Angola held its first elections in 16 years on Friday. During the time I was there there were constant rallies (mostly supporting the main party and forgone concluded victor, the MPLA) and general chaos, with everything from random scooter parades of teenagers in party t-shirts waving flags to a quad-bike rally on the beach on the isthmus called the Ihla where it seemed at 10AM I was the only one who wasn’t completely hammered.
Part of me wishes I could have stayed in Angola during the elections, most of me is glad I left to avoid getting caught in anything.
Like many "democracies" in Africa, it’s not really an election, but as long as there is oil money and enough people close to the president are getting rich (and they are!), peace will probably hold.
More reading here.
After a tough week of travel from Namibia to Luanda, I was graciously allowed to camp out back at the local Yacht Club. Free camping is great, but with a not-so-great "shower" and "bathroom facilities," after several days of playing the Great African Visa Waiting Game, negotiating the never-ending traffic, getting lost repeatedly (thanks to my crushed GPS), not speaking Portuguese, and with the camel’s back breaking due to snapping ANOTHER valve cover bolt, I had hit a bit of a low point.
(On a side note, if anyone is looking for the DRC embassy in Luanda, it is near Largo Jaoa Seca, which is off of Mainga past the Guinea Bissau embassy - hang a left at the mortuary (funerario) coming from town. Please do the navigating gods a favor and don’t spend 4 hours looking for it and asking maybe 100 idiots where the street is.)
I had been befriended by several members of the yacht club as previously mentioned, and one of them, Raphael, happens to work for an American oil company. He relayed my story to his American co-workers, and before I knew it, I was being picked up Raphael’s boss, Mike, in an air-conditioned SUV and whisked away to one of the oil company’s housing compounds.
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A constant refrain I have heard throughout my African trip from almost every african I have encountered is "wow that’s dangerous! I mean, here in (SA/Namibia/Angola/DRC/etc.) it’s plenty safe, but over THERE, those people are DIFFERENT.
In my experience, you need the world’s largest grain of salt when talking to any African who has rarely left a 10 kilometer radius from where they were born about foreigners.
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Thirty years of war
Destroyed roads and death but damn
Angolans can party
Jogged by the water
Dazzled by such a skyline
Sickened by the smell
New cars everywhere
So much oil sold to the west
Lets go buy stuff
Most expensive city
In almost the whole world thus
twelve-dollar burgers
Shacks and penthouses
This is New Delhi by day
And New York by night
Well not really.
I did manage to snap another cylinder head bolt (in my defense, it had gotten bent from the impact from the gas tank during one my many medium-speed wipeouts in sand in southern Angola that popped off the rubber gas tank mounts and was leaking oil), and this of course means with no pressure at the top of the cylinder head, you have a functioning motorcycle only as long as you take Mt. St. Helens-style oil eruptions, possible valve damage, and cam chain corrosion.
But not to fear.
Why?
Because I am currently being helped in organizing one of the greatest airlifts in human history. The Belgian government’s instant retreat from the Congo that left the entire country with only 16 university graduates? The US Army’s last hours in Saigon as CIA officers scrambled onto to the legs of helicopters? The D-Day invasion of the Normandy coast in WWII? The Berlin Airlift that marked the beginning of cold war hostility between the USSR and the USA?
These all have NOTHING on the Luanda-organized Houston-to-Angola Great Valve Cover Bolt Airlift of 2008, quarterbacked by a seasoned Cape Town-based entrepreneur known for landing helicopters on lawns for no good reason, a slightly confused Texan motorcycle parts supplier, a obviously former brain surgeon turned Houston courier driver, a bewildered oil company employee about to board a charter flight to Luanda, and an overweight asthmatic airline pilot who wouldn’t dare grab that last donut if it meant taking his hand off the controls for even a nanosecond on such an important mission.
With any luck I will be in the DRC in a few days, and The Great Airlift will be soon seen in the living rooms of housebound seniors everywhere on The History Channel, with millions of forkfuls of Stouffer’s Lasagna frozen in in mid-air as a geriatric army is captivated in synchronicity.
This is all possible by the oasis of America found on Angolan soil in the expat compound here in Luanda - more on this in the next post.
Stay tuned.
…If you’re on a motorcycle somewhere in southern Angola between Lubango and Benguela and have cable-tied your GPS into its mount and it feels secure, and you decide to not watch it much as you’re feeling good and flying down a halfway decent dirt and rock track, you will probably look down at some point and notice it’s gone…
…And after backtracking for an hour and then going forward again scrutinizing the ground, and when you’ve finally given up and are heading forward, a group of kids about 50 meters away from where you first noticed it was gone will probably come running wildly out of the bush holding the GPS, and your moment of elation and joy will most likely quickly turn to despair as you realize it’s been run over by no less than a dozen trucks and is about as helpful as a parachute on a submarine…
The tracks for this ride diary abruptly end where my GPS met its maker under what were probably wheels 1-9 of several 18-wheelers, but the commentary (as usual) continues on and on and on…
The ride from Windhoek to the Namibian border is a long, boring, and dry, boring, plain, (did I mention boring?) trip.
