The artist

The world is ruled by an invisible artist. We think. That must be the reason our veins are adapting to the climate, our insides being painted the colours of the ever evolving sky, shifting from golden dawns to the slow, pink drownings of the sun in the horizon. Because the artist has painted us into his masterpiece, it does take some time and countless miles to get how much bigger the world is than us. I don't think we've quite gotten it yet, or if we ever will. Than again, we're growing a personal, inside universe whose boundaries are yet to be defined.

When in Stone Town, the artist joins us in a cafe' by the waterfront, looking at the pink sun through the white sails of swahili dhows. The Zanzibari winds carry ocra dust and the smell of cinnamon and pepper and we're ideally resting on a gigantic December spice cake in space. But our bodies know, we're in Africa and it's the middle of June. Our thoughts are wrapped around us like thick, comfortable blankets. When we lie down on them side by side and look at the sun and the moon, both are so stunning and gigantic we can't tell the difference. He's mixing things up. He must be going mad.

Mushroom Farm wakes up at five in the morning to find us standing on the edge of a cliff, our lungs filled with diamonds. We watch the bright, blue lake Malawi being painted in a thousand shifting colours by the schizophrenic, genial artist. What we see steals all of the words we have in our mouths and behind our teeth and in the backroom of our thoughts. Even when the madman pulls out a revolver and opens up a thousdand holes in the sky, the only echo the valley can carry is silence. We taste the absence of speach and slowly sink into a world that doesn't need anything but light. We are bubbles of solitude that never burst, but eventually just melt into each other.

Tired of madness, the artist is lighting up the evening candles on Chizimulu Island with one hand, scratching the silver and gold off the sky with the other. We disappear behind a corner in our kayak, paddling it into the last whispers of daylight. The fishermen are waiting to build their ghost city at night, their floating pirate empire. They are slowly dragged away by friendly streams, and the sun's just another of their sinking ships.



The artist lies in bed and turns around to watches the back of his lover, the land of the thousand oddly shaped mountains. She's falling asleep, drawing a blanket of mist over her naked rocks and wild forests. So it's goodnight Mozambique, he whispers. Just like that. And some part of us, of our eyes are stuck there forever. We are breathing fully in this world a billion times bigger than us. Learning to draw endless frontiers around our tiny lives. Shaping infinity inside nothingness.

Spice tour on Zanzibar

1. The little yellow thing that makes up the core of an asteroid. It's extremely valuable and tastes like ginger ale.

2. The feeble remains of an unlucky roadkill we hit on the way over. Could be anything really. Probably possum.

3. What happens to bird baby trolls that stay to close to one another when the sun comes up.

4. Olives, we think. Yes, they are a bit funny looking, but what isn't around here.

5. Hah! That isn't even a fruit, or berry, or whatever. That's the stuff that makes colour. They used it heaps back in the days. Right?

6. Upside down strawberries! Just kidding, only I'm not.

7. Just your average pine tree. Don't know why it's in here.

8. You thought those brown semen looking things were frog babies? Well, they're not. They're little pieces of fruit with a will of steel.

9. A freakin' big coconut that got stuck halfway down. At the moment of visit it just sprang to life. What the fuck, right?

10. Exactly what it looks like. A pair of good old human testicles. Cut open, that is.

11. A new crossbreed between porcupine and Velcro. It just got stuck up there by accident. All of them. Yes, they're as fluffy as they look.

PS: This is also a super secret contest. The one who can guess what the things in the pictures really are will get a super secret prize in the mail. We'll give you a hint. Number nine is not really a fruit.

PPS: We might need some help judging the winner. There is a reason we just made stuff up to begin with.

Dear Rudi

As you requested we have recently spent some time at your newly aquired property on the shores of Lake Tanganyka in the western parts of Tanzania. Construction on the luxury cottages is progressing as expected and the campsites are already up and running. We personally chose to pitch our tent right on the lake shore, and the view is just amazing.

The two private beaches remain an untuched oasis in this otherwise littered corner of the country. The trees you so cleverly planted throughout the property puts an effective stop to unwelcome onlookers and adds a welcome feeling of privacy. The means taken against the spreading of Bilharzia in the area have also been effective. We enjoyed several swims in the crystal clear lakewater during the time of our stay. We have yet to take a medical examination, but feel certain the parasite has been terminated.

A few bushfires, undoubtedly started by envious neighbours, did occour as you predicted. But it was nothing major and we quickly got the situation under control. We have taken measures to ensure similar incidents will not happen again in the foreseable future. We have to say, you have done a splendid job securing this extraordinary piece of land and we strongly support your proposal of making this the destination for the next BSTV holiday.

Penny on the train track

June 12th 2011, Kigoma. The train is so packed with screaming kids, boob-flashing moms, mumbling 90-year-olds, blind beggars, untalented musicians, obvious thieves, annoying sellers, talking goats, cackling chickens, countless bags of rice, potato, corn and unknown ugly smelling stuff that it might seem funny, but it aint. People keep forcing their way on and off the wagons, seemingly at random, while we sit hunched in our corner hoping that some of them won't make it back on the train before it leaves the station. Not that we think it will ever leave.

An hour than two pass as we get baked by the sun though the open windows, while an increadibly strog smell of urine reaches us from the outside. Than it happens. People still running parallel to the rails, the station becomes smaller and smaller and finally landscapes start sliding away over our shoulders. We can smell the wind speeding up and the perfume of miles left behind. We're off, final destination Dar es Salaam. Both sides of the railroad are crowded with people, like an audience saluting astronauts headed for the Moon. There we are, far off in a bright, dry and surreal universe, waiting for it to become even more surreal as hours and miles pass. The worst parts are the stops and their unpredictable, but always significant lenght. And when even more people pour into the train on the next stop you do think "they must be joking", but they're not. At one stop we walk towards the entrance of the wagon ad take a peak outside and there they are, right beneath us, men peeing ON the train. Some moments our biggest worry is how the heck are we gonna disintagle ourself and get through the human labyrinth and to the toilet. Other times we partly lose contact with our limbs. Others again we're far off in the vicinities of the Moon with fellow travelers, saluting an unknown world that keeps waving at us.

