Stamm's trip to Africa in August 2001

The trip started with trying to find the least expensive flights to Africa. The cheapest flight from New York to Nairobi Kenya cost a couple thousand more than the cheapest flight from New York to London plus the cheapest flight from London to Nairobi. The stopover in London was half a day, but it was worth it. We then had to find the best way from Nairobi to Malindi Kenya and from Malindi, back through Nairobi to Lilondwe Malawi. Finding the flights on the web was easy, but purchasing them was not. We tried 3 travel agencies and even more airlines, but to no avail. Kenya airways had no US office and the London Office couldn’t sell to a US Citizen. Thus we called the Kenya Office. They would sell them to us, and even give us a discount, but would not take our credit card over the phone. So we made a reservation which we had to pay for at least four days before the flight. The train needed only a day notice so we ended up taking the train to Mombasa and then flew back. The final problem was getting a ticket for Abby from Lilondwe to Nairobi and back. Again they wouldn’t take our credit card so we had to wire money to Abby and have her purchase the ticket in Lilondwe. It cost over $600 and the largest bill they have is worth about $3 so she was nervous carrying such a large stack of bills to the airline office.

We left Sunday August 5 after leaving our car at a commercial parking lot near the airport. We arrived in JFK in New York and went to the Continental terminal only to find the Continental desk closed. We found a Northwest agent and he was nice enough to check our tickets. It turns out that Continental had booked us seats on Virgin Atlantic so we went to that terminal. Luckily we had a long stopover so we made it on time. We were able to check our large luggage through to Kenya from Syracuse so we didn’t have to deal with them on our long stopover in London. There wasn’t enough time to go into London so we made the rounds of the shops at the airport and snoozed in the lounge much of Monday. We had an overnight to Nairobi and arrived early in the morning. We got through customs with no problem and then looked for Abby. She had decided to not spend the expense of a cab and had left a message at the airport for us to meet her at the YMCA. The problem is we did not get the message. We even went to the desk and asked if there was a message. Several hours later Abby was worried about us and called the airport again. This time we got the page and headed downtown.

We had time to visit the university and attend the Massai Market. It was a small park downtown so filled with venders and customers that you had to push your way from one to another. The venders spoke English, but would not take no for an answer. You also had to bargain for a price. I had gone to a bank to change some travelers checks which was an experience all in itself. It was about 4:30 and most banks were closed so I looked for a money changer. I saw a guard outside one and asked him if it was open. He looked at me and then opened a gate and let me in. In side I went to the only open window and showed them my travelers checks. I had to fill out a form and he then took them to another window inside his cubicle. That person handed out the money and it was given to me. Lots of security. I didn’t want to pull out my inside the pants money belt at the market so I stuffed the money in a pocket. Bad move. The cash was picked from my pocket at the market. At that point we had to leave for the Y and pick up our luggage for the train station. I had saved out Kenyan money for the train, but even then, it took forever for them to issue the tickets. We asked a nice white gentleman what car we should enter and he showed us the first class car. The problem was that all the first compartments were for two and there were three of us so we had opted for second class which also had a sleeper, but for four. We found our car and started our overnight ride to Mombasa.

