My Anti-Hoarding tips

Inspired by my friend Deidre, house converter extraordinaire, here are a few random tips for keeping down the stuff we accumulate. As Deirdre says: First World Problem, still...


1) Move house often. It's amazing how the effort of packing boxes and the cost of a container can concentrate the mind. Don't pack anything that you can't assign to a room or a purpose (no 'miscellaneous' boxes allowed).

2) Discarding clothes is hard. I have emotional attachments to my clothes: "I wore that all summer when it was so hot." "That was one of my favourite outfits when I lived in Wellington." "I wore this dress at that great dinner party."... My solution is to be harsh and stuff everything I haven't worn in a while into a bag and stash it in the bottom of the wardrobe for  on cycle of seasons (varies by climate). I can take out anything if I think of it and miss it, wear it and put it back on the hanger. Anything else gets chucked without looking at again at the end of the term. The 'not looking at it again' is the magic ingredient, because otherwise my memories are triggered and I can't do it. Works a treat.

I have also been known to cut up a load of old jumpers and patchwork them into a blanket, or to frame that perfect t-shirt. That requires a bit of a DIY effort, but can be worth it.

3) Get a scanner and Evernote or Dropbox to cut down on paperwork. I use the Fuji Scansnap 5500M, as it has a multi-page feed and scans double-sided directly to a folder. Great for articles and receipts, and you can set it to do OCR - text recognition - so the article is full-text searchable. Then dump it all into Evernote or Dropbox until you need to read it again.

4) Indulge one vice. It might be hats, or art books, or commemorative mugs. I collect camels. No guilt, no restrictions.

5) Find a freecycle place or a charity. Passing on items rather than throwing them out is much easier. Often what you don't need, someone else is looking for. I am not keen on selling on eBay, it's a lot of effort for little return. Be generous with the things you don't really need any more, and make someone else happy. Sometimes just placing things next to a bin rather than in it means that someone else will find it and take it home.

There you have it, my anti-hoarding tips.

How to ... Get your car out of customs in Egypt

We managed to extract the car from Egyptian customs, but only after witnessing the most flamboyant display of ineptitude, corruption and disorganisation so far on this trip.

The setting: Aswan’s ferry port, witness to weekly passenger ferries and occasional cargo barges from and to Wadi Halfa in Sudan, and a suburban hellhole complete with sewage repairs and begging children, site of the Aswan traffic police department.

The actors: various overlanders, both amateurs like us and professional drivers of overland trucks; M., the fixer extraordinaire; K., his slow-witted taxi driver (employed by M. only because his uncle is the head of the customs department); a near-blind customs official and assorted policemen on the hunt for baksheesh.

The mission: to convince Egyptian customs, traffic police and various other unmentioned government agents to release nine cars and trucks from the customs zone of the ferry port so that we can bloody well finish our journey.

The backstory: most of us have been waiting to move on for more than two weeks, variously in Aswan, Wadi Halfa and assorted locations in the Sudanese desert. The barge carrying the cars (which runs on a separate schedule from the passenger ferry) was delayed due to Eid, weekends (Fridays) and other unexplained vagaries of Arabic origin. The barge had arrived on Thursday afternoon, complete with five Landrovers, two overland trucks, one MAN truck and a Landcruiser, as well as three dogs. It was now Saturday. Everyone was tense in a different way, everyone wanted to get out of Aswan as soon as possible.

The timeline:

8am - waiting for K. and a second taxi driver to pick us up. Fourteen people sizing each other up at the hotel; I don’t like what I see. Two stroppy Australians and a South African motorbiker who has been heard to call the locals kaffirs. Great.

8.30 - The taxis arrive. We drive to the police station. K. and two members of the group disappear inside with carnets, passports and money. The rest of us get acquainted while leaning on the bonnets of banged-up taxis (ours has done 750,000 km). The Dragoman driver is reading the Daily Express. She must be homesick.

9.30 - The others re-appear, the grand total of their achievements a collection of blank forms in Arabic. We pile back into the cars and take the bumpy road to the port.

10am - Arrival at the ferry port. K. takes the first group through to the offices, while we in the second group are left behind to fend off baksheesh attempts by the gate keeper, who is trying to charge us to pick up our cars.

