Creating a Life beyond Recognition!

WYBMADIITY - Huh?

Well, I know I have said that my next blog will be from Germany, but instead I have decided to reflect on the activities of the past weekend. So, like I have said that Dirk has asked me to go with him to supervise a job of one of our colleagues in Mbeya.

Well, what a fucking drive. We left the office on Friday afternoon around 13:30 and headed for the long road to freedom to some extent. It took us about 3 hours to do a 300km stint for our first stop at Mikumi National Park to do lunch. Once we were on the National Park’s road, it was really unbelievable to see how green the world really has become. It was so green that you could see some wild animals feasting on the road side. I took some amazing shots of wild elephants, dears, zebras, giraffes and some wild baboons.

Once we entered the Camp site where we decided to go for a late lunch, it was all and all a different story. The place was so green and it was really just so beautiful and amazing. Right in front of the open planned restaurant, there was at least 2 water holes where the thirsty animals came to drown their thirsts…..not that they were the only one’s who did a bit of drowning thirsts I have to add very diplomatically. If I have to guess, the water holes were approximately 20 – 30 meters away from the restaurant, but it was really amazing to see these animals walking freely with no border lines. At this point I have experienced the true essence of freedom. There was no electricity, no telephones and we were just parking off watching the sunset to some extent with the wild animals marching all around us. It was really an incredible feeling to have experienced this. After all of these incredible experiences, it was time to hit the road again.

The weirdest part is that none of us knew exactly how far this drive was. I can confirm now that it took us another 8 hours drive to get to Mbeya. All and all it was about 11 hours drive. It was definitely the most beautiful scenery I have experienced in a long time. To compare it with Mauritius…..Mauritius only had beautiful beaches with a couple good mountains, but this was different. This was like the scenery from home……Just so amazing. I think when god designed the world, he created Africa first.

OK, eventually we found a hotel at 23:30 and let me tell you that there is no way in hell that this hotel could deserve any stars and per night per person it pulled out a staggering USD40……..fucking shit. Anyway……Saturday morning broke and Dirk and I still just so fucked from the 11 hours drive. First thing first and we woke up with a very big surprise……This was the day that the local electricity Tenesco decided to cut the power on the whole city part of their power sharing scheme…..The water levels are low due to insufficient rainfall and then there is no water to cool down their turbines or even run some of their turbines to run and therefore, NO FUCKING ELECTRICITY. Anyway, we set off to site to go and finish up what we were planning to do and then I was gratefully advised that there is no fucking way I will be allowed on site due to my clothing. Yeah, they didn’t like the fact that I wore T-shirts, my beach shorts and open shoes……Against safety regulations. So, I was demoted to support staff and did all the fucking driving for food, spare parts and just everything that was needed.

I did like the job to some extent…..because I didn’t have to work. I found an open bar at 10am and there I parked and shared very valuable information about countries I have visited before. With a Captain Morgan Dark Rum of course….or a couple I might add. Just a little bit of bar talk. I have looked for an internet café and eventually found one that was open (running on generators), but signal strength of the satellite internet was so fucking bad that I couldn’t even open my emails….God, it felt if I was in hell for 3 days…….So, eventually picked up Dirk for lunch and drove straight back to the bar for a couple more COLD ONE’s…….At the bar counter there was a plate with these letters on “WYBMADIITY”. Dirk asked the guy who was sitting next to us with the idea that this might be SWAHILI and with our curiosity we are always interested in new bar theories. This guy told him Will You Buy Me A Drink If I Tell You and firstly we didn’t catch it and thought that this poor guy was one fucking arrogant SOB and with our South African tempers we almost took this down to the bar stools if you know what I mean, but luckily we behaved. Awesome Shit Bru!

Eventually, the electricity came on around 8pm and we were back in business. I fetched Dirk around 9pm and we went back to the “Zero Star” Hotel. We were so fucked, because of the activities during the day and decided that there is only one way and that is straight for food, couple of cold one’s and then the bed. At 7am this morning, Dirk woke me up and we prepared for our journey back home. Fuck, it’s been a while since I have done long distance driving….keep in mind that Mauritius only has a circumference of 260km…..Anyway, 09:30 we hit the road and I took over the driving around the 300km mark all the way back home. This time it came down to only 8.5 hours drive. This was really an awesome weekend doing something that none of us have done for such a long time.

Finally, I’m back in the office and it is now around 20:40pm and busy typing this blog. Guys enjoy your time around and I promise now that my next blog will be from Deutschland.

Ciao for now

PS: Check out the pictures, there are quite a couple of good one’s of this weekend.

posted by Gordon van den Heever @ 8:51 pm