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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