Tanzania – Chanters Lodge Livingstone

Tazara – Latest

China will will assist with rehabilitation of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway (TAZARA). In recent years, Beijing has on several occasions extended financial and technical assistance to TAZARA, which was built with Chinese money in 1976 but has been facing operational challenges and is operating far below capacity.

It is believed upgrading the line will encompass ensuring a ready route from landlocked Africa to the Indian Ocean – with possible links to lines going to the Atlantic Ocean – and that this will also greatly benefit China, which has huge economic interests on the continent. China’s Minister of Commerce, Chen De Ming recently said the assistance was another sign of that country’s commitment to Africa.

In a statement, Chen said the project would eventually link Eastern and Western Africa and help speed up industrialization.
The statement was released after a meeting with Zambia’s First President, Dr Kenneth Kaunda, in Beijing. Dr Kaunda was in China as President Michael Sata’s special envoy. Minister Chen said the port at Dar es Salaam, Tanzania would need to be overhauled to cater for increased cargo.

Experts have already conducted a feasibility study, which will be submitted to China’s President Hu Jintao. Dr Kaunda assured Beijing of Zambia’s goodwill and that despite widespread media claims to the contrary, China’s investments in the country were safe.The 1,870km TAZARA line links Zambia’s Kapiri Mposhi to Mbeya in Tanzania.

The authority running the line is exposed to the tune of US$700 million. Earlier last year, China provided a US$39m interest-free loan to TAZARA.

16
DEC

Africa, communications, copperbelt, railways, Tanzania, transport, travel, Zambia

Kate & Nick Minns on Zambezi 107.7 fm

We were delighted to welcome Kate and Nick Minns, pictured above, to Chanters Lodge last week, and indeed as guests on our local radio show ‘The Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient featuring George da Soulchild’. As regular readers will know, our show goes out every Sunday night on Zambezi 107.7 fm, Livingstone’s leading local radio station, at 20.30 hrs and streams live on the internet too! It’s a locally popular show, perhaps because we give away a weekly prize of a dinner for two with drinks at Chanters Lodge to the first person texting us the correct answer to the name of the artist singing our ‘oldie of the week’. This week the track was ‘With You’ and the artist Chris Brown. The prize was quickly snapped up!

Kate and Nick are from Adelaide, Australia and are both nurses qualified from University of South Australia. For the past two and a half years they’ve been working in a cardiac unit in a military hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, taking the chance to travel during their breaks. They told listeners they’d been to Spain, Syria, Italy, France, Germany amongst others on a long list of countries! When Milli Jam asked them which country they’d visited they liked the most, Nick rather surprisingly opted for Syria – they’d been there before the current troubles, while Kate said she’d loved Italy, partly because of her family background which contained roots in Italy. During their present trip they’d been to Uganda to see the mountain gorillas, as well as to Kenya and Tanzania. They’d been impressed to see the magnificent migration of tens of thousands of wildebeest in Tanzania.

The music on the show was great. We opened with Flavour’s ‘Adamma’ – a huge hit in Nigeria and a great dance track, back to back with Flo Rida’s latest ‘Parapapa’. Milli Jam had trouble getting his tongue around that. Local tracks were ‘It’s Alright’ by Exile featuring K’Millian coupled with ‘SpotLight’ George Kaufela’s smash with Ty2. We moved on with ‘Talk That Talk’ by Rihanna featuring JayZ and ‘Til I’m Gone’ – Tinie Tempah featuring Wiz Khalifa. Great stuff and we surmised that the Chanters Girls would be dancing back at the lodge. We closed with Maverick Sabre’s ‘I Need’.

Nick and Kate told listeners how much they’d enjoyed their breakfast on Livingstone Island the previous day – Nick had jumped into Devil’s Pool but Kate had not (wise girl!) They’d seen Victoria Falls from both sides and although they’d been impressed with the Zimbabwe side they felt that the Zambian side offered better opportunities for photography. We liked that! This lovely, adventurous couple told listeners that they’d be spending the last few days of their holiday in Cape Town and were then looking forward to flying home to friends and family in Australia, after a long time away.

Asked where they would like to be and what they would like to be doing ten years from now, their first reaction was to cry in unison ‘we don’t know’ but after a pause for thought agreed that they’d like to be working in Australia, still travelling from time to time and raising a family. Sounded like good ideas to us.

22
NOV

Africa, Australia, Chanters, Kenya, livingstone, medical, music, radioshow, Tanzania, tourism, victoriafalls, zambezi, Zambia

Tourism in Africa

I liked a piece by Beth Kormanik on Hotel Interactive I’ve edited quite a lot of it and added my comments specifically for Zambia at the end.