I was forced to split up the ride and stay longer in Tsumeb than planned due to some necessary bike body and personal body repair.
After my previously mentioned experience at the Namiba/Angola border, I made it around nightfall to Ondjiva, the first semi-major town in southern Angola. The ride along the way was surreal, with fresh evidence from 30 years of war that ended only 6 years ago scattered along the roadside, from bombed out tanks, firebombed jeeps, and landmine removal notification posters.
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After going partially insane waiting on motorcycle parts that never arrived in Windhoek thanks to the absolutely incompetent inbreds at Kawasaki Namibia and thus left me forced to hot-wire the cooling fan to the ignition, and going completely insane in Tsumeb waiting on some metalwork for the bike and to recover from a bizarre stomach pain that kept me bowled over for three days but finally just stopped, I took off for the Namibia/Angola border.
Having had a connection that helped me secure the visa for Angola (many overland travellers never get it and are forced to airlift bikes over the country), I was confident passage through would be a smooth process.
Boy was I wrong.
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The following list is culled from various friends, relatives, and complete strangers and is by no means comprehensive, but I have certainly heard them all at least a dozen times.
1. Isn’t Africa dangerous?
Certainly parts of it, but so are parts of the US and Europe. Africa is a HUGE continent, and not homogenous in any way, shape, or form - just like there are vast differences between Americans that may live a mile away from each other (try Harlem and the Upper West Side). There are plenty of neighborhoods in East Brooklyn and East LA that many Americans won’t set foot in - does that make America dangerous? Like everywhere else in the world, Africa requires commonsense, self-awareness, and a ability to change with your surroundings. Ignorance of Africa is no excuse for bias.
2. Why do it on a motorcycle?
Why not? Doing it in a 4×4 is boring, slow-going, more expensive, and enables you to pack everything from (pulled from 4×4 travelers’ websites): a bread oven, water heater, expandable roof tents, large amateur telescopes, mountain bikes, and flatscreen TV’s.
And considering the roads (or lack thereof), there’s no way to do it in a Prius.
3. Why do it all?
Why not? It’s a serious adventure, I have both the means (savings) and the opportunity (time off between job/grad school/whatever, and traveling in so many countries by motorcycle allows you to experience both a whole lot more than backpacking the same old tired tourist routes or flying in to some artificial resort.
4. What are you trying to prove to me/them/yourself?
Nothing. Seriously! It sounded like a great adventure and way to explore a part of the world I hadn’t seen, and it (usually) still seems like a good idea.
5. Do you like the monotony of breaking camp, packing a motorcycle, riding it all day, setting up camp, and repeating?
Not really - it actually gets boring after a while, but it’s a necessary part of survival - and the quicker you get in "survival mode" and the mundane becomes automatic, the more you appreciate the rest of the trip.
It’s also an important life lesson for me about taking care of the basics and doing the "little things" that I often have a problem with managing and remembering.
6. What’s wrong with you?
Apparently a whole bunch of things - but really, I am not the first person to do this nor will I be the last by any stretch of the imagination.
7. How much stuff did you send back home after your first week on the road?
At least 20lbs worth of crap - from extra clothes I didn’t need (if you don’t wear safari-type shirts at home, you ain’t gonna wear them in Africa), books (a little light reading becomes not-so-light after it’s on your back for a week), French homework (yep - really!), extra toothbrush (every little bit counts), and some other junk.
8. How is the bike holding up?
Eh - could be better. After 2 weeks, I had a melted fan relay (which required 4 days of patient waiting in Windhoek for a part that never arrived and necessitated a little electrical hack job), a bunch of missing bolts, a wobbly carrier deck (fixed), a leaking cylinder cover gasket (replaced - probably a result of pushing the bike too hard), a snapped cylinder bolt (my fault - stupidity), a missing handguard expansion bolt (fixed with a hack job using an allen bolt, some large washers and bolts, and a lot of lock-tite), and probably some other things that I haven’t noticed yet but will when it’s probably going to be a royal pain in the ass.
9. How are YOU holding up?
Fine - each new country and new set of terrain and climate takes some adjustment - things can be hard mentally at first, especially when you have all day in the sun sitting on a bike to think about it, but it is amazing how quickly one adapts. Something that would have set me off (blown bolt, discovering $2000 US of fraud on your main credit card, etc.) gets dealt with quickly and calmly - I’m learning a hell of a lot about myself and dealing with what in some circumstances would be major problems.
10. When are you going to end this ridiculous trip of yours?
When I feel like it. Seriously. If I get to Ghana and I want to go home I will. If it’s Morocco, or Israel, or Sudan, or Joburg on the way back ’round - I’ll quit when I’ve had enough.
…But until then…
…If you go in for a tire fitting at the only Kawasaki dealer in all of Namibia, and you specifically ask them NOT to use your fresh tube but rather patch the slow leak in the old one and ask them NOT to steal your metal valve covers, they WILL use your fresh tube and toss the old one, steal your valve covers, and put cheap plastic ones on…
…ADDENDUM: But they will help you diagnose what’s wrong with your bike when it’s running funny after staring at you like you’re an idiot for a minute or two…
