All that talking

A group of backpackers are sitting around a hostel lounge in Turkey. They're talking about touts, the hustlers that try to grab backpackers on the street and sell them something at inflated prices, take them to a hotel or bus for a commission that the traveler then has to pay, or just generally try to lie, cheat, or steal to get a fast buck off of unwary foreigners.

"India was unreal. So many of them!" One says.

"I dunno, Cairo was pretty bad." Says another. "One guy followed me in and out of five stores. Five. Just so he could get a commission from whatever hotel I went to. I told him to go away and he just wouldn't listen."

"I had some bad ones in Thailand." Says yet another. "Guys kept telling me whatever place I wanted to visit was closed and I should go see this other temple I'd never heard of. Then it would be a gemstone scam! Tried to sell me these pieces of green glass he called 'uncut limestone.' Ridiculous."

"But you know what the worst country was for this?" The first guy says. "Morocco."

"Worse than India?"

"Oh yeah."

I'd been part of this conversation more than once in different parts of the world. Morocco was a byword for hassle for travelers. So when I landed, I had my guard up. Especially after a stern talking-to by my hostel owner-- basically said "Don't talk to strangers here, you can't trust them." Went on for quite some time about it.

So, my first morning in Fes, I walked into the 700-year-old Ville Nouvelle (as Lonely Planet apparently says, only in this part of the world could a 700-year-old area be called "new town"), and waited for the plague to descend. Nothing. People hardly gave me a second glance. I walked down the street. One or two restaurant owners called out 'Bonjour' and gestured to a table, but that was it.

I tried an experiment. I walked by a cart selling sunglasses and let my gaze linger on a pair for three seconds. In many countries, this would cause the merchant to chase me down the street, bellowing "Hello my friend! Special price for you!! Hello! Hello!" Here? Nothing. I grew bold, walked back, and openly looked, taking my time. Still nothing. I walked up to the display and inspected a specific pair. It wasn't until I caught the merchant's eye and said 'salaam alekum' that he even gave me a second glance before returning to sipping his mint tea.

Was this even the same country that the others had told me about?

In some ways it wasn't. It was when I came to one specific part that was mentioned in the guidebooks that I suddenly found myself surrounded by English signs, chintzy decor, doubled prices for food on actual menus, and White and Asian tourists. But even there, hassle was minimal. It was on the outskirts of this area that I started meeting a few hustlers, one who gave me a little push in the back and told me to 'go away' when I ignored him.

And once I was past that part, they melted away. Just some curious glances from other pedestrians, and some cute kids playing tag and yelling "bonjour!" when they saw me.

Later, I was having some mint tea with a Moroccan guy who spoke English, and he told me a story from a couple years ago. He'd been sitting in a cafe, speaking to a British guy in English, and another foreign woman came over and asked if she could ask a few questions. She was from the National Geographic, she said, and she was writing a story about Moroccans who come back after a long time in Europe. She offered to show them what she had so far. He read it, and was so disgusted by the amount of lies and factual errors, that he made her tear it up into pieces. He gave her a couple hours a day, just to set the facts straight about Morocco and Moroccan culture.

"People go to these places and they think they know what they're talking about but they don't. Not really. They just take whatever s*** they read about it before coming. Or they talk to people here who don't really know what's going on. It's true! They don't know. Not like me. I know."

I don't think he saw the irony when, later that evening, he proceeded to outline his complaints about European society, never having been to Europe himself, but defending his assertions with a heated "I know what it's like! I watch it on TV and I talk to friends! I know!" But, after my talking to in Fes about not talking to strangers, I was a amused that one of his assertions was that you could trust strangers in Morocco and not in the West.

I've heard a saying that a fool thinks he knows everything, and a wise man marvels at how much he doesn't know. Because after all that talking, you never really know that much, do you?

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...and back again.

I found this sign in Johannesburg. It's a reminder of one of the many lessons I learned on this trip. No matter where you are, someone thinks it's exotic.

A few days ago, I was headed this way. But I was still very much on The Trip. Rambling through the Drakensburg mountains to Johannesburg, walking in the rain with my couchsurfing host while he ran me through some of the contradictions of his hometown. But that wasn't what I had come for. I came to catch a flight.

Half a year a go, I broke my old estimate of "year or when my cash runs out, whichever comes first" so I could see Africa. Three months ago, I made it to Cairo and started my way south.

But this flight wasn't for that. This flight was for something else. Yesterday, I reversed my last three months of travel and returned to Cairo in a little under eight hours. I spent twelve hours there, mostly in a hotel room, courtesy of Egypt Air. Then I got on another flight, to Casablanca.

I'm writing from Morocco.

It could be the start of something new and big. I could loop down West Africa, cross up to the UK, skip across Scandinavia into Poland, across more of eastern Europe like Ukraine, drop down to Iran, the Persian gulf, cross into the safer 'stans, down west China through Tibet and Nepal into north India, across Burma to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and, and, and...

...no. That's not why I'm here.

After over a year and a half of adventure, I'm here on a little side trip to see Morocco and to visit some memories in Spain and Portugal. Then, a sentence I've been waiting to write for a very long time.

I'm coming home.

It won't be direct. I have a lot of people I want to visit and thank. First I will arrive in New York City, then make a stop or two in the east coast, then turn to Chicago. After that, it'll be time to come back to Seattle, put down my backpack, eat dinner with my family, pet our cats, and go sleep in the little twin bed I grew up with.

Then we'll get to see how true that sign in Joburg is.

Now in Southern Africa

I think we need a break from social and political commentary. So, let's take a moment to explore the concept of time. I promise you it'll be less dry than these first three sentences, so you can wake up... now.

I like to tell people that, in my experience, there are three kinds of countries. There are countries that run on time, like Germany, Japan, or Singapore. Then there are countries where being on time doesn't matter so much, and most things are chronically late, like Mexico, Syria, or Thailand. Then there are countries in Africa.

I first heard the term “now now” in Zambia. Foreigners had taught locals the meaning of the word now. The problem is, Africans kept using it like the foreigners would use the word “soon.” This gets confusing when your question is something “when is this bus leaving?” So the foreigners invented “now now” to mean not soon, but now. Same thing happened to that as happened to “now.” For example, I was one sitting in a truck and told that we were arriving at my destination “now now,” just was we passed a sign saying it was 40 kilometers away.

So I should've been prepared when I went to catch my Greyhound bus from Umtata to Durban. 3:00 was the scheduled time, but my hostel in Coffee Bay told me it could show up anywhere between 2:30 and 3:30. So when I stepped off the 1 ½ hour shuttle from Coffee Bay to Umtata at 2:00, I wasn't too concerned, even as I saw a Greyhound bus pull away in front of us. At 3:30 though, I started to wonder. By 4:00 I was getting concerned. At 4:15, long after all the other companies' buses had left, I called my hostel. They gave me the Greyhound bus telephone numbers for their offices in Umtata, East London, and Port Elizabeth, plus a national call center I was told only to use as a last resort.

I called Umtata first. No answer. I called East London. No answer. I called Port Elizabeth, got a confused woman with a lot of static on the line who, after asking me to repeat my question four times, asked to call back in twenty minutes. I waited twenty minutes and then called back. No answer.

I called the national call center and was told the number didn't exist. I tried a few different combinations. Same result. I called Port Elizabeth again, twice, and finally got the same woman and static telling me they still didn't know and asking me to call the Umtata office. I told them they weren't picking up, and she said they should be there and answering their phones. So I called Umtata again. This time I heard someone pick up and an immediate click. They had hung up on me. I called again. No answer. I called a third time. This time I got a man who didn't know where the bus was because the driver and crew weren't answering their calls, and would I please call back in ten minutes. Nine minutes later, just before 5:00pm, the bus arrived.

The speakers were picking up engine noise, and a lot of the more elderly passengers were complaining about the lack of bathroom stops (despite the bathroom on the bus). The bus also played the same Will Ferrell movie twice (one I'd never heard of but that seemed to be a two-hour excuse to shoot a five minute scene where he gets into a shouting match with Mike Ditka). But, though over two hours late, we did make it to Durban.

In Durban, my friends explained the African concept of “just now” (roughly translates to “in a minute or so”). I asked them what you said if you wanted to say now the way foreigners meant the word. They said they couldn't think of a way to do it. Apparently it doesn't come up that often.