Dinner was served on the train so we found a table. A black gentleman with a British accent was passing the table and looked at me and said you look familiar. I thought he looked familiar too so went over to where he had sat down. He asked if I was from Oswego. It turned out to be Melsom Nelson-Richards from the sociology department. Small world. We had dinner and breakfast with him and learned he was also headed for Malindi, so we offered him a ride. We weren’t sure where the downtown Budget car rental place was so we found a taxi. The taxi was too small for us and our luggage so we put most of the luggage in and Abby (who speaks keyswahili) and I went to get the car. It turned out they had no knowledge of my reservation which had been made Friday. (This was Wednesday morning. It turns out it arrived late that afternoon.) Thus there was no car waiting for us and we had to wait until one was brought from the airport office. He seemed reluctant to give me the car even with my international driver's license. In the meantime since we were not far from the train station, Abby had decided to walk back and get Ginny and Melsome, much to the horror of the car rental person (white female walking alone). When they arrived, the car rental person felt much better, especially when he found out that Melsome was willing to drive. I was glad too as I could get used to the driving on the left and no one obeying traffic rules in the much smaller Malindi. I had a map and offered to navigate. It was very difficult and we went in at least one circle before finding the road up the coast to Malindi. The fact that there were no stop lights or signs didn't help. The road was in very bad shape so we were glad we had gotten a landrover. There were many road blocks along the way. They would stop us and when Melsome showed them his passport, they would wave us on. When I was driving, they just waved us on. They probably thought he was our driver and wanted to extract a duty from us until they found where we were from. Tourism is important to Kenya. In Malindi we drove all over looking for a hotel for Melsome, but everything was either very expensive or a hole in the wall. Melsome finally convinced us to just drop him off after a promise to call us if he had a problem, since he was used to finding a hotel by foot. (Back in Oswego I asked him what he had found and he said it wasn’t very nice, but adequate.) I then drove out of town to find the resort we had reserved through our timeshare. I got used to the stick shift and driving on the left rather quickly. The motorists were another matter. We followed the directions and finally found signs to the resort. The road up to the front gate was the worst I had ever seen. I was extremely glad I had high clearance and 4-wheel drive. It turned out that for the hundreds of people there, only three cars were in the parking lot. They all took taxis from the small local airport or the resort bus.

The resort was nice individual cottages with thatch roofs. We had a one bedroom efficiency with minimal kitchen. Abby had mosquito netting over her bed in the living room/kitchen. Ginny and I had a mosquito netting curtain around our bed which wasn’t long enough to do any good, so we were glad it was the dry season and continued taking our malaria medicine. The resort was right on the Indian Ocean and we took several walks at low tide which exposed the coral reefs. We took the chance to bring home a few shells, even though you are supposed to present a sales receipt to take them out of the country. This makes jobs for the natives. The pool was nice, but we didn’t try more than wading in the ocean. We had dinner there once at a nice restaurant which served a buffet with various local and western foods. We got to try lots of things. The rest of the time we cooked ourselves. One night Ginny had put fish scraps just outside the door to keep critters from attacking them inside when she heard a quiet meow outside the door. Thus she opened the wrapper around the scraps for the cat. The next morning the scraps were gone and two cats stayed around for the rest of our stay. In the evenings, several native groups performed. They announced in English, French, Italian and German. Most of the guests were Italian. There was one other group from the US. The workers enjoyed talking to Abby in keyswahili as none of the other guests spoke it. One day we took the bus to Malindi and walked around the markets. We picked up a few items. The people were obviously poor, but none seemed to be malnourished. Another day we drove to Gedi, a 500 year old ruins of an Arab town where Abby had previously visited. Unlike here, we were allowed to climb all over everything and look for pictographs etc. We took lots of pictures. Abby had been there before, which is why we went.

After a few days we drove back to Mombasa and then west to Taita Hills where Abby stayed with a family in Wundanyi near Voi during her semester abroad in Kenya. The road just west of Mombasa (the main road to Nairobi) had been washed out several years earlier and they hadn’t even graded it. It was full of potholes and boulders. Every vehicle tried to find the best path through the maze so sometimes we passed oncoming traffic on the left and sometimes on the right. Luckily only a few miles were that bad, mostly it was just potholes like the road from Mombasa to Malindi. We got to Wundanyi and left our car with the brother of a friend of a friend and hiked up the large hill to find our host. Abby had written to him so he knew we were coming, but not when, since his phone was not working. He said we could drive up to his place so walked with us back to get the car. The road was very steep and had lots of potholes, but was no worse than the road from Mombasa to Nairobi. This saved us carrying our overnight bags. His wife had been in-and-out of the hospital in Nairobi so was staying with one of his grown children. None of his children were there either, so he contacted a cousin who lived nearby with her three children to cook a great meal for us. We prepared for dinner by taking a sponge bath in a small room made for that purpose using a pan of hot water. The toilet was a separate building with a hole in the floor. Dinner was n’ugali (a boiled corn starch) eaten with various vegetables and chicken. After a good nights sleep and breakfast, we drove back to Mombasa.