11am - After a series of phone calls to M. and strong words with the various fixers he sends, we are let into the office as well. We spend an eternity watching the near-blind official painstakingly copying driver names, chassis numbers and registrations from the English forms to the Arabic version. This takes two hours for nine carnets, with multiple breaks for tea and smokes.

12.30 - The barge is now available, sort of. M. has managed to convince the crew that just because the normal pier is blocked by the Minister of Agriculture’s boat (he is returning from a visit to Sudan, and seen speeding off in a very shiny black Merc), we should still be able proceed with unloading. So in order to drive the cars off the barge, we have to manhandle the strangely engine-less craft to shore by all together pulling on a rope, while the captain and his crew shouts encouragement. Taking the trucks and cars off takes a grand total of 15 minutes.

1.30pm - We are still waiting in the port car park for something to happen. M. brings tea. Suddenly a customs official appears, spends 2 minutes peering through the door of each car, asking if we have knives (?!?), and vanishes. Silence returns. We haven’t had lunch. In desperation I spend some time cleaning the fridge and kitchen in our Landrover.

2.30pm - A policeman, ferried in by K. for the occasion, takes rubbings of our chassis and engine numbers before demanding payment for overtime. After collecting E£10 per car he is taken back to town by K. and ennui descends one more.

3pm - We are told to come back tomorrow to complete formalities, as the traffic police has gone home. Aargh!

The denouement: Stuart spent all of Sunday at the traffic police to arrange insurance and registration. He was finally allowed to leave, sporting Egyptian number plates, after yet another official tried to extract a bribe for not doing a proper check. Our fixer, to his credit, called his bluff and told him they’d be happy to unpack the cars so he could do a more thorough search. Luckily the official decided he valued knocking off on time more than the money and let them depart at 4pm.

Kenya roundup

At one point it seemed as if we would never leave Kenya, as if we would bounce back and forth from Jungle Junction campsite in Nairobi in ever decreasing circles, attached by a rubber band to the little bit of easy living we could find in East Africa.

We arrived from Tanzania on a car repair mission, then, suspension repaired and with an improved double suspension, we headed out to Maasai Mara and on to Uganda. We returned to Nairobi to meet up with Mark and Martina (and to say goodbye to Merryl, who left us for the other side of the World), left again for a short visit to Lake Elementaita north of Nairobi. Then we returned again on our way through to the South, for a lost week at the beach, diving and dozing. Returning for the last time to Jungle Junction we finally got ourselves ready to move on to Ethiopia (which was not without its hiccups) but we finally got out of Kenya, despite all signs to the contrary.

Why was it that we drifted round this country for such a long time? We stayed here longer than anywhere else, criss crossed the country in an aimless pattern, spent the a whole week in one place, the longest time on the trip so far, and returned to some places multiple times, something we hadn't done anywhere else. Was it that we were glad to be somewhere we liked, as opposed to the unpleasantness of Tanzania? Did we lose our way halfway through the trip? Was Kenya just so fascinating that we couldn't leave?

What is certain is that Kenya turned out to be an eye opener. One of the better regarded, more well-off, more stable countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is a place that wears its problems on its sleeve. Kenya has a terrible infrastructure: In Nairobi most houses, if they have electricity at all, only get switched on every other day. Big cities like Kisumu, Mombasa, Nakuru have the worst roads we have seen in any country. Everywhere we went there were signs of the current drought, from starving cattle to grey and dusty game parks, and not all of it can be put down to it being an El Nino year. Deforestation is turning hillsides into scrubby deserts that fail to support the subsistence farmers scrabbling to make a living there, and government support in the form of road maintenance and power or water supply is non-existent. The most exclusive neighbourhoods and most expensive tourist lodges in the most expensive game parks we have come across in East Africa are in Kenya, so ready cash can't be the problem. Kenya is the first place where recent history is still palpable to the casual visitor, and it's depressing to think how far a small place like Malawi might have to go when even a relatively well-positioned country like Kenya can't get its act together. It didn't help that I was reading a book about Kenyan corruption scandals (It’s Our Turn to Eat by Michaela Wrong), which put much of these problems into a political context.

