According to Moses, Africa is so diverse that every day one (even him) can learn something new by encountering something unexpected. Here is a list of Kaarel's surprises in Africa.
| Date | Surprise | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| 20090713 | Kilimanjaro visibility | |
| 20090713 | Obama cult | |
| 20090713 (?) | "1 o'clock" means "7 o'clock" | In Kiswahili-speaking countries. |
| 20090726 | Baboons drinking water from tap and stealing half of our garbage. | |
| 20090802 | Ankole cows with their massive horns | |
| 20090804 | Twa people | Haven't seen people covered with that much dust (on a daily basis) before. After dancing for a while they seemed to have fallen into a bit a trance. I was afraid that at some point they'll grab machetes and chop the mzungus into pieces. They didn't, but there was some disagreement over the payment — villagers seemed angry by the fact that the village chief (?) (a woman) who received the 25 USD from us would go to Ruhengeri, get a good exchange rate, and pocket the difference (or something like that, translated by the driver/guide). |
| 20090808 | Bar at the Overland Stop camp | The bar was built on the hillside, and covered to make it look like a cave. The entrance was a 30m long walk downhill, into the "cave". |
| 20090820 | Big cockroach at Kariakoo market | Bought a bagful of baobab seeds, they taste bitter. |
| 20090820 | Octopus smashing | At the beach where the fishing boats land, next to the fishmarket in Dar es Salaam. The octopus is smashed against the ground to make the meat softer. Sand is rubbed into the octopus prior to smashing. Finally it is rinsed in the sea water (into which other fisherman urinate, at the same time). |
| 20090820 | Kunduchi ruins. It's weird to encounter old stone ruins in this part of the world. | On the way back from Dar, the dala-dala dropped us approx. 1km from our campsite on the Kunduchi beach. We covered the remaining distance on foot. Finding the right way is easy with a GPS, and most of the way we walked along the beach (the camp was on the beach). About half way through we passed the Kunduchi Ruins, and I remembered reading somthing about them in the Rough Guides. Didn't stop to explore them in more detail as the sun was setting and the beach is know for muggings (again according to the Rough Guides). |
| 20090821 | Local guy climbing a coconut tree | As part of the Spice Tour. To get a better grip, he connected his feet with a rope. |
| 20090821 | Painting: black-and-white: zebras on a Pollock-like background | Sold everywhere in Zanzibar. Haven't seen it elsewhere in Africa yet. |
| 20090821 | Food and cooks at Forodhani gardens | The gardens have been (recently?) renovated. Every cook wears a white hat. This makes the whole setting look unusually clean given African standards. Food (zanzibari pizza, fish on a stick, octopus, lobster) is colorful and tasty. The main drink is sugarcane juice, pressed on the spot. There are many mzungus, but also locals (many wearing burkas) are present sitting on carpets on the ground having their dinner. |
| 20090822 | Estonian poetry book at a bookshop in Stone Town | Estonian poems about Zanzibar, with translations into English (but not to Kiswahili). The store had only one copy (left?). The salesperson didn't know what language the poems were written in. |
| 20090822 | Masai warriors on Kendwa Beach wearing their traditional clothing + sunglasses and speaking Italian | Many tourists on Kendwa Beach are Italians, and restaurants offer pizza (the non-zanzibari one) and pasta. |
| 20090823 | One can get sunburned so much, after just 1 hour of sitting on the upper deck of the boat and snorkeling for 30 minutes, even after applying 50+ sunblocker. | |
| 20090825 | Local justice in Zanzibar | Saw a pickup truck take over our truck. A man with a swollen face was sitting inside. Moses claimed that he had been beaten up by the locals as he probably stole something, and now the police are taking him to the hospital. |
| 20090826 | Baobab forest | Along the road between Mikumi and Iringa. |
