The World Wise Arrive in Bangkok

We left the dust, macro fauna, and con-artists of East Africa for clean, polite, smiling Bangkok. We arrived in the super modern Bangkok airport, and to our surprise, our bags had arrived and official tourist information directed us to a bus which took us exactly where we wanted to go! Thailand is made for traveling.

We found a clean, basic $10 hotel room in the tourist section of town. Everywhere in the streets vendors sold delicious foods and colorful clothing. We were surprised to find that we could shop at these stands without being accosted by desperate sellers. What a luxury to our tired minds! We bought some much needed new clothes and set out to see the city. Bangkok is child's play to a person who just traveled in Africa.

We walked in the humid morning air toward a series of large Buddhist temples. We talked constantly about Africa, which we were only starting to process. A smiling and unimposing Thai student greeted us. He was curious about us and informative as well. He told us that the large temple in front of us was closed to tourists due to a police holiday. Serendipity was in the air. He suggested some other temples to visit and even drew a numbered itinerary for us on our map. "Did you watch TV last night?" he asked. Of course we hadn't. "Well you must also go to Thai Silk." We assented. He found us a tuk-tuk and even haggled the tuk-tuk driver down for us. With smiles, we embarked on our tour.

First, we went to a stunning temple in northern Bangkok. The grounds had several temples, each one ornately painted, with shining gems inlaid into spiked roof edges that resemble flames. Inside the main temple was a large, serene, smiling, golden, shining Buddha sitting in Lotus position. We made customary bows and entered. All around the temple paintings depicted impermanence: a tiger eating human flesh, vultures hovering above a carcass, a meditator next to white human bones.

When we returned to the tuk-tuk, it was parked in the shade next to a rotund Thai man reclining with a cigarette. As the tuk-tuk driver went to the restroom, the man informed us that he was actually a lawyer in London. He was in Bangkok visiting his family. Cindy and he talked law a bit, and finally the conversation got around to Thai Silk. He was animated. "Did you watch TV last night?" Apparently we had really missed something special. The man described how he has all his suits shipped to England from Thailand, and that once they have your size, they can always make you a cheap, new suit. When the tuk-tuk driver returned, the rotund man wished us well on our travels. In Bangkok, everyone looks out for everyone else.

From there, we arrived at Thai Silk. "You are lucky!" the salesperson burst out, as he showed us luxurious fabrics. As we had already learned from the overweight lawyer, this was a one time deal for tourists; normally, only the Thai are allowed in the shop. "We normally do wholesale, but with the slump economy, we are opening this deal up to tourists." They brought us water and we looked at the cheap and good quality suits. Ultimately, we realized that this was not the time for suit shopping. As we left, the classy salesman transformed into a hawker, and tried to sell us herbal soap.

That was a sign of strange things to come. The tuk-tuk driver informed us that we had to go into a jewelery shop for him to get free gas. We obliged, shopping for 2 minutes and then returning. Next, he took us to another suit store, where he informed us that we needed to spend at least 10 minutes for him to get the free gas. We did. The suit sellers brought us coffee and we pretended to covet Armani.

Next, the driver dropped us off on a busy street and told us to walk up a narrow alleyway. The alleyway opened up to a crowded temple, ornate buildings, food vendors, a court for playing something like hackey-sack basketball, preachers, and a towering 50 foot Buddha facing east.

When we returned to find the driver, he was gone. We looked for him; we hadn't paid. He was nowhere. Strange. We still had three stops on our tour. We had no other option but ask strangers where we were.

Slowly, as we walked back to our hotel, we began to unravel the true nature of the events of the afternoon. We were abandoned mid-tour, shortly after hitting three shops. We had met two extremely friendly men, both of whom had hyped Thai silk, and both had used the curious phrase, "Did you watch TV last night?"

Duped! The whole "tour" was a scam. We had spent the day ensnarled in the vast suit-seller's conspiracy, whose agents lurk in the shadowy corners of temples all over Bangkok. Our tuk-tuk driver abandoning us had elucidated the true nature of this path of seemingly benign strangers.

The "student" initiated the sale. With a simple lie and polite interest, he got us into the tuk-tuk. He began to grease the gears by mentioning Thai Silk.

The "lawyer" poured butter on the roast. He won our trust, and then became the hype-man in the parking lot of an obscure Buddhist temple.

The tuk-tuk driver abandoned us because we were not buying cashmere suits or jewelery. Once he had collected his handouts from the stores for bringing us in, he no longer needed us. He dumped us on the side of the road at the closest temple.

We found our way back to our hotel and thought about our day. We realized that this was the best scam possible! We toured around in a tuk-tuk, saw some amazing temples, drank complimentary beverages, and woke up to our own naivetee in a benign way. We felt lucky as we walked into the humid night air to feast on delightful and spicy Thai food.

"Teacher, the baboon stole our bread!"