In Mombasa we contacted another home-stay family of Abby’s. He suggested a hotel nearby so we dropped off our bags and returned the car. We then visited the archeology building where Abby catalogued bones for her project during her semester abroad. Next door we toured Fort Jesus and its archeological relics. We walked back to our new host’s for dinner. This host was Muslim so Ginny was given a headscarf to wear and we were served a very sweet tea.. After dinner our host contacted a reliable taxi driver to take us back to the hotel and pick us up at 4:30 am to take us to the airport for our 6:30 flight to Nairobi where we immediately transferred to a plane to Malawi.

The flight passed near Mt Kilimanjaro and Lake Malawi. In Lilongwe, the capitol of Malawi, we took a bus from the plane to the airport. We went through customs quickly when they learned Abby was with the Peace Corps and we were mainly carrying educational goods for her use. We then managed to get all of our things into a taxi and drive to the Peace Corps transfer house. The taxi was in bad shape and almost didn’t make it so we saw the advantage of knowing good taxis like in Mombasa. The transfer house is where peace corps members stay while in the capitol. They let us stay since few members were there then. At busy times like Thanksgiving, most of the members have to pitch tents outside so it is clear why they have a high wall with barbed wire around the compound and two guards at the gate. We walked to the Peace Corps office and met the staff there and arranged for someone to drop off most of our luggage at her site. We then picked up Abby’s broken computer. (We brought her a new computer and brought the old one back.) After lunch, we returned to the transfer house. We decided to use public transportation since Abby was familiar with it. Renting a car was very expensive and we were unsure of the roads. It turned out that the roads in Malawi were far better than the ones in Kenya.

Abby wanted us to see Mua, a mission and hospital east of Lilongwe, on the way to her site. To get over the hills that form the Rift Valley, we had to go north first, then east toward Salima, then back south. We each carried a pack and picked up a van which serves as a bus. If you squeeze, you can fit 18 passengers in one. They seldom traveled with that few. The record for us was 29, not counting the driver and person collecting the fares. They would wait at a stop until almost full, then pick up and drop off passengers along the way. Other possibilities were an occasional coach (mini-bus), a lorry (large truck where you piled on whatever they were carrying or a pickup truck. I think we had about 20 on a pickup truck once, but it was too crowded to count people. They would stop for one person to get off and three would pile on. The most comfortable place was on the spare tire, especially if I could get both sides of my butt on it. Whenever you had to change directions, you had to change vehicles. As I recall it took three to get to Mua and three more to get to Abby’s site from Mua.

We had to walk about a mile up a dirt road from the main road to get to Mua. It was hot and dry and the packs were getting heavy. We finally got to the top and the climb was worth it. We passed the hospital, then the church, and then the mission which rented rooms. A brother of one of the Peace Corps members joined us so we took a male and a female room. When we arrived, the brothers were eating lunch so we went into a park next door to have our own lunch. We then visited the museum. The founder of the mission found three tribes in the area, each speaking a different language and constantly fighting. The founder’s goal was to get them to live in peace, which he accomplished. He also tried to preserve their customs. The museum gave the history of these three tribes. We walked to a nearby village and there were goats everywhere. As elsewhere in Malawi, buildings were mud brick with metal roofs. Some of the out buildings as well as the fences were thatch. We joined the brothers for dinner and breakfast. Dinner was out in the open, in a circle under a canopy and home style. They would pass around dish after dish and you would take what you wanted. The dishes would then move to the center and you could go up for seconds. I should mention that all meals in Kenya and Malawi began and ended with someone pouring water onto your hands over a bowl, because you ate with your hands. Breakfast was inside, but also included a variety of food and was served after an early morning service at the church. After breakfast we toured the hospital. The facilities are well kept, but they lack supplies. They must wash and reuse gloves, but they are not high quality ones like we have here and they disintegrate.