My advice if you find yourself in a place like this? Just go with it. Don't try to fight the system, you'll just make yourself angry.
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The Pot Calls the Kettle

To a lot of people Cape Town must feel wonderful. To me, it felt like the twilight zone.

A lot if had to do with the first 24 hours there. I came in on a very comfortable overnight bus run by the Intercape company with video programming called Intertainment (hardy har har). The video programming stated that it the company was proud to provide quality service and to glorify God. It then went on to advertise Christian feature films as if they were the only feature films in existence, imply that evangelical gatherings could cure HIV/AIDS, and pause to tell any potential advertisers that the company could broadcast their message on Intertainment to an audience that was 65% white and 35% "other." A gentle reminder, we are in Africa. Does anyone else see what is wrong with how that statistic was written?

I got to my first hostel in Cape Town, The Penthouse on Long, and asked them to sell me on the place; to tell me why I should stay longer. They told me that they "had great facilities, clean private showers, a nice bar upstairs and a rooftop terrace, that they didn't allow any locals to stay"-- pausing upon seeing my facial expression to tell me, 'that's a good thing.' I asked why. They said they don't want poor people hanging around long term, not paying their bills, and that they were a security risk.

They then tried to sell me on one of the more popular backpacker establishments in South Africa-- something called the Baz Bus. It's selling point is that it picks you up at your hostel, and drops you off at the next hostel you want to go to. Which is great. If all you want to see is hostels and the inside of a bus full of backpackers. I will admit, the place was very comfortable and had great facilities. I did not stay a second night.

Downtown Cape Town felt like downtown Sydney to me. Buildings were all a similar age and style, and the ethnic breakdown appeared to be about the same. But in Australia, White people make up the vast majority of the population. Most people I ask around here put the white population of South Africa lower than 10%. That first night, I went out with some people I met to a punk rock show at a bar downtown. It was only a few blocks away, but on the hostel staff's advice, we took a private cab to get there and back because "it wasn't safe" otherwise. I still don't know whether that's true. I do know that we were looking around at the show and were only able to spot one non-white person there. He was collecting empty glasses and bottles and cleaning the tables.

Apartheid is over. Isn't it?

The thing that's most striking to me is just how much fear there seems to be in ordinary middle class white people in Cape Town. There are so many things they say that "aren't safe" or are "bad areas" that you don't really know what is and isn't safe anymore. For example, I stayed with a friend in the college suburb of Stellenbosch for a few days, using the train system to get between there and downtown Cape Town. The trains had the irritating habit of leaving about ten minutes ahead of schedule, meaning I would miss them even if I arrived early, but aside from that seemed to comparable to the El in Chicago or the subway in Rome. At one point in downtown Cape Town, one white guy told me I should I only take the trains if I was brave, saying that was a taste of "the real Africa." I don't even know how to start unpacking everything rolled up into that statement.

As far as I can tell, white people live in central Cape Town, and everyone else lives in these settlements called "townships" on the outskirts. A couple of these aren't that bad. But several I saw as we drove by made tiny villages in Tanzania and Malawi look prosperous. Everything was made out of sheets of corrugated metal. I was lucky enough to stay a couple nights with documentary film makers who were shooting a movie about artists in the townships. You could hardly believe they were filming in the same country.

We're in country which seems almost unique in its mixed-race heritage, this large population of colored (once again, that's the polite term here) people, that you don't find in other parts of Africa. I for one would like to learn something about their culture. It's just a tiny bit irritating to be told that the only "safe" way to do this is to go on a tour of a township with white tourists paying money to white tour operators so they can point cameras at locals like they're animals in a zoo.

Right. Enough venting. I will say that the times I've stayed with people here have been great- first with friends which is always good because you're with friends, and second with couch surfing with the filmmakers, which was the closest I felt I could get to what was really happening in town. Both were fantastic hosts and I had a great time with them. I also got to spend a day in Cape Town on bicycle, which I highly recommend-- riding from Observatory across the foot of Signal Hill to the waterfront was a beautiful ride, especially since the day I did it, I was able to sneak back to the Company Gardens for a free concert by the Hip Hop Collective. A great last day in town.

I'm not in Cape Town anymore. I'm in a place whose actual name is Wilderness. It's a nice little place. The people staying here are great. There is a working farm with a vegetable patch guests can take stuff from for free. There are all kinds of activities in the nearby national park or the beach you can go do. So far, on the hostel grounds, I have seen one black person. She cleans the kitchens. Nobody seems to talk to her, except for one Afrikaaner I overheard asking if she had any family members they could hire to do some cleaning.

The worst part about it all is how familiar it feels.

I went to a college that whose student body and faculty was by the vast majority white, and whose working staff was almost all black. I may complain about people here confusing "different" with "dangerous," but where I went to school was known as a "nice neighborhood" surrounded by "bad neighborhoods." I knew people who would frequently complain that to get to anywhere in the city took forever because you had to take a bus or train across "bad neighborhoods." I myself spent four years in this town, and I can remember walking around these neighborhoods only once, on accident.

I've heard some people say that the faults that annoy us the most in others are the ones we see reflected in ourselves. Maybe, as someone who lived almost fours years in Chicago, that's why these things about Cape Town bother me.

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Between Sand and the Skeleton Coast

Halfway up dune seven, I asked my host something to break the silence. He didn't answer. I looked back and found he was sitting down about thirty feet below me. It was a hot day, and he wasn't twenty-three anymore. I'd been walking everywhere, but I didn't object to a break myself, so I paused, letting my feet sink in sand up to my ankles.

The dogs ran circles around us. Chester, the barrel-chested black lab mix, had the odd habit of staying right in front of me and then stopping, blocking my path, his legs half buried in sand, until I'd scratch his haunches. Bobby, the russet cocker spaniel, was always either coming up or going down. Up and down. I figured by the time us humans reached the top, he would have scaled the dune about five times.

Every step forward in the loose sand was another half step back, and would loosen up the sand up to shoulder level, just to bury your feet. I had instant shifting sand arch-supports within minutes. It was noticeably easier to climb where someone else had left tracks, only slightly compressing the sand.

At least I wasn't carrying a snowboard this time. The morning before, I'd gone sand boarding, after a five or six year hiatus from snowboarding. I relearned that I was way better at heel turns than toe turns, accidentally switching from goofy to regular stance twice, and then falling down. It was fun, but I found myself really missing chairlifts.

This time it was just us scaling the dune. The tracks I'd been using ended about twenty feet from the top. Swell. I slogged up, a step at a time, watching the sand at my eye level collapse with each foot placed directly below it. Then I hit the sharp ridge.

The setting sunlight left the side I'd been climbing in shadow and the other side bathed in yellow light. I clambered a foot over and sat down, reaching for my water. Chester hopped up and sat there, panting. Bobby leapt up and over to the other side, then ran all the way to the bottom on that side in about thirty seconds, leaving new tracks on the fresh sand. Then he turned around to look at us. I can't read minds, but I could pretty clearly get the 'now, what did I do that for?' from Bobby and the exasperated 'you idiot' from Chester, watching his companion slowly climb back up through the sand on the hot side.

The other bipedal member of the party joined us a couple minutes later. I handed him my water. He thanked me, but only took a sip.

"You climb that every day..." he panted "and you'll be... really fit."

We sat and watched the sun go down over the Namibian dunes in front of us. You could just see the reflection of the ocean in the distance.

"Last time I climbed this was..." he paused, "Thirty-nine... no, forty years ago."

Bobby made it back up at this point. I started snapping pictures.

"What was the story?" I asked.

"You ever heard of a forty-day party in the army?"

"No."

"It's a party you have forty days before your service ends. We call it the forty day party. It's a real drinking party. I woke up early the next morning when one of my friends shook me and said let's go board down dune seven. So we did."

From the dune-boarding instructor the day before, I knew that before seven years ago, dune boarding had meant going down headfirst on a dune, riding a waxed piece of thin wood like a sled. Some said you could hit 80 km/hr this way.

"I dragged my hung over body up this thing twelve times that day. Went over a rock and it left a mark. Still have it" He pointed to a white mark above his hip.

I grinned. "I bet there are a lot of guys with 39th day marks and scars." No comment. We'd both been distracted by Bobby deciding he wanted to go back to the bottom of the dune yet again. Poor dog was no longer running. He slowly and sadly walked back up, step by step.

