Malawi to South Africa Overland

Two months have past since I completed my cycle ride and arrived in Malawi, so an update is long overdue. That’s not say that there hasn’t been a wealth of activity from which to draw a blog post, just that I’ve been pretty consistently busy. In this post there’s something for everyone: adrenaline filled encounters with the law, a moderately impressive road trip, and my usual dose of exaggeration that makes it all worth reading...

Mulanje

Malawian life is enjoyable, as long as you have time. When trying to get things done within a timeframe, it sometimes feels as though the whole country is conspiring against your misplaced haste. Take for example my recent efforts to electrify our new office in Mulanje. Past experiences with electricians have flowed something like this:

1. Pick first sparky in the yellow pages.
2. Phone to explain the job, sparky gives estimate and we arrange time to do the work.
3. Sparky arrives and does the work.
4. I pay up, he leaves.

In Malawi, this process needs to be altered to take into account the fact that the electrician doesn’t have any transport, tools or money for materials. My experience was more like this:

Day 1
1. Ask around, get phone numbers for 3 electricians.
2. Get ‘persuaded’ to use friend of a friend, call to get quote.
3. Drive to collect sparky to assess the job.
4. Drive sparky to market to find out cost of materials.
5. Drive sparky home, arrange date for work to be carried.
Day 2
1. Collect sparky from home, drive to market.
2. Pay for materials myself.
3. Drive sparky to friends house to borrow his tools
4. Drive sparky to office, he does work
5. Pay and drive sparky home.

South Africa

I barely had enough time to learn to greet people in Chichewa before being asked to come to South Africa (where I still am). Admittedly I had a month, but the language is utterly different to anything I’ve had to learn before, and I still make the locals laugh when I attempt to say hello. I received a job offer to work for Link, essentially as an IT consultant. Funny how computers seem to chase you wherever you go... Since I’m trying my darndest not to fly in a big atmosphere-munching jet, I opted to drive down to JoBerg from Malawi, as there was a Link vehicle with a soon to expire import permit that needed to be returned to SA. If I had had any idea what condition the car was in before I took delivery of it in Mulanje, I would certainly have made other plans. The wing mirror was held on with brown packing tape. The clutch just didn’t work. There were no front brake pads. The list goes on. This car may have had a 4x4 sticker on the back, but it was designed for that very specific 4x4 niche of driving tiny children 1 mile down the road to a private school.

I intended to complete the journey in 3 days, passing through Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Before the first day was over, I had already written off the 2 front tyres and various parts of the front suspension by hitting a monumentally huge pot hole. It was helped by the fact that the car’s front dampers had been destroyed on Malawi’s dirt tracks, so the front the car bounced in and out of adjoining pot holes. The other problem being that Malawian tarmac roads are excellent (bearing no relation to the shocking state of the dirt roads), but as soon as one crosses the border into Mozambique, the sealed surface is pocked with age old scars testifying to years, probably decades of neglect. So anyway, I hit one of these potholes, which, to my credit, was hidden at the crest of a hill as I’m driving westwards into the dipping sun. Any notion of wheel alignment that existed previously on this much battered car was completely destroyed – looking from the front of the car, the wonky wheels made me think of a severely cross-eyed goggle-spectacled child. I replaced the most seriously damaged tyre with the spare and limped back down the road (metaphorically) to the border crossing, with the steering wheel at a rather unnerving 60 degrees just to drive straight, all the way the front wheels screeching at me for holding them in a permanent skid just to stay on the road. An hour or so later, after watching the wheel alignment being fixed using a piece a string and a lot of guesswork, I was back on the road, with 1 tyre close to exploding and still 200kms to cover before reaching the nearest town from which I could buy tyres. Needless to say I drove very cautiously from here on.

Arriving in Tete, I encountered that fantastic Mozambican generosity that made me write so lovingly about the country last time I travelled through on the way north. Seeking directions I accosted the first person I saw, who duly abandoned what he was doing, jumped into the passenger seat and spent the next hour guiding me around the city and interpreting to help me track down the tyres I needed to continue my journey. I really love Mozambique. Maybe it’s the laid back Mediterranean influence of its old Portuguese colonial master that makes the people so friendly here. I can’t be a coincidence that Mozambique has a similar ambiance to Brazil in some respects. I can’t help thinking that 16 years of civil war also has a role to play – those that are left are grateful for peace. I spent the best part of 2 days driving through Mozambique - I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it, and made lots of people laugh with my not-quite-enough-to-get-by Portuguese.

