Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates, aka*

On the 28th, after a little bit of doubt, I made it to Atlanta from Paris. On Hallowe'en (somebody's new year) I found myself back in Ventura California after slightly over 27 months away. (Plenty of photos of all that, plus previous travelling are up at Snapfish.) I will now attempt to become a productive member of society in a country that -- lucky for me -- seems to suddenly be brand new for all of us. The last couple of years have been a great adventure and a great joy, but as I am no longer wandering South Africa (no matter how much I wish I was) that means that it is time for this blog to make an end. Until the next time I hop on a plane of course. But, in anticipation of that moment, I will just say PEACE OUT! And leave you with the lyrics of the great Paul Simon:


A man walks down the street
It's a street in a strange world
Maybe it's the Third World
Maybe it's his first time around
He doesn't speak the language
He holds no currency
He is a foreign man
He is surrounded by the sound
The sound
Cattle in the marketplace
Scatterlings and orphanages
He looks around, around
He sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says Amen! and Hallelujah!







*The End

Zanzibar for Obama

Since the last time I wrote, I've embarked on a 40-hour train ride (in which I learned the kiSwahili phrases for both "My name is not Mzungu!" and "No, thank you." Useful.), briefly peaked at Lake Victoria (fishy), took a 15 hour landrover ride across the Serengeti and Ngorogoro conservation area (Big. And dusty), spent a day chilling in a Masai village, and managed a brief but eminently satisfying view of Mt. Kilimanjaro, snows and all. Wow. It's outrageous just to read that sentence, isn't it? Sometimes I take a second to reflect on all the places I've been, and people I've met in the last couple of months, and I find myself simply flabbergasted. It is unbelievable that I have had the good luck to experience a trip like this, and I try to spend at least a minute or two each day feeling greatful for it. To be fair, this is usually not the minute when some street-vendor or other has started up with a combination of 'flirting' and selling me something I don't want. Occasionally he will throw in a reference to how fat I am and how attractive African men find this. At this point I usually throw the concept of cultural-sensitivity out and respond exactly as I please:
"Big mama! How are you today! Nice t-shirts, good price!" (while puffing out his cheeks and miming a big stomach. Or, occasionally, making eating motions. My favorite.)
"Hey, Fuck you! I'm great, no thanks." I talk fast and say it all with a big smile. You can get away with anything with a big smile. I doubt they even hear me.

A lot of this has been going on recently, since a few days after my brief view of Mt. Kilimanjaro (how much longer is the snow there supposed to last, anyways?) I made my way to Zanzibar. Which is FANTASTIC. I hesitate to label any place I've been as a favorite, I feel like everything should be evaluated in its own time and place and context and, I've loved almost everywhere. But despite the almost obscene amount of tourists wandering the island, and the obscenely irritating number of shops, street-vendors, and people generally trying to make a buck that the tourists have generated, Zanzibar -- and Stone Town, where I am now -- is still amazing. Zanzibar is the center of a swirl of every culture, language, religion, and individual quirk that has ever seemingly wandered across the African continent. Hindu temples and shops, Omani mosques, a Portugese fort, remnants of hundreds of different southern, central, and African tribes -- come as either willing traders or as slaves to be sold in the last slave market in Africa -- all shape the place and the language and the food and the smells. I just don't have words for it.
And its hard to mind the tourists in that case, because in a place where cultures and people from across the world have ebbed and flowed for over 1,000 years, it makes perfect sense that toddlers now shout "Ciao!" as well as "Jambo!," that restaurants ease Swahili food for European mouths, and the sheer amount of energy and infrastructure that goes into, well...international trade, I suppose you could say. (Even put into this context, however, the man who has been trying to sell me bootleg swahili reggae CDs for the past 3 days still irritates the living crap out of me). So I love it. Zanzibar is the home of intersections, of contrasts, of blending and bending and history and modern crap. The last slave market in Africa is now the home of "Zanzibar for Obama!" election headquarters.

Stop Stealing My Chacos!!!!

The other day I got caught in a rainstorm blown in by an errant and early monsoon. I ran to the nearest open building, which happened to be a restaurant, and sat drinking chai massala (spiced tea) in Dar es Salaam on a Sunday afternoon during Ramadan. The day before that I took a 13 hour bus from Mbeya to Dar, and as the bus wound through a game reserve I saw herds of giraffe, zebra, kudu, and impala meandering along the side of the road. Even a small cluster of baby elephants lazing in the shade of a Baobab tree. From the window of a bus!

