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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It’s been two days already, two days of tarmac and dust. The tarmac is great, the dust isn’t. While the tarmac is like silk to the four battered wheels of our van, the dust finds its way through every pore of our car and during the months, those pores have accumulated like maggots on a rotting piece of meat. The dust is everywhere and combined with the increasing cold of the more northern part of Tanzania, our precious Doutzen gets a beating and lets us know it; every morning the starting of another journey takes more time, it’s like she’s saying “screw you guys, I need a spa before I do anything more worthwhile.” and every time we promise her that surely this was the last time we drove over such a terrible road consisting only of rock and sand, torturing our beloved transporter.
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It is a regular morning on our own almost private compound near Tanga. Doing our morning rituals, we meditate for about an hour, lift 200 Lbs. just for fun and discuss the bibliography of Nietzsche, which we read the previous evening. When Marten tries to make a religious point, Audrey calls. Audrey fed us a couple of times, does our laundrey now and then and is the head of catering at TangaFresh. Worried she tries to explain to us that we’d better didn’t show up near the city, cause immigration is looking for us. This sounds like a well deserved break from normality and we hurry ourself to the city. Indeed, an hour later, we encounter an immigration officer who tells us we are lucky he doesn’t throw us in jail. Instead of the humble apologies he expects as being an operator for the authorities, we reply with typical Dutch bluntness. ‘This is not true,’ we say, ‘you can’t arrest us for being in an office.’. ‘Can too, you can’t work on a tourist visa!’, the officer replies. ‘Can not,’ we say in our turn, ‘we were not working.’ The man agrees reluctantly but insists that whenever he sees us again in an office behind a desk, he has all the right to throw us in the pen. Barely being able to keep our laughs, we again tell him this is ridiculous. Tanzania does not prevent us from reading our email, right? The man of the law shrugs a bit and closes the door behind him. We look at eachother and find that we handled this pretty smooth, although we’re a bit disappointed none of us were to see a Tanzanian prison from the inside.
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