The sunrise is amazing. Everything goes pink and orange and we even managed to get some sleep - more out of exaustion than for the comfort. The train's waking up, the nameless characters that surround us have barely opened their eyes, starting to make noises again. The baby repetedly smacking the floor with his lollipop before once again putting it back into his mouth. The old woman on our left that tries and tries, with all her strenght, to slaughter the coacroches crawling on the walls but ends up just patting them. The mom with the cool hairstyle, a little girl under her seat and her lap full of chapati, rice, tea, cups, pots and pans. The only guy who speaks english and keeps chasing away the people sitting on our necks, arms and feet. They're all here again. And than there are the endless stops again. And us, waiting for a gust of wind.

We travel through brown, yellow, red ground. Dead trees and dry grass. We're sneaking though an endless fall, smuggling hopes for a summer. Than it's dark again. The coacroaches make their appearance on stage, and we observe them silently, squeezed together, swimming in sweat, smelly, hungry and tired with still half of the way ahead of us. We look for an escape in the small stories inside the train, looking at the nameless passengers that we now feel like we've known for ages. The last sunrise is magical, announcing the approaching of Dar Es Salaam far away on the horizon. Crawling towards the coast of Tanzania is hard, the Heart of Africa is an entangled piece of wonder. Finally we're there, as if just a few minutes had passed since we left. The miles are long gone, as if they belonged to the moon. The astronauts have landed.

We walk trough the nightlights of Dar after a cold shower and think THAT was a once in a lifetime experience. Once ONLY. Yeah right. A few days in Dar es Salaam arguing over the Mozambiqua visa, a week on spice paradise Zanzibar and we're back on a train. A sleeping wagon this time. First class, that is. And it is wonderful, lying down, a book in our lap, the miles piling up behind us on the Tzara Line, the landscape painted by sundown racing by. We're Neil Armstrong again and Mbeya is our Moon, but for those waching from either side of the rails we could be going anywhere from Zambia to Venus. Us mzungus, the aliens. Our souls get sleepy, the comfort like morphine. A french, a brit and the two of us. A bubble floating by.

We get off the train, crawl into Malawi, drive up a mountain and pitch our tent on the edge of a cliff in Mushroom Farm. A couple of stunning waterfalls, three breathtaking sunriseses, a hike to Livingstonia and off we are again. A hike down the mountain with backpacks whose weight is just wrong. We reach Nkhata bay, get on the hudred year old ferry Ilala to Wakwenda retreat on Chizumulu Island, an oasis owned by the crazy brit Nick. That is heaven on earth and a whole other story, but the short of it is, a paddle around the island, Ocean's Eleven on the telly, a short climb for cell phone coverage. Every cell in our body is finally completely at peace with the world, we pass through Likoma to have a look at Malawi's second biggest (and most oddly placed) cathedral, get on the ferry again. The Ilala reaches Metangula in the middle of the night, so packed with people that we have to climb down the sides like frakin' James Bond just to reach the rescue boat that will finally carry us ashore. A grumpy immigration officer with a flashlight adds teo half-hearted stamps to our passports, and two dusty towns later we're in Cuamba, at the train station, waiting in line at 4 a.m.

We're leaves in the wind and pennies on the train track, waiting for our judgement day. It's the 15th of july, about a month after we left Kigoma. The world wakes up and there are people peeing on the train again, people staring, bags of rice and potatoes, people selling onions, roorts, carrots, boiled egges and grilled mice on sticks.

As the train starts moving the sky softly brightens, awakening the mountains around us. Gigantic monsters from an era yet to come, futuristic statues of unbeliavable proportions, shapes from another world. The mist is melted away by the rising sun, thought snakes of fog still hide around some of the summits and cover others like a wave from the sea. It's only a ten hours ride this time. We gape at stone hills shaped like turtles, rabbit ears, cupcakes and pyramids. You end up wondering whether we're in a real part of Planet Earth or if this is all a strange, strage dream. It might as well be.

By the time the train reaches its destination Nampula all the toilets are filled with oddities and one has to climb over people sitting on top of potato and rice bags to get anywhere. So we just sit still, looking around, in a soft shell of numbness that has become our crust, an armour that both shields and exposes us to this mad world. As we get off the train we realize that of course we've been flattened. There is no other way of getting around in eastern and southeastern Africa but being as thin as possible, squeezing in and slipping through. We look to our left and know that the Indian Ocean is still a couple of hours away, and we remember everything we've been through. Traces of the Central, Tzara and Mozambiquan line appear on our skin like invisible tattoos, and our hearts warm up like suns. There we are again, pennies on the train track. Looking for a place we don't know.

Welcome onboard the MV Ilala

All first class passangers please move on to the upper deck of the ferry as the lower ones are locked cages that will assure your death in case we go down. Witch, to be honest, is far more likely than we would care to admit. These are reserved for poor people.

Along both sides of the upper deck we have provided approximately one rescue vessel. They each hold a minimum of 24 passengers and had their last routine security check in 1997. They are both strictly reserved for first class passengers, and anyone from second or third class even attempting to approach will be shot upon. There is a third rescue vessel at the back of the ship, but it is reserved for the captain. We feel pride in scaring you into purchasing a first class ticket and are happy to say that you will be the only ones up there. Have a surprisingly long journey.