Dinner Time in Ethiopia

 Last night I joined a wonderful group of teachers for a traditional Ethiopian dinner at http://www.dimmarestaurant.com

What an experience! We all sat in a large room, adjoined by Ethiopian families with children in all sizes. The small tables were like woven baskets with beautiful designs and a round, wooden table top. 

Before eating, a waiter came by with an ingenious tin jug of water, soap and a basin that catches the waste water. He offered this to each of us to wash our hands. An important move since the entire meal is eaten with the right hand.

A large round platter of food was placed on each small table - serving 3 or 4 people. We each received injera, a very thin rolled up ‘bread’ that looks exactly like a tea towel, and is just as soft and pliable. You use your right hand to pull off a piece and then you use the injera to pick up a little bit of food.  

Colourful patches of food, displayed in a palette of colours - 

• minced beef with capers;
• Gomen Kitfo - local cabbage with cottage cheese
• tikur
• fento
• zemamujet (cheese with cabbage)
• kocho (bread wrapped in banana leaf)
• gored gored (beef)
• yellow peas mashed with meat 

Injera

Much of it was very spicy, other things were smooth and mild. I think I tried them all… And I did need my lemon flavoured Ambo to put out a fire once in awhile…

While we ate, young men and women played interesting instruments on a stage and danced… and danced… and danced. I don’t know how they kept going all night. Using head and shoulder movements, they kicked up a storm showing us traditional dances, some with spears, from around Ethiopia, including this bizarre head twirling dance that makes you sick just watching it. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmyf__yc5ZQ   

I think it was filmed in the same restaurant I was at. 

After eating, we all washed our hands again and were served coffee that was prepared in the same ceremony as I described a few days ago - the beans roasted right there and ground by hand with a pestle. It was served with fresh pop corn and plenty of incense - the smell of coffee mingled with that of the frankincense sprinkled liberally on glowing coals in small stone pots on each table.

A fabulous, rich experience. I feel very lucky to be surrounded by kind, smiling Ethiopians and such hospitable hosts here.       

Amesege’nallo' everyone!

Mambulu Safaris, a personalized way of travel in Africa

One of the best decisions we made, with our recent trip to Africa, was making use of Mambulu (http://www.mambulu.com) Individual Safaris, a small personalized travel agency. 

We have always planned our own travels, spending days online looking for the right accommodations and travel modes. We usually travel on a budget and often with very specific dates or places in mind. 

How do you get to your motel once you arrive at the airport? 

Should you tip the taxi driver? Barter for the cab fare? Is it better to use a bus?

What is a good place to eat, a safe place to stay?

We had never been to Zambia before and so, when Kees came across the Mambulu website we were interested. It offered personalized safari trips, specializing in African countries. We contacted owner Rob Sijm and asked for quotes.

He immediately responded in a friendly, professional manner. We never looked back.

Rob asked many questions about what we wanted, when and where.

He send us detailed proposals and fine tuned them.

It saved us hours and hours of research. And it wasn't, I'm sure, more expensive than if we had done all the work ourselves.

When we arrived in Lusaka, a transportation staff member welcomed us with our names on a sign. He took our passports, obtained visas for us and ushered us around the waiting queues. He collected our luggage for us and checked it in for our next, local flight.

When we arrived at the next airport, in Livingstone, we were once again greeted and ushered to a waiting car. It went like this for our entire trip.

The accommodations were good albeit very primitive at the Zambia Book Bus (www.thebookbus.org). Turned out that Mambulu Safaris is the official rep for the Book Bus in The Netherlands so he was knowledgable about it and able to include it in our travel plans.

Our next accommodations were Sandy’s Creations in Lusaka: http://thebestofzambia.com/leisure/accommodation/lodges/sandys-creations-lodge/

Very nice individual cottages and a restaurant with simple meals. 

In South Luangwa National Park we splurged on a top notch safari lodge and then spend some time in a more budget lodge: http://www.trackandtrailrivercamp.com

Here, again, we had an individual cabin along the river. Extremely nice people, good food and fabulous game drives, even though the cabins had seen better days.

If and when we return to Africa, we will certainly ask Mambulu Safaris to plan it for us. It was great to have such personal attention to detail. Not only did Rob plan everything for us, but he supplied us with a binder full of all the documents and information, sent reminder emails and met us in person before we flew from Amsterdam to Lusaka. He's located in The Netherlands but you can use their services from anywhere...

Elephants For Lunch

An option to a game drive, is to take a walking safari. Walking appeals to us. But does a walking safari mean that you can run into lions? In a way, it does. But the guide takes us to an area where he feels it is unlikely to run into anything too big or dangerous. It is not a long, arduous hike but an interesting stroll through the African bush. The guide reads the ground like the pages of an open book. “Look,” he points, “ a hyena walked here. He was not in a rush because only the two middle claws show.” [It takes me a while to understand that ‘craw mecks’ means ‘claw marks’… ]

He points out where baboons dined on the fiber of elephant droppings. We see gorgeous round clay pots, broken open. They are the large balls that a dung beetle rolls through the mud. He shows us intricately woven weaver bird weaves nests that always hang on the west side of a tree.

A bird "condo"

There’s even a bird called taylor bird which stitches leaves together with real stitches. We follow trails made by elephants and hippos, see a large flock of bright green love birds that look like the leaves of a tree flying off…

One afternoon, we have lunch at Track & Trail River Camp. They’ve set a little table for us and when I look up I spot an elephant. Then three more. They come within meters. From the safety of the kitchen door we watch as they stroll passed, right next to the bar.

