Back in Europe

Posted by Janine and Mikkel

Writing about attacking rhinos, beautiful Mozambican women, swimming with whale sharks and magic muti markets in Jo’burg seems rather weird when it is done in grey and rainy Netherlands…but we’ll give it a try anyway. And yes we arrived in Amsterdam yesterday. Janine will stay here beginning her studies already next week whereas I will be heading for Copenhagen Wednesday.

After having enjoyed some well deserved luxury in Durban we drove north towards Mozambique with a stop in Swaziland on the way. In this tiny country, it is still allowed to have several wives! Only one day in Swaziland, we managed to meet two Swazi women, Lovejoy and Gladness (no joke!). Both were very progressive: they rejected having to share their husband with other wives. Goodness seemed very sure of this and her husband was also supportive although many of his friends didn’t really understand how he could settle for only one wife. Lovejoy however seemed like she might settle for just being “first wife”. She explained that if the woman just makes sure that her husband always gets everything he needs, he doesn’t have to look around for another wife.

As you can hear, the ideas of the western nuclear family unit are not very well established in Swaziland. The sovereign king doesn’t do much to change this; at the moment he has 13 wives (he’s in his thirties) and an unknown number of concubines. What we did learn was that the system with men having several wives is breaking up due to poverty and unemployment (somewhere around 40-50 % it seems). A man can only have several wives if he can support them all (each having the right to her own household). Instead people have more informal relationships which have provided extraordinarily circumstances for the spreading of HIV. In 15 years, more than 40 % of the population has been infected with HIV.

In Swaziland we slept at a camp site inside a national park. The camp site was just next to a water hole so we spent the evening having a drink while watching elephants, rhinos and hippos bathing. These rhinos were luckily in a good mood, which couldn’t really be said about those we encountered on a little drive inside the park: while Janine was just about to take that perfect picture, the rhino started running towards our car. Mikkel gave full gas and speeded out of there, ruining Janine’s picture…

Mozambique was a totally different story. The Portuguese colonists definitely left some Latino roots behind in the capital Maputo. We asked several people where “it was happening” on a Saturday night and all of them told us to go to ‘Coconuts’. Obviously we had to check that out and it turned out to be a huuuge club which seemed to cater for the whole town’s under 30 population.

After a few days in this cool city, walking up and down Karl Marx Avenue, Vladimir Lenin road, Oluf Palme Avenue, Fidel Castro Street, Mao Tse-Tung Avenue as well as streets named after all the big African leaders of the independence movements, we went on a seven-hour drive to a little beach town – Baia de Tofu. While most people get two traffic fines on this road, we managed to get only one –for speeding. These police guys are quite smart: they place themselves right at the 80 sign and then blame you for driving 120! Well, Mozambique is one of the poorest countries of the world so as a tourist, you just have to regard these fines as some sort of tourist-tax.

In Baia de Tofu, we snorkeled with a 7meter-whale shark (his massive face was right in front of Janine the moment she jumped in…) and did a dive-review (where Janine shot herself up to the surface and Mikkel managed to get seasick). All this was obviously very tiring, so we spend the rest of our time swimming, reading, chatting and enjoying fresh barracuda’s, giant prawns and crabs.

After a long drive we got back to South Africa, which suddenly seemed so civilized! Good roads, trustful police, drinkable water, petrol stations with toilets, super markets etc. In a small place in the mountains, we went mountain biking past waterfalls and forests, and in the evening Goodness - the (black) girl who worked at the hostel - was brave enough to take us to the only bar in town: a real (white) Afrikaner bar with the worst taste of music in the world… The owner bribed us to stay by giving us drinks and shots. It worked and we hit the dance floor!

Last stop on this little holiday was Jo’burg (also called Johannesburg, Egoli, City of Gold and Jo’si). We stayed with Mikkels Danish friend Morten in Parkhurst – one of the nice Northern Suburbs with big houses surrounded by even bigger walls. It’s an area where everyone got a swimming pool and someone working there to keep it clean (except Morten who cleans himself).

Jo’burg is great: Lots of cool suburb areas with cafes, bars and restaurants and a high-rised city center where most business and affluent people have left. The lower circles of society have taken over this space, making it quite a unique experience for those who dare to venture in there. We did, together with Morten and one of his friends who took us around in the center. Among other places to a local magic muti market with animal fetus, dead birds, monkey skulls, all kinds of different roots, dry plants and much much more. These things can cure everything: bad stomachs, low performance in bed, winning back of a lost love, flues, winning the lottery, good luck with exams, protection from thieves and robbers, etc. etc. On the amount of vendors and products it was obvious that this was a big industry.

