Eastern and Southern Africa 1973 (6).

"Jambo, Mama, abari safari" - good day madam, how is your journey - the people in Tanzania called cheerfully to me. "Mesuri, mesuri" - good - I then called back to them because how could it be anything else but good in this beautiful country with kind people and ... we were on asphalt again.
As a grey ribbon the road wound itself through a lush green landscape. Suddenly the road in front of us was completely green. Henny, who cycled in front of me, shouted "Legs up, a swarm of locusts!". It cracked and crunched under the tyres, but evading them was impossible, a green carpet of more than a hundred meters long.
Large notice boards along the road said: "Be aware of crossing elephants". We had to cycle more than 50 km straight through the Mikumi wild reserve. Cycling was not allowed anywhere in the wild parks, but there were no fences here, so nobody would stop us. "Last year a car with occupants was crushed", they had warned us, but we had already seen so much wildlife, we felt familiar with it. As usual we tried to find a place in the shade to rest. We first looked of course whether there were any lions lying around, no elephant path near to us, no snake hanging in the tree, we approached the tree, stamping with our feet to chase away the possible snakes. After the tea and sandwich pause we had to stop soon again: elephants on the road.
What now? Some with a little one, they saw us and remained undecided swinging their trunks. Slowly we walked in their direction, in the mean time we looked for a culvert to which we could run and shelter in case of emergency. As we came closer, they began to walk backwards, into the roadside. The last part we cycled fast past them, the elephants with flapping ears walked into the grassland again. Further down the road stood a big one which we hadn't seen and cycled past him at less than 3 meters distance. Surprised or frightened the elephant began flapping his ears and made a few steps backwards. It was clear, elephants are afraid of cyclists. The dozens of others which we passed were not so exciting anymore.

n Malawi we encountered more cyclists, and sometimes we travelled together for a while, together we wiped the sweat from our bodies on the killing steep climb in the humid heat. Even women rode bicycles sometimes, very rare outside the western world. Also Mr policeman used a bicycle. In a wide, white shorts, the antique relics of English-colonial costumes, he accompanied us for a while. "Ooooh all the way from the Netherlands". "Eeeh you really cycle fast" because at every small hill he had to get off his heavy bicycle.
After an hour ort so we arrived in Mzuzu where we wanted to stay the night. I got off my bike to wrap the "kanga", a large wrap like a skirt, around me. Namely, the law in Malawi forbids women to show their legs, men could do that but they were not allowed to have long hair. In the country side I just cycled in my shorts, and when we came into the built-up areas I quickly put my wrap on. With a lot of fuss I climbed in the long garment on my gents bike again. This rung a bell with our friend. "Would you come with me into the office?" he asked. Yes, I think we have to. We got off our bikes and walked with him into the office. Standing behind a bench our friend began to talk. "Yes eh, you see": he did not mind much but the law, you know .... . " Oh no, he begins to nag about my shorts" I thought. "She has to cut her hair" he finally uttered. "Who gave you that idea" Henny flared up "to cut my wife's hair!!". He looked at us uncertain, and laughed, laughed because Henny was angry about my hair, and they forgot all about my shorts.
Somewhere he will get hold of us, the wet monsoon, but bad enough on the unpaved roads of Malawi. Half days we were sheltering under a piece of plastic, under the fly of our tent or under an awning. The rest of the day it meant plodding through the mud. Sometimes Henny had to carry the bikes and the odometer showed only 25 kilometres for that day, In the general wetness, more snakes appeared, many of them lay, killed by the traffic, on the road and occasionally they wriggled in front of our wheels. When we had too much speed to stop, we pulled our legs quickly up in the air and hoped that the animal would not be trapped by the spokes.
We were resting on a sheet of plastic Henny repaired a tube, I was picking the worms out of the flour for the pancakes. Before us was a row of children, watching, giggling and trying to sell oranges to us. But our panniers were already full with oranges and bananas from other children. Then all of a sudden like jack in a box from the box, they stood upright, with fixed look in one direction: a snake came calmly crawling in our direction, we also rose, the snake crawled through the middle of our plastic sheet and disappeared into the bushes.