Leaving Africa

We went to South Africa in 2003, when we traveled with Arm In Arm In Africa (we still host their website at www.ArmInArmInAfrica.org). South Africa is hosting World Football Championships this summer, but all of Africa is united behind the event. So, everywhere we travel people are huddled around TVs watching preliminaries and cheering on different teams. Soccer is huge everywhere, except the USA. It’s bigger, by multiples, than the Olympics. I’ve got to say, it’s an amazing game to watch.

The countries we traveled in on this trip (Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Kenya) seemed to lag behind some of the development we saw in South Africa. Roads, pretty much everywhere, were bad (or terrible). The capitols of Lusaka and Nairobi, for example, don’t seem as impressive as Cape Town or Johannesburg. That doesn’t prevent rural communities, which are centered on sustenance agriculture, from thriving. With the exception of everyone having cell phones, many places probably haven’t changed a lot in the last 50 years. As the rest of the world widens the gap with new advancements, the majority of Africa still struggles to get even the most basic medical care, education and economic development.

Another surprising thing has been intermittent power outages, whether big city or small. Everyone takes it in stride and is prepared for periods of no power. On Zanzibar, they’ve been w/out regular power since December 11, when the aged cables to the mainland failed again. Businesses consign themselves to running on generators. Promises by the Tanzanian gov’t of the power being restored, were greeted w/laughter, but it did come on for periods while we were on the island. Meanwhile, we also had our own power issues. Everywhere we traveled we’d look for outlets (e.g. a bar, bathrooms, etc.) to charge our camera batteries, headlamps and laptop.

About the only time we had good internet access in Africa was when I found the HQ for the ISP in Dar es Salaam. After that, we knew there’d be little or no connectivity until we arrived in Nairobi. While we enjoyed being isolated in several of our camps, like in the Serengeti. We missed being able to check eMail, see what was happening with family and upload blogs. Not being able to upload photos because of limited internet bandwidth has also been frustrating. We’ll try to make up for it while we’re in airports, heading to Turkey and then Greece.

Jeff