We spotted a car in the distance, in the middle of the flat sands. Sure enough, it was stuck. The sun was about to set, and the driver would have a tough time getting back to town in the dark on foot. So we slid back down the cool side of the dune to where the car was parked, next to some palm trees that had been half buried by the sand drift, and drove out to the stranded car. After discussion in Afrikaans and some digging and tire deflation, we pulled them out before the sun set completely.

We headed back to Walvis Bay, the second biggest city in Namibia. Since the entire country has a total population of about two million, Walvis Bay still felt like a small roadside town to me, sandwiched between the desert and the Atlantic Ocean, the roadsides peppered with red and white triangular signs with a big exclamation point in the middle and the word "sand" underneath. I was still getting used to the country. Clearly more developed than its neighbors to the north, it used to be a part of South Africa, after it was wrested from Germany following the first world war. German city planning prevailed. Ninety degree angles, wide, long, empty streets. I still haven't seen a building taller than three or four stories in the entire country (though I haven't yet seen the capital).

The other thing that's taken some getting used to is meeting citizens of my own race. There are a small number of white Zambians and Zimbabwaens, but before that, anyone who saw me immediately assumed I was from Europe or the US, the distinction was a little hazy. At least two people I met seemed to think London was part of the US. But here, people occasionally come up to me and try to talk in Afrikaans or German. I still don't really look like a local, but I'm close enough to be given the benefit of the doubt.

Aside from the white people, the other group I've met here are of mixed race, the polite term for which here is still actually "colored." I'd been wondering why I hadn't seen more of this in so many former European colonies. In Latin America, the people took a lot of pride from their mixed race heritage. Namibia is the first place I've been in Africa with a significant mixed race population. I guess it shouldn't be that surprising. In a region where you can still ask most local people what tribe they belong to, interracial marriage must seem like a very big step. But not here.

After we got home from our climb, poor Chester just collapsed, panting. Bobby had some water and padded right along, looking for a little food and attention. We switched on the TV to a university rugby came between two Cape Town area schools. I noted out loud that almost all the players appeared to be white. Edith, my other host, said "well, they're from Cape Town." As if that explained everything. Maybe it does.

Where I come from, most people are scared to talk about race. Me included, I don't like offending people. But this is something I'm going to have to keep an eye on as I continue south.

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Meeting People

A face of the Nguni tribe. By pure luck, I passed their homeland on the day of their annual Nc'wala ceremony. When I'd got up that morning, I didn't know it existed. Thanks to a bored Zambian border patrolmen and some luck, I attended the ceremony with an official contingent from the Malawian national government's Ministry of Youth, Sports, and Culture.

There were hundreds, maybe thousands of people there. The dress you see in this picture wasn't the norm, but there was plenty of it. Headbands from the skin of various big cats floated in and out of a crowd packed with grilled meat, drums, tents from various NGOs promoting health concerns, and big banners from the new sponsors, a big bank and a big cell phone provider.

There would be long speeches by bureaucrats, singing, dancing, free food and drinks for all, and then the main event: a bull would be slaughtered by a spear to the heart, and the chief would drink its blood. A security guard told me confidentially that it used to be a lion they killed, but with modern safety concerns for the crowd getting pics with cell phones and video cameras, they'd reduced it to a smallish bull tied to a tree.

The main ceremony happened in a compound with guards at every entrance. When one of the Malawian delegates tried to get in, he was stopped and asked for ID. But they waved me on through without any questions. I stepped in, and stopped when I heard another one of the delegates asked for ID. I turned to the guard and said "excuse me," loudly, about to ask some pointed questions about waving white men through and not others. But when he turned to me, I got a better idea. And that was how I found myself in the absurd position of telling security that, no, it's okay, they could let in the official delegation from the government of Malawi because, "they're with me."

After talking to a few people, I managed to get up close and personal by pulling out my camera and mingling with the paparazzi in the middle of the grounds. We moved around in a herd, getting the best lighting for our shots, and staying out of the way of whatever chieftain or group would be processing onto the grounds. I had to keep reminding myself to keep the camera out instead of just watching the performance. It was better than a front row seat.

It was a good day. On my ride out to the next town, I got to hear a lengthy debate on the future of the tribe. The appointed butcher had taken three stabs to bring down the bull instead of just one, much to the shame of the tribe. One man maintained this meant that "things had changed" and it showed the weakness of the Nguni. Another fiercely defended the tribe, saying it was just the one man, who would pay dearly.

It's been a show of how the last week or so has gone. Most of the highlights have been unplanned, and totally centered around the people I've met. I've been approached and shared afternoons with a huge cast of characters, almost all with legal first names to make you do a double take. I hung out with a private guard named Innocent, a 71-year old night watchman named Morning, a science law student named Advantage, and even a cab driver named Gift Master. All of them very eager to meet and talk a stranger from a far off place.

The big exception to all this, was one highlight that was very much planned: Victoria Falls. The rainy season is just ending, and the massive waterfall is at it's highest flow. There are three main paths in the national park. One is impassable at this time of year-- it's right across the top of the falls to an island. The next is a far-off trail with strategic viewpoints for photography. The third is right in front of the falls, across the rocks, and one long bridge. On the photographers one, you get sprayed with a lot of mist. Guess what happens in the close one.

I put my camera in two ziploc bags in my pocket, and my money and passport in another ziploc bag. Then I went in for some walking glory of water and wind. It wasn't a shower, it was a pounding. As I walked, across the green cliffs surrounded by white mist with the falls as a backdrop, a full circle halo of rainbow stayed around my feet for as long as the sun shone, moving with me as I walked, ran, skidded, and slid in the water I could breathe. Watching the water flying into an invisible whiteness, you start to get an idea what the sirens sounded like when Odysseus had himself tied to his boat. Very few things that deadly are that beautiful. 1.5 million liters per second go over that cliff around now onto some very sharp rocks. So you just lash your mind to the mast, and walk through the water and rainbows.

I think I'll miss this.

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This Week in Zanzibar

This week was indulgence week. Joel takes a break and goes to a(nother) tropical island paradise. A Swahili music festival's finale, swimming, fresh fish and octopus, street-side mangoes, and sugarcane juice with ginger and lime were all on the menu. I even got a few precious minutes with a piano, behind a 3rd floor balcony overlooking a gorgeous sunset view. Welcome to Zanzibar.

It's a strange place, truth be told. As you can probably tell, I had a pretty good time. But not all is perfect for all. Since around Christmas, electricity was cut off from the mainland. This doesn't mean there is no electricity, it just means that there are hundreds and hundreds of generators loudly growling and belching diesel into the 300 year old facades and intricately carved wooden doors of Stone Town, as well as every other settlement on the island. It's a real problem for the residents, many of whom have no running water without electric pumps. Those who could afford generators also needed to buy lots of diesel. A lot of Mzungus and other tourists shook their heads and said how the lack of solar power and presence of the fume belching generators just went to show how the local population only thinks in the short term. I think a lot of us forget how thinking in the long term costs more money than some of these people have.

It's something I've run up against in every tourist spot. It seems like a parallel world between the lives of locals struggling to get running water in town and the tourists sipping Evian in the restaurants. As a backpacker, you end up in some weird middle ground, eating with the locals because it's far cheaper, and then spending far more than they earn per month on things like scuba diving or a boat tour. It makes the two sides hard to ignore, even if you wanted to. Life on the edge of the bubble-- It's good to pop it when you can.

We spent time in three towns: Stone Town, the biggest and oldest settlement on the island, Jambiani, a south-eastern local shallow beach with a couple resorts lining the small village, and Nungwe, a better beach up north with a lot more tourists to show for it. To give you an idea, we were first persuaded to stay in Jambiani by the reaction of two Swiss guys we shared a taxi with from Stone Town. They took one look and said they were leaving to go back north to Nungwe because Jambiani looked boring.

"I mean," one of them said, "there are people reading here." I couldn't tell from his tone if he saw this as more comparable to scratching tally marks in the side of a prison cell or to eating babies, but we got the gist and decided parting ways would make everyone happier.

We did later join them at the party beach, for Friday night (good dance party-- turns out it's a lot easier to do the moonwalk when you're standing on loose sand. Who knew?) But before that, the rest of us got to sit back, play cards and eat free fish curry by candlelight while we swapped stories. Some of the most interesting came from a Zambian guy who had taken up adventure racing, dodging venomous snakes, strict fundamentalist christian schoolmasters, and other assorted wildlife. Then later I would be sitting around the fire, chatting with volunteer nurses and medical students while some of the guys living there played bogo and djembe drums, singing, and dancing. That's when I'd start to wonder, when did this kind of thing stop becoming an exotic cultural experience and start becoming my social life?

