Frank in Africa ‘08

soooo, lets finally write down the full story about what happened to my laptop.

As I wrote before the hard drive crashed because I killed a mosquito that had landed on my laptop, I hit it pretty hard which resulted in the head of the HDD skipping or breaking or something.

So after getting a new HDD (thanks Grrr) and a leopard copy (both these items were in Blaxtars bag that was missing for 8 days) I tried to fix my laptop for the first time. After opening the laptop case and putting in the new HDD without a problem I tried to install leopard… here’s where the trouble started…

1: my superdrive (CD/DVD player/burner) is broken so I had to use another computer to do it, which is fine, I had done this before and didn’t expect trouble, I tried 1 of the powerbooks and quickly realised the copy we got seemed to be Intel only or something, so I tried Beers Macbook pro, which also failed horribly with kernel panics and other fun stuff,

which led to point 2: basically the copy of the disk we got from college wasn’t burned the right way (as 1 could expect from the IT guys at college), after reading some forums about how the problem had to do with the DVD header being set wrong, we attempted to reburn it the right way, the problem was that a dual layer DVD was needed, and since this is africa, it was nowhere to be found, after 6 computer stores, Jeroen actually found an apple store that refused to help because they were doing inventory, but in the end we found a store that had the needed DVDs, so after burning, it didn’t work, so I got an external harddrive for 130 euros, and tried to use that as a boot disk, which also didn’t work, this all cost me about 2 days…

so I gave up for a while and waited for the teacher from college to get here and bring an original Leopard DVD, after receiving that yesterday, it was as easy as 4 click and 1 hour of waiting for it to complete the installation… I now once again have a laptop…it is a great thing.

Nina named it for me, since she felt like it’s such a personal extension of your life that it should have a name. His name is “mr Nilsson” atleast that’s what she said, my laptop isn’t the complaining type…

Tags: Namibia // 2 Comments »

So here I am, my laptop is fixed (finally!), I’m sitting on my bed feeling like crap, I just caught a bad cold, we all know how it starts, you get this weird dry feeling in the top of your mouth, and before you know it the slime is everywhere. funny thing is that a cold is also 1 of the symtomes of malaria, but I’m not worried.

Now how did I get this you might wonder… well… a teacher from college arrived yesterday, he had a cold, and since my immune system is probably pretty weak from the malaria pills my guess is a handshake was enough to make me feel this bad. We’ve all heard the stories before about westerners introducing bad virusses to tribes wiping them out completely, guess this is not simular but it still sucks…

what else, uhmm, think we’re gonna have a “Braai” today (basically a BBQ) with the german students who are also staying at the lodge. there will be lots of meat which is always good, especially since I had vegetarian food yesterday (some of the people in our crew are vegetarians). I don’t know how much I’ll eat though since I’m not feeling that well.

I finished the webisode today, and it should be online tomorrow for you all to see at www.virusfreegeneration.eu/hiphoptour/

Tags: Namibia // Add Comment »

hey hey,

so I’m in Windhoek Namibia right now, it’s not what I expected it to be, its well, a modern city, large shopping malls, clean new buildings, good roads, lots of white people etc. I can’t say it really feels like Africa, Malawi was africa because life was basic, Tanzania was Afrika because of the mess and bad smells, this place is more modern than Tilburg is, more stores, restaurants and better roads. 

But here’s the thing, we’re staying in the white part of town, we drove through the other neighborhoods and they’re much more what I expected, poor people who have nothing to do but drink all day, really small houses made of all sorts of left over materials (which seems really efficient). I guess Namibia is a country with large contrasts, and its really clear that the white people still have all the power here. they’re the bosses of every store, and the black people seem to do as they say.

we’re staying at a place called “Paccini Lodge” which is run by a german lady, she’s very strict and there are signs with rules everywhere, there isn’t that much allowed, but according to her thats what keeps this place safe. I dunno if I agree with that…

After being in Windhoek a few days we moved to Keetmanshoop (a 6 hour drive, at night, with 10 people in a small van) which is a smaller town, more primitive in ways, but still pretty modern for an african city I’d say, we stayed at a place called the “Central lodge” which was of course also ran by Germans, it was a nice place with good food and a large swimming pool.

on a Saturday we were there we went to an internet cafe to see how fast it was, they advertise their internet as  “ADSL”, but its not what they have, if you find a connection over 5kb/sec you’re very lucky. while we were waiting for our stuff to upload I stepped outside and realized that there was nobody there, the streets were empty and I wondered why, it felt like a ghost town almost, just a clean ghost town with perfect concrete roads (germans), the supervisor at the lodge told us that its normal and its like that every day, stores close at noon and people go inside to sleep, later I heard from the guy who’s driving us around that its because of this thing called “payday” people all get paid on the last friday of the month, and then go on a shopping spree, but the store employers also get paid on that day so the stores close and everybody ends up getting totally drunk at the townships. on Monday everything was back to normal and the stores were open 9 to 5.