We visit Chipembele Wildlife Centre, an impressive visitors’ centre set up and run by a British couple. They were both police officers in England, obsessed by Africa. Seventeen years ago they moved here, built a house in the bush and now educate African children on the importance of wildlife. On the side, he catches poachers. 

We found an elephant tusk on the ground.

He tells us about one poacher who has just been released from prison. Through some local contacts, we manage to make a date with the guy and spend an afternoon chatting with him. What motivates a poacher? Money.

The (ex)poacher has nine children and no job. 70% unemployment in Zambia means no work, no income. So how does a father provide for his family? How does he put food on the table?

The easiest way is by poaching. Edwin told us he built his own guns and would spend the night in the bush, hunting impala, buffalo, kudo and more. He ate the meat but mostly sold it.

He got caught. At some point he got offered a job but screwed up and went back to poaching. He ended up in jail. Jail in Zambia is not for the faint of heart. “1,500 mean in one cell,” he says. People right next to him died of suffocation. One meal a day of a kind of uncooked porridge. It was a wonder that he survived the year. But now he swears he will never poach again. Only time will tell. We hope he will find a job. His skills as tracker are probably unparalleled. And he now seems to agree: wildlife needs to be protected. Wildlife brings tourists and tourists bring money.

We also understand the problems caused by free roaming wildlife. Herds of elephants trample and eat the crops of corn. They brake into grain storage units. Governments try to help villagers by building stronger storage units. They supply villagers with ‘chili bombs’ and help them to plant chili hedges to discourage elephants.

In Mfuwe, the village nearest the National Park, people have lots of trouble with elephants. “They come through our village at night and eat all of the mangos,” our driver tells us, “but in the next village can sleep outside without fear of being trampled.”

I think about this as I fall asleep to the music of cicadas and the loud ‘snoring’ of hippos just outside our chalet along the river. That night we have the very first rain fall of the new rainy season - the first rain in 7 or 8 months. It will soon transform the region into a lush green forest with wide rivers and newborn animals.

Into Africa

Cameleon

We took a taxi to a beautiful lodge along the Zambezi River to watch the sunset. We sat in lazy chairs on a wooden patio, right at the water’s edge. 

Hippos in the Zambezi River

Hippos frolick in the water, blowing air and splashing at each other. And, to our delight, we spot zebras! A whole herd. One even has a baby. 

And then… giraffes! Real, wild giraffes. First there’s only one. Its thick long legs look exactly like the tree trunks surrounding it. You can only spot him when he moves. Then three more giraffes appear. They lazily munch on leaves, stretch higher for more green and then spread their long legs wide to reach down to the grass. 

As the sun slowly sets, and the zebras graze behind us, while the hippos snort in the Zambezi, Kees and I grin at each other: we are finally in Africa! 

A few days later we have flown back to Lusaka and, just outside the city, we see more zebras and giraffes. But we also spot our first hartebeest, impalas, vervet monkeys and warthog! What a thrill to see these African animals in the wild! 

Mama Warthog and baby - move over, Poombah!

Hello Zambia!

A long flight via Dubai to Lusaka. There, a nice young man from the travel company welcomed us, took our passports and money and disappeared. But he soon reappeared with visas and ushered us ahead of the line-up. Picked up our bags in the hall full of busy African people and white visitors with suitcases.

Then we re-checked them, changed some US dollars to Zambian kwachas and waited for our next flight. Walking over the hot tarmac, seeing red dust and corrugated tin roofs - we knew we had arrived in Africa. Finally. When Kees and I first dated, he had a map of Africa on the wall and we dreamed of the places we would visit and explore. It took so long to make this dream reality.

Our next flight took us from Lusaka to Livingstone in the south western corner of Zambia. We are basically on the border with Zimbabwe. Livingstone is a small city. We are staying in a compound with a large house and a primitive swimming pool - but it’s great for cooling down on a hot day. We slept in a tent - a regular large tent. It’s all very dusty and dry. We eat at a picnic table under a stone roof and cook meals outside at the picnic table. 

A pool helps to fight dust and 38º heat

Livingstone isn’t very big. Today we drove down the main road. It has all sorts of shops - shoe stores, banks, phone shops, supermarkets. But just a few blocks away, people live in small houses and don’t have cars. They have no money to shop here. There are markets in other parts of town. If you can’t buy a large bag of sugar, you buy a tiny bag. So the stall owners measure sugar and flour and spices in bags of all sizes. 

There is 70% unemployment here so many people just walking around on the streets. The women wear long colorful skirts, often with a matching headband. On top of their heads they carry their wares: huge bins of carrots or a crate of 24 bottles of soft drinks, a 2 meter long metal tube or a mattress. It’s amazing to see the things they carry on their heads.

Babies are tied to the mothers’ backs in a colorful cotton shawl. They just lay the baby on their back, bend over, wrap the cloth around the baby and tie it at the shoulder. I’d be scared to drop the child but when they stand up - the child is securely strapped to their back.

We stopped at a traffic light and Kelly told us “This is a brand new traffic light, the first in Livingstone.” She said, “When it was first installed, they held a ceremony by building a grandstand at the intersection and dedicating the traffic light.” 

“Then,” she said, “people from outside of town would come in and just sit at the intersection to watch the light change colours, because they had never seen a traffic light.”

We walked across the local market as the only white people there. You can buy used shoes or plastic buckets, dried fish, corn, tires, everything at the market. We bought glorious African cotton and a long dress for me.