managing to catch the sight of many elephants, crocs, giraffes, and big game. Kasane was quite the developed town, and quite expensive as well. As such, when we asked how much a room was at our lodge, we got the answer $100. $100?! Well we had talked the price down to $35, but we still weren´t going to stay for that. The campgrounds cost $8 a night, but Ed didn´t have a tent, so we were going to try to squeeze us both into my one man tent. Alas, Ed was much too tall for the tent, and after a while, he left, went into a shower block and slept on a bench in there. What a soldier.
We parted ways the next morning, he going back to Livingstone for a flight back home, and I packed all my gear, filled up my tank of 10 liters of water, and set out for the wild! The next stretches of road were going to be so flat, and so devoid of people that the villages would be averaging 40km apart. This was elephant country, and they roam the roadsides. I was a little worried about becoming a lion´s midnight snack, actually, so I decided not to camp too much in the wild. Well, 20km into the wild, my back tire punctured. It was my first puncture in this trip (of which I had 2 more later on in Botswana!), and I was none too good at repairing flats. So after some time struggling, I flagged down a truck, with a nice Zambian guy to help me change the tube. Since there was a 200km stretch of absolutely nothing up ahead, I asked the driver to take me to the next town, Nata, deciding it was probably for the best.
That night, I looked for a place to camp on the outskirts of town, and it was surprisingly occupied by people. I ended up camping next to a power substation, since the bright spotlights were very comforting in the dark night. And the Botswanan cows sound like neighing horse demons.... they scream like mad and wander around at night with the only proper cow like property being their cowbell going ding ding ding as they scream their way past. I slept with one eye open.
During the next 4 days, I made it from Nata to Maun. The landscapes were flat, and the roads straight, but there were surprising amounts of diversity. Sometimes I would bike past forests, sometimes past plains stretching as far as the eye could see, sometimes shrubs, and sometimes cattle ranches. I stopped by national park entrances to fill up my water tanks, chatting with the park rangers, and even slept in a village that the San Bushmen had been relocated to called Phuduwudu. I had really wanted to meet some San when I arrived in Botswana, wishing to learn the secrets of their hunting and firemaking skills. However, the Botswanan government has largely forced them out of the bush and forbade their hunting, and Phuduwudu has been there since 1987. Most of the kids in the village speak the national language swana, not the san languages, go to school, and dress like any other village Botswanan. Since it was getting late, I asked the chief of the village if I could camp in the village, and he let me camp by the police station, occupied by a san man, Mr Menakubu, who had come to the village to help the san ease into the village life, breaking up fights, and educating them on how to get along in a village setting. He thought it was very sad that the san were losing their traditions like this. Meanwhile at the nearby park entrances, the rangers thought it was good that the san should get the benefits of development and get educated in school.
And so after the last flat tire fix and coke can stove meal, I was 30 km from Maun. I was so relived and elated I was about to make it. The weight of the water and food had wreaked havoc on my thin tires, and I am sensing the end of my trip in Africa. So I have decided to speed up and sold the bike in Maun. The bicycle trip was truly amazing though - it brought me into the villages to see village life in Africa, to greet the villagers as I rode past slowly, and to even ride with them for a while. They truly see you as a traveller, arriving with only wheels and bags.