A concert was held at a small soccer stadium, a ot of kids showed up (they don’t have any other form of entertainment) and it seemed to be a succes, Nanibia is home to the Namas, names somewhat look like a mix between black and asian, people have really pretty faces it seems. and are all very slender. the Namas are genetically proven the oldest race on earth. We again had problems with the audio equipment overheating at the concert, and the amp died a few times, but nobody really seemed to mind.

the day after the concert we drove back to Windhoek, which is a 6 hour drive through the desert, since its the rain season, it was really green and looked amazing. we’ve been back in Windhoek a few days right now, we got to hang out with some german students which was a nice change of things, spending 35 days with the same people all the time sorta gets to you at times.

it’s 8:30 am right now, the battery is about to die, and today I might actually get to repair my macbook pro (I’ll write about all that later)

only 31 more days to go I think,

you guys better comment!!!!

Tags: Namibia // 5 Comments »

yes I’m still alive and doing well, but with all the traveling there isn’t much time to write blog posts, stay tuned!

Tags: Namibia // 1 Comment »

hey hey nice people who read my blog,

sooo It’s been a while since my update, but this will be a good and long post, lets start with some good news, I’ve been feeling a lot better, my stomach still hurts at times, but not nearly as much as before, I’m now suspecting the bottled water we’re drinking, it has 20mg of Chloride in it per liter, and well, that’s not good for you. I didn’t end up going to the hospital, and I’m still taking my malaria pills (only 8 of them to go!!)) do not worry =).

Yesterday we had a day off, and so we decided to go to the Malawi Lake! basically the entire east side of the country is a giant fresh water lake. but it was a 3 hour drive to a nice spot according to some local rapper… 

I got up at 5:30 in the morning, we were leaving early so we’d have a full day at the lake, I was tired but excited. After waiting for the taxi for 30 minutes or so, and witnessing the african wake up ritual (women carrying baskets of water on top of their heads, and men running around arranging stuff, the taxi arrived… the trip was amazing, lots of nature, Mountains/Hills (which looked extra cool because of the low hanging clouds), Baobab trees, Birds, Monkeys etc. after about 3 hours we had to stop because the bridge was broken and they were repairing it, we had to go back to the nearest town and take a different road, this ended up being a small dirt road, which was amazing, I saw a lot of little huts where people lived, lots of excited kids waving at the car, and a lot of women protecting their harvest (corn) by guarding the fields. after 6 hours we finally arrived at or destination… big monkey lodge if I remember the name correctly. It was right at the lake and owned by a british guy, the food was good but expensive, the view was amazing.

After having some lunch (I had a vegetable curry with rice, and a coke in case you’re wondering) it was time to swim, the water was crystal clear, there were little fishes swimming, and the sand was almost fully made out of crystals, but all small pieces turned into smooth round pebbles by the water. so I swam, and took a walk down the beach, the locals actually lived there, it wasn’t some tourist place with just white people, there were a lot of children doing the dishes or getting soaped up by their mothers, all the kids were excited to see us, and after saying “hello” “fine” “and you” about 1000 times I swam some more… after that I just relaxed, enjoyed the view and just relaxed…

at 5 we had dinner because we had to be on our way again before dark, luckily the bridge had been fixed and it took us 5 hours to get back to the lodge we’re staying at. The place was pretty empty when we got there, which was strange since the place is filled with dirty old white people and young black girls each night, guess on sunday they all take the day off…

It was a great way to spend one of our last days, and I really needed it.