Sometimes, I take a second to think about all of the people and places and sights that I have been lucky enough to come across in the last 5 weeks, and I simply can't believe it. I am blown away that I have this opportunity, that I am walking in a place which, while hopefully it won't be a once in a lifetime visit, is certainly a once in a lifetime experience. I love this place, the different people and the different countries, and the different land, and I plan to spend a good deal more time here in the not-too-distant future, but that in no way detracts from the uniqueness of what I'm doing now. No stepping in the same river -- or the same daladala -- twice, and all that. To reduce it all down to the most basic summary: Its pretty badass that I get two months to wander through Africa all on my lonesome. I try very hard not to lose that perspective, even when busses take hours to fill, or trains break down for TWENTY FIVE HOURS, or people constantly try to sell me something or hustle me, or just otherwise part me from my cash. Its all part of the deal, and part of the story. While at times I do get so frustrated and exhausted of everything that I just want to scream and cry and break things, well, that sort of part of the package. If I wanted a no-hassle, no-fun vacation I would have signed up for club med. This is real. Whatever real is.

Today is Eid, the end of Ramadan, which matters in Dar es Salaam. Dar is a mix of seemingly everybody who has ever wandered across the African continent. Maasai in traditional wraps are hired as security guards at shops and cheap tourist hotels, which in turn are located across the road from massive mosques and hindu temples. People wander the streets in any traditional outfit you can think of, and the streets smell like fried samosas, sweets from the Taj Mahal Confectionary shop, spiced tea, live chicken, rotting garbage, bananas, coconut, coriander, and wet pavement from the last rain to blast through. I am undecided on if I like the place or not. When I first got here, all I could think was that it was so BIG. I was vaguely reminded of sketchier parts of Hollywood, but with a lot more mosques. Big, and busy too. Cars zoom up and down the streets, people are everywhere, the place is littered with shops and stands and carts and people people people. After wandering from laid-back Malawian village to village, its all a little overwhelming. In fact, it all reminded me a bit of the feeling of going into Pretoria's biggest mall two days before Christmas, after having spent three months straight in Steenbok. Just...too much.

Now I've been here for a few days though, and I'm slightly better adjusted. Hopefully this afternoon I'll begin moving on to Mwanza, on the shores of lake Victoria. I was supposed to do this yesterday, but...thats where the 25 hour train delay comes in. All part of the fun, right?

Sing Us A Song

I have finally managed to slow down a bit and stop jumping from place to place. After the marathon that was Botswana-Zambia, and even the first couple of days in Malawi, I feel like I am finally starting to relax and take things at a travellers place, without always worrying about the next place I'm going to and how important it is that I get there now now. On the one hand, this is very relaxing, but on the other it gives me much more of a vacation feeling which for some reason I feel like I am not -- nor should I be -- on. I can't explain this, maybe I feel like I'm supposed to be communing with Africa and not spending my days laying on hammocks and watching the lake swish back and forth. Thats what tourists do. I am not a tourist. I am a peace corps volunteer, and we do thinks a little different from that generic backpacker-on-holiday set. Except now I'm not. I'm just one more unemployed girl watching the lake swish back and forth while drinking beer in a hammock. Which is, of course, not the worst thing in the world to be by a long shot.

Recently a lot of that hammock-lounging has been taking place on Likoma Island, in the middle of Lake Malawi. Likoma is, as you would hope a small tropical island in the middle of a large Rift Valley Lake would be, very beautiful and very laid back. There are two roads on the island, and maybe twice as many cars (the fancy resort's land rover, the Unicef truck, the ambulance, and the German guy's green jeep). The sunsets are also up to standard, and so I won't bother to describe them, I'll just allow you to consult all of the postcard sunset imagery in your head. Besides being an (unemployed) bum, on Likoma I spent four days learning to SCUBA dive, and have decided that I am totally in love. Diving is like nothing else, you become completely a part of the water around you, as much as the fish and the rocks and the light that floats down in tendrils and waves. Its amazing to swim 3 inches above the sandy bottom of a lake, and know that the surface is 18 meters (thats 54 feet) above your head. Plus, the gasses and pressures and whatnot involved made my freshly burnt arm break out in little bubble-wrap like nodes. Icky and fun, what a great sport!