And what happens when I come home?

I still don't have an exact end date, but the range is narrowing. I'm sitting on a plane ticket from Johannesburg to Casablanca at the beginning of April. It's the first one that's unquestionably pointed homewards. I do want to spend some time in Morocco before heading up into Spain and Portugal, but after that, if all goes to plan, my next move is across the Atlantic. Another run through Europe, maybe the British Isles, is sorely tempting, but I have been multiple times, and if there's one set of countries I can come back to later in life, it's Ireland and the UK. So that leaves one of the very few regions I haven't seen since September of 2008: the one stamped on the cover of my passport.

But in the meantime, I've got a lot of ground to cover, After long drives across gorgeous Tanzanian countryside (including a lot of giraffes and zebras), a bit of ugali and xima, and me getting crushed at checkers (I was never any good when flying kings were legal), I'm writing this far from Zanzibar on a completely different beach. A small black kitten is curled up, purring between me and my computer as I type. She lives a pretty nice life here on the shores of Lake Malawi. The length spans a big chunk of the country and its full of fish. Dinner time is soon, perhaps I should do something about those facts.

PS. just want to tell people that I'm sorry I haven't been responding to comments as usual-- internet out here in Sub-Aaharan Africa is finicky at best. Thanks for leaving the messages, and know that even if I'm not responding to all of them, I am reading them all.

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Development after Death

I knew that smell, I thought. I remember that smell. I don't like it. The last time I smelled it, it was a few minutes after walking away from a tower of human skulls. It was closest I'd ever seen to evil. This must be what we smell like when we're killed and buried in crowds.

The atmosphere was entirely different this time. Instead of bones sticking up from the ground, with simple stark signs of fates being left over, I was looking at a beautiful, well manicured garden, and listening to a hand-held audio guide. At first it was only the smell and the things the guide were saying that made this different from any other garden. Perhaps a few of the unmarked slabs a couple meters square were a bit out of place as well. Until I found one with a sign saying something I'd seen before, all those months ago: 'Please don't step on the mass grave.'

Sitting in the center of one of the biggest continents on earth, Rwanda barely measures up to half to size of Scotland. Mention other countries like this to the average non-African, maybe Lesotho, Burundi, or Djibouti, and you won't see much recognition. Mention Rwanda, and you get one. An atrocity put this little land-locked dot of a country on the map.

In 1994, a population found itself divided by tribal lines highly exaggerated if not totally made up by colonial powers who had left decades ago. One side began to systematically exterminate the other. It was one of, if not the most efficient killing machines in history, slaughtering over 1 million Rwandans who either happened to have the word "Tutsi" on an ID card, or didn't but helped another Rwandan who did.

As I made my way through the memorial with the largely superfluous audio guide to my ear, I took in the story. It was not a new story for me. I'd studied this event in both high school, to learn it had happened, and college, to figure out how and why. The colonial division by the Germans and Belgians of those who owned more than this many cattle to the ruling minority, everyone else but the Twa, or pygmies, to the other. ID cards. Enforced rule of the minority over the majority. The last minute switch of power before independence. The first blood a few years later. The warning signs so blatant they couldn't really be called signs but announcements. The UN commander asking for troops and being rejected. Then the start in earnest of torture, murder, and rape on a scale only known to crimes against humanity. I could go on, but you might not forgive me.

My point was to pay my respects. See how they handled the tragedy sixteen years later. This, the main, (though by no means only) memorial pays compact and fitting homage not only to the Rwandan genocide, but a few of the other genocides in world, including the Holocaust, the Armenians, the wars of the Balkans, one I'd never heard of before in Namibia, and the one whose memorial I'd been so strongly reminded of before, Cambodia.

I studied international politics in college, hoping to make this planet a better place in a big way. I know lots of people like me from all over. We had our training, We want a better, more peaceful world. Now there I was getting a briefing on our enemy. This is genocide. This is what we're up against.

But looking around, I remembered something else I wasn't seeing in this memorial. It was back in Chicago, Pick hall, bottom floor lecture hall, Professor Stephen Wilkinson and spring quarter's course, Ethnic Conflict. We'd just put down our copies of "We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With our Families" and listened to the latest reiteration of the phrase "never again." The professor looked at his students with a pause, until one of us finally said what everyone was thinking: Darfur.

It wasn't until I was sitting in a coffee shop with an experienced photojournalist and human rights activist that I got any mention out of it. It's a situation so many people know the name of yet don't know the story. To oversimplify, the ruler of Sudan, wanted for war crimes, is backing Arab Muslim militias that are systematically killing black Muslim villages. The Rwandan genocide lasted a few months. This has been going since 2003. And once again the UN and UN Security council is hamstrung from acting. Two of its most powerful members, China and Russia, refuse to recognize the situation as genocide. Entirely coincidentally, these two also receive a massive amount of oil from Sudan.

As one of my friend's old history professors likes to say: "Remember class, history has absolutely nothing practical to teach us."

It makes me think about the places on this map of Africa that are no go zones for me. Sudan, Somalia, northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I know people who've been to all of them, the "safe parts" of them, but what they have to say is either entirely about being a tourist or isn't too encouraging. The stories out of the Congo are so horrific I don't feel comfortable repeating them here. I've never heard of a human doing anything like that to another human in real life or fiction.

But equally remarkable is how Rwanda isn't one of these places. Sixteen years after the chaos, and this ambitious little place is the most developed country I've been to in a full month. In a region where traffic police expect $2 bribes and issue tickets when they don't get them, and trash is thrown out the window anywhere you go, Rwanda is an amazingly clean and corruption-free place. The Kigali taxi-motorcycle drivers not only all have helmets, but they carry spares for their riders. Plastic bags are outlawed because of their environmental impact. I've never seen either of those things anywhere else in the world. I had one Swedish foreign service officer tell me the place is so ambitious that they keep having to be told to slow down or they'll miss steps.

And as for tribal divisions, I won't say there aren't any, but there is a very big movement to forget them. If you ask people who they are, they don't tell you Hutu or Tutsi. They tell you Rwandan. In other countries, when asked in a registration book at a hotel or border what tribe they belong to, I've seen all Rwandans put an emphatic slash through the space. They're done with the distinction.

I used to divide countries into the categories of "developed" and "developing." But I've definitely noticed that some of the latter deserve the title more than others. From my brief stay there, I'd say Rwanda deserves it fully, it's not sitting there undeveloped, it is actively developing. This will be a place to watch in the years to come, when hopefully it will be known by its successes rather than its tragic past. And maybe someday we can expect the same from some of its neighbors.

In the meantime, I've hitchhiked my way to a very different place. I wrote most of this entry sitting in the passenger seat of a 2100kg gas tanker (that's the weight when it's empty). Now I'm I'm going to the coast, and then a little bit further. At noon today, a boat sails for a place you can't say without thinking of adventure: Zanzibar.

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Check out this entry's Photos.

Inside a Small Ugandan Home

I've seen some good views in my time. But this one was very good. As usual, the photo doesn't do it justice, but it gives you an idea. This is Lake Bunyonyi, Uganda. Almost on the border of Rwanda. This was the last stop of a week in the country.

This view wasn't the viewpoint the Dutch acrobat and I were headed for, but the loud, dark clouds were coming in fast behind us. So we spent a few minutes just enjoying the scene from where we were, then heading back down.

We'd been warned that the path would be slippery if it got wet. With the leaves and smooth ground, it was already pretty slippery when dry. We picked our way downhill, passing men with machetes and women with boxes and baskets on their heads going up, going home. I almost took a picture of one of the many cows I'd seen with horns big enough to pick up a small car, but the herder decided he'd want 2000 shillings. I knew I could get a better picture for free later, so I skipped it.

We passed a small family, a man with a cowboy hat, a small boy, and a tiny little girl. I complimented the man on his hat, and we each answered the same question from the little boy that all little boys and girls ask in Uganda: “How are YOU?” The only understandable answer is “fine.” We kept going, both kids watching us. The boy waved a bit and said “bye.” We smiled and said “bye” before moving on. We passed behind some trees and heard the boy yell something in Luganda or whichever local tribal language was more popular in the area (I have so much trouble keeping them all straight). A moment later, he nailed my friend's backpack with a small rock. Two or three more rocks followed, to the embarrassment and surprise of the next set of Ugandan adults we met coming up the hill.