| 20090827 | The Malawi borderguards registered me as coming from "Estonia (Hungary)", I told them to cross out the "(Hungary)" part. | They probably had never heard of Estonia and thought that it is some sort of province of Hungary (maybe because we handed in the Estonian and Hungarian passports at the same time, and these look similar, both blue). |
| 20090828 | The guys (handcraft makers and Malaweewa dealers) on Malawi beaches introduce themselves by funny names. | On Chitimba beach met Luke Skywalker and Bob Marly (from Jamaica), and later on Kande beach: Sugar and Spice, Sugar Daddy, Flash Gordon, Stan the Man, Black Rhino. If you haven't got (or don't want to spend) any money, then they are willing to trade, being interested in everything from sleeping bags to padlocks. |
| 20090828 | Malawi woodcarving tables with foldable legs. | The three legs are carved from the same piece of log. |
| 20090828 | A smoke-like swarm of bugs on lake Malawi (locals call it "lake flies" (?)), and another patch (of the same species?) projected on the windshield of the passanger compartment of our truck. | |
| 20090829 | Saw a pig being killed and shaved, later roasted, and then eaten. | |
| 20090829 | Beat a local guy in the bao game 3 times in a row. Had never played this game before. | Bao is a game played in (at least) Zanzibar and Malawi. Played on a board of 4x8 squares, there are at least three types of games: "boys' game", "girls' game", and "champions' game". |
| 20090830 | Village dinner | Sitting on mats, in the darkness (headtorch light), using our own dishes and cutlery. Menu: beans, rice, goat meat, spinat (didn't try), cassava ugali (didn't try), banana beer (tried only a little, tasted horrible). Children singing and dancing: cute but not very musical. Then we singing (e.g. "My name is Kaa-rel, I come from Es-to-ni-a; my name is Mo-ses I come from Ken-ya; ...") and dancing. In the end, the locals could not resist the temptation to ask for more donations and try to sell us some more paintings. We donated a bit but didn't buy any paintings. The women then washed our dishes (which we rewashed the next day). |
| 20090901 | Malawi funeral | Near the Malawi-Zambia-Mosambique border, drove by a funeral procession: women walked in the front (and started singing at one point), then a carriage with a coffin and old women weeping, then men. In Lilongwe saw a big cemetary. That was the first cemetary that we have seen in Africa so far. |
| 20090903 | Wildlife and humans: lion family on the road next to the trucks; elephant family walking through the camp. | Feel quite safe in the truck/camp, have no fear, would go and pet the animals (except for the croc maybe), if the camp owner/safari guide wasn't watching. |
| 20090904 | The president of Zambia showed up at the Mama-Rula's camp in the middle of the night. | I was sleeping and woke up but thought it was a joke and went on sleeping, while others took pictures with the president in their pyjamas. |
| 20090905 | Zebras at the Eureka camp, Livingstone | Grazing just next to the camp, I dared to go approx. 1 meter from the zebra. |
| 20090910 | Devil's Pool and Angel's Armchair | Jumping into the Zambezi river a few meters away from a 100m fall. |
| 20090911 | Solar cooker at a local school (Cowboy Cliff's Local Cowboy Pre-School) | Cardboard, painted silver, surrounding a pot placed on 3 little stones and wrapped into a plastic bag. No need for firewood or charcoal, just the fierce Zambian midday sun. It takes 1h to get the water boiling. |
| 20090913 | Baboon (again), bungee jumping, sisu, etc. | |
| 20090920 | South African coins given as change at a Namibian supermarket. | South African Rand is legal tender in Namibia. The banks must exchange between Namibian Dollar and South African Rand with a 1:1 rate. |
| 20090920 | Portugese and German labels on products in a Namibian supermarket | |
| 20090920 | "Shout-outs" in "Namibian Sun" | Ads in a local newspaper which where in grammatically incorrect English and quite funny. |
| 20090920 | Lots of different bugs at the "Die Kraal" campsite | |