Unfortunately, I got those sunburnt arms from one of the most GOD AWFUL boating experiences of my entire life. Likoma, like I said, is an island in the middle of one of the world's largest freshwater lakes. So of course, you can only reach it by boat (or plane, but like I can afford a private plane flight). The boat of choice coming from the Malawian main land is the Ilala Ferry, a huge old steam boat thats been chugging up and down the lake for half a century. Most people rave about the thing. They have fantastic experiences, meet cool people, spend their time admiring the Mozambican and Malawian shores while drinking beer and generally having a good time. I, of course, happened to hop on during one of the worst storms of the year. Which really confused me, since there was no rain or clouds or even swells (though, in retrospect the ones I were estimating at 2-3 feet were probably a lot closer to seven, with occasionally bursts up into 9 or 10 if they were feeling particulary energetic.) There was just wind. Lots and lots of wind, which in turn made the boat rock and pitch continually, so that everything slid back and forth on the deck and most people had to give up and crawl to where they wanted to get. This still might have been fun (at no point did it feel dangerous -- just very rolly) had I not spent most of my time leaning over the side, trying not to lean over the side, or racing for the side, instead of just watching it all happen. So I was a little distracted and forgot the sunblock. (Mostly I was more angry than sick. Well, maybe almost as angry as sick. There was a lot of sick. BUT, I am not the one who gets sea-sick. I've been on boats my whole life! Don't the sea gods know this? I decided the problem was that we were on a lake and not an ocean. Stupid lake.)

Now, however, both my island and my lake times are up. Today I'm in a beautiful little place called in Nkhata Bay, staying at possibly one of the world's most social backpackers. So mostly I'm just hanging out and making friends before making the final run up to Tanzania. I like the place (Mayoka Village, should you ever find yourself here) for many reasons, but a major one is that they are heavily involved in the community around them, they don't set themselves apart. So last night a local church choir came to sing before dinner in the hopes of raising money for a new church roof. I like that this is something the owners would agree to, and something the church felt comfortable requesting. So the choir came up -- four ladies, two men, and a guy in back playing a keyboard with all the backbeats and synth settings he could muster. And the choir rocked out, and the ladies sang and dance, and the pastor/baritone held up his arms and called out 'Hallelujah!' whenever he felt the music required it, and the tourist audience sat quietly and attentively and applauded very nicely when it was over. And I laughed, because it was such a classic combining (I won't say clash, there was nothing violent) of cultures. Everybody played by their rules and wanted to be at their absolute best, and the rules were totally different on both sides. So the choir kept singing, and then of course the kitchen staff, and the barmen, and all the locals in the place got up and started singing and dancing too (because those are, of course, the proper rules to play by. There's no divide in African music, no performance space and audience space, no creator/reciever. Its all just music, and you're all inside of it) and the tourists thought to themselves 'oh, how charming' or maybe 'oh, how rude!' and I thought 'Rock on,' but I'm still too much of a chicken to get up and play even when I know the right rules. Until the next song, when the inevitable of course happened and the choir and other people up front starting pulling up the tourists to join -- starting with the girls in the front, of course -- and the tourists thought 'oh, how daring and how local we are!' and I'm sure the Malawians just laughed, or wondered what it was that glued those white butts to their wicker seats. Finally it ended like it should, with many people from many places up and dancing -- though still with a clear front and back to the room. Here is where people sing and dance, here is where we sit and admire people singing and dancing -- and a hat was passed around, and people gave money for the new church roof. I liked it. There was such an honest effort on both sides to come across that gap, or at least take an open eyed look. Nobody made it entirely to the other side of course, but it was a solid and friendly attempt. Which is all you can really ask, isn't it?

Evidence

Today I'm in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, after saying my goodbyes to Zambia. The border crossing was memorable mostly for the sheer number of times you have to change modes of transportation to travel less than 100 kilometers.

