Well dear admirers, fellow travelers and other sharing our oxygen and cravings, how have you enjoyed the past couple of entries on this website of ill reputation? The steady delivery of our updates in your perched mailbox must elate you as heroine does to an addict. We’re now underway for lets say a month and a bit, and we figure you’ve enjoyed the show so far, why else would you take the trouble to read all these words? Sure, it’s written in a flair only equated by the likes of Aldous Huxley, Rimbaud and Hunter S. Thompson, but in the end it only matters what those smoothly composed words say, doesn’t it? Don’t thank us for it, really. It’s only a narrative driven by an insatiable hunger for adventure and recognition combined with the classic urge to write. But, who are we kidding? We both know, you and I, it’s much more than that. It is history in the making, worldchanging grandeur that comes to you through the pixels on your monitor and dazzles your mind, and thus, we’re once more allowed to refer to the addict and his heroine. Fear not, you’re getting your shot right at this moment, click on the words below that tell you to click there in order to read the rest of this entry, and you’ll get there, Literature Paradiso… or something.

Lets see, where were we… Ah yes, at the car of course. That bloody not working vessel that we devote our time to, our hands, our very lives. And what do we get in return? Nothing! It’s okay to let us know that we’ve abandoned our car, our Doutzen Cuiser for almost a year, now we remember that is was our love for her that kept the parts of this ever so untrustworthy collection of bolts, nuts and steel together. But it is not okay to just stand there, unresponsive to our combined efforts to patch her up again. It is ungrateful, that’s what it is! And it makes us desperate as well, leaving us little choice but to pull her from her spot, using one of those little spend-too-much-time-in-Africa trucks that need to be pushed themselves. The chain that we locked to the front of our own and to the rear of the truck straightened with a soft metallic *clanck* as the truck pulled our Doutzen on her first meters covered since about a year. Henk tried to get the best angle from this brave and final endeavor, while Marten sat behind the wheel and simply waited till the car had gathered enough speed to turn the key and when it did, oh spectator, Marten did turn that key and the car did start and it did run. For a short two seconds, then it seized. Marten stepped out of the car, Henk ran towards him, camera slung over his shoulder, both feeling this wasn’t good.

After towing our car back to it’s starting position and checking the engine, this feeling was confirmed. The entire engine basically in ruins, leaving us with a problem, or challenge if you will. Lets call it what it is, shall we? It’s a problem. A major one, our entire project depends on that once bright orange car, the centre point of our story and show is this car, with all her imperfections, all her dents and all her smells. So we have no other choice but to get the needed parts, motivate ourselves once again and fix that car. This is where we discovered that engines and cars that are for the taking, almost for free in Europe are hard to find here. Our engine was called classic, and vintage and the parts are incredibly hard to come by and thus very expensive. So incredibly expensive that it is actually wiser to order the parts from The Netherlands and have them DHL’ed over. As you know, we are quite the wise guys and so indeed, we did order the parts from The Netherlands, maybe with a little help from our friends.

So what did we do…
In the meantime, the time that it takes to get the so much needed parts from our home-country to the warm heart of Africa that Malawi is, we still have got a goal for our project; to help wherever we stop. Figuring that our mere presence in Lilongwe would probably not cut it, we knocked on the door of the Lilongwe Wildlife Centre, which is centered in, waddayaknow, Lilongwe. Wildlife means monkeys and playing with monkeys has always been one of our most favored things in the world, justifying our playful nature and constant desire for banana’s. Will we succeed in sharing a banana with a baboon? Will we relieve the volunteers at the LWC from some, if not all of their trouble? Are there any banana’s left? Are there volunteers to start with? Who knows, thats what we, in the world of literature, call a cliffhanger. You’ll know after the next written episode here, at threelefthands.com/en

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Well, the beaches of Tofo had been good and provided us with some good vibrations, which we needed for the next coming days of hardcore backpacking. You must think that more people do the backpacking thing and that it’s not that big of a deal, which is true, but those people don’t carry around a walloping seventy kilograms of luggage around. Try walking around with this load -comprised mostly of steel car parts- for five minutes in the blistering sunbeams that change to sudden raining season outbursts and you’ll be soaked with either sweat or rain, wondering why you didn’t see this torture coming. Therefor, hardcore backpacking. However, previous perils have made us quite hardcore as well, so no problem. We made it. It took us three full days in crappy Toyota minivans that actually take eight hours to cover threehundred kilometres and great determination to endure the dozens and dozens of people that they’re able to stuff in these hardly safe vehicles, their combined sweat filling up the confined space, increasing the headache that already was more than a nuisance.