“As the continent of Africa realizes new heights with global tourism – bolstered by the FIFA World Cup in South Africa last year – new facts and figures are telling the story of a continued growth in 2011. Key issues such as difficulty in crossing borders and concerns over security, though, are stalling that growth.

Tourist arrivals to Africa in 2010 reached 940 million, an increase of 6.6 percent compared with 2009. North Africa is the biggest draw, thanks to Egypt, with 29.7 million arrivals that accounted for $21.7 million in receipts. The figures were among those in just-published State of Tourism in Africa, a report sponsored by the World Bank, the Africa Travel Association and New York University’s Africa House.

“It seems there is room for us to be optimistic,” said Fatou Mas-Jobe Njie, Minister of Tourism and Culture for the Republic of The Gambia and president of the Africa Travel Association, which held its sixth annual Presidential Forum on Tourism Tuesday in New York. While travel and tourism hold the promise of growing GDP, creating jobs and encouraging sustainable development, the current reality is of low consumer confidence and investment.

“Still, we need to caution our optimism as uncertainty still remains,” she said. “We cannot ignore what happened to the tourism industries of Egypt and Tunisia after the shocks of political change.The reality is that the possibility of growth and development are not yet fully recognized or realized in Africa’s political corridors. That’s why ATA has a critical role to play. ATA can help raise awareness of the importance of the industry among decision makers and across the general public in Africa.”

First, though, African countries need to resolve long-standing issues that hamper travel, such as the difficulty crossing borders, according to Nigel Vere Nicoll, managing director of Advancing Tourism to Africa. “Why is it that the border between Kenya and Tanzania is impossible to cross?” he asked. “The two parties just don’t talk to each other. It doesn’t make sense.”
Ezekiel Maige, Tanzania’s Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism, said the two countries have issues over border security and also of a fair distribution of tourist dollars. “We are discussing in the region how we can sort out these problems,” he said. “The assurance I’ll give here is we’ve reached a very good stage.”

David Scowsill, president and CEO of The World Travel and Tourism Council, pointed out that air service agreements in Africa are terribly outdated – many in East Africa still operate under rules developed at the Chicago Convention in 1944. Travel across borders within Africa remains difficult. “I suspect our predecessors were having similar conversations 10, 15, 20 years ago,” Scowsill said. “We’re not working fast enough.” Being a tourism minister is a lonely place to be.The focus on travel and tourism and what it does for job creation and wealth creation overall is an agenda that is only going to be driven by the president of a country. If we could find two, three or four visionary African presidents who really understand the power of travel and tourism and are prepared collectively to move things and change things, to open the skies and to have common visas things would happen, without that, I can’t see anything changing very quickly.”

Another challenge is marketing Africa as a safe and desirable location, according to Gregg Truman, vice president of sales and marketing for South African Airways.

“If Africa wants to be recognized it must be willing to spend resources in marketing the destination,” he said. “That’s what we don’t do well most of the time. Yet we have beautiful scenery, a lot of cultural tourism, eco-tourism. We have diverse products that people can learn from and enjoy”

In Zambia’s case:

I should think our new Minister of Information, Broadcasting and Tourism, Given Lubinda and President Michael Sata are very busy with other things, but the sentence I’ve highlighted above about tourism needing to be presidentially driven bears thinking about!
The ATA has been around for a long time, I’m not sure how much they’ve really done for tourism in this country.

Recommendations for Zambia: 1. Re-introduce the successful visa waiver scheme for bona fide tourists with advance reservations.
2. Allocate a good budget to Zambia Tourist Board for overseas marketing in Europe and USA.
3. Improve tax incentives and concessions for the hospitality and travel industries in order to stabilize prices and to change the perception of Zambia being an expensive destination.
4. Improve air (and road) links between the different tourist destinations within Zambia and surrounding countries and encourage competition to reduce air fares.
5. Make the Victoria Falls accessible to tourists from both sides of the border without visas and immigration formalities. (Dreams division)

The photo? Victoria Falls – the Zimbabwe side for a change!

1
OCT

Africa, ATA, infrastructure, innovation, Kenya, Tanzania, tourism, travel, visas, Zambia

MV Liemba

I liked this piece from the BBC. At home we have a watercolour picture of this boat painted by late Trevor Ford better known as Yuss the famous cartoonist, some of whose cartoons grace the walls of the restaurant at Chanters Lodge.