After walking back to the main road, we waited for transport. A couple of vans and a lorry later we arrived in Ulongwe where Abby is a teacher in the high school. The town is spread out for a mile along the highway. From the south you first come to the mission which has the catholic church, a home for girls away from home (for example high school students), a hospital and a wood working shop where they make beautiful furniture. It is good employment for the locals. Also there is a grade school which used to be part of the mission but is now public. Then there is a stretch of farmland on either side of a river which was somewhat dry when we were there. (It is a monsoon climate which is wet in summer and dry in winter. The rains usually start sometime in November.) Then comes the market with numerous buildings, a supply store and a post office. Finally another grade school and a dirt road leading back to the high school. Leading off the main road there are a number of trails to houses where people live. Abby lives near where the road to the high school starts. Her neighbor next door is Mr Zembani with wife Flora and several kids, the youngest being Prescott. When Abby leaves for the day or leaves town she leaves her key with them so they can let her worker in and feed her cat. Abby’s house is a single room about 20 ft square. It is built of mud bricks put together with a mud mortar. Wood beams held up a metal roof. The floor was cement. There was a door in front opening onto a cement porch. In the back a door lead to a reed fenced in back yard. There was an open pagota with thatch roof for the rainy season, a mud brick kitchen building (Abby cooked inside on a hotplate so didn't use the kitchen.), a building in which to bathe and a toilet building with a hole in the ground. All had cement floors. Most people have dirt yards which they carefully sweep, but Abby is trying to grow a garden which her worker waters every day. There is a papaya tree in the yard.

The first day, Mr Zembani took us to the elementary school where he teaches and we met some of the other teachers and the Headmaster. We were told that although being taught football (soccer) is required of the students, they are unable to do so since they do not have any soccer balls. We also toured the building where the district teachers are given training sessions. Later we met the woman in charge of this place when she invited us to dinner, but she was out of town when we took the tour. Then we walked to the school on the other side of town, met the Headmaster, and toured that school. Both schools are extremely overcrowded with 120 students in the lower grades. Attrition makes the higher grades somewhat smaller. Only the top 10% can go on to high school so they often drop out in the fifth grade when they realize they will not make it. They art taught in Checawa which few of them speak before going to school. By high school, they must learn English as they are taught in English there. We also toured the woodworking shop and the hospital. In addition to the district coordinator, the Zembanis had us for dinner. Both revolved around n’sima which is make of corn starch like n’guali of Kenya, but cooked differently and is softer. There were numerous dishes to eat with the n’sima.

One day we took a coach to Mangochi so that Abby could visit her bank, and then a pick up truck north to Malawi Children’s Village (MCV) along Lake Malawi. One of the Peace Corps volunteers works there. It is a orphanage, but most of the children are kept in the villages. Each of the 37 villages involved has two volunteers who find families to take in the orphaned children. MCV helps with food and medical care. In unusual cases, the children may stay at MCV, but for a maximum of three years. One of the main sponsors is the Rotary Club in Rochester, NY. We were lucky to get a ride in a private car back to Mangochi where we caught a pickup truck back to Abby’s site.