Then again, the preconceptions we had about Kenya, where Nairobi is called Nairobbery and we were urged to lock up absolutely everything in and on the car lest it was ripped off, turned out not to be applicable to us. We even left our car parked outside a hotel in Nakuru overnight (nervously, and only because of a lack of off-street parking) without having so much as a fingerprint in the deep dust covering the door handles in the morning. Coming from Tanzania we found Kenyans to be more restrained and friendly, taking no for an answer even in very touristy places, although we were still very aware of being quoted mzungu prices. Bargaining hasn't stopped, it's just that our counterparty has been a lot more amenable to reason.

Kenya is potholed roads and nonexistent signage, suicidal matatus (what counts for public transport here, broken down mini busses painted with hopeful slogans and apparently totally unaware of road rules) and crawl-slow lorries; it's a street that suddenly disappears in the middle of Nairobi, leaving nothing but deep holes and mud and oncoming mini busses in a typically unlit part of town; it's witnessing two serious accidents and two obviously drunk drivers in the space of one night time trip - and being involved in our own little accident, taking four hours to extricate ourselves from the financial fallout of replacing a scratched door on a Nissan (not so) Hardbody; it was visiting the mythical beauty of the Masaai Mara only to find that the Masaai who are supposed to care for it don't and the rangers seem to care only for the tips from photographing tourists, in the process ruining the environment their livelihoods depend on, and it was left to us to restrain our guide from harassing the wild animals; it was the sorry sight of a parched savannah and deforested mountains, and wondering where all the money goes when a visit to a game park can cost US$250 per day.

Kenya was Nairobi, which saved our sanity, civilisation at last, when we were desperate for a bit of familiarity (although Marabou storks glaring from the lamp posts and slums next to posh malls kept the affinity in check): we relished in breakfast at Java Junction, dinner at a proper Italian restaurant with proper service, supermarkets selling prosciutto and parmigiano and a real Land Rover repair shop, a national museum that hadn't been thrown together in a day, some thoughtful historical and art projects and the sense of it being a real cultural centre.

Then there were the cool people we met: Joseph the Cambridge-educated ornithologist Masaai, obsessed with birds, who had met David Attenborough and Angelina Jolie (not at the same time), had cool stories of colonial life in Happy Valley and who revised my accumulated resentment of 'guides' who often have been more clueless than we are about their 'area of expertise'; Kiwi and the Mango Man and the other guys on Tiwi Beach who kept us in fresh fish and prawns and fruit and cashew nuts and without whom we would not have eaten so well without having to actually get out of the hammock; Christoph from Jungle Junction, about whom I have raved once already, and who is doing a much better job than I even know in keeping overlanders on the road North or South, and who does all this amongst the craziness that is Nairobi and Kenyan bureaucracy and a raving community of colour-conscious website crazies; Mildred the ape researcher in Kakamega, we had too little time to find out everything she knows about blue and Colobus monkeys, although we realised it must be much when she can recognise them by name in the dusk at a distance of twenty meters; and lastly (but only because we met them on our last days, on the way out of Kenya) there were Peter and Rita the Dutch couple running Gadissa Lodge and a centre for disabled children in the Wild West of Isiolo, Swiss Henry who provided us with two new roof rack brackets and a cottage as a pit stop on the dreaded Marsabit road, and Mr Mangia, who sold us a deep cycle battery when we least expected it.

I have not mentioned the diving on an incredible reef in the Indian Ocean, the wildebeest we watched crossing the Mara river in the face of crocodile attacks, the romantic plains around Lake Elementaita where I finally understood how one can fall for Africa despite all the craziness, the total paradiseness of palm trees on a white sandy beach, the forgotten beauty of North East Kenya where the remote desert belongs to the Samburu and the cattle rustlers and that might be the only way it will stay as untouched as it is right now. I haven't mentioned them because the pictures will describe them better than I ever could.