We split up just as the rain started to come down. She'd ordered a pasta dinner at our place as a treat, having spent the last five weeks eating Ugandan food where she'd been volunteering. I ducked under a roof where I saw people with half-liter sized mugs, figuring I could get my own meal for cheap. I asked what I could get. The answer was 'porridge.' I ordered one and sat down on one of the wood benches. I answered the obligatory how are you with the obligatory fine, and talked a little more extensively with the one man there who knew some English.

Soon I had my own mug. Inside the mug was a milky brown liquid. I gingerly took a sip. The closest thing I'd ever tasted was sour mare's milk, a Mongolian specialty. Remembering what a bowl of that had done to my insides in Ulan Bataar, I put down my mug.

“Is good?” One of them asked.

“Yeah. Good.” I said. “Different.” I said.

“Different from what?” He asked, “you had porridge before?”

“Not like this.” I said.

“Ah yes. This porridge, sits four days now. You can get drunk from this porridge.”

Right. I took another couple sips to be polite, cracked a few jokes about not making it back to my place, then decided to give the mug to the man to my right, who would probably enjoy it a lot more than I would. I paid on my way out.

The rain was getting harder, cutting channels in the dirt road. I considered a shop advertising chapati from behind chicken wire and wood, then spotted some smoke coming from a nearby wooden house. It was yet another roasting pot of beans, potatoes, and plantains (known here as matoke). I asked about meat, then looked closer and realized the meat being served was either tripe or some other inner organ I didn't recognize. I asked for the basic vegetarian special. The pot was on a patch of dirt covered by a tin roof. I was invited to sit in an unlit cement and mud room next to it about the size of my closet back home.

It was dark inside, but, stepping over the pile of potatoes in the doorway, I could see a woman in an elaborate wrap and headscarf with her small boy sitting on a makeshift bench. There was a small table, and a pile of corn husks in the corner. I sat down next to the woman, nodded and said hello.

The food was heaped into the bowl, just the right amount of beans and sauce to matoke and potatoes, and was just the right temperature. The boy was finishing his portion and watched me curiously as I dug into mine. He first moved away from me, then to the side, then came to sit next to me and look up at my face. At one point, overcome by curiosity, he grabbed my calf with both hands, just below the knee, where my shorts ended. I remembered being told that people wouldn't take you seriously if you wore shorts here because no Ugandan adult would wear them.

I like kids. I always have, and I like to think I can get most kids to like me. You don't need a common language to do this, you just need to know how to play. So when he started waving his hand left and right, I mirrored him carefully, waiting for him to catch on. As soon as he did, he started giggling.

I showed him the way I could give a low whistle with my hands. He was a little young to understand when I tried to show him how to do it. So I settled for how to make the little popping noise with my middle finger and cheek my dad use to entertain me with when I was his age.

His father walked in. He saw me and said hello. His breath smelled like the porridge stuff I'd just been drinking. Turned out he knew a bit of English. It is the national language, something I'm still getting used to. He introduced himself as David and his son as Joshua, his firstborn. His wife was never mentioned or introduced, even though she was sitting less than a foot away.

I'd finished my food, and something in David's look told me he was going to ask me for money, just like so many others before him had over the past week. So I thanked him, and made to leave. But he said, no please stay, let us talk. I didn't feel I could turn that down, and anyway the rain was really going at this point.

Conversation was halting and laborious, but questions and statements came from David in slow spurts. He had six children. His youngest was named Joel, like me. This little room was his house. What did I think of his house?

I knocked a fist on the walls.

“Strong.” I said. I tried telling him about some of the mud huts with grass roofs I'd seen in Ethiopia and how here in Uganda the brick and mixed mud and cement structures with wooden reinforcement was much more durable. I don't know how much I got across.

Joshua coughed. He picked something in the back of his mouth. He coughed again, this time the something landed in his mouth. It was red liquid. Blood? His father looked a bit disgusted, and sent Joshua away.

An ear of roast corn appeared. He split it in half and gave me half. Joshua reappeared and sat down next to me, hugging my leg. After a couple bites, David split his half of corn in half and gave a piece to Joshua.

More halting conversation. David offered me porridge. I thanked him but told him I'd had some already. He talked more while I ate corn, wondering who I could split my half in half for. I ended up finishing it on my own. David then tried to get me to eat the rest of his. I insisted that he finish it himself.

He asked where I was from. I told him. And he slowly pulled out a piece of paper. I wrote my name and my home town. He looked at it and asked for a number. I gave him my voice mail number in the US. Then he asked if a letter would reach me there. He thought I'd just given a mailing address. I pulled out a notebook and asked him to give me his address instead.

He wrote down his name, David Baine, and then C/o Richard with a completely illegible last name, and then a Ugandan phone number, missing a digit. He explained that Richard was doctor in a nearby town, and that the phone number was his, not David's. He tried to explain something about “grafts” on “papyrus” and lake water that I didn't understand. He asked a neighbor who had just stopped by for a translation. Instead, the neighbor told me about his job before he left.

The rain had slowed to a trickle. David looked out and then at me.

“I live here.” He said. “This my house. I have six sons.”

“Six boys?”

“ehm. Four girls, two boys.”

“I see. Good house, good kids.” Josh was still hugging my knee and trying to make the popping noise with his finger and mouth.

“So you see.” David said. “I am not happy.”

He just looked at me, hunched over in his tiny place outside a mud road. He lived just off the shore of a beautiful lake. He was literate, but with six little mouths to feed. And the 'porridge' was talking to him.

I nodded slowly, looking at the scene. Before, I'd thought more than once that I'd wanted a picture of the perfect lighting on the potatoes and plantains on the dirt floor, but didn't feel comfortable asking for a picture. But the man's face was one of the many moments I never would have dared photograph yet wanted to keep an image of much more than some nicely lit food. Not for the beauty, but for the reminder that there are people who wear this expression every day. It's not sadness or hopelessness. It's just a blank. I am not happy. That's how my life is.

When I crashed at an aid worker's place in Ethiopia, I pulled a book of the shelf by Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank. It was about how we can eradicate poverty. One of the last chapters was all about the museums that we would create to show kids what poverty was like after we'd eradicated it. When it would be history, something our kids would never know. The picture I never took of David's face would have been just the exhibit Yunnus had in mind. Maybe if we all work hard at this, someday that's the only place we'll ever see that expression again.

But in the meantime, when I got up to pay and leave, and he asked me if I'd send something to his impossible mailing address. I didn't know what to say. I still don't.

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Check out this entry's Photos.

Safari

The first movie I ever saw multiple times in theaters was The Lion King. I've had the soundtrack running through my head for about a week.

When I was about the same age, maybe a few years younger, my grandparents gave me a subscription to Ranger Rick magazine, a magazine for kids devoted to nature and wildlife. Back when I was first dreaming about this trip, the main thing I wanted to see more than anything else was the different animals all around the world.

I was one of those kids that always figured there was a secret alliance between kids and animals, and that if I tried hard enough, I'd be able to talk to them. I had all these elaborate fantasies about the adventures I'd go on, talking to them all. Mostly starting with our cat, Charlotte. Charlotte never seemed very impressed by my attempts, or by my corralling her in with my stuffed tiger, Mark, who I was also sure I'd be able to talk to.

I never pulled off the Doctor Dolittle thing, but my grandmother (among others) would remark that I seemed to have a way with animals, especially cats and dogs. I can read them fairly well, and I still get made fun of by some friends for finding just about any animal kind of adorable.

So you might understand why a three-day safari in the Kenyan side of the Serengeti, the Masai Mara national park, might be kind of a big deal for me.

I won't write too much, I written a lot lately without giving too many pictures. But now that I've got a good camera again, I'm going to let the pictures do most of the talking. Enjoy!

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Check out this entry's Photos.

Rough Truck Ride to Nairobi

This story is abridged. I'd love to put in all the good parts. Maybe in some other format some day. For now, we're just going to give you the basics.

Up to this point, I've refused to specify an ending date to my trip. This isn't just to keep people in suspense or some ear of commitment. This is because I knew that transport in a lot of Africa is notoriously unpredictable. I'd been warned. So when I found out that a 700km journey was going to take me three days instead of the seven hours it would have taken in any developed and most developing countries, I shouldn't have been surprised. The buses in southern Ethiopia leave when they are full, not before. They stop whenever someone inside or outside wants to stop them, be they passengers, chaat sellers, or the cops looking for a bribes. In a surreal moment, one of the cops told the driver he was fining him for having more passengers than seats. May seem reasonable back home, but if you've ever ridden any form of Ethiopian transport, you know this is a bit like ticketing someone for driving with only one hand on the steering wheel.

