Zimbabwe: villages, trad and washing
by Matt Barratt
photos: Duane, Juliet, Steffi & David
The
next major climbing destination was Shamu, a well developed climbing area
near Harare. The first excitement was ascending a route called "Anything
Else is Sport Climbing", a wonderful route with an offwidth layback crux
that is well protected by a No. 5 camming device. As no-one on the truck owned
the required piece of gear we improvised by taking up a small plank to reduce
the width of the crack and thus protect it with a No. 4 camming device, unfortunately
nobody tested this cutting edge engineering by falling on it! Other than this
excitment truck dwellers tested their mettle sport climbing, exploring the
many wonderful cracks and by braving the incredibly pungent toilet. However
the highlight of our stay was getting to know the farmer (Ronald) and family
whose land we were camped on. 
Ronald
said he was 78 years old and had 16 children and he was currently married
to a 24 year old woman, judging by the ease with which he carried fire wood
and water he was also stronger than all of us. The whole family made us very
welcome and even provided hot water for washing, but this may have been due
to disgust at our lack of attention to basic standards of hygiene. Luckily
a huge thunderstorm (the first rain for 12 months) provided a welcome 
opportunity
to wash in the run off from our tarp, we then spent the evening cowering on
the truck watching the lightning strikes and our tents slowly washing away
in the mini-flood. Duane especially enjoyed the storm until he alighted from
the truck and discovered that his tent had blown away, he promptly retreated
into the truck for the night bemoaning his fate, luckily some locals discovered
his tent the next morning and bore it back shoulder high in triumph.
Having had a short but sweet taste of Shamu we moved on to our final climbing
destination in Zimbabwe: Mt. Dema. We followed our noses and found ourselves
at the foot of a fabulous dome of rock, all we had to do was find the local
chief to secure permission to stay-we had been unable to get in contact by
phone. Emma set off round the village and eventually found the chief at a
funeral, but he seemed happy to leave and talk to us! As we watched the villagers
bow to the chief and 
waited
for permission to approach him we realised that this was ging to be a little
diffrent from climbing at Stanage. Anyway the chief spoke to us and it appeared
that we needed to speak to the chief in charge of the whole province, so the
village chief, several elders and the Hot Rock mob climbed back on BIRT and
we went to find the Big Chief. Eventually we arrived at a walled compound
into which dissappeared Emma, Henry and the village chief. After a long pause
they came out accompanied by the Big Chief himself, all the village elders
immediately got to their knees and started clapping their hands and the rest
of us shuffled our feet uncomfortably, apart from David the closet Royalist
who also dropped to his knees in a practised fashion. The big chief gave a
short speech of welcome, during which he berated Emma for having had the temerity
to shake his hand which apparently would have incurred a hefty fine if she
had been a Zimbabwean citizen. Formalities over we headed back to our home
for the next few days.
Dema
Climbing highlights: Mike, his dreadlocks and Jase trekked off to Mt. Matioru,
which apparently means mountain of the rotten tree, to make a rare ascent
(probably the first since 1988), possibly by a new route. There was some bouldering
action from the heavily muscled contingent and Steve, some of whom also ventured
onto the multi-pitch climbing. Finally the rest of us climbed the existing
Hot Rock routes which were almost all of exceptional quality and brilliant
fun if you like crack climbing, particulary Flash and Banana Crack which would
not have been out of place in Squamish or Yosemite.
Dema Social Highlights: This was undoubtedly the best interaction we had
to date with the local community. The families closest to us brought us fruit,
firewood and water everyday and even offered us hot water to wash in towards
the end of our stay. 
Juliet
adopted several local children who she spoilt disgracefully, David entertained
with his juggling skills and the children all made more use of the climbing
wall in 5 days than we did in the previous 2 months. Diana seemed to be on
a neverending social whirl of visits to various families and Maxi Matt kindly
let several dozen 10 year olds think that they were better at football than
him. Our final highlight was the neverending diet of porridge which all of
us grew to love....