Border Crossings

Crossing into Kenya from Uganda, at Busia, was the usual mayhem. Goods trucks were parked in long rows down the main street waiting for their paperwork to clear. Young guys run up to the car to offer their services as middle men to handle our customs and visas for a fee. We learnt very early on, at Kazangula in Zambia, where the signs at immigration insist that no brokers are allowed to deal with the officials, that we didn't need or want someone helping us. As it turns out, at every single border crossing there is a very simple process: get the visa, sort out the car through customs, pay any taxes or fees, done - move on to immigration on the other side and repeat with other taxes to pay and other forms to fill in. That sounds easy, but of course is attended by uncertainty and chaos. Still, we wouldn't trust someone with our passports, our dollars, our car papers. Instead we found a place to park in the midst of trucks, soldiers, vendors selling cold drinks and snacks and officious looking men, and wandered off to find immigration to get our exit papers.

One thing that has been singularly lacking at the borders has been decent signage. There are any number of huts and containers serving as offices, forex shacks and barracks, but nowhere a clear sign who does what and where to go next. The best option for us in the beginning was to follow the overlanders in front of us and hope they knew what they are doing. Eventually we worked out to look for the distribution point of immigration forms, although those are sometimes just photocopied sheets, so that is not so easy either.

Once we have located immigration, we fill in forms that are never looked at again by another human being - first name, last name, passport details (which I know by heart by now), length of stay, mode of transport, contact details. Then we get scrutinised to make sure we match our passport photo and sometimes have to fill in a big ledger, too, and that's usually it. We haven't overstayed our visa anywhere yet, so I don't know what would happen in that case. I suspect a small dollar amount would take care of it.  

After immigration, customs. Stuart usually does that part. It means getting the carnet stamped to leave the country, and sometimes the payment of exit taxes. When we left Kenya, we had spent two days over our seven day transit limit and had to pay US$40 for road tax. No big deal as we hadn't spent anything coming into Kenya. Getting the car out of a country is usually also a pretty easy affair. No-one has so far even wanted to look at the car in case we were smuggling something, or even checked our insurance.

Before we started I thought that the border crossings would be day-long events, where our car gets taken apart Cold War style, our intentions are scrutinised and we might be sent back for lack of the right paperwork. As it turns out we are through much faster than the backpackers travelling by matatu or the overland trucks with their crowds of youths. May it stay like this for the rest of the journey.

Border formalities

The rush has subsided now that we have hit the deadline of getting ourselves out of South Africa before my visa ran out. We made it to the Namibian border on the last day of my visa. The Namibian border at Noordoewer is a desolate and dusty affair in two parts. Stuart was very nervous as we approached the South African side, as this was our first land border crossing with the carnet, the car's passport that should get it across Africa without incurring customs duties. Incidentally, this was also Merryl's first land border crossing, although she was much calmer about it. The sun blazed down as we were directed to our first stop, South African passport control. There was a long queue in front of us as a large overland safari vehicle has just pulled up and decanted a load of bandanna and shorts youths for the formalities. By the time they were done the guy in the Home Office uniform could not have cared less about our visas and we were gone out of the immigration office in seconds. Next stop customs, which basically consisted in handing over the slip the first guy had given us, and we were off into No Man's Land. We drove across the bridge past the big sign welcoming us to Namibia. Around the corner from the sign we landed up at the Namibian border offices, again tagging behind the overlanders. We had some discussions with the immigration officials regarding our lack of a local address for our stay and welcomed their suggestion that we would be going to Fish River Canyon - which we were, but not just yet, and definitely not the only place we were staying. Stuart then went on to sort out the car formalities, paid the border crossing fee for the car and we were on our way. So apart from the panic where we had temporarily lost Stuart's inoculation pass (which no-one wanted to see anyway) everything went extremely smooth. No bribes, no hassle, no questions, no muss, no fuss. May all border crossings go this well for the rest of the trip!

