Category: Health and Safety

Is it safe to travel to africa? before start to write about travel safety tips  we would like to say one thing; it can happened anything any time anywhere in the world when traveling our just next to your home.

Travel around the world by motorcycle, sleep in the tent, go to bush / wild camp most of the time, stop middle of nowhere…etc. try protect yourself from wildlife or people is not easy but might be necessary. We are not carrying a gun; even if we want to carry we don’t know how we can use it. 🙂 We don’t know karate, judo or something else to protect ourself. (To be honest, it can be good idea to learn a little if we have time). But still we have something to protect ourself or some plan for it. We didn’t have something when we were traveling in Europe but we had in Africa. We ride motorcycle around Africa in 1,5 years and passed 33 countries. Of course we had some problems but we handled it. If you have questions in your mind “is it safe to travel Africa right now?” it is so hard to tell because a little up to you as well. Where are you going? When are you going?…etc. This is our travel safety tips;

How can we protect ourself? What do we carry for our safety?

• We have pepper spray with us. When we ride motorcycle it is hang on next to hand bar we can get it. When we walk it is always in our pocket. When we sleep just next to us as well.
• We have electro-shock which is flashlight at the same time. We carry it same way pepper spray. We had pepper spray and electro-shock after a thief try to enter our tent in a secure camping site.
• We also have small switchblade.
• We have mosquito spray, which we use to spray tent before go to sleep. it is always next to tent and can use easily like a pepper spray.
• Our small hammer is always next to us as well when go to sleep in the tent.
• We don’t go out in the night if it is not necessary or our friends need to pick up us to go out. We always ask first for the area is it safe or not, we can take any taxi or we need to call somewhere. Some countries in Africa use uber taxi and we used them as well.
• We never carry our passport with us when we go out just have copy. If police ask and has to see we tell them to go back to the hotel, camping site…etc to show them.
• Never carry all our important paper, cards or a lot of money with us. Because if somebody steals it we never lose all of them.
• If we go to bazaar or walk around we don’t carry our normal phones. We have one old phone, it is always with us to look for directions and roads because we don’t want to show a good phone in our hands all the time.
• When we need shopping one of us always next to the motorcycles the other one goes to shop. Depend on the area who wait next to motorcycles.
• We need a break sometimes when we ride motorcycle. Of course people can come next to us to talk. We always try to put motorcycle between us when we talk. Some kind of safety for us as well because they can catch you in a second.
• If we don’t know people we don’t shake hands so often and especially in Kenya after we hear some stories. They have something in their hand when we shake hand we can lose some kind of our memories.
• When we go to the bar we just drink beer because they always open next to us and easy to close top so nobody can put anything. We know a lot of stories about it in Africa and Brazil.
• When we leave from tent or motorcycle we carry all important stuff with us never leave it behind. Or if we are in a hotel, camping site… we can put safe box(if they have) or give reception.

We had one of bad experience in Africa. 8 people attack us middle of the street. After that we talk a lot about our safety and decided some important rules.

• If anybody try to enter our tent again or take something on the motorcycle “Do not run behind it!” we never know if his friends waiting on the corner and attacked.
• If people attacked us to steel something “Do not fight with them!” because they can use their gun or knife and we could get injured there or worse.
• If our petrol finish or break motorcycle like nowhere or one person need help because of  a injury…etc  “We never leave each other nowhere alone there!” we will find a solution together and leave the area together.
• If the motorcycle breaks and we need to fix with somebody “Only one person will focus to work on it!” other person needs to take care motorcycle and our stuff.

I think one of the other important thing is how to prevent yourself from malaria in Africa.

We made a short video for our Africa journey, roads, life… We hope that you like to watch :

GS

How to prevent diseases when you are traveling especially from malaria in Africa?

This is one thing that comes together, there are still millions of people dying from Malaria all over the world but most of them in Africa. Of course we have to deal with that as well, we are now on total 20 months in Africa and in most of the countries there is a serious threat of malaria. So how do we prevent against malaria?

We are so long in the malaria risk areas and there is no vaccination against malaria. But there are medicines who protect you against malaria like malarone, chloroquine and doxycline. Again there is a but, they are not protecting you for a 100% and for long term use they can seriously damage you body and some of them can have side effects. I’m not a doctor so cannot explain all the medicines in detail, so I’m not going to try that.

We decided to not use anything against malaria, but that doesn’t mean we don’t take care of not getting it. This is what we do and are on our opinion the most important things to do.

– Socks, the mosquitos love your ankles.

– Long sleeve shirt and pants, now most of your body is covered. We know that it is not easy to wear them when the temperature around 30-40 degrees especially after ride motorcycle all day under the sun. But it is the way protect ourself from malaria.

– Mosquito spray with deet, we even put this on our clothes to protect. We have been using 70% deet on it. This doesn’t protect you only from mosquitos and malaria it is one of the thing carry with you and help how to prevent diseases because we have more fly or animals can bite on the nature.

– Eat garlic, this is not a proven method but garlic is working like a antibiotic.

– If we camp in a place with a lot of mosquitos we spray our inside tent before go to sleep.

This is the most you can do and it works for us, we didn’t get malaria.( still we have three more countries in Africa 🙂 ) We have been traveling with people using medicine and still got malaria. You just cannot protect yourself 100% so it’s a matter of luck, you can just prepare yourself against it. We do carry malarone with us as we can use it as a anti malaria medicine if we do get malaria, this way we can get to a place to treat us against it.

If we feel sick and our temperature is high we test ourselves, you can do this everywhere in Africa for a small price.

Important note! If you do get malaria in Africa or elsewhere in the world, treat yourself against it in the country where you are, don’t fly to your home country as they might not know what to do.

Also safety is an other issue.

We made a short video for our Africa journey, roads, life… We hope that you like to watch :

FS