We packed up reluctantly at the end of our stay in Zimbabwe, the climbing had been amazing, we were lucky enough to live in close contact with some lovely people and we had found that despite having nothing by our standards many people would show us amazing hospitality without expecting anything in return. Anyway we were down to our last pilchard and it was time to move onto Malawi via Mozambique.
Moving on: through Malawi to Tanzania
We
spent 8 hours driving through Mozambique before crossing the border to Malawi,
as a result of this we all have an exciting fund of "When I was in Mozambique..."
stories that we now tell indiscriminately to friends, families and strangers
alike. Anyway we arrived in Malawi, stopped only to get drunk, eat and shop
on our way to Mt. Mulanje, home to the longest rock climb in Africa. Due to
the onset of the wet season,
technical difficulty, lack of gear, loose rock, the lack of a pure line, the
heat, cowardice and any other excuse we could think of everyone avoided attempting
this monster of a climb and embarked on various scrambling, bouldering and
walking missions. Most of the group based themselves at the Chambe hut and
walked, scrambled, bouldered and bivied on mountaintops in thunderstorms from
here. Several of us embarked on a different route that cleverly involved a
several kilometre walk on the road in 35 degree heat but it did include the
bonus of every child from miles around coming to gape open mouthed at the
Mzungu (a mostly polite? term for white people) and chant give me money en
masse. Anyway we eventually made it onto the mountain 
where
Duane broke the world record for most sweat produced by a single human being
in the space of one day (I use the term human being in its widest possible
sense). We embarked on several scrambles, the highlight being getting stuck
in the biggest boulder field ever and also getting caught in one epic downpour.
The best entertainment was produced by our Canadian contingent who seriously
miscalculated how much food would be needed to keep them happy on the mountain,
the rest of us enjoyed eating our food in front of them! Due to their seriously
weakened state the mice in the huts were able to steal their remaining food,
by way of an amazing traverse up an overhanging towel, and force Jase to sleep
on a table in case they dragged him away, as he was too feeble to fight them
off. At least that is the only reason that might explain why Jase was so frightened
of the mice!
We gathered together after our various adventures and headed into the longest
phase of the trip without climbing, luckily there would be sun, sea, sand,
food, alcohol and bilharzia to occupy us in the meantime. Here are the top
10 incidents from the non climbing phase:
1:
The truck olympics that involved dwarf tossing, spawning the immortal phrases
"Let`s f***ing toss these dwarfs" and "It looks like that dwarf
is out"-video soon to follow on YouTube. Aalso the bizarre appearance
of a drunken giant, formed by 4 hot rockers, at the fancy dress party.
2: Five grown men, clad only in shorts, fitting themselves into a truck locker to be revealed when Emma was conducting 8 new trip members on a tour of the truck.
3: Mike conducting us on a tour of the most disgusting reggae bars in the world and swearing blind that each one was going to be better than the last
4: Waiting for the pythons and mambas in Snake park to eat the live chickens
that were put in the cages with them at feeding time and wathcing the crocodiles
scrap over their food
5: Drew balancing on a slab in his flip-flops trying to get a better photo of the black mamba that was only 8 feet away and then 3 of us fleeing at high speed when it came towards us
6: The most awesome thanksgiving dinner we have ever had (and the only one most of us have ever had!) cooked by Duane and Diana in an epic 12 hour cooking marathon
7:
Watching the most outrageous overtaking manouvre ever on the Mombassa-Nairobi
road that coined the phrase "That guy has his balls in the passenger
seat...strapped in"
8: Watching "Dancing Matt" drink and dance
9: Kat drunkenly falling into the boys pee bush
10: The whole smelly, drunk, hungover group crammed into a rickety bus driving into the courtyard of the exclusive 5 star resort that Duane and Diana had stayed in at great expense in order to get away from us
Crags (and Crimbo) in Kenya
So we thankfully arrived at the Kenyan border eager for the climbing to resume
and to dry out after the excesses of the previous few weeks. Our first destination
was Lukenya, a crag 30 km from Nairobi. We arrived just after dark to be greeted
by the gate keeper attired in greatcoat, wellies, balaclava, torch, bow, arrows
and the biggest smile in the world. Lukenya turned out to be an African version
of 
Tremadog(roadside
crag in North Wales for the ignorant), single pitch and small multi pitch
climbs but with the bonus additions of stinging insects, snakes and consistently
dry rock. The group let loose on the crags and had a go at most of the classic
routes and some of the not so classic ones, a brilliant venue for the VS-E2
climbers and enlivened by the 35 year old guidebook which was still accurate
in its locations of hornets and bees nests, as Mike discovered. We spent 5
wonderful days here before reluctantly departing to our next destination,
Lake Baringo.
