Dear All,
Yes we did it. On 15th December we entered the proud village of Laufenburg where we have our apartment. So we completed our journey Maseru2Laufenburg after 9 month and 15days; a total of 290 days of hard work, privations, exiting adventures and incredible dangers. Well, we officially crossed 14 countries in Africa, among them 1 non-existent state (Somaliland), we shortly entered 2 more countries on a more informal way without to much disturbing the poor immigration officers (Botswana and Angola), crossed Asia in only a few days (at least a part of Turkey) and finally took the risk to cross Greek, a whole lot of these newly established puzzle states in the Balkan, even had the courage to spend 2 days in post revolutionary Italy and finally reached Switzerland.
In Laufenburg we opened the entrance door of our apartment just to discover that it was not any warmer than our house in Maseru during the winter months: 9 degrees. To attract the maximum attention of all Laufenburgies (at least part of the 2169 existing Burgies) we parked the car just in front of the door – well to be more precise it was not too far from the middle of the road. Fortunately, there was not really any traffic due to a nearby X-mas market where the local Burgies tried to do their level best to warm up with Glühwein and discussions about our car. Of course they were a little astonished on the fact that such a dirty car was allowed to enter Switzerland and especially the village limits of Laufenburg. Then they discovered the black box on the top of the car – a few guys dared to ask what it could be, but definitely were a little overwhelmed by the answer a rooftop tent because they never thought of elephants when camping. They read the stickers – Cape Nature, Sudan, Kenya, I love Ngorongoro and of course Cooperation Lesotho – Germany. Few questions, nobody would dare to out himself for not knowing were this kingdom is. Probably most of them rather limited their reading to Germany. As Laufenburg and our parking was not more than 30 m from the German border, we suppose a majority of the Burgies could imagine where Germany is. Unfortunately nobody really put some money for the next trip in the basked we have placed in a strategic position.
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Well, after this attempt of marketing our trip real work followed: getting up all our staff to the apartment on the 3rd level, clean everything, repair whatever needs a touch and make it ready for the next adventure. We started these exiting activities, then we discovered a beautiful bottle of Tinta Barocca Allesverloren in a nearby supermarket – and we lost our enthusiasm and interest to continue working. So, we were busy in emptying this bottle, in formulating philosophic questions about rotten grapes and in planning the next trip. As usual in these situations we did not come to an outstanding and final result. Nevertheless, concerning rotten grapes we decided not to taste any Ethiopian wine anymore.
Concerning our next trip we could only identify the final destination we want to reach overland: Punta Arenas (Google it if you missed that place at school). The rest remains largely a project to develop. But one intermediary point we could already fix: the Glacier Brewhouse in Anchorage where they serve this excellent Pale Ale.
Definitely before leaving for this trip and before editing number 11 of Be Jealous, we have a few tasks to accomplish:
- Get our car in order. E.g. replace the old irrigation pipe they have installed in a village in Malawi with a proper brake pipe manufactured by Toyota.
- Earn some money to repair the car and to finance the next trip. For this reason Martin made a pleasure trip to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso were our mother of all companies identified some opportunities to sell the idea of decentralisation to a reluctant Government.
- To thank everybody for reading Be Jealous, for being so patient not to delete each edition immediately; or for those who are maybe a little lazier to look at least at some of the pictures. To specially thank those who could follow and understand all our interpretations and conclusions deriving from our in-depth observations and our astonishing experiences we made during our trip thru Africa without getting completely confused and crazy about the logic that reigns this world. And last but not least many thanx to all of u giving feedback to Monika, Martin or Billyboy (forr englis is corecd) and helped us in one or another way to reach Laufenburg.
Currently, it looks like we’ll have a few weeks to enjoy winter in Switzerland and Germany. Martin will have to spend a few days in January and February in Burkina. In March the real salary slavery will start again, Inshallah. Martin will be for a month the coal mine in Eschborn before we’re moving to Ouagadougou. There he is supposed to finally understand the mother of all development cooperation and he is even supposed to know after all how to work properly within this company. Even if their success rate with this induction program is quite high, the result may still remain mediocre for certain cases. Monika will follow him and is hoping to find another interesting job with Red Cross or similar. In the meantime she is busy compiling the distribution list for be jealous 11…
Of course we’re already actively preparing our overland trip to Punta Arenas. As we could not yet determine the exact date for the start our current main activity is to establish the future distribution list for Be Jealous, so if you want to be jealous in future simply return a mail confirming your interest (write yes, I want) and u’ll receive edition 11 in a few weeks, months or years.
In the meantime we’re proud to be jealous to everybody who got inspired and moves forward to do some outstanding things.
We wish all of u a merry X-mas and all the best for a happy New Year, bonne année et les meilleurs voeux à tous ceux qui ont pris l’effort de lire les onze éditions de Soit Jaloux en anglais und frohe Festtage und einen guten Rutsch in das Jahr 2012a für all diejenigen, die weder der englischen noch der französischen Sprache mächtig sind und dennoch jedes Wort sämtlicher Ausgaben von Sei unheimlich eifersüchtig gelesen haben.
This especially concerns our dear friends in Lesotho, Senegal, Mozambique (or wherever they may be), Germany and DRC with whom we had a long way to go together in our task to fulfil at least of the most important coal mining objectives of our mothers of all development cooperation (some refer to Red Cross, others to GIZ). This also concerns the poor guys from South Africa and the Ozzies who had to go back to their slavery status much earlier than us. Further this concerns all those who took the incredible risk of climbing Kili with us and somehow survived it. Those who never responded to any of our newsletter: e.g. the guys fully overwhelmed by their missing Carnet de Passage and the wedding preparation on a Greek Island fully ignoring the political pre-revolutionary risk in this country. Those who still are on their way to London (with a X-mas stopover in Germany) because they are convinced that nowhere else you can ship back a car to Durban. All those we met on our way and are not mentioned above, who still have the opportunity to be on their trip or already are back home enjoying X-mas cookies and all others who received the newsletter indirectly. Not to exclude our dear family who took the opportunity to improve their knowledge in English and geography by reading the newsletters (of course we appreciate everybody’s discretion on not sharing any further details with them), all our other friends who were following to the last word our experiences to have the same challenges in a near future, our coach potato friends who were happy just to read the newsletter in their armchairs, all those who helped Billyboy to improve his English (sorry he’s American, not British) and last but not least all those who thought it’s their duty to help us on our trip of 50 000 km thru Africa without being on the distribution list of Be Jealous. Finally not to forget poor Prado – even if he/she/it is only our car and he/she/it got dismantled of some of his precious parts during our trip he/she/it merits our special thanks for not getting bored of Monika and Martin on our lonely trip along Lake Turkana or at the gate of the ferry to Turkey. We’ll thank Prado by taking he/she/it to Burkina where his/hers/its beloved Diesel with an extra charge of sulphur will be readily available.
Cheers
Monika & Martin
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