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We’re in Tofo. As some of you might know, a village in Mozambique that exists only by the grace of tourism. The constant flock of people to this idyllic place has inspired entrepreneurs to flock there as well. Big ones, that build a lodge or hotel, and small ones, that can afford to maintain a small stall in the village market. There’s a long and hard journey ahead of us and only passing Tofo would be a waste, as Henk has got some connections there, that made our stay at Fatima’s Nest very affordable. Our stay in the Netherlands has made us softer than we had become through the rougher patches in Africa and suddenly we’re aware of things that earlier seemed common. Surely, they are still common here, but it just takes a bit adapting and, in that process, we noticed the boys in the market. Better said, we noticed Johnny Dineiro, or Little Johnny Cash. Naturally, Not his true name, but the streetkid has got no clue as to the real name he got from his parents. This is because he also does not know the whereabouts of his father and mother. Their fate is only to be guessed. A possible scenario is that the father ran away and the mother died with childbirth. Another one is that they both are in some ditch, their hands barely holding on to the bag of glue their sniffing from. You think of one, make it depressing and you’ve got a fair chance of being right.
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For the not Dutch, or ‘undutch’ as we like to refer to the unmeasurable number of human beings that would like to enjoy our incredible writings that sometimes cause uncontrolled laughter, sometimes bittersweet weeping, to all those people, among which are you, we’d like to say, have no fear, we have not abandoned you. But see, we were in The Netherlands preparing for our next trip, or ‘The ThreeLeftHands part deux’ as we affectionately call it. So, the last six months we’re not boring, but simply not good enough to share with you. That being said, lets explain why we, so suddenly, are blogging again.

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Last time you heard from us, Henk was beachboying his way through Mozambique and Minne and Marten glavanted around in Malawi. All with the purpose to maintain ourself. Contrary to previous months, years even, not much happened in the past half year. or so we tend to think. We seem to forget, what makes the continent so special, we seem to blend in more and more in whatever country we are. The dirt, the poverty, the diseases and the ugly, we hardly pay attention anymore, consumed as we are with our own ego. Hower, let us not wallow in the mire, lets retrace our steps and see what made the last six months worthwhile.

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I laugh as the next wave crashes down on my head, on my shoulders and in my eyes. With a quick but gracious gesture of my head, the long manes that have grown on my scalp are removed from my eyes. Must be an impressive sight for the people on the beach, I recon while spitting out a gush of salt water. With another move filled with the grace that’s unmistakably mine, I slide on the wonder of hydrodynamics that you’d normally call a surfboard and start paddling through the clear-blue water of the ocean that is becoming my new mistress, seducing me with her waves of which I see one coming just now. I try to pick up speed, considering my athletic body not a hard feat, and feel the board, with me still on it, being lifted and now guided by the wave. The sudden speed is electrifying, my vision tunnels and the only thing I see is the tip of my board and the all consuming blue of the water around me. For a moment, there is nothing but exhilaration, the urge to stand up and balance and this overwhelming joy that, for a while, I thought I had lost forever. Nothing matters, everything is fine, the adrenaline is drug-like and for a moment I don’t even miss the only men I consider my equals, my friends and compadres, my brothers in arms, my Marten and Minne.
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Sorry dear reader, sorry, sorry, sorry. Pardonnez nous. All these excuses are for those who have been waiting restlessly for news from their three Dutch heroes and simply didn’t get what they were craving for. Like heroine junkies we kept you hooked with every now and then a tiny non revealing update on our twitter or facebookpage (Henk, Marten, Minne). Questions were hurled at us like balls in a grandslam final, but we had no return, no back and no forehand. What happened to Noflik, and Doutzen? Where the hell are you passports, no wait, where the hell are you guys in the first place? What’s your next project? Etc. It didn’t stop, which shows us the great admiration that you’ve naturally developed for the three daring philanthropists that form the ThreeLeftHands. Well, to incline to your desires, let us begin at where we ended.
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Well, it seems like waiting for diesel in Malawi can take a long, long time. However, not the waiting for petrol itself, but more everything that evolved from the waiting, is what kept us from keeping you updated on our wondrous adventures. We’ll try to give you a brief summary of everything that has happened to us, but keeping it brief might annoy you, as once again, our adventures are way to interesting not to tell in full detail.