| 20090920 | Kohalik sakslane sööb kotlette ja keedetud kartuleid, joob Baierni kannust õlut, kirub "neegreid", ning kurdab, et nende tapmine (totschiessen) on ära keelatud. Steakhouse "Die Kraal", Grootfontain | |
| 20090921 | Hoba meteorite, 3x3x1 meter block consisting of iron (87%), cobalt and nickel. The largest in the world. | I expected a much larger rock. It actually used to be somewhat bigger but people have been cutting pieces of it over the years. This is now forbidden. |
| 20090921 | In addition to salt, vineger is added to the fries (chips) in Namibia. | |
| 20090921 | Namutoni fort | From 1906. |
| 20090923 | Himba woman shopping at OK Foods. | |
| 20090923 | Giraffe running along the road (next to the truck), then stopping and stepping over the fence, going back (?) into the farm. | Much of Namibia has been segmented into farms/ranches the borders of which are marked by fences. Occasional gates lead into the farm where its main buildings sometimes 10km off the road. Animals cope with the fences by either stepping over or crawling under them. |
| 20090924 | Herero and Himba women sitting by the roadside, possibly at a curio shop. | While Herero women wear a lot of clothing, the Himba are almost naked, given that the ochre-fat-ash cover does not pass as clothing (although is performs the same function). Herero and Himba are closely related (e.g. speak similar languages which are both Bantu languages?) but for some reason the Herero have accepted more of the Western culture, e.g. the massive clothes that they wear are Victorian-style clothes introduced by the colonists/missionaries in the early 20th century. |
| 20090925 | Temperature in Swakopmund | Much colder than a few kilometers inland. |
| 20090928 | Places in Swakopmund: Italian cafe, Asian restaurant, shebeen | |
| 20090929 | Birds flying in two rows from a platfform in the sea to the coast (approx. 100m). | |
| 20090929 | Sossusvlei and Dead Vlei; Climbing Dune 45. | |
| 20090930 | Click language | |
| 20090930 | Springbock hitting the fence | |
| 20090930 | Table montains dominating the landscape during most of the 700km (?) drive. | |
| 20091001 | A dog facinated by stones. | |
| 20091002 | People of the Republic of South Africa, at least the ones living in Springbok, look quite different from the Africans seen earlier, in terms of their facial features and a bit lighter skin color. | |
| 20091003 | Orange plantations in Citrusdal, their scent | |
| 20091004 | Cape Town | Barbed wire and electric fences like in Nairobi, otherwise no similarity |
| 20091005 | Tanzanite | |
| 20091005 | Khayelitsha United Mambozo | |
| 20091006 | Bo Kaap, Malay district | Colorful houses, streets as steep as in San Francisco, two cows eating by the street. |
| 20091006 | Gemstone factory | It takes some 2 months to tumble and polish the stones. |
| 20091006 | Cape Point | It's not the meeting place of the Atlantic and Indian oceans, as often advertised. The oceans actually meet at the most southern point of Africa, Cape Agulhas. |
| 20091007 | Karaoke on Lang Str. | |
| 20091008 | Barbed wire securing the hiking trails of the Table Mountain. | Why? Local facination with this material? |
| 20091008 | Feeding a helmeted guineafowl french fries at the Kirstenbosch Tea Room. |
Lots of schoolchildren School uniforms No barbed wire, just broken bottles cemented to the top of the wall. Weight bridge Tab system in camp bars Jackfruit Flamingoes, lake Nakuru Sisal plantations Buffalo attack a bus Light-red colored ketchup Foot-and-mouth decease prevention, red line in Caprivi, Namibia (?) East and South Africa is very high, usually the elevation is 1000m. Obviously this is not the case at Dar/Zanzibar and Swakopmund. Checking the receipt upon exiting the supermarket (Malawi?, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia). +/- 9 hours (RSA) Men holding hands, sign of friendship Visited Tengeru on dala-dala (27 persons on 15 seats). Mosquito catching blue bags (tengue fever mosquito?). Saw them in Jinja but this wasn't the first time, maybe (?)