First there is the shared taxi from the Zambian border town. Apparently there used to be mini busses a year or two ago, but they were done away with since they weren't filling fast enough. Instead, little toyotas patrol back and forth from the border, leaving town when they fill up, shuttling people over, and then stuffing themselves full again before shuttling back. When I say little toyotas, I mean approximately 1998 camrys, not land rovers, and by full I mean at least 6 full grown adults -- not counting the driver. Four cram into the backseat, which isn't so bad, but then two more stuff themselves into the front passenger before the driver will even think of taking off. And in my ride, at least, I was not the biggest of these people. A feat I don't think I've seen attempted since college -- Picnic Day, usually -- and never without the influence, procurement, or escape from the consequences of, alcohol involved. (With adults in a sedan, at any rate, I can't even remember the record for the Chia car in high school, but I know it was a solid 2 digit number at the least).

Eventually we made it, though, and the driver kindly dropped me off exactly at the border post -- not before he and about 17 of his friends had even more kindly 'helped' me to exchange all my Zambian Kwacha for the Malawian brand. But the price was fair, and forex's are a pain, so even that wasn't so bad. I got myself stamped out of Zambia -- where the exit and security procedures include waving down the customs officer from his chat with the cold drink lady, having him stamp your passport without much inquisitiveness, and then being pointed in the direction of a large ledger book, where you are instructed to write down your name, country of origin, and mode of transport, for purposes that elude me, and probably the customs officer as well. What, if anything, is ever done with this book is a mystery to me, but I've learned its never a good idea to argue with the man holding the large rubber stamp, so I filled in the book and off I went. The same process essentially applies in Malawi, including the over-full toyota sedans and the men desperate to exchange cash. But finally I made it onto a bus heading to Lilongwe and into Malawi proper.

To be honest, I came prepared to love Malawi -- its talked up so much, "the lake of stars" "the warm heart of Africa"... -- so perhaps I was already a little biased, but certainly not dissapointed. I've been here two full days, and only to the capital, and so far I'm already in love. On the way in we passed three weddings (a pleasant departure from the funerals that always seem to line the sides of the road in South Africa), and two men walking down the road in traditional Chewa dress. I don't know why, but it still made me happy. The man next to me in the taxi took it upon himself to be my personal tour guide, pointing out "this one, it's Chewa culture! Of course!!" whenever we passed anything remotely Chewa-related, and punctuating everything with a huge laugh.

Today and yesterday I spent my time wandering old town Lilongwe, tomorrow I'll do the same, except with more purpose in mind. On friday I'm off to Likoma island, and will attempt to learn to Scuba dive, so money and sunblock will be the goals of the day.

Like a Hundred Million Hotdogs

Today I am in Lusaka after almost two weeks on the road. I got here via Botswana and Victoria Falls (sadly, the Zambian side only, I opted against a brief foray into Zimbabwe as a gift to you, mom) and tomorrow I start making my way into Malawi.

Northern Botswana is every image you have in your head about Africa, all distilled into one half of one country. Its full of huge expanses of bush and forests, crap roads, occasional small towns that are nothing much more than a couple of gas stations and a lady selling oranges, and rich tourists flying into remote $600 a night bush lodges on chartered planes to enjoy personal butlers and the chance to shoot/photograph something. Elephants, ostriches, giraffe, and all sorts of other animals wander the highways. A truck driver showed me the massive dent a buffalo made in the passenger-door one morning at 5am, a security guard at a campsite/lodge in the middle of nowhere (that I accessed by foot and not charter plane, by the way) told me stories of having to chase elephants out of the swimming pool with nothing more than a strobing flashlight (apparently elephants hate strobes, they run away from them instantly. So should you ever find yourself in the bush facing down an elephant... you're welcome.) I personally saw the ostriches and a giraffe just hanging out by the side of the road, not all that interested in the busload full of pointing Batswana -- and me.
Baobab trees also line the roads, and there's something really amazing and beautiful about those trees. I can't explain it, but there's a reason that they carry with them such a strong image of "the real Africa" (for whatever that phrase is worth) and are so iconic in so many people's imagination. They are, of course, enormous. As tall as a 3 or 4 story building, as big around as many houses I've seen, but their is also something vaguely silly about them. They're upside down trees, with their roots reaching up and who knows what going into the ground. But they are beautiful, and preposessing in a regal sort of way. They are old, old trees, that have seen a lot come and go over the centuries. If none of it bothered them, its hard to see a reason for you to get upset about what happened just an hour ago.

