A 4.30am rise and a quick email check revealed my flight with Ethiopian Airways had changed from 7.40 to 7. Nothing could be done about this other than hoping the 2 hour required check-in was a sufficient buffer. Fortunately, it was. I’ve completed the Tanzanian leg of my work trip and I’m off to Zimbabwe, with the day’s flights traversing Tanzania, Malawi, South Africa and Zimbabwe. The more specific route included Dar-es-Salaam to Lilongwe (an extra stop that precipitated the earlier departure) to Blantyre to Johannesburg and change airlines to Bulawayo. Lilongwe was a funny stop. You’re taken by bus from the plane to the terminal less than 50m away and then you have to pass through a luggage check and immigration. Time was short and I sidestepped both by following the locals around the various stations. You’re then taken on a circuitous route to the boarding lounge to get back on the same bus and out to the same plane. Along the way we encountered a seemingly non-working escalator. I was part way up when it slowly started to go down. Picture a traditionally built lady at the head of half an escalator of people and me at the bottom of the line. She was struggling to walk up and the rest of us were hoping the downward pace of the escalator didn’t escalate. She made it and the rest of us hurriedly followed. Bar the need for a technician to fix some external piece of the aircraft that would not properly close, the remainder of the flight across Malawi was free of mishaps. Once at cruising height, you could see the many varied west-east river systems that snaked across the landscape: some wide but dry; some with water coloured dull brown, rusty red or tinged green; or skinny dark-blue braids weaving their way through banks of sand (the photos do not do justice to the colours). An occasional blue lake could just be discerned in the hazy distance, and tin roofs sparkled star-like, briefly and in turn, as the plane passed high overhead. What stood out were the limited roads and tracks and seemingly intact vegetation*. You knew when you’d crossed into South Africa. Dense townships proliferated, and you may just be able to discern neatly arranged streets on the right and more haphazard housing distribution on the left. Ground truthing from road trips in South Africa, suggests the right is more affluent with shanties on the left on the township’s periphery. The South African landscape comprises cleared land, sparse scrub, plentiful roads, deep mines, and large-scale farming with centre pivots becoming more frequent closer to Johannesburg. Plus the fires. Small but pervasive and contributing black smoke to the layer of smog. Welcome to J’burg and on to Bulawayo.

* I was later told that Malawi is fairly densely populated and the flight route was probably over a large park area. However, I think there would still have been a stark contrast with South Africa.