Ships don’t come with much more historical ballast than the MV Liemba. The steamer still shudders and belches its way across Lake Tanganyika every Wednesday and Friday, a century after it was built as a warship in Germany. In its time it’s been a pawn in the colonial scramble for Africa. It’s been scuttled and then raised again from the deep. It may have been the model for the warship sunk by The African Queen, a steam-powered launch in the film of the same name, starring Katharine Hepburn as a prim spinster and Humphrey Bogart as the rough captain.

And now it’s a ferry on Africa’s longest lake, invariably packed with hundreds of people plus their jumble of bundles and baskets as it churns the water between Kigoma in Tanzania across the lake to Mpulungu in Zambia. But for how long? Such is the ramshackle, dented state of the vessel that the company which runs it has asked the German government to help with refurbishment. The basis of the appeal is that this is a piece of German history. The steamer that serves the citizens around Lake Tanganyika was once the Kaiser’s gunboat.

A spokesman for the Marine Services Company told the BBC: “We have requested that Germany help in its rehabilitation. This is because of financial constraints but we have not had a concrete commitment.” The Liemba started life as the Graf Goetzen in 1913 when she was built as a warship in Papenburg on the River Ems in northern Germany. It is said that the Kaiser himself ordered the construction to further his imperial ambitions. The Graf Goetzen was then transported in parts, in 500 crates, from Hamburg to Dar es Salaam on the coast of East Africa – and from there over mountains to Lake Tanganyika where Germany, Britain and Belgium were all engaged in colonial jostling.

Britain did not take the presence of the vessel easily. As the Admiralty put it: “It is both the duty and the tradition of the Royal Navy to engage the enemy wherever there is water to float a ship.” So London decided to send two gunboats and by an equally difficult route. The British ships were sent down to South Africa and then up the continent as far as they could be taken by rail, and after that by the sheer human power of 2,000 labourers who hauled and cut through the jungle, eventually getting them to the lake which became the site of imperial contest.

The two British boats, by the way, were initially to be called Cat and Dog but that was thought to be too flippant – the Admiralty in London at the time was not into flippancy. The names Mimi and Touto were chosen instead, the French terms used by children for cat and dog. Colonial rivalry and conflict then ensued, and, in the face of a British attack, the Germans abandoned the port of Kigoma, scuttling their ship, the Graf Goetzen, to stop it getting into British hands.

The Goetzen then remained at the bottom of the lake for nearly 10 years until she was raised to the surface. Amazingly, the engines still functioned after minor repairs – possibly because the German engineers who had done the scuttling were the ones who had taken it out from Germany… and they took care to encase the engines in grease so that their baby could one day live and steam again.

It is not clear who raised it, perhaps the Belgians or perhaps the British – but whoever did it, the old German gunboat ended up in the hands of the British. Clearly, a vessel of the Royal Navy could not be named after Count Gustav Adolf von Goetzen, who was a German explorer and governor of German East Africa. So the ship was renamed as the Liemba – which is how she has stayed ever since.

And so may she stay for much longer if she can be renovated. The request for financial help has fallen between the governments of Lower Saxony, in which the ship was built, and the federal government in Berlin. The president of Germany has added his voice. The ship, said President Christian Wulff, had a “singular history” and performed an “indispensable service” to the people of East Africa. The government of Tanzania joined the clamour for salvation.

A study has been done by the German authorities but it is thought to have concluded that the costs might well be higher than actually building a new ship. But would a new ship be quite the same as an ancient steamer, dented and bulging with history?

3
SEP

Africa, Germany, Malawi, Ships, Tanzania, uk, Zambia

Yellow Fever – Zambia

SASTM Newsflash

Subject: Yellow fever vaccination recommendations: Africa

The WHO has revised the Yellow Fever (YF) vaccination recommendations for Africa. However, the South
African Department of Health has issued the following information regarding the requirements for travellers
from and to South Africa. Effective 1st June 2011

1. Tanzania
Returning travellers from South Africa to Tanzania and those from Tanzania travelling to South Africa willrequire proof of YF vaccination. This is unchanged from the present regulations.

2. Zambia
Returning travellers from South Africa to Zambia and travellers from Zambia to South Africa will now require
proof of YF vaccination. Previously, proof of YF vaccination was not required.

3. In-transit passengers, irrespective of the time period in-transit, will still require proof of YF vaccination.

2
JUN

Africa, medical, rsa, Tanzania, tourism, travel, Zambia

AfricConnect

As long time Customers of AfriConnect this from LusakaTimes caught my eye:

AfriConnect Zambia, today announced the commissioning of its direct fibre link to South Africa in its continued effort to provide the fastest internet service to the Zambian public. And AfriConnect will in the next few weeks be commissioning a second fibre route through Tanzania.