There was a stay in the closest thing I've ever seen to a wild west frontier town before I finally made the border, knowing I'd just finished the easy part. Getting from the northern Kenyan border to the capital of Nairobi over land was the legendary challenge, one that native Kenyans had tried and sworn off.

The road is a dirt road, corrugated by lack of maintenance with potholes big enough to hide a VW bug. A few years ago, Somali bandits made this road impassable without an armed convoy. Now the Kenyan army has cracked down enough so that you just pay your way onto a truck carrying cattle or beans for a day and a half to Isiolo, 3 hours north (by paved road) of Nairobi. You pay a bit more to sit in the cabin up front, otherwise you're out in back, sitting on metal bars above the truck's load. It's quite safe, so they tell me. They also tell me that the ubiquitous dude on each truck, riding on top of the cab, in camo carrying a rifle, is just another traveler going home.

I crossed out of the famously (mostly) unconquered African land into the ashes of the British empire. Slightly more infrastructure, cars on the left side of the road, and clunky UK-style electrical plugs are back. So is English as the dominant language. Except for trilingual Lebanon, this is the first English speaking territory I've been in since Hong Kong, back in July (though Amsterdam could make a case as well). Kiswahili is close on English's heels. You hear it everywhere, even if finding it written down takes effort.

Kids no longer stare at me or yell "you you you". Mzungus, as we're known around here, aren't an oddity anymore. We're just a cash machine. The best description I have seen of Moyale, Kenya was a fellow blogger who posted a picture of a seat-less overflowing toilet in his hotel, calling it a metaphor. Upon entering town, I was beset by seven touts (or “brokers” as they call them here) in less than twenty minutes. One cussed me out for ignoring him (and got really scared when I asked "if he wanted to speak to me"), another followed me into my hotel, offering to wake me up the next day for the truck he wanted to sell me a ride on, and another after that found me in an internet cafe and insisted it was time for me to get on his truck right then and there.

As usual, I got lucky and met people. The people this time were a Kenyan reporter doing an investigative piece on tribal conflict, an Israeli backpacker who'd fallen head over heels for the country, and a very quiet friend of theirs. We spent a little time trying to make a local NGO's internet connection work before the Israeli and I made arrangements to head south together on the same truck, the reporter acting as our negotiator for a fair price.

One of the brokers actually did track me down to my room at 7am the next morning to wake me up, insisting it was time to go on his truck. I politely told him to get lost, and another followed me to my room after seeing me across a balcony on my way to the bathroom. More hilarity ensued.

We made our way through it all and got on a truck at a fair price. With one thing after another, the Israeli convinced me it would be a better ride on the back of the truck instead of in the cab. We'd each save at least $13, and we'd get a better view.

At first I thought she was right. But I was picturing just the two of of us, maybe two other locals, on soft bags of... something. Turned out we were squeezing ourselves onto sacks of ginger or the metal crossbars above them with twenty-two other passengers, and though we didn't know it yet, we'd be picking up even more.

That was an adventure. I'll cut the details and just leave you with the headlines and hooks. The lush greens did gradually give way to spectacular rock deserts. We had a very nice catholic Kenyan man who just couldn't believe there could be someone from Jerusalem who hadn't accepted Jesus Christ as the messiah. We blew a tire with a sound that prompted our armed man to load and ready his rifle, causing half of us drop from the crossbars and hit the ginger sacks. There was a long discussion of the merits of communism while sitting atop the spar tire, witching the stars. Then there was the dinner stop where they never turned off the engine, convincing me that we wouldn't have time to eat. Meaning I went most of the journey without any food.

In other brilliant moves by yours truly, when everyone set up to go to sleep, I noticed that nobody was going for the covered back area, they were all packing themselves into the front in uncomfortable positions. It did occur to me that there was something they knew that I didn't, but I figure they just didn't like being in the covered section. So I found a stack of cardboard and laid it out in the back. I realized my mistake when we started moving. My position put me right above the back axle, meaning every time it hit a bump (roughly once every ten yards), I would be shot up a foot into the air. Sleeping on cardboard I can grudgingly do. Sleeping while flying up into the air and landing on cardboard every few seconds is just a little too much. So I headed back forward. One of the Muslim girls helped me find a three-foot spot on the ginger sacks crunched between three people and a sack of hard-heeled shoes. If you've ever gone camping and found you'd put your sleeping bag on a root, you understand that this isn't very comfortable. Ginger is a root. Imagine sleeping on a sack of tree roots. Now imagine trying to do it after you've been bouncing up and down on a steel rail for ten to twelve hours. I gave up within fifteen minutes.

I ended up sitting in an improvised sling big enough for one modestly overweight person, strung out between the rails. I was sharing it with the guard, who was bundled up with about five layers against the wind chill, which I'm guessing was around 65 degrees Fahrenheit. I spent the night trying nod off with half of my extremely sore butt in a burlap sling with the butt of a rifle lodged across my lap, while four old guys chewing chaat leaves (a stimulant similar to coca) yelled at each other. The sling didn't rip in half until we'd nearly arrived.

The only upside was the scenery and the animals. Among other things, I saw tons of African hares, the smallest deer I'd ever seen, not much bigger than a large cat, lot of birds, and the silhouette of my first wild African Elephant.

When I finally arrived in Nairobi, twelve hours later, I was sunburned, severely dehydrated, and very very sore. I was also filthy. People in the microbus from Isiolo to Nairobi tried very hard not to look at me. I hadn't eaten in over twenty-four hours. I had slept about half an hour. I dragged my stinking unshaven body across to the first restaurant I found, spent what felt like an eternity just putting my bag down and sitting. When I washed my hands, the water coming off of them may or may not have stained the sink dust brown permanently. The chicken in my stew was the toughest, chewiest fowl I'd ever eaten, so I haven't been back to check.

I got information from my usual sources. I wasn't sure I was in good enough shape to pull off the stunt of getting a free tourist map and orientation from the local luxury hotels, but the internet cafe was the cheapest in town and gave me the number of a hostel, though it had no formal address. After a half hour hike uphill, I shoved past a group of evangelical Christians in residence, and finally got myself a much needed bed and shower.

And that was how it started. I've spent a lot of time since then getting errands done. My passport has had yet more pages added, right side up this time. After a lot of frustration wandering through camera shops full of nothing but Sonys and Kodaks, I scored big time and found a fantastic deal on a pocket Canon compact with manual controls and a 10x optical zoom. Combined with the 4x digital, that's a virtual zoom of 40x magnification.

And starting in about ten hours, I'm going to be putting that particular feature to very good use. Just how I'll do it is for you to guess. Until next post of course. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

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Check out this entry's old fashioned film camera Photos. Because we're blogging likes it's 1999 (...before blogging existed. Yes).

The Craze Must Be Godly

I got to spend one of the biggest festivals in Africa, Timkat, in the
town most famous for celebrating it well, Gonder, Ethiopia. Timkat is
actually the Ethiopian orthodox celebration of Epiphany, the baptism
of Christ. For the purpose, the arc of the covenant is brought to a
place called the Fasil Baths, a pool constructed in the seventeenth
century by the king of Gonder. Vigil is kept all night by worshipers
in white shrouds. Come morning, a hour or two before sunrise, more
people start to come by candlelight. Those who have spent the night
sleeping next to the baths start to wake up and rise. Then comes the
singing. And that's just the beginning.

It was a wonderful sight, and for me it justified my having stayed so
long in town for the festival. For a few minutes at least, until one
of my few superstitions was unapologetically smashed to bits.

I'm not a superstitious person. I tend to walk around ladders because
I don't like things falling on top of me, I think breaking mirrors is
stupid and dangerous, and I avoid saying the name "Macbeth" when among
fellow theater people in a theater because it freaks them out. But
I'll open an umbrella indoors, I like black cats, and spilling salt
doesn't bother me except that it's a waste of salt.

But I did hold a superstition that a religious population would
refrain from committing crime on religious ground, during religious
ceremonies, or under the eye of religious leaders. So when I came to
one of the biggest Christian festivals in one of the most fervently
Christian countries I've come across, filled to the brim with priests,
on the most traditional spiritual grounds around in sight of what most
of the people there believed to be the true arc of the covenant, I let
my usual guard down.