From Joburg we went straight to Cape Town just to have time for an afternoon on the beach and a great, but also a bit sad, evening with most of the people we have met there during the last 6 months. As you might have sensed, we have had an amazing six months in the diverse, interesting, contrasted but oh-so-beautiful South Africa.

We WILL miss it!

But at least we get to see a lot of you again soon, this will surely make up for some of the loss...

Janine & Mikkel

From Cape Town to Durban

Posted by Janine and Mikkel

We had a wild couple of weeks the first part of our journey through South Africa stopping in places appropriately named “Wilderness”, ”Nature’s Valley” and “The Wild Coast”. We swam rivers, soaked up sun on deserted beaches, tried to surf some waves, hiked up mountains through thorny bushes, visited a friend in “the rural areas” [read: bad bad roads, no running water, round huts...and bad stomachs], had Tsotsis (gangsters) in our car -we were not in it ourselves fortunately-, and camped on the beach near the most beautiful waterfall where we got woken up in our tent by…ahum, a wave.

This refreshing morning wave was not as pleasant as it may sound; it had been raining the whole night and, in addition, Mikkel’s back was in its worst state ever, causing a painful sleepless night (Janine’s massage had apparently only made it worse!). And then nature mocks you by sending a mini tsunami all the way inside your tent! You may now understand our decision to go back to civilization (for a while). So here we are in the city of Durban, where we had a friends’ apartment waiting for us. Hooray to bed, roof, fridge, bath tub, restaurants, etc.

It all started quite civilized –and un-African, with the over packed holiday resorts on the southern coast (Garden Route for those who know). Here we found out that Afrikaners are real descendants of the Dutch: they also love camping closely together on huge campsites near the ocean. Its not that they bring everything with them from home, but they seem to have a camping dublette of everything: camping chairs, camping tables, camping satellite dishes, camping fridges, camping stoves, camping clothes etc. We did find some lovely spots on the way though, and did an unsuccessful surfing attempt and a lovely hike.

But Mr. Rain was visiting the coastline. So we decided to celebrate New Years in a tiny mountain village, where we met some crazy backpackers and, after a tough hike all the way up the mountain, celebrated the New Year with bonfire, beers and boogey.

Then it was time to visit some of the real Africa again. We were in the Eastern Cape, a rural area, full of hills and villages with round clay huts, the X[click]hosa people’s homeland in the apartheid language. A lot of the Xhosas (millions in fact) have moved to Cape Town and other cities for work, but most still return to their ‘home’ each year in December and January. This also counts for Sizwe, a friend from Cape Town whom we visited in his village with a name we could never remember or pronounce. It was pretty much out of the way and we were apparently the first (white) visitors ever. Happy as they were to have us over, (not much was actually happening there, you see) we were received by big hugs from everyone. Within half an hour, the women dressed Janine up in a traditional woolen dress and started dancing and clapping around us. The beer started flowing and as the people got more and more drunk, we got more and more tired, and started wondering how the next day would be when the ‘real’ party would start...

Luckily this party never really happened, and we had a nice and quiet day walking through the village and talking with Sizwe and other people. It was lovely to experience the friendliness of the people, but also sad to see how some traditions were kept so strongly: Women doing all the work and slaving around for their family-in-law (Janine's comment obviously!) and how life was so dominated by poverty and alcohol abuse.

The women were getting the water in the mornings – in buckets on their heads. We got a personal first hand experience of what it means to have ‘no access to sanitary services and water’ (which the Millennium Goals are trying to eradicate by 2015) ; a day after we had left the village, our stomachs both started to protest in the way stomachs do :-(. Luckily we were in a most lovely place on the Wild Coast where the owner took care of us with a herbal mint-ginger tea. The Wild Coast is the most amazing coastline with beautiful beaches, mountains, small huts and absolutely no large scale development and where beaches are mostly shared with cows and playful local boys.

When our stomachs had recovered we moved a bit further up the coast to do a hike to a very well hidden waterfall. A three-hour walk along a deserted beach, a couple of river crossings, up a mountain, along a cliff edge and then down to a spot that could have been starring in both “Treasure Island” and “The Beach”. The night however didn't live up to the beauty and greatness of the day, but this we have already told you about.

We will stay here in Durban until thursday where we will drive towards Mozambique. Mikkel's back seems to be fine again after a chinese guy "restored his energies" back to normal. Hope you all got well in to the New Year. To those of you who have been using sms we are sad to inform you that Mikkels phone got stolen out of our car with both his South African and Danish simcard in. So please use Janine's number from now on.

Enough for now. Take care all of you.