Lake
Baringo was an amazing place, we camped about 20 metres away from the lake
edge which was teeming with hippos, crocodiles and tourists in boats. There
were also a pair of huge Eagle Owls and a giant tortoise for us to look at,
though some people chose to ignore the tamer wildlife and embark on a happy
slapping campaign against the crocs and hippos, thankfully David and Mini-Matt
let the wildlife escape with their lives! We also went climbing here but only
3 people had the bottle to do battle with the main cliff, Dancing Matt, Phillip
and Henry (Yes that is correct, Henry went climbing!) they did battle with
the charmingly named "Falling Debris" and survived to tell the tale
at the small cost of the destruction of a climbing rope. The rest of us were
so taken with the climbing here that we voted to run away to our next venue;
Hells Gate.
The climbing here is in a game park, charmingly named Hells Gate, and is
one of only 2 game parks in Kenya that you are allowed on foot in. We discovered
some brilliant single pitch climbing here and some interesting multi-pitch
climbing. 
The
single pitch climbing was almost exclusively pure crack climbing where you
can enjoy moving your protection up the route with you. Some members of the
trip enjoyed discovering how much fun sustained foot jamming can be in the
hot African sun....while others bravely got to grips with the slightly loose
main cliffs. In fact George got to grips with one climb so well that he ended
up pulling a block off and taking a 20 metre fall but being a tight Yorkshire
B***tard he refused to leave the route until Steffi had retrived his gear.
Thankfully he sustained nothing worse than a strained ankle, though we are
still trying to find out if there was any brain damage....opinions are divided!
The
final part of this blog must be dedicated to our Christmas eve and Christmas
day celebrations.
After climbing on Christmas eve we gathered for a formal ceremony where five members of the trip allowed their beard or hair to be sculpted into interesting shapes, this ceremony had been months in the planning for the beard wearers and years for dreadlocked Mike. The ceremony resulted in the beard wearers looking like Captain Morgan, a red neck southerner and an 18th century english gentleman while Mike merely came out looking normal but upset over the loss of his beloved dreadlocks.
Christmas morning dawned hot and sunny and we thought about our friends and
families in colder, wetter, snowier places....our Canadians were 
particulary
pleased. The day started with a slap up breakfast and christmas cake at the
unprecedently late hour of 9am. After a hard days relaxing we 
reconvened
at 4pm and started to cook a brilliant 3 course meal that involved steak and
the highlight of cherry, mango, banana and pineapple crumble. Luckily all
our letters had reached Santa and he turned up just after the main course
though for some reason he kept telling dirty jokes in a Yorkshire accent.
Some wonderful presents appeared and in some cases the recipients disappeared
immediately to watch their present on the Laptop (we have not seen Duane since).
Drew and Jase then sang some carols for us, including a song specially written
for the occasion entitled "Christmas in Hells Gate" and the two
classic hits "Eye of the Tiger" and "No More Rats". Finally
the evening ended up with a celebratory firework display that not only emptied
the nearest bar but also resulted in 6 men, wearing camoflage and brandishing
AK47s threatening to arrest Emma if we set off any more fireworks!
Happy Christmas, Love Hot Rock