As we practiced the African art of waiting in the back office of Hell's Gate National Park, we felt like school children waiting in the principal's office after tattling on a bully. "Teacher, the baboon stole our bread!" We weren't sure if our tattling was merited, but like children who lacked skillful means, we didn't know what else to do. We waited and waited that afternoon, as clouds rolled in taming the ferocious sun and park rangers told us baboon tales.

The park rangers claimed that baboons target white skinned people; that they fear blacks; and that they fear in particular black skinned people wearing national park uniforms. The rangers, who were both amused by and empathetic to our plight, assured us that the baboons only want our food; they do not want to hurt us. They may show us their sharp teeth, inflame their red butts, rip our bags from our hands, tear open our tents, and poo on our non-edibles. Scaring us and maligning our belongings are simply means to consoling their deep pitiful hunger, so the rangers said. We mused over these tales feeling a smidge incredulous that the big baboon was really hungry and not simply mean and too lazy to find his own food.

Hell's Gate National Park is an awesome reserve full of beasts, all of whom appear to be feasting virtually nonstop. How dry, dusty canyon lands with red walls and pillars of columnar basalt sustain such great herds of eaters mystifies the untrained observer. Regardless, the park authorities permit visitors to cycle through the park unescorted, witnessing giraffes, buffaloes, zebras, gazelles, ostriches, warthogs, and bushbuck feeding across the savanna.

On the morning of our baboon encounter, we had cycled three kilometers into the park and up a sandy road to Naiburta Camp on a cliff overlooking the savanna. We selected the perfect campsite, set up our tent, and settled into the shade to eat and wait out the high sun hours.

We had eaten our fill and settled into the lazy heat when the thief, a large, lumbering baboon, appeared at our campsite. Cindy scampered into the sun, gathered rocks, and began hurling them at the beast, leaving Greg alone with the food. The baboon nary broke stride for the rocks, instead becoming ever larger and running directly towards Greg, or more precisely the food. The charging baboon puffed up his hair, flashed his gigantic canines and juicy pink gums, growled, maximized the muscles of his barrel chest, and Greg reacted by banging furiously on a pot. Without hesitation, the baboon ran right past Greg, plucked our bread from our belongings, and strutted over to a tree ten meters away where he plopped onto his red swollen behind and gorged himself, eyeing us smugly all the while.

With hot fear in our veins, we grabbed our remaining food and loose belongings, left the tent, and peddled back to the entrance where we tattled on the bad baboon. Ultimately, three armed rangers informed us that the punishment for stealing our bread would be "elimination." The rangers wrapped in shawls to disguise their national park uniforms, drove us in a nonregulation vehicle (the baboons recognize the park vehicles, too, the rangers said), and brought us with our bikes back to the campsite. When we arrived at the campsite, a safari tour, including four African guides, had set up camp and the baboon was nowhere in sight. The park rangers encouraged us to befriend the guides and continue our stay, which we did.

In the low sun of the late afternoon, we biked past giraffes, buffalo, warthogs, and gazelles out to a gorge at the north end of the park. We declined an English speaking park guide and instead ended up with a self-appointed non-English speaking Masai guide. Our old, jovial, happy-go-lucky, skinny as a rail guide led us limberly through a maze of rock walls, steaming hot springs, and florescent green moss. Down we hopped, with old skinny bones gesticulating the way, tasting bitter salts and splashing through hot waterfalls. We finished the tour and biked in the gloaming back to camp.

In a corner of our new African friends' campsite, we huddled around our stove. The park rangers had told us that the baboons go to sleep around 5 or 6PM, so we need not worry about them until morning. In the morning, the rangers would come back to check on us.

The bad baboon, however, stayed up late that night prowling the cliff side above the campsite well past 6PM. He eyed us haughtily from afar until he saw our sling-shot wielding African friend and sulked off into the darkness.

Before retiring to our tent, we secured our food and belongings in the safari van. Upon closing her eyes, Cindy was out like a light and slept like a rock.

Greg, on the other hand, riveted by his duty to protect his slumbering wife, spent the night consumed by baboon thoughts. He plotted about what he would do upon seeing a large canine or claw come through the tent. As he worked in his mind through the contingencies of a baboon attack, he held his wife with one arm and a large wooden stake with the other. He imagined beating the baboon with the wooden stake and handing Cindy his belt so she could simultaneously whip the beast. He worried that the smell of food lingered on our clothes and sleeping mats on which we had used the stove. He pondered the rangers' contradictory claims that the baboons would not hurt us, but that they are very dangerous. He envisioned the baboon chasing us from our tent and plotted how we could most quickly exit. He feared the worst: what if the baboon returned with one of his big male buddies and they attacked us together from both sides? Above all, Greg was certain that the baboon would be back at sunrise; he could not risk sleeping through sunrise since we must not be in the tent when the baboon arrived. Dreams of baboon canines filled the small spaces where Greg drifted out of plotting.

