This article was orginally published in the UK Cache Mag
Pause for a moment and imagine this- a cacher used to the high density caches of western Europe and the lively caching community which supports events, CITOs and Megas, heading for southern Africa for up to 4 months! My time in Malawi required a considerable amount of readjustment. There are only about a dozen caches in Malawi, most of which are poorly maintained if at all and hundreds of miles apart- this ain’t no power trail!
Returning to the UK after the second of two extended placements in Malawi, supporting the Book Bus, I’ve been reflecting on the caching opportunities taken and missed. (The Book Bus is a UK based charity which brings books to places where there are none and a joy of reading to children who otherwise go without.) One of my first thoughts, as a cacher of eight years’ vintage, was that this might also provide the chance to fill another country (and continent) on my caching map, earn another souvenir or two and maybe even meet other cachers. How wrong I was! Fellow cachers gave me their trackables, some with specific Africa-related missions and, sure in the knowledge that I could help them on their way, I gleefully took a good dozen with me!
One of the poorest countries in Africa, the technology to support such a high-tech hobby as ours in Malawi is beyond the pocket of the average citizen, even those lucky enough to have a better-paid job in one of the cities such as Blantyre, close to where I have been based. Most of the caches in Malawi have been placed by foreign nationals like me, sometime on behalf of local groups, many of whom are simply unable to maintain their hides once they have returned home. The only caches I found, except for one nano, were virtuals or EarthCaches, which require no physical maintenance at all. But even on those frustrating DNF runs, I was afforded views of dramatic landscapes which were their own reward, smiley or no smiley. Here’s a few tales from my caching travels.
A Rift Through Africa– Earthcache
On a weekend break to the massive Lake Malawi, I saw my chance to ‘find’ my first cache in the country, an earthcache which focussed on the Great Rift Valley, a limb of which runs between Malawi and eastern Mozambique along a series of Lakes including this one. Geologically, this enormous valley complex is an active plate boundary, where Africa is being pulled apart as the plates move away from each other. Eventually they will form a new ocean and the western 2/3s of the continent will head towards America at the speed of growing fingernails.
From where I was staying to GZ required me to hire a canoe and paddle around the coast of Cape McClear, the site of David Livingstone’s original camp in the area and named after his great friend. On a blistering hot day, I landed on a sandy beach only to be greeted by a uniformed ranger who informed me that I had entered the national park illegally! She explained to me that there was a 3000 Kwatcha (£5) charge. I told her that I was in a canoe (!) and had not money with me but she seemed more than happy to accept my bag of mangoes as payment- corruption even at the lowest levels!
Rushing out to greet me came a crowd of uniformed boys. This was also the location of a local secondary school and, even though they must have been more than used to tourists in this area, they were excited to see me! They were all keen to have their pictures taken with me and my canoe and showed great interest in my GPS. Some of them showed me the information stone that I was looking for and I duly noted down the information that I would later need to log the cache.
Eventually, after a long drink and an even longer paddle into the breeze and I was back at base and searching for Wi-Fi in a local bar to log the cache, my first find in Africa. After doing so, I excitedly checked my souvenir collection to see what I had been awarded. To my horror, I was to discover that there was no souvenir for Malawi and no souvenir for Africa either! In fact, there is no souvenir at all available for finding a cache on the massive continent, which is surely a travesty. One cache, one weekend. This was a different experience altogether for me!
After seven days I was back in the area, a four hour drive from ‘home’, but this time with my own transport. This meant that I was able to perform a slight detour to try and find a physical cache instead and, hopefully, deposit some of the trackables. On possibly the hottest day I have ever experienced, I found myself and my intrigued muggle friend, Jenny, climbing a rocky outcrop in the mid-afternoon sun, both in flip flops! We saw lizards, snakes and gekos but no cache despite a thorough search. The views of the area were outstanding but the cacher in me was still disappointed. The last few visits had also been DNFs and so it seemed that the cache may indeed have gone missing, maybe falling between cracks in the rock of even taken by animals. And so I still had all these trackables, no physical cache and a sceptical friend in tow!
Days later, and with time running out on my first visit, I took a different approach. I would leave these TBs in a cache of my own. Although I had no way of maintaining such a cache after my departure, my friends at the charity’s base, “Fisherman’s Rest” were intrigued and said they’d keep an eye on it for me. The viewpoint that I chose also overlooked the Rift Valley and so I thought this would be a great spot. I clambered down a slope to add a few T points, and hid my Tupperware under a pile of rocks, first leaving a FTF badge and all the TBs. I felt relieved that I was able to keep my promise to their owners and so headed back to pack my bags for the next day’s flight home.
Though it would be weeks before anyone visited it, I still held out hope. However, the first cacher to call only took one of the TBs! A second visit didn’t happen until after Christmas and, to date, no one else has been here! The bugs were stuck here! At that point I had no plans to return to Malawi and I felt guilty for placing them all here. Maybe I should have brought them home and given them to another cacher to move. (Note: this cache was washed away by the rains the following season and, sadly, had to be archived)
Hardly a day was left before my flight home. Almost as an afterthought, on the morning I left, I marked the position of an outcrop of particularly rich, red soil and later devised an EarthCache. The red soil in the part of Africa is caused by its high iron content. Basically, Africa is going rusty! To date, there is still a FTF waiting for someone here! I wonder what the record is for an unclaimed Earthcache FTF? (Note: FTF was eventually logged on 20/11/2014)
There and Back Again
In the New Year I was offered the chance to return to Malawi to undertake more work for the Book Bus. Needless to say I jumped at the chance, although I was far more realistic this time about the caching opportunities. I was also relieved to be able to rescue all those trackables and move them on, maybe even bring some home again, with apologies!