AfriConnect Commercial Director Ian Ferrao said in Lusaka that the commissioning of the Tanzania fibre route makes AfriConnect Zambia, the first Internet Service Provider ISP in Zambia to have multiple fibre routes. Mr. Ferrao also announced that the company has commissioned 155 mbps of high speed international fibre bandwidth on the network.

At the launch of its new SMT-1 Package in Lusaka, Mr. Ferrao announced “The launch of this service now means our speeds are faster than ever, with low latency to the internet for all customers”. Mr. Ferrao added that AfriConnect has upgraded its back up capacity to have better protection against fibre cuts and maintenance downtimes.

He said several months after connecting its fibre directly to South Africa offering less than 100 ms latency; customers have experienced faster general internet browsing, video conferencing and internet banking. And commenting on the company’s expansion programme, Mr. Ferrao said AfriConnect is expanding to Chililabombwe, Mufulira and Luanshya on the Copperbelt Province and Chirundu in the Southern province.

He said under the expansion programme, some towns will have base stations while others will have technical support stations. He said the towns on the Copperbelt will fall under the Copperbelt hub in Kitwe which now has engineers present to offer support to all its iConnect customers.

Note the lack of mention of anywhere called Livingstone despite the fact that it is the ‘tourist capital’.

26
MAR

Chanters, communications, infrastructure, internet, livingstone, Tanzania, Zambia

SADC Visa

This would make a lot of sense

The fate of a single tourist visa for the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) member countries will be determined in June this year. Tanzania’s Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Ezekiel Maige, says that single visa is top on agenda of the SADC ministerial meeting slated for June, 2011 in Lusaka, Zambia.

Billed as a ‘grand debate’, the ministerial meeting is expected to evolve a ‘grand action plan’ that will lead to the establishment of the SADC single tourists’ visa. “A single visa will go a long way in easing travel arrangements for those intending to sample tourist allure in SADC member countries,” Maige said in Arusha.

SADC member countries are Tanzania, Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Zambia, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.

Bring it on!

24
MAR

2011, Africa, Malawi, Namibia, rsa, Tanzania, tourism, Zambia

Ann Fagan & Gavin Dempster Rock 107.7 fm!

The most recent edition of the Chanters Lodge Experience with the Milli Jam Ingredient was super. Our Guests, Ann and Gavin pictured above, were lively, interesting and amusing – they rocked the house and so did the music! Our show airs every Sunday night between 20.30 and 21.30 hours on Zambezi 107.7 fm, Livingstone’s popular local radio station and is a mixture of music and chat.

Gavin and Ann, Guests at Chanters Lodge, told listeners that they came from Perth, Western Australia but had been travelling the world for the past 18 months. They’d arrived in Livingstone a few days previously, having taken an overland truck from Nairobi to Victoria Falls, visiting the Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Zanzibar and Malawi before arriving in Zimbabwe. Gavin was delighted to be back in Livingstone and told listeners that for him anyway the highlight of their overland trip had been Ann’s joy in seeing the sights and sounds of Africa for the very first time! “Awwwww” we said!

Gavin had been in Zambia for a month in 2010 exploring Livingstone for houses where he’d lived as a child in the 50’s – his dad had been an engine driver on the railways in Zambia at that time. He’d also taken a 9 day canoeing trip on the Lower Zambezi, describing it to listeners as one of the best things he’d ever done in his life! This year Ann and Gavin had enjoyed their cycle trip around the city the day after they’d arrived, visiting Linda Community Orphanage School for whom they’d brought various goodies!

The music on the show was hot! We featured Jennifer Hudson’s ‘Gone’ back to back with ‘Next 2U’ from Chris Brown and Justin Bieber at the top of the show. Milli Jam’s local selection of Dalisoul’s ‘Musunge Mushe’ (take care of her) and Kay’s ‘Kanyelele’ (ant) had the Chanters Girls rocking back at the lodge. We dropped ‘Boom’ the latest from Snoop Dogg featuring T-Pain, coupled with Tiesto’s UK smash ‘C’mon’ featuring Diplo and Buster Rhymes. We closed with Britney Spears – Until The World Ends. A great selection from Milli Jam also included Ne-Yo’s ‘Hello’ and Jay Lo’s popular ‘Run This World’ featuring The Dream and Rick Ross.

Gavin and Ann told listeners how much they’d enjoyed their recent two day, one night safari in Chobe National Park, Botswana to celebrate Ann’s birthday, where they’d seen a lot of elephant, buffalo and hippo though they’d missed out on big cats – they weren’t all that worried as they’d seen these in the Serengeti during their overland trip. Milli Jam asked this lovely couple if they’d retired – Gavin said ‘very much’ and Ann replied ‘semi’. They’d met when they were both working for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, a large charity organization in Australia. “Was it love at first sight?” I asked. “We kind of grew into each other” Ann replied. “Yes” we said, laughing.

