Goodbye for now, Africa!

Somehow, we find ourselves at the end of our time in Africa. We have eaten our last meal, visited our last sight, slept our last sleep. In many ways, it seems the time has flown by very quickly; yet, we’ve had so many wonderful experiences during these past eleven weeks.

Growing up, we both thought of ‘Africa’ as one big, foreign place. When we decided to start our travels in Africa, we selected a few different areas within the continent to explore. Obviously, travelling to five countries doesn’t give you a full picture of the entire continent. What we learned, of course, was that even within each country, there were vast differences between people, animals, language, lifestyles, food, traditions, culture, cleanliness, and landscape. We were provided with many opportunities and reminders to open ourselves up. We have learned that there is a lot of value in being uncomfortable physically and mentally. We have thought a lot about what we have become accustomed to at home, and all that we take for granted. We are just so privileged in so many ways. We believe part of the experience of travel includes having our eyes opened to differences, feeling uncertain, and questioning what we know to be true. We know there is a lesson in each interaction, each moment of the day, and will continue to look for ways we can learn from these experiences and interactions as we move on to another continent.

We feel especially humbled by all of the incredibly hard working individuals residing in these countries. I hope I can keep the image of plowing a field by hand or walking over 40 km carrying large sacks in mind when I consider complaining about physical labour back home.

We also felt very safe in each of the countries we visited in Africa. We had the odd time where people would call out at us, and Will attracted a couple interesting characters on two occasions, but we didn’t experience any major issues at all. I didn't walk around much on my own as a female, and it's possible that having a 6’4” male beside me provided a security blanket. We didn’t go out after dark a whole lot, and when we did, we usually took taxis. We had warnings about keeping our belongings safe and not waving our phones around, but we were cautious about this and didn’t have any problems.

Remember what I said earlier about being privileged? Being English language speakers, we generally didn't struggle very much with communication until we got to Ethiopia, aside from a few funny misunderstandings. In a way, we are thankful that we didn’t find it as easy to communicate in English in Ethiopia. This forced us to learn more Amharic than we learned of any other language in the African countries we visited previously.

We have had a lot of questions about the typical prices we’ve been paying for things in different countries. Here’s a little taste of the prices (converted into CAD) we came across for…

	Shared taxi/transport for short trips around the city (x2 ppl)	Average meal (x2 ppl)	Coffee (x1)	Beer (x1)
Uganda	.70 matatu/shared taxi, 8.60 uber	17.00	1.35	1.35
Zimbabwe	2.50	44.00	2.50	2.50
Botswana	1.00	6.00	We didn’t see any coffee shops	1.20
Zambia	1.70	9.10	1.70	4.00
Ethiopia	.20 (light rail train), 7 taxi	4.60	.65	1.15

We had planned and booked a lot of our travel through Africa when we were still back in Canada. We were not sure how easy it would be to book accommodations once we got here, so we thought it would be better to book in advance. Although it was nice having a plan at times, it felt a bit restrictive because we couldn’t move on if we finished early somewhere or wanted to see another place instead. Going forward, we are going to try for looser planning without having things booked and see how that goes for us.

Highlight of each country:

Uganda: Seeing mountain gorillas

Zimbabwe: Spending the day at Victoria Falls

Botswana: Taking a boat safari through Chobe National Park

Zambia: Hanging out in the Devil’s Pool above Victoria Falls

Ethiopia: Hiking through Simien Mountain National Park

Names we have been called:

Mazungu

Mke wa/Kewa

Ferenji

Food we will be saying goodbye to:

Uganda: Cassava/G. nuts/Posho

Zimbabwe/Botswana/Zambia: Sadza/n’shima

Ethiopia: Injera/Shiro/Biyiyanut/Tibs/Ferfer/Full

Animals we will miss seeing most:

Baby elephants (although we might see more in Asia!)

Hippos

Number of plastic water bottles we feel guilty about purchasing: too many to count

Apps we've loved: maps.me (you can download any map and use it offline), exchange currency (for a quick reference about the current exchange rate for any currency), and whatsapp (great for connecting with friends, but also widely used by businesses here). We welcome other suggestions about great apps that would help us out!

African countries we want to visit next: Seychelles, Namibia, Kenya and South Africa

We are very thankful for all of the people who have helped us during these last few months. Whether it was pointing us in the right direction, welcoming us into their homes, or sharing an experience with us, we feel lucky to have crossed paths with each person we’ve met so far.