ADVENTURES ON A TRUCK!

Here I am on day 8 sitting on Zanzibar, finally getting a chance to fill you in. I have smuggled my laptop onto the island…without the rest of the group knowing – I don’t suddenly want thousands of people wanting things charged and photos transferred onto disks…or anyone knowing it is usually stowed away under the floorboards in the Rwanda never-opened bag, because it can’t be stolen if no-one knows it is there.

So, highlights of the trip so far have been:

1) Seeing the Massai men in the village doing their jumpy-dancey thing and singing at the same time – that was brilliant.
2) Descending into the Ngorongoro Crater and seeing lions, giraffes, buffalo, zebra, wildebeest, flamingo, rhino in the distance and at lunch time watching an elephant walk straight past us no more than a few meters away, rub itself with dust, squirt itself with water, have a quick bite of the surrounding reeds and then go for a paddle!

3) Managing to film a leopard leaping into a tree and watching it devour a gazelle it had killed and put there earlier.
4) Driving through the Serengeti with my head stuck out of the top of a jeep watching the plains sweeping past and a cheetah in the distance…as well as three lions stalking their prey (unfortunately not seeing a kill though!)
5) Seeing the Indian Ocean (the first sea I have seen for over seven months!) Lovely and warm to swim in – and gorgeously blue and clear. Tomorrow we will be snorkelling after a boat ride which I am looking forward to tremendously.

Well, I’m sure that all sounds pretty exciting, but before you get too jealous it’s not all been clear blue waters and lions! The lowlights so far have been:

1) Sudden striking of homesickness – for Rwanda as well as England – and missing of the people in both places. First time I have really felt painfully homesick in these seven months, but I guess maybe it was because the end is now in sight and it was hard work to begin with (see lowlight 2)
2) Culture shock! After spending six months in Rwanda, not drinking, not seeing anyone smoke and praying before every meal we both of us felt the dramatic culture shock on beginning the trek. We got on the truck and loud music was turned on, two people danced across the truck and informed us that we would have to join in the 8am disco every morning (one of them promptly falling over and banging her head on the door because the truck was moving!) Then the driver & tour leader in their welcome talk told us that if we wanted to smoke marijuana that we should ask them where it was best to buy it. Both driver and tour leader punctuate every sentence with at least one swear word. The tour leader herself has been hung over at least one morning in the last week and is drinking plenty every night. So…it was suddenly like being back at university in the first week when you don’t know anyone… And heaven knows why I wasn’t expecting it – I should have known better. Now, a week later, things have improved – everyone is fairly nice as individuals – but the group who have been here longer than the second lot of us who got on at Nairobi are still a bit scary! There is talk of a teambuilding exercise to unite old and new groups, though this has come far too late, and I am seriously considering hiding under the table or having a fit and being taken away to go to bed!
3) Traveller’s diarrhoea. Its unbelievable how unhardy my once so hardy constitution has become. And feeling sick is not fun when you are on a truck for eight hours of the day and in a tent at night!
4) Being offered a room with a double bed in Zanzibar by the tour leader who had come to the conclusion that Tracy and I were a couple! In Rwanda if you hold hands no-one bats an eyelid – men walk along with their arms around each other all the time…here it seems that you hold hands once (and then mainly because I was feeling rough) and they have you down as raving lesbians!

Anyway, at the time of writing I am happy again – groups are always difficult when you first join them, and eventually you find a niche. Unfortunately my usual niche cannot be used, because if anyone does anything silly they are given a numpty award and are forced to wear a dummy on a rope around their neck for the whole of the next 24hrs, regardless of whether they are snorkelling, scuba diving, bungee jumping or trekking lions. So far I have avoided it, but it certainly caused me some stress to begin with. Now I’ve given up caring – life’s too short. It just means that if you pull the curtains (we have accommodation with beds rather than tents in Zanzibar) and the entire wooden pole falls down on your head with the curtains attached, you have to very quietly fit it back up and not tell a soul! Not sure how long I’m going to survive without one – one week down, three to go. Anyone seen a redcoat in the vicinity?!

We have another few days in Zanzibar and then we drive on down through Mozambique – don’t think we see much of that, but we get another pretty stamp in our passports – and into Malawi where we camp by the lake, and then on into Zimbabwe and Victoria Falls…our aim is to have saved enough money by not drinking to be able to fly over Victoria Falls when we get there. The mode of transport ranges in price from an helicopter to an aeroplane, so hopefully we’ll have enough for the aeroplane, otherwise we’re stuck using the wings I am currently constructing from a curtain rail and a pair of curtains…