Malawi has been great, the nature is stunning and the people are really friendly, its strange to see that people who have so little are so happy, that might also be a problem though, to be honest, the people here simply aren’t efficient enough to turn this place into a strong economy, too many people are doing the same things and non of them seem to really care about it, thats why everything is going so slow… but hey, thats just me thinking with my crazy western standards…

now it’s time for me to go pack my bag, I finished my book about Namibia and I can’t wait to go…

check out the pics: http://www.simplygiz.com/files/Afrika/25feb/

Frank

Tags: Uncategorized // 1 Comment »

hey hey,

today I spend most of the day trying to fix my laptop, Blaxtar finally got his bag yesterday, it got lost somehow, and it took them 7 days or so to find it…I got my 100GB Hard Drive and some DVDs from college with software, a wrongly burned leopard DVD sorta spoiled it all, right now I’m copying beers hard drive onto my computer, which will take another 6 hours before I’ll find out if it works.

I’ve been a little sick the last 2 days, my stomach hurts really bad after I take the malaria pill or eat a meal, last night I had a fever and I was shaking a little, today I’m feeling much better but Jelle knows people here who own a hospital and I might go there for a malaria test on sunday…scary stuff…

today we moved to a different lodge, this one has internet so it’s a lot better for us, easy to upload stuff etc etc… the place is nicer 2, more peaceful, fruit trees and weird wooden statues in the bushes…

I’ll post some pictures soon, I promise…

Tags: Uncategorized // 1 Comment »

hey hey visitors of my site (350 unique visitors and counting), how are you people doing…?!lots has been happening since my last post, my last post ended with me saying I was gonna climb this mountain, which I did, I could type 3 blogposts about just that trip, but I really don’t have the time or energy for that, so you’ll have to do with the short version of the story for now… me and Beer decided to take the day off and climb the mountain, we had hoped for some sort of path to the top, we were wrong, after about 15 mins of climbing (following a rainwater drainage pipe) we came across 2 young african girls wearing slippers/sandals who were on their way down, which made me feel like some sort of tourist wearing my leather boots, we asked them if there was a path, they said no. after following the pipe line for another 10 minutes or so, and avoiding huge bumble bees (red with black) we heard a lot of water, there was some sort of water storage and filtering plant halfway up the hill, there was a little man made path next to the fence which ran up hill for about 20 minutes, after that there were no more paths, so we started climbing, after a few minutes beer yelled “Ants”, he wasn’t wearing any socks and was getting eaten alive by these ants that bite and dont let go, Beer had to go back and I decided to keep going by myself (which as everybody knows isn’t a smart idea) so I pulled up my socks all the way to my knees and started climbing, after about 30 minutes the spiked bushes and trees turned into white rocks, boulders, really big ones, and it started to get really steep, but I decided to keep going, the view was already amazing and I could see the top. I took lots of pics of the view and these strange blue reflective bugs that were everywhere… I reached the top, which was a total vertical piece of rock that was to high to climb, and drank my water before going back…going uphill was the easy part, downhill was terrible, I ended up with lots of scratches and wounds on my arms and legs from the plants, I even fell and almost broke my leg, but the adrenaline was flowing and I felt great, on my way down I heard water, and I figured it was the water plant we came across on the way to the top, but it ended up being a waterfall/river which was awesome. there was a lot of water coming down, lots of strange birds with white tails and mushrooms, it was such an unexpected and awesome sight that my wounds stopped hurting and everything was great… I made it home before dark, satisfied but tired.not much else happened in Zomba, just the usual walking to the internet hotspot and back, and working on the webisodes. there was an open air concert of Blaxtar (the dutch hip hop artist) and Gosple (the malawi hip hop artist) and it made it verry clear to me that people arent ready for hip hop yet, they didn’t care, there was no excitement and we (the white people) seemed like a better circus attraction…after a week of Zomba we took a busride back to Blantyre (where we landed, the capital) it was a bumpy ride, and the rappers were singing the whole time, not just hip hop, also other stuff, some of my requests were awesome, seeing Blaxtar do a Methodman impression was crazy…Yesterday we checkin into this new hotel place, its basically a construction sight, they promised us silence but well… this is africa, after finally getting a room and unpacking I tried to hang my mosquito net but I couldnt get the lil screw to grip the ceiling, so I asked for a hammer, after 10 minutes this guy came back with this rock he had picked up somewhere and handed it to me, the hammer didnt really work, but its 1 of those little experiences I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life…no pics today…they still need to be sorted… 

Tags: Malawi // 2 Comments »