On Sunday, we went to the beautiful church. I wish I could have a recording of their singing. I just got a little of the choir practicing on video tape. After church, we took a bike taxi to Liwonde National park nearby. (There is a road of sorts, but the bridge is down and there isn’t enough traffic to warrant motor transportation. We had to get off the bikes and wade across the river.) The bike ride there wasn’t too bad as there were pads on the racks behind the seats. It took about an hour to cover the 12 mi. When we got to the park, Abby looked for one of her students who lived there. She wasn’t there, but Abby found her father, one of the rangers. We told him we wanted to walk to the river and get a boat across. He volunteered to take us and went to get his gun. He said elephants had been seen nearby recently and he needed to protect us. We were very lucky he was willing to do this for the teacher of his daughter. It was a lovely walk and he showed us many things along the way. We also saw tons of birds. When we got to the river, they radioed for a boat to take us across to the lodge on the other side in Mvuu. We had lunch at the lodge which was a wonderful buffet and bought tickets for a boat tour. On the tour we saw a large group of elephants and were able to take the boat within 80 ft of them. We also saw water buck, impala, numerous hippopotamus, including a mother and baby on the shore about 50 ft away, and we even saw a crocodile. After wondering around the grounds to see what accommodations looked like and filming a few monkeys, we returned home. The ranger had us wait in his home while he found some bike taxis and we met the daughter who had returned. The bike taxi ride home was very rough as they did not have pads on the racks.

The last day in Ulongwe we went to Abby’s school and taught a couple of classes. Ginny talked about genetics and I talked about global warming. We met the Acting Headmaster and the rest of the staff. The Acting Headmaster is attending college to get his teaching certificate and asked for financial help. Very few of the teachers have teaching certificates (two years of college). Abby was considered as having the equivalent of one as she has a college degree, even though it is not in teaching. She is teaching biology to form 1 (equivalent of 9^th grade) and general science to form 3. Abby had 2 yr of biology, a year each of chemistry and physics and a semester of geology so she knows more science than any of the other teachers. She was given a room as a lab and has shown the other teachers how to use the donated equipment. The school has no electricity, so the rooms are dimly lit. The chalk boards are in bad shape, but we did manage to write on them.

After lunch, we took a van to Balaka (holding all of our luggage on our laps) and then another van to Dedza. We left most of our luggage at the house of a Baptist missionary and hiked down a hill then up again to Katsekaminga where Abby had stayed during her training to be a teacher. She doesn’t speak very good English and her house is very small, so her neighbors took care of us. They fed us dinner and found us beds in a nearby house. The next day after breakfast we hiked to the school where Abby practice taught and met the Headmaster and one of the teachers. The teacher introduced us to two classes. In one of the classes, the roof was literally moving up and down in the wind and making so much noise that the class was getting ready to move out under a tree. We then walked across the street to look at some ruins and Abby informed us we were in Mozambique. We then hiked back to the village and the neighbor walked us to the hospital where his wife works. We got the tour of our third hospital. They are always glad to show off their hospital to a visiting nurse. We then hiked to Dedza Pottery which (Abby said was a mile but was more like three) where we had lunch and looked at the local wares. We got our second ride, this time back to Dedza proper where we picked up our luggage and headed by van back to Lilongwe and the transfer house. There we packed for the return home.

The next day we went to the Peace Corps office again so Abby could check for messages, then took a taxi to the airport. The plane was late so they fed us lunch. When the plane departure neared, we were ushered into another room and told to identify our luggage which had been checked through to New York to make sure only luggage from passengers got on the plane. We then took a bus to the plane and took off for Nairobi and got another lunch. We again saw Mt Kilimanjaro and lots of Tanzania. Outside the plane they divided us into two groups, those ending in Kenya and those continuing to another country. They then walked us to an airport wing with many shops between the gates. Once in the gate area, you couldn’t leave (for example to go to the bathroom) without a special pass. We finally took off for Amsterdam. It was again an overnight trip so we didn’t see much except for the lights over Athens. We were only on the ground in Amsterdam for an hour and a half so we were only able to visit a few shops before leaving for London. In London we had a long stay, but couldn’t leave the airport without going through customs. We were able to take a bus to another international terminal and back to visit other shops. Among other things, we picked up the British version of Harry Potter. That afternoon we left for New York. We had to pick up all of our luggage and go through customs, then haul all of it to another terminal for the flight to Syracuse. That flight was delayed a couple of hours so we arrived in Syracuse after our car place had closed. So we took a taxi there and walked to Wendy’s for an early breakfast. The car place opened at 5:00 am and we were able to come home. This was by far the most exhausting trip we have even taken, but we are glad we went.