Looking for paradise

After driving hundreds of kilometers on empty roads past square brick farmers’ houses and green savannah filled with thorny shrubs as far as the eye could see, the road went up through glorious mountains and down again to an eerily quiet Lake Malawi, where we slept in a rattan hut on the camping ground of a lone German adventurer who proudly declared his barren lakeside home the most beautiful place in the world. The lake is almost devoid of fishermen and remains largely undiscovered by tourists because of its remote location, though the German, like most Europeans building a hotel in Tanzania, has big dreams. One day, he said, he will be able to charge visitors several hundreds of dollars for an overnight stay, just like the lodges in the famous Serengeti national park. For now he’s living in a container converted into a makeshift house with a pregnant wife, cats and dogs, and countless sand flies for company. I understand his desire for solitude and the romantic pull of rural life; but the thought of having to accommodate a tourist herd would kill my dream immediately. After all these years in Ivory Coast I’d forgotten that tourists look like overweight children; one sees them trudging along unpaved roads in shorts and faded t-shirts, roughing it to the next bar, the next museum, the next national park. The white man likes to walk, oh yes; the African walks because he has no bicycle.



Tanzania is an immensely beautiful country but there isn’t much I can say about the people; an old village woman scolded me for taking pictures, children yelled “white person”, and I’ve been offered peanuts, bananas and fried termites by street vendors. C. is the one who does the talking; he speaks the language; he haggles with policemen and wards off the beggars. Yesterday’s journey went northwards on a road connecting Tanzania with Congo, Zambia and Malawi. It was lined with wrecked trucks and squashed trailers, and C., who in a previous life ran his own trucking business, entertained me with a running commentary on driving skills and truck maintenance. He has great stories to tell about the dangers of trucking in Tanzania, but the best story is unsuitable for sharing publicly, and will remain untold.