Parcel Service

We lately had occasion to stress test the South African post office and it's international connections. Since we are leaving on a long journey without access to a postal address we made sure we did any online ordering and receiving of credit cards, etc, before we left. We have previously lived in the Middle East, where postal delivery is a futuristic concept that may one day be implemented, and house numbers change with the seasons, so we thought we were pretty prepared for haphazard services. Not so:

We were waiting for four parcels:

1. Merryl had her dive gear sent from New Zealand, via NZ Post with tracking
2. Stuart was waiting for replacement credit cards from the UK, sent by his parents via courier
3. I ordered an underwater camera housing from the US, which promised EMS courier shipping
4. Mark was sending an insured parcel from Germany, containing my camera and a load of Amazon purchases. This was shipped via DHL

The result was:

1. Merryl's parcel, while trackable, sat in the Northland post office for 6 days as no-one attempted delivery or bothered calling the contact number to arrange pick-up. Apparently the post office doesn't like to make calls to mobiles as that costs money...
2. The credit cards arrived within 4 days, a record, although it was lucky Stuart was home when the delivery was made, as the driver couldn't work out our address (which is written on the side of our building in large letters). Then again, at least the parcel was trackable all the way.
3. Amazingly, although it first seemed that the parcel would be delayed and I never received a tracking number, the parcel arrived from the US within a week. Again the delivery driver, even with the help of one of the numerous security guards that inhabit Melrose Arch, was about to leave as he couldn't identify the address.
4. The DHL parcel was the most fraught, as it contained some electronics we needed for the car as well as my repaired camera we needed for the doc, and most importantly Merryl's tent. Without it she might have slept in the open. The first sign of trouble came when Mark tried to deliver the parcel to the DHL office. Three trips later he had wrapped the parcel variously with twine and sticky tape and even bought some sealing wax to make it customs proof. Apparently no-one had a clear idea what the rules were, but everyone had an idea how to fulfill them. The real surprise came when I went to track the parcel online using the tracking number prominently displayed on the receipt. No such number. Hmmm. Calling the customer service centre I find that not only does this tracking number not work online, but that the parcel can't be tracked once it has left Germany. Apparently the parcel you really care about, the one that you insure, the valuable one, is the one that can't be followed and may disappear into the void for days (as happened to mine), "for security reasons". By the time I had received the item (this one wasn't delivered either), it had gone through four tracking numbers, none of which showed up in any publicly available system.

Lessons learnt for future overseas parcel posting:

• When paying for tracking, make sure that means international tracking all the way, and ensure that you know which tracking number to use.
• Always put a contact number on the parcel. It likely won't get used, but you never know, you might actually be contacted when your parcel arrives.
• Call the customer service centre with your details every day, well before the parcel is due. It might help your mail delivery karma, and if you're lucky someone can tell you where your parcel is currently stored.
• Shipping from the ex-imperial centre to it's ex-outposts seems to be more efficient than shipping from some other country (see speedy delivery of the credit cards from the UK to South Africa), even from an efficency hub like Germany.
• Pay more, send early!

This is driving me crazy!

There are many little inconveniences when one moves countries a lot, but none seem so deliberately infuriating and purposely designed to force me to tie myself in knots while trying to do something simple than DVD region coding. Man, as if it wasn't enough that I have to rip or re-buy my films if I want to watch them on my iPod, but to stop me from watching stuff on my computer just because I buy DVDs in a variety of countries that have been randomly assigned to different regions, that is just too stupid.

Of course my Mac should have a region free drive, and of course I could just wait to buy DVDs until I am back in Europe, or I could pay for a download from iTunes and then deal with the DRM on that and pay extra for the bandwidth to get the film that isn't all that much cheaper than a DVD in the first place and includes no extras, but why? How did we get to a place where I am a criminal for wanting to watch a movie? Soviet Russia much?

Grrr.

Just to give you an idea how totally ridiculous these regions are, here is a map. South Africa with Europe, why? And Australia with NZ and South America, good idea! At least Leo doesn't have this problem (as long as he stays out of the US).

Visas part 3 - quick results

Amazingly, after handing all the papers in at the Ethiopian embassy in person, after answering another bout of piercing questions and after waiting for an hour while watching bad daytime soaps (although Scandal! turned out to be strangely moreish), we were actually issued with a complete set of visas! We were stunned, but made with the cool until we left the compound. Then we whopped. And went to the next place, the Tanzanian embassy across the way.

This visa was meant to be next day, too, and as it turned out the process there was extremely streamlined. From the stacks of bundled South African passports in the office and the parked safari trucks outside we surmised that lots of South Africans head of for their holidays to Tanzania during the South African winter.