The most thrilling day in Monkey Bay was by far he day that Marten had a close encounter with prehistory itself. Our man went swimming for a bit in the clear blue water of Lake Malawi when suddenly it hit him; the thing pulling at my leg is not Henk or Minne trying to piss me off… Two weeks earlier we had spotted it for the first time; its lean and muscled body motionless cruising the surface of Lake Malawi without rippling it, measuring a full two meters it was lurking between the rocks and its empty stomach was infecting its primitive brain. A decent rain season would have caused the fish to breed and than it wouldn’t have a reason to be so close at all. But the rains are late and the fish don’t breed and it grows hungry and Marten was there, feeling its sharp teeth piercing through his flesh, and that’s when he realized; “I’m being attacked by the crocodile!”
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After a couple of days sandpapering the hardened metal of our battered engine, our hands looks like we’ve been exposed to a toxic waste that fully blistered our limbs from wrist to fingers. Together with a new glowing spiral, this hard piece of labor has to provide us with an ever so smooth running car and to our mild surprise it actually does! This, and the fact we’re about done here in Kilangala, means we can leave now and this we tell to the managers of the missionpost, who invite us to share dinner for the last time this evening.

That evening we do indeed share a good meal and later settle in the livingroom to enjoy a cup of coffee. Instant coffee, but still. The room is slowly filling up with people, which is not uncommon; this house is one of the few with a television set, and thus, everybody comes here to see some moving pictures on the tube. But what a surprise for us when mission manager Moses tells us that all the people here have gathered here to say goodbye to us, the three strange but quite useful mzungu. Everybody wants to say his or her part, and in the end we even get a great African pimping shirt that makes us look even better than we already did and with tears in their fading eyes, the elder women ask us if we maybe could stay a little longer. “None of that…” we stumble, clearly moved by the small drama unfolding in the Kilangala missionpost created by our undeniable departure. Because although we like it here, Malawi as well is entitled to her appropriate share of the ThreeLeftHands.

Which joy is it that overcomes us, we realize when we take of the next day; never before was our presence so welcomed than it was in this small rural village. Never did people understand us so well. But then, maybe the village isn’t that different, maybe it is us who have changed. We must admit that we’re increasingly capable of dealing with the attitude on this continent that is so different from the completely to our needs and wishes tailored Europe. It just doesn’t work like that in Africa. We say; ‘If you can’t do it like you should, you should do it like you can.’ but in Africa, they’ve raised this saying in to a proper way of life.
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Refreshed by the mountains of northern Tanzania, we force ourself back into our van for another couple of thousand kilometers that we’ll have to drive to our next project. As usual the start is hard, but once we’re going, we’re going. Easily we fall back in the driving routine that we have mastered over the last fourteen months.

Somewhere in the morning, that can start after 12 o’clock as far as we’re concerned, we start to drive and the journey ends around five, while at this moment already two hours are spend looking for a suitable camping spot. Along the road we picked up some rice and cabbage, that as soon we step out is thrown in our wok thats located on the inferno that erects from our surprisingly still functioning washing drum. After a well deserved cup of tea, we look for our designated sleeping spot. Marten and Minne sleep, along with Noflik, outside the van, guarding Henk who’s the only one who still sleeps in the car. At first daylight, which can start a couple of hours after sunrise as far as we’re concerned, someone stumbles about to make, pour and rink a cup of coffee, after which we wake up, entertain ourselves a little bit and start another day of driving, that this time needs to take us from northeast to southwest Tanzania.
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