After Botswana I made my way into Zambia, across one of the tiniest borders in the world. The Botswana/Zambia border consists of about 25 feet of the Zambezi river, across which ferries that can hold all of 3 trucks and 40 people chug back and forth continually. Why the can't just build a bridge is a mystery to me -- the river can't be more than 30 feet across, and the lines of semis waiting for their turn on the ferry stretches at least the equivelant in miles -- but all the same, if you're on foot its pretty fun to cross borders on a ferry.
Crossing from Botswana to Zambia reminds me, in retrospect, of the crossing from South Africa into Mozambique -- calm to chaos, logic (as far as these things go) to anarchy. There is no line in the Zambian customs office (as much as there's ever a line anywhere in southern Africa) just a bunch of people shoving passports and 'temporary documents' at the customs officer, who stamped everything in site without much concern for the huge hordes of people, or the actual identity or nationality of the paper in front of him.
From the border I caught a public taxi with a driver who had decided to hang the days catch outside the window, and then drive at what couldn't have been over 70k/hour the whole 60k to Livingstone and so everything I own now reeks of dead Zambezi fish. On the plus side, he did drop me off exactly at the front door of where I was going -- after consulting 3 police officers, two other passengers, 5 ladies selling more dead fish at an open air market, and the guy who kept telling him he knew the exact address not once.

So, finally the next day I made it to Victoria Falls. Which is outstanding. I don't really have the words to describe it, its just the biggest thing you've ever seen, a cliff hundreds of feet long and that drops down sheer hundreds of feet down. Kayakers paddling around below you look like toys, and as the water falls over the cliff it hits with an unbelievable impact that -- in the rainy season -- can throw up plumes that can be seen as far as 2k away. I was reminded, watching the falls smash into the gorge below (and that is the word, the water falls so far that it literally smashes into the river underneath it) of nothing more than a sack of cement hitting the ground from 20 feet up, and throwing up dust all around it. And thats all water. Victoria Falls was originally known as Mosi Oa Tunya, the smoke that thunders, before Livingstone re-christened it, and the water is thrown up so far it looks like smoke, and hits so hard you can only be reminded of thunder. In the words of Eddie Izzard, we're going to have to take 'awesome' back (from who? from people like me, most of the time, unfortunately) because you can't just say that Victoria Falls, Mosi oa Tunya, is really really cool. It's awesome, in the original sense of the word.

Homeward Bound

(slowly)

As of yesterday morning, I am no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer. I have officially COSed, and therefore am officially no longer the US governments problem if I do something stupid. Which is probably comforting for all of us. I was going to have some long, summing up "wow, Peace Corps sure was great"post, but I just read the one I made a couple of weeks ago, and I can't really think of a better summary than that intense feeling of awe and gratitude. So I'll leave it. And besides, as I've been saying goodbye to almost every person who has kept me going in the last two years, I've decided that its not really the goodbyes or the last nights out, or the summing up that counts, its all the stuff that came before it. So lets not worry about the end of PC, because it was everything up until the end that matters.

About two weeks ago I took Jabu and Latoya to the big mall in Nelspruit to say goodbye. We got all dressed up and went to Spur (a 'wild west' steak house) and then to see Batman. Neither of them had ever been to a movie theater before, and I really wanted to do something special as a way of saying goodbye. Those two were my best friends, and I'm really going to miss them a lot. The thought of never seeing them again, not seeing the type of people that they will grow up to be, makes me so sad that I've justdecided not to think about it. I did write down addresses (of course!) and give them mine -- I also gave Latoya a couple of pre-stamped envelopes with my address already on it, so in theory all they have to do is put some words in an envelope and drop the envelope through a slot. That is at least a little comforting.

This morning I have been wandering Gabarone, in Botswana. This is the first step on my 10 week amble across southern and eastern Africa. Gabarone is an interesting city, very laid back, very calm, though that could be because I've been doing all my wandering on a sunday morning. Probably its a little more hopping monday through friday. But the people are nice and the houses don't look like maximum security prisons (pretoria -- I'm looking at you), which is a definite bonus. Tomorrow morning I move on to a city called Ghanzi in the middle of the Kalahari. I'm excited.