ZimGabe

Day 3 was where the real action was to start. The drive through Zimbabwe. There really isn’t a feasible way to drive from Malawi to Johannesburg without entering Zimbabwe at some point, unless you want to take the better part of a week. I was both excited and nervous about the prospect of entering this failed country. Zimbabwean inflation is rumoured locally to have hit 4000%, making daily money changing a necessity to be able to afford goods. Unlike when I crossed the border into Mozambique, where I had a rough idea of the exchange rate and so felt happy changing money on the black market (my basic nokia phone even has a currency conversion utility), with Zim I had no idea what that days crazy exchange rate would be, so felt fairly confident that I would be ripped off and hand over $40 only to receive 90,000 Zim dollars, enough to buy a orange perhaps. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe branch at the border offers a rate roughly 1/60th that of the black market rate, meaning had I used it, I might have paid about $40 for a coke, which some people probably do in London, but I wasn’t going to do it here.

By this point, the car was starting to fall to bit’s. The juddering clutch had shaken free a wad of exhaust paste, so the car now sounded like something out of wacky racers. The clutch was verging on the unusable. The suspension was so badly damaged that I was restricted to 90km/h for safety. If I was to avoid changing money, I would need to get the car through Zimbabwe without another unscheduled mechanic stop. The other worry, of course, was fuel; which doesn’t exist in Zimbabwe outside of the cities. I formulated a plan. Topping up with fuel as close to the Zim border as I could, and filling my 20L jerry can too, I decided to try and make it through the 580kms of Zimbabwe without having to spend any money or buy fuel. Unfortunately, the closest I can find fuel in Mozambique turned out to be 100kms from the border, which meant I had a range of about 700kms of fuel to cover about 570kms. That is cutting it a bit fine if you ask me. If I got lost or had to detour for a mechanic, I could be in serious trouble.

That night I couldn’t stop thinking about travelling through Zim and the sheer number of things that could go wrong. Meeting dad at the airport the following day in Johannesburg, I couldn’t afford to lose another day travelling to SA. I woke at 4, worried, and was unable to get back to sleep, so got up washed and drove to the border to cross as soon as it opened and get this country behind me. The border crossing was surprisingly easy, although at about $75 not cheap. Clearing the border in about 20 minutes, I was filled with fresh confidence that perhaps this country wouldn’t be so bad after all. And then I got arrested. The first road block, not 5kms from the border stopped me and asked for my insurance. In my morning stupor and nerves, I had mistaken the 2 amounts I had paid at the border for a temporary import permit and insurance, which is quite normal. What I hadn’t realised was that one of those amounts was for a carbon tax. I thought I was riding high on environmental karma recently, but I was clearly wrong. I had been warned that all the road blocks would be looking for a bribe, and sure enough, after threats of impounding the vehicle for 2 days, the officer agreed to sell me an arrest slip which meant that I couldn’t be arrested again in Zimbabwe for the same offence. I decided not to give the rest of the Zimbabwean police a reason to exact a bribe, and headed back to the border to buy insurance, furious with myself for screwing up, but at the same time slightly excited at having bribed my first official.

The rest of the road blocks (about 8) all asked for money. They start by asking for your licence and car details, but will drop the request and let you through quicker if you give them something. Fortunately for me, they ask it in a round about way such that I can play the fool. "eesh, its so hot. Can’t you give us a drink?" is police speak, I soon found out, for give us money for a drink. I was carrying a whole crate of mineral water for the journey, so at each round bloc I just reached behind seat on hearing this and passed over a bottle of sun warmed Malawian water. Sometimes the police were annoyed, quite often they laughed, but I managed to get through the country without paying any more money.

I had enough fuel, the car didn’t break down, and I managed to make it through Zimbabwe that day; with just a bunch of bananas and a huge bag of peanuts for breakfast and lunch. Turning up at the South African border I discovered that the export permit for the car had been lost. I was threatened with a second arrest that day. After a lot of batting of my long eyelashes (still not sure who I inherited those from), I managed to persuade the border official that the car was completely worthless, (I offered to sell it to her for 20 quid if she covered my onward journey), and so not a major import/export violation. She stamped my border card and I was home free. More or less.

And Finally

I’m now working in Limpopo, in the northern part of South Africa. It’s an interesting IT project, with scope for rollout in Malawi and Uganda too. I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to overland to Uganda, but I’ll certainly have a think about it!

Alex