And true enough, we returned the next day, picked up the passports, and were done. Easy-peasy. Merryl also needed a visa for Rwanda, so we thought we'd try our luck while we were in town. The visa was meant to take 3 days, so we were prepared to leave the passport, but as it turned out we were on a roll. The young ladies in the office not only got us a visa while we waited, but also managed to wangle it for the exact dates we were after (one of the problems with visa applications for a long trip is that many countries issue visas only for a limited length of validity, between 1 and 6 months. If you don't make it to the destination country in time, the visa is forfeit. This means that we can't apply for a visa for Sudan, for example, until we are in Kenya, as it's only valid for a month.)

So suddenly, after a lot of prep and agony, we were done. We are still missing a bunch of visas, but those we are going to have to brave other African capitals for. Fun.

Visas part 2 - aka The Housekeeper Edition

Everyone tells us that Ethiopia is like no place else: The only African country never to have been a colony, with an ancient language sporting a unique script, food that is surpassing strange to the foreigner, and still in the year 2001 due to the fact that they stuck with the Julian calendar when most of the rest of the World went with the Gregorian one. So trying for a visa for our visit in October was pretty daunting.

I had prepared well after my return trip to the Tunisian embassy, where they had required an itinerary, ferry bookings to ensure we would leave the country again, bank statements and car registration papers. We had all those, plus separate bank statements for Merryl to show that she has independent means and a cover letter to explain that she is employed by us as a house keeper (well, it is almost true, even though I listed my own occupation as 'house wife', which just shows how much I am willing to compromise my principles for the sake of an adventure).

The visa counter at the Ethiopian Embassy in Pretoria

Unfortunately once we actually stood at the counter in the courtyard of the embassy and handed over our paperwork it was a whole other story. Maybe it was the idea that we were driving ourselves, that we were going to be camping, that we were leaving here in June, but would not pass through Ethiopia until October, but for some reason the embassy officer was very suspicious of us. What exactly he thought we would be doing in his country other than visit some old churches and hike in a few national parks I am not sure. Did we look like arms dealers trying to connect with our sources in Yemen across the water? Did he think we wanted to immigrate? Did we seem the types to foment revolt?

Regardless, the man was adamant to know everything about us. He thought of all sorts of other information we should supply him with, from our marriage certificate to an itinerary of our complete trip rather than just the bit through Ethiopia, more bank statements (and not 'manufactured ones, as he pointed out helpfully) and a letter stating the names of the passengers in the car, all car details (again, despite us supplying the registration and the carnet), and a letter from the bank stating that indeed we were the owners of the bank account whose bank statements we had handed over. Apparently having your name at the top of a statement is not enough, but an editable, unsigned Word document sent by email from the bank is irrefutable proof.

Oh, and my personal favourite comment from the man with all the power came when we showed him Merryl's employment letter. He took one peek at her with her cool Kiwi haircut and surf chick clothes and told me: "She doesn't look like a house keeper to me."

Visas part 1

Oh, I am having soooo much fun at the moment, digging my way through visa applications and their respective requirements for 18 countries. I knew that this was going to be the hair pulling part of the trip preparations, but quite how hilarious the process would be I didn't know. And I haven't even applied for any visas yet, although I have managed to order a passport replacement for Stuart, as he inconsiderately travels so much that he managed to fill his passport in two years. That involved getting shouted at by UK embassy security - driving a big huge Defender obviously means that I am carrying large amounts of explosives -, driving around the block three times to find the hidden accessway to the passport office, being asked if I carry any weapons, as they are not allowed through security, and finally being growled by a Very Grumpy (TM)at the cash desk. There is sooo much more fun to be had, I am sure.

Just fyi, we need visas in advance to the following countries:

Tunisia

Rwanda

Tanzania

Ethiopia

The rest of the visas we can get either at the border, or - since they have a short expiration date - we have to apply for them in another country, for example the visa for Egypt we have to get either in Nairobi, Addis Abeba or Khartoum, all of them undoubtedly fun places to spend a few days while traipsing to the embassy every day. Not.