Events and non-events
Soon after I arrived would be CITO weekend. I’d missed the chance to take part in my local event and didn’t have time to organise one of my own. Malawi, like many developing countries, has a real problem with litter. It now has access to all the packaging that we ‘enjoy’ in the west but has no real infrastructure to deal with the waste. Subsequently, the roadsides are strewn with rubbish, especially the blue plastic bags used by market traders. I spent an hour clearing a short section of the main road outside Fisherman’s Rest (the M1!) and Skyped my friends back in Lincoln to swap experiences.
A highlight of my long evenings was when I had the chance to Skype my caching friends (who had now taken my muggle girlfriend under their wing in my absence!) at their monthly quiz night events and also the Inbetweeners’ 10,000 finds celebratory event. It was great to be able to see and talk to all my friends, so far away, jealous though I was of all the caching opportunities that I was missing
Days later, my thoughts turned to the forthcoming World Wide Flash Mob event. Last year I had organised the Star wards themed event in Lincoln and was keen to host another one this year. Unsure how “flashing” might be received in Africa, I picked the grounds of a smart hotel (it has wifi…) as the location and waited to see who might show an interest. And waited. And waited…. In fact, no one logged a “Will Attend” apart from me! My chance to get an African FTF was thwarted, however, when I had to return to the UK earlier than planned to take up a new job. I’d already had my Malawian flashmob event mentioned by the WWFM organisers, Sonny and Sandy, on their Podcacher podcast and so didn’t want to let them down by cancelling it. I waited until the last moment and, in the end, decided not to archive it. After all, no one would be coming anyway so it didn’t matter that I wasn’t there. In fact, I’m claiming this as another first- the only event cache to have been attended by not one cacher- not even the so-called host!
3500 Finds at Victoria Falls!
A landmark was looming! One of the undoubted highlights of this second visit was our planned journey to Zambia to visit one of our other Book Bus projects in Livingstone, close to Victoria Falls. It didn’t take long for me to realise that we’d be passing several caches en route and that there were even a few near the falls themselves! Looking at my stats, I decided to try and make the virtual cache there my 3500th find.
Much deliberation was had about our route and mode of transport to Livingstone. In the end, the cost of taking our car over the border was prohibitive and so we stealed ourselves for the three-day, 1000 mile bus journey via Lilongwe and Lusaka. This included the agony of passing right by two caches, one of which I’m sure I could see from the bus window, without the chance to stop! However, I did get the chance to find my first physical cache in Africa, a nano located at the HQ of the Scout Association of Malawi, where I was to visit for a partnership meeting. I used my GPS to find the HQ by navigating towards their cache. When they saw my unit the staff excitedly told me about their cache- did they think I didn’t know or something!? The other caches in Lilongwe seemed to be missing, sadly, and so that was it for the day.
Our next overnight stop was in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia and another place with no maintained caches but to be honest, after 14 hours on a bus and another eight hour trip the next day, even I was glad to head straight to bed that night, cache or no cache!
Livingstone was a different matter, however. There seemed to be a clutch of caches in the area, many of which were associated with the nearby Victoria Falls. However, not all of them were within reach, despite being so close by. The Victoria Falls are on the River Zambesi which, at this point, separates Zambia from Zimbabwe and some of the caches were on the Zimbabwe side. Crossing over was a possibility at the cost of buying a visa but we were here to work and I couldn’t really justify more than a couple of hours of sightseeing.
Yet again, no physical caches were here, just the Victoria Falls, Zambia virtual cache and an EarthCache, Mosi-oa-Tunya, which, although located on the far bank, seemed possible from this side. This meant that the virtual would be my 3500th cache find. I couldn’t have planned it better and a more dramatic location for a cache you could not wish for! The spray was visible from Livingstone town, about 7km away and the roar of the falls could be heard over the traffic as our taxi pulled into the visitor centre car park. We saw people bungee jumping from the road bridge over the river. I walked down the ‘Boiling Pot’ at the bottom of the falls and was treated to a new and increasingly tantalising glimpse of the falls themselves around every corner of the trail. But the most amazing experience was that of being soaked to the bone while crossing the footbridge while the sun and spray formed a rainbow over our heads! The hand written “#3500” sign was a soggy mess long before I had my photo taken at GZ to qualify for the find. Now I knew why so many people were wrapped up in coats and wide hats on such a hot day! After gathering the data I needed to claim the Earthcache I reluctantly walked away.
So, five caches in just under three months and only one of them an actual container- hardly a massive haul and there was now a huge dip in my stats graph! But what few caches I had managed, and indeed the DNF locations too, had taken me to some of the most spectacular locations that I’ve ever been to, caching or otherwise. I’ve missed my caching buddies, the quiz nights, FTF chases and the surfeit of drive-bys but I’m sure I’ll always count these as among my favourite caching adventures.
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