Lichinga 19 October
The past two days have been ovewhelming with new impressions. Driving for miles and miles across the savannah, a flat open landscape with a variety of trees and here and there a single giant steep rock, more like a montain topp. It is spring and the leaves are in different stages, som without leaves, some in bright spring green, others in red, rust or yellow. The soil is teracotte colored and the unpaved road looks like an endless orange band in front of us. Earlier rains have eroded the roads so that you need to criss cross in order to avoid the biggest wholes and furows. We encounter few other vehicles, only on the main roads an occasional huge truck coming forward in a furious speed, driving up a tremendous cloud of dust impossible to see through for several seconds. We have to stop each time in oder to be sure to stay on the road and not to hit any person along the roadside. fo there are people everywhere, walking or biking. Women in colorful clothing of cloths draped arounf them in an elegant but probably comfortable and practical way. Carrying baskets and other loads on top of the head and a baby on the back or at the bossom. Little girls with somewhat smaller loads caried the same way. Men and boys biking with huge loads of supplies on the bikes such as sacks of rice or coal, often three on top of each other, long, thick bamboo sticks for building huts and huge bunches of dry grass for roof making. Most of the bikes don't seem to have brakes and when we pass, they rush down fro the road trying to slow down with a foot on the ground. Villages and settlements all along the road. Small plots of land, newly burned and plantded waiting for the rains.
wespent one night in Cuamba in southern Niassa province and are now in Lichinga in the western part near Niassa Lake, staying for two nights in a nice hotel with internet.