I paid for that mistake with my camera.

Looking back, I'd walked right into a pickpocket's dream. Big jostling
crowd to distract people and explain the feeling of hands on your
pants, lots of rich farenji (foreigners) for targets. I had both my
hands full, moving up to a viewing platform, one with my water bottle,
another with a lit candle, both raised above my head to navigate. So
when I felt the hand go into my left pocket, I couldn't believe it. It
wasn't even a skilled pickpocket attempt, I've foiled half a dozen
much smoother ones, but this one got me by virtue sheer surprise. I
couldn't believe anyone could be so clumsily blatant, so I for the
crucial split second decided they weren't actually trying anything.Whoops.

And there went my camera, and with it all but one of my pictures of Ethiopia.
I suddenly felt a lot less respect or interest for what seemed like a bunch of
people in white sheets with candles jostling around a half empty pool
of water in the dark. Especially after I caught not one, not two, but
five more people trying to pick my pockets again within the next 45
minutes. One of them actually succeeded, but, when they found all
they'd come up with was a spiral notebook, they tossed it on the
ground in disgust, where a friend of mine found it moments later.
So much for that superstition.

I did manage to get some photos from friends I've made in town. I'm
very grateful, but it's not quite the same... especially since I'd
just lost all the pictures of the friends I'd made in Addis Ababa,
Bahir Dar, Lake Tana, and Gonder itself. If I wanted to spend another
week there, I could probably find them on the black market somewhere.
I'm learning this now back in Addis Ababa.I went camera shopping
today, and found out that the government puts crazy import duties on
all electronics. I was offered a point and shoot camera that would
cost maybe US$300 at the very most for US$787. And it was the only
camera the store had. The stores here know digital cameras are too
expensive for people who live here, and that anyone else would by them
at home. So they don't even bother stocking them.

By the way, I had yet another pickpocket attempt while I was at it. A
guy walking a couple inches ahead of me stopped suddenly, and I
crashed right into his back. I stepped around him, patting his
shoulder with my left hand while apologizing. He grinned, grabbed my
left wrist and started kicking my left leg. Not hard, just enough to
get my attention while I felt another guy reach for my right pocket. I
hadn't expected it, so I smacked the offending hand away instead of
grabbing, which meant both of them were able to escape. But at least I
still had all my belongings.

I didn't get so lucky as to find a cheap digital, but I scored some
inside info that Kenya doesn't have the same problem with taxes on
electronics imports. So I've got some shopping to do in Nairobi. In
the meantime, I was given an old pocket film camera with "Focus Free"
in big letters on the front. I'm not sure that's a good thing. But it
works. So, instead of buying a $787 camera, I went and bought $4 worth
of film, roughly 72 exposures. That's right boys and girls, we're
going old-school.

I'm sorry I didn't get it before. Festival aside, I got an inside tour
of the farmers' market of Gonder. Now when I say "farmers' market," I'm
not talking about the free-samples of fruit-flavored honey and garlic
spread in the city summer street under colorful awnings. I mean the
dust, tarp and stick maze where the farmers come to buy live goats,
chickens, oxen, and spread out their produce on burlap to hawk to
families there. My trigger finger was itching to take pictures of
everything I saw, just to share it.

The 25-year old tenth grader (no joke) showing me around was confused
as to why I wasn't taking pictures, and didn't quite have the English
skills to understand my explanation. It wasn't the only point of
confusion-- he also couldn't wrap his head around the idea that I
didn't know the market price of an ox in my hometown.

Like a lot of beginners at the English language, he asked a lot of
weirdly formed, personal and sometimes profound questions, following
them up with his answers as examples. For example, what was most best
person in Ethiopia or out of Ethiopia (his was Barack Obama). Or what
was the most hated people and most liked people (for him, gangsters
and religious people, respectively), what did your parents do (his
were farmers) and what was the economic situation of your family (his
was "very well off").

He invited me to his place for lunch. It was another two or three room
cement and mud structure with very dirty dogs and cats wandering
around. I was served the same things every Ethiopian serves me and is
sure I'm trying for the first time, injeera bread and a coffee
ceremony. Looking at the dust, the number of kids and people that had
to fit into all these rooms, I felt like I should do something to help
them out. Maybe offer them a little money, at the very least to cover
the bottles of coke they sent the little kid out to get for us. But
then I remembered one of the answers he'd given me to his questions.
His family is "very well off." Giving them money, would probably
offend them. I did later take my main host out for a couple drinks,
but still, this put things in perspective.

To my Developed world eyes, the home would have been a poster for a
third world charity with the title "help us fight poverty." But they
were very well off. It made me think about all the other people I
wasn't seeing who were so much less fortunate. The little kids in the
middle of the countryside getting into fistfights over the plastic
bottles tossed out of buses, because of the money they get for
recycling them. The people sleeping wrapped up in tarps on the streets
of Addis Ababa, creating a more than passing resemblance to the
mummies in the Egyptian National Museum. The stories of the crowds
sleeping outside the lonely spots where the UN might do food drops for
the holidays the next morning. The ones who have no other way to
survive.

And all I have to worry about is that I won't bring home the pictures
I took of some of them.

Keeping things in perspective doesn't always make you feel good.
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Photos pending the miraculous return of my stolen Canon SD1100. Don't
hold your breath.

Hello, you.

There's a funny thing that happens in developing countries where you don't look like the rest of the population. You'll walk down the street, people will look at you as you pass, and right when you're about to pass them, or just after you've passed them, one of them will burst out "hello!" It's always a little too late to reply to without twisting around and trying to stop them, because at this point they've usually started scurrying away, giggling.

Small town Ethiopia isn't like that. At first I thought the little kids were yelling something at me in Amharic, or one of the other local languages. But then I realized what they were really saying: "You! You! You you you! Youyouyouyouyouyouyouyou!"

Every time our 11-seat minivan with 18 occupants stopped somewhere on it's ten-hour route, the kids of the town would be out, following, waving, trying to touch my arm through the window and yelling "You!" If I waved or said hi back, some of them would stop, shyly. Others would act like I'd just thrown them a fistful of candy.

In the cities, the "Yous" change back to "Hello," but there's nothing shy about it. They'll yell it from far away until they get an answer. If you say hello back, they get really excited and say it again and again. If you say "selam" or "ishi" (hello or hi in Amharic) they become really shy. Sometimes. Last night I had a pair of six or seven year old kids follow me down three or four unlit, suburban, dirt road blocks, just so they could keep saying hello every few minutes.

This place isn't timid. Ethiopia is a proud country. It was the second Christian nation after the Armenians, the only African nation never to be colonized (except when it sorta was for five years, but we don't discuss that) and it doesn't mind doing things differently from the rest of the world.

For example according to the local clock and calendar, it's about 2:30 am, and the sun is shining on this bright day in 2002. Christmas was about a week ago, and the feast of the Epiphany is in four days.

I thought it was funny when I learned that the State of Arizona doesn't observe daylight savings time, but that the Navajo nation, inside its borders, does. I thought it was a bit odd to find that the capital of Argentina observes daylight savings time while most of the rest of the country does not. I thought it was weird of China to maintain one time zone for its entire nation, leaving large chunks a few hours off from the neighbors directly to the north and south.

But that was all before I learned that, in Ethiopia, time is roughly eight years and six hours behind everyone else in its time zone.

I've been to other places where there are alternative calendars to ours. The Jewish Calendar, the Chinese Calendar, and the Islamic Calendar are all in different years. But in the countries they're used in, they mostly seem to be there just to calculate when the holidays occur on the calendars everyone else uses. In Ethiopia, the Julian calendar is used for just about everything, and our calendar is referred to dismissively as "European time."

Same with our time of day. Ethiopia being so close to the equator, daylight almost always lasts twelve hours. So dawn happens at 12:00am, noon at 6:00am, dusk at 12:00pm, and midnight at 6:00pm. It makes sense. At 3:00am you've had daylight for three hours. Four at 4:00am, etc. I still haven't gotten a straight answer as to what time the date officially changes, dusk, midnight, or dawn.

History too, doesn't follow our little rules. I bought and downloaded a pdf guide from Lonely Planet on Ethiopia. This is from page 30, the history section: "The following chapter contains the factual 'real' history that historians like to use, but it's important to remember that for the majority of Ethiopians this isn't the history they believe in. In Ethiopia, like in much of Africa, legends concerning magical deeds, ghostly creatures and possibly nonexistent folk heroes are not just legends, but are taken as solid fact and who cares if the historians say the dates and places don't add up."

