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Drumbeats from Africa - Week 1
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8 July : Caugoda : GPS UPDATES
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"PETRONAS Adventure Team, we have you in our sights," said the PAT website management team in Kuala Lumpur to Harun Rahman in Africa during one of the "rare" windows of communication.
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Owing to the convoy venturing into Africa's more remote areas, establishing good telecommunications contacts is often not possible. But thanks to the Satellite GPS Tracking System, the website team is able to track the convoy’s position. The system is owned by one of the expedition sponsors – BlueTECH Sdn Bhd.
The device which is located in Azman Baharuddin's car, sends continuous data (date, time, latitude and longitude) to overhead satellites, in the form of e-mail, to personal computers installed with software that decodes the data,” says BlueTECH Technical Director Tiong Kee Meng. With this technology, the website team can track the real-time progress of the team right down to whether Azman is speeding or not!
The PAT website team will upload the GPS updates at least once a day to keep readers informed about the convoy's progress.
Today’s GPS update: As of 6pm (Malaysian time), having crossed the Zambezi River, the convoy is 2.3km southwest of Caugoda, Tete, Mozambique heading towards the Malawi border. The Zambezi River is Africa's fourth largest river behind the Nile, Congo and Niger. After crossing the border into Malawi, the team will stay at a hotel just outside Blantyre, the commercial capital of Malawi.
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6 July : Casa Msika : OFF-ROADING IN MOZAMBIQUE |
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Tonight, we are camping at Casa Msika, a camping site located on a large dam, also known as Lake Chicamba. This campsite is about 200km west of Beira and is a change of scenery from our previous campsites. For the past two days, we were camping on the beach at Pralo Do Bilene and Vilankulo.
There is a curry aroma in our campsite this evening as team members cook their favourite dishes to remind themselves of home. Even though Bingo Bingo (Baharom Hamzah) has half his house with him, including the microwave oven, he is having fun.
Medically, the team is fine. Cars are okay after a small problem with Ah Tee's fuel pump. Other than that, our daily journeys are long - the roads are peppered with pot holes. The people of Mozambique are very friendly, but extremely poor.
Along the route today, team members were reminded not to venture off the road. Even if you wanted to have a pee stop, you had to pee on the road because landmines were placed alongside the roads. (Can anyone guess how Zainab and Connie, the two ladies in the team did it?)
We also refueled today, and because of our extended tanks, it took us over 1.5 hours to finish! We hope to send you photographs of our Mozambique section soon - we have to find a stable internet connection line first. Until the next drumbeats. |
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2 July : Durban : FLAG-OFF DAY !!
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What a day! At 9am this morning (local time) the Mayor Counsilor of Durban, Obed Mlaba flagged off the PETRONAS Adventure Team on to their fifth major expedition – AFRIKA Trek 2003. Also present was the Minister of Transport – Durban, Mr. Sbu Ndebele, Minister of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs – Kwazulu Natal, Mr Dumisami Makhaye, Department of Minerals and Energy, Mr George Nungumi, and PETRONAS South Africa representative, En. Azrin Azmi.
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The attendees were taken by surprise when Expedition Leader Halim Rahman announced that PETRONAS and ENGEN will each contribute 10 Rand for every kilometer the team clocks during this expedition. This amounts to almost 280,000 Rand that will be channelled to charities in South Africa.
Halim also mentioned that the team will be doing community relations programmes in Mozambique, Malawi and also in other countries we will be travelling through. We will be reporting on these activities in the days to come.
After a hearty breakfast with the Mayor, the team made their final preparations and headed out of Durban. Escorted by the Durban police, the team breezed through the traffic to reach the highway for Pretoria, 635km away.
Driving along the Drakensberg mountain range, the team was rewarded with some great views and beautiful roads. A quick lunch stop just outside Harrismith, the team headed on to Johannesburg and then to Pretoria.
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Top to bottom: The team is finally on their way, nice roads and beautiful
scenery in South Africa.
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We were greeted with the normal rush hour traffic coming into Pretoria but the Durban Traffic Police were there to greet us and escort us straight to our hotel. We were definitely the envy of the locals as the police stopped all traffic to let us through.
We arrived at about 6pm, and with just under an hour to freshen up, we were ushered to the Malaysian High Commission for dinner with representatives from Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and of course South Africa.
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The staff at the High Commission went to great lengths to make us feel at home with some Malaysian dishes and desserts. Everyone tucked in knowing that we won’t be having such delicious home cooked food for the next 50 days or so.
Thanks to everyone for the food, the company and of course for the help in making our passage through Africa smoother! Tomorrow we head off to Komatipoort for our first campsite. Although we’re looking forward to it, the team is also dreading the cold nights ahead.
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Zainab and Connie of PAT
with the ladies of the
Malaysian High
Commission in Pretoria.
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