Our guests described their musical tastes as ‘eclectic’ but told listeners about concerts they’d recently attended in Perth given by Lionel Richie and Jo Cocker, making us very envious in the studio! We had a great response to our question when we asked those wanting to win a dinner for 2 at Chanters Lodge where our Guests hailed from. Gloria won. Our Guests greeted the staff at the lodge, praising them highly and thanked Zambians listening for giving them such a warm and wonderful welcome to the country.

15
MAR

2010, accommodation, activities, Africa, Australia, Botswana, Chobe, entertainment, Malawi, music, radioshow, Tanzania, victoriafalls, wildlife, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Ras Mbisi, Mafia Island

I’ve never visited Mafia Island in the Indian Ocean (more’s the pity) but there’s only one place I’d stay of I did and that’s Ras Mbisi – just check their terrible location in the photo above…Yesterday I checked Michelle’s (the owner) blog and found this:

“Friends and links and things

Long overdue this post, I/we have had so much support from friends ‘in the biz’ or with links to it I think it’s about time I tell everyone about them

Richard Chanter of Chanters Lodge, Livingstone, Zambia – @livilodge was one of my first followers on Twitter and a staunch supporter of the Ras Mbisi ethos, we love him and can’t wait to visit – also he used to run one of my fav places in Malawi, Nkopola Lodge, I have yet to dare ask him if he remembers a 6 year old and her 3 year old brother attempting to head out onto the lake on one of the pedalo’s!

Rachel Hamada of Mambo Magazine – Mambo is an online mag for coastal Tanzania in general and the islands in particular and it’s FAB, she is also a travel journo a former political journo and has an involvement with Mustaphas Place in Bwejuu, Zanzibar – we have met a couple of times in real life and she is a fun person to spend time with as well as being quick and well informed on her specialist subjects (not to mention vocal on any subject you care to mention).

Sally Mckenna from Africa-beat.com a great resource for TZ residents and tourists alike, Sal-gal has bigged us up, given us exposure, put us up and generally been an all round good egg.

Matt Bell from receptionbook.com we luurve Matt (and Adam) they maintain our website, explain complicated internet stuff (well ok not complicated just make it simple for idiots) and run our reservations system.

Ulric Charteris and his team from Roots Marketing, Dar es Salaam, the AV, the brochure all their work, we don’t just love them we want their babies.

Elizabeth Cook Tell ‘em PR in Nairobi another Twitter mate and the first to visit Ras Mbisi – we first met over (many) a glass of wine in the Level 8 bar at the Kempinski in Dar – btw I still have your mates swimming costume lovely.

Jane Alexander @exmoorjane on Twitter, follow her and read her blog, her pieces in the Telegraph, The Lady et al, she has done so much to raise awareness of us and has earned a special place in our hearts – I am still trying to combine a tour of the specialist beer producers plus ‘alternative’ health destinations in TZ so we can get her and hubby here to visit in a ‘work’ scenario.

Stay tuned – we are waiting for the photos of last Saturday’s wedding here at Ras Mbisi – an amazing and beautiful day such a treat to be involved (although I did have a few sleepless nights!!) “

Thanks Michelle for the great promo, you rock!

4
MAR

accommodation, Africa, entrepreneurship, hotels, Malawi, Tanzania, tourism, victoriafalls, Zambia

Sarah Knight

Check this wonderful picture of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania with the lovely Sarah Knight in the foreground, before she climbed the mountain in aid of Sparks Childrens Charity. I got to know Sarah on Twitter where she’s @sarknight – well worth a follow!

In her usual life Sarah’s director of a regional recruitment agency – Sarah West Recruitment – and passionate about her industry, local business and her work. Mother to 2 amazing children who inspire her on a daily basis to not only aim high, but to enjoy the little things in life too.

Sarah has a ‘can do’ attitude to life and adventures, she loves life and tries to make the most of every moment and encourage others to do the same. Climbing Kilimanjaro was initially another flippant ‘yes’, little did she know that this adventure would be such a learning experience, bringing the rewards of new friendships and new experiences. That’s without even setting foot on the mountain!

If you follow her blog like I do, then I guess we’ll find out more about her climb when she has time to write. On Twitter she said it was without doubt the toughest thing she’s ever done in her life. Awesome I call it!

Sarah lives in Exeter, just 15 miles from where I was born.

13
FEB

activities, Africa, children, Customers, leadership, Tanzania, tourism, Twitter

Page 2 of 3 123