These are not the only things that've made me stop and think for a second. I was hosted for my first day in the country. As we walked from the airport into town, I was given the usual modest spiel of "I mean the place isn't too fancy, I hope you don't think it's too..." etc. And I just gave my usual reply to put them at ease: "Don't worry, all I want is somewhere my stuff is dry and secure and somewhere I can wash myself off."

Instead of being a reassured, my host looked worried. He didn't have running water that day. I would later learn that a shower is something he gets about once a week. It's a clean culture otherwise, all people wash their hands with soap both before and after every meal, but body odor here is a fact of life.

Parts of Addis Ababa, the capital city, look like the rural areas of Central America. The neighborhood is made up of little compounds of mud and plaster houses, encircled in tin fences. The toilet is a hole in the ground, covered by a curtain. There is electricity (most of the time). When unplugging a phone charger from my room, I accidentally pulled the outlet halfway out of the plaster wall. The next place I stayed, in the town of Bahir Dar, the way to turn off the light was to gently tug on one of the wires sticking out from behind the sheet of plywood that comprised half of my wall. I was warned sternly not to touch any bare ends that came out.

My first night in town, my host took me out to a bar with traditional music and dancing. It was a great night, some amazing dancing from people just getting up from the crowd, and what looked like the great grandfather of battle rap taking place between a female singer and one of the male musicians, taking turns calling each other goats and saying the other is so cold they don't need to buy a refrigerator. On the way there, my host wanted my opinion on something. Why was it that in Ethiopia, they are poor but happy, while in other countries they are rich and unhappy. The truth was that I didn't think people were all that unhappy in rich countries, but I didn't say so. The question was more of a lesson. Ethiopia may be poor, but it's happy.

And it's working to better itself. I spend a couple days with a 21-year-old woman from Bahir Dar who did something very similar to what I did. From a young age, she saved everything she earned for a cause. But instead of traveling around the world, her cause was much more noble. Her money goes to helping women and children affected by HIV. She's already founded and registered a local charity to help the staggering number of HIV/AIDS victims in her area.

"I don't want outside help." She told me. "Ethiopia has to help itself. We need to solve our own problems."

I've only spent a week in this proud place, but already it's proving to be a little bit different from anywhere I've been.
---
Well, my camera was stolen before I could save my photos, but I at least put this together.

Last Missive from Cairo

I've been doing a little homework on my trip to Ethiopia. I've looked at a few countries where communication was tricky, but if my guidebook is to believed, this could be one of the toughest I've faced. Telephone service is such that even with a full cell signal, calling is often impossible. Post service is reliable, if slow. Internet service in the capital, Addis Ababa, takes “five minutes for a two line text email.”

This means I can't guarantee any updates after this one for some time. If and when they do come, they will likely be without photos. My email access will be limited. Also those of you who know how to reach me by phone will have a harder time doing so.

Probably.

I've had warnings like this before and sometimes found them completely overblown. There's still a chance I'll be able to find broadband internet access and plenty of cell service. But it doesn't look likely.

In the unlikely even I am cut off completely, I'm leaving my plan up here: I am headed south. My ideal plan would be to spend time exploring southern Ethiopia on my way to the border crossing into Kenya at Moyale. However, this border crossing is a bit risky and sometimes gets shut down. I will not proceed across unless I am satisfied that I can do so safely (possibly with a convoy). If I cannot cross via Moyale, I will most likely get a flight into either Kampala, Uganda, or Nairobi, Kenya, whichever is more convenient/affordable.

Transport in this region of the world can be very slow. If nobody hears from me for a long time, please don't be too concerned, I am probably happy and healthy, just sitting on a slow bus in the Omo valley playing cards with an Ethiopian family and wondering when my stop is coming. Infrastructure is poor, but the country is very safe. The national airline is one of the best in the continent, and I'm traveling in the most cool, dry season there is to travel.

In the meantime, I'm posting a few more photos from Cairo and the Pyramids. Enjoy!

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Check out this entry's Photos.

Egypt Express

Luxor. If your first thought was "Las Vegas," you need to get out more.

Yes, everybody, I've made it to Egypt. After a moving learning experience or two in Ramallah, I made an impulse trip to float in the Dead Sea, rushed my way across to Amman, Jordan, and dropped down to see the cliffs of Petra by night, surrounded by candles, the echoes of a flute and Bedouin singing. Then it was across to the Sinai, New Year's Eve party on the beach, and then some diving in the Red Sea. Then a desert haul across the Suez canal and down the Nile river to the the town you see here.

Man, that was fast.

After celebrating officially having hit all seven continents, I teamed up with a Belarus-born Canadian to get from one town to the Valley of the Kings. For about $1.75 each, we rented two rusty rattletraps that almost passed for bicycles, pushed past the touts onto the ferry across the Nile, and rode past the donkey carts out towards the Sahara, to the tombs of the pharaohs.

Pretty cool stuff, but I'm sorry to tell you that the most obviously Egyptian things I've been seeing so far, the tombs of the pharaohs, did not allow photos. My friend got nailed for taking a picture inside the tomb of Thutmoses III-- the flash went off right in front of the irate attendant, who tried to take her camera away. If you do a little searching, I bet you'll find a couple pictures, though.

I spent a lazy day or two on the hotel rooftop with Swiss, German, Finnish, and Quebecois (edit: thanks Count C.) travelers, eating koshary and banana pancakes, talking and laughing about a lot of nothing in particular, and then I left for an overnight train to Cairo. It was scheduled to leave at 11:00pm, so naturally it arrived in the station at 11:40 and left a little before midnight. Welcome to Egypt.

Speaking of a welcome to Egypt, I'd been warned about Cairo. Everyone who'd been there seemed to have some warning to give about the place. The traffic is awful, the touts are unbelievable, the pollution is absurd. It's dirty, smelly, ugly, and you just want to leave.

They exaggerate. A little. It was a remarkably clear day and there wasn't *that* much trash in the streets. The cars do slow down for you to cross, if you're standing directly in front of them and if they're in a generous mood. But they were right about some of those touts. Those of you who know me know that I'm normally a patient guy, usually quite friendly, rarely if ever angry. I came very close to clocking two separate touts this morning because they simply would not leave me alone. They followed me into and out of shops and around whole city blocks. The second one was very lucky he didn't try grabbing my arm a third time.

After refusing half a dozen persistent taxi rides and shoving past two more touts convinced I still needed a hotel/tours/perfume, I hopped a bus to the suburb of Giza. The bus was stuck in traffic for only twenty minutes before moving. There would've maybe been enough leg room for me if I had stopped growing at age six. There was one overpowered A/c vent in the bus and it was pointed right at the only seat left. I scrunched up sideways and shivered for about half an hour, when other people finally started getting off.

I gratefully slid to an open window seat on the left side, watching the sunset over the buildings, thinking: What a day. This is the first productive thing I've tried to do since getting a hotel room and it's already sunset. Oh well. I still need to figure out what I'm doing after my flight to Ethiopia this weekend. I have a couchsurfing host, but no guidebook. Maybe I can wing it when I get there. I wonder if--

Whoa.

I only caught a brief glimpse of them rising behind some of the apartment buildings, but that was enough. Whatever I'd been worrying about before had been jarred out of my head. I knew they'd be here, I knew I'd see them, but knowing doesn't always prevent awe.

You can't blame me. It was my first glimpse of the pyramids of Egypt.

Some things are over hyped. Others are hidden gems that should have more hype than they get. But there are some things in this world that are so famous that, no matter what they are really like, seeing them floors you. There are many places claiming to be “wonders of the world”. There are even seven new ones because they got a lot of votes on the internet (to date, I've seen six of them). But only one original wonder of the world stands today: the Pyramids of Giza.

I got out, shook off a few more touts hawking horse rides, and walked up as close as I could for the time of day. Maybe without the title, I wouldn't stand in so much awe. They're just triangles of bricks, really. Ridiculously huge triangles of bricks, even bigger than I'd imagined, but still. Triangles of bricks. However, one of the really rewarding things about travel is the feeling of finding something you've heard about and seen imitated all your life. The felling of standing there, breathing it in and thinking “this is it.” And whatever else I'd had to deal with that day, that feeling made it worth it.

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Check out this entry's Photos.