At last morning glow diluted the blackness and the day verged on sunrise. Greg shot upright, ready to get out of the tent and find the baboon. Cindy awoke deeply drowsy, beseeched Greg to stay in the tent, and slow like molasses began to get dressed.

In those long pre-dawn moments, the noises began: clearly the baboon was awake. This spurred us both out of the tent and over to our African neighbors' campsite. Waiting for the baboon to decimate our tent, we watched the colorful sunrise through the marbled clouds. Once the sun rose and the day became bright yellow, we saw the baboon in the distance. Shortly thereafter, an armed ranger arrived.

"The baboon will be eliminated," he assured us.

That morning we packed up camp and biked the Buffalo Circuit, a 14 kilometer loop, mostly uphill through rocks and soft sand, utterly unsuitable for biking. At times, we both walked a single bike up the road, as Cindy's strength sufficed only to overcome gravity's backward pull on the bike and pack and keep the bike upright. For Cindy, any forward movement came with excruciating effort. With one person pushing the bike from behind and the other balancing the bike in front, the task became manageable. In this manner, we leap-frogged the bikes up the most severe parts of the mountain.

The reward for our efforts was bliss: panoramas of pastoral Masai villages; the glassy shining Lake Naivasha; Mount Logonot's jagged crater silhouette; light playing on savanna and red columnar basalt; fields of grazing mammals; the feeling of exhaustion through exertion; breezing down the mountain; and biking out of the park to eat a meal far away from the big bad baboon.

Spider Video Coach: Border Crossing at Midnight

Spider Video Coach is an international bus providing service between Tanzania and Kenya. It's vaguely Spiderman themed (not to worry intellectual property rights hawks - it's only blue and red with spiderweb patterns and spider decorations). We highly don't recommend it - they drove off while Cindy was using the toilet (with poor Greg left on the bus frantically flipping through a Swahili dictionary for the words "wife" and "shitter") and then stuffed her in a taxi with four others to meet the bus beyond the police check point since we were over the legal weight limit. Here's an open letter to the driver who tried to abandon us around midnight at the Kenyan border:

Dear Driver of the Spider Video Coach,

What were you thinking?

We did everything right. We obediently lined up at customs on the Tanzanian side, we filled out the those little blue forms, we helped those without the writing skills to complete their paperwork, we walked through the leaches lurking in the shadows between the two borders who tried to take our money and steal our passports, we filled out identical paperwork on the Kenyan side, we paid money for visas, we bought snacks and sodas, and we smoked cigarettes while leaning against dim light poles. In short, we did everything that a busload of border-crossers should do. We asked only that you complete your duty, as our coach driver, to pick us back up on the Kenyan side and finish this long journey.

But instead, you turned off the lights in the coach, tilted your seat back as far as it would go, and took a nap! When we finally went back to get you, you said that we wouldn't go until morning! You made us bring you to the police station as if we were an angry mob! We were not angry, we were only tired, but we played our roles impeccably. The angry fat woman was loud. The bulky intimidator had toothpick in his mouth. The incredulous young woman shook her head and laughed. Mr. Rational gesticulated vigorously. The token muzungus were mute and observant.

When you finally put the coach in gear and creeped through the dim border crossing, we could only wonder, what is going on in your head?

Sincerely,

The 6:30 am from Dar es Salaam to Nairobi, Feb 20, 2009

Black Star: Zanzibar

Arrival in Zanzibar

Strip yourself naked. Coat your entire body in syrup. Now put your clothes on. Next step into the kitchen, a white box with windows everywhere, filled with bright white sunlight. Look around at vats of rolling boiling steaming water. Bakers pull loaves of bread out of giant ovens, accompanied by invisible, puffy clouds of hot air. Relax - you cannot fight this. This is Zanzibar.

Now close your eyes and spin around in circles. Open your eyes and step into Stone Town. Before you can orient yourself, the papasi (Swahili for "ticks") are on you. In Zanzibar, you will be dining always with insects, licking their chops in anticipation of dining with and on you. But the papasi are not bugs - they are touts. They are not after your food and blood, but more benignly, your money. Futile though it may seem, you might as well start waving your arms and swatting now; it actually does help. Just as a waive of your arm will shoo a fly away from your beer, a firm "no thank you" ("la asante") along with a convincing recitation that you know exactly where you are, where you are going, how you plan to get there, and what you will do there, will persuade the papasi to disengage.

Realistically though, if you are disoriented from the hot sticky spinning, the papasi can be of service to you: they know where you are and can quickly figure out where you'd like to go. Within minutes, they can lead you through the crazed maze of asymmetric, crowded, crumbling streets and land you in a quiet, cool place with an enterprising Zanzibarian proprieter.

Whether through your own wits or with the help of papasi, the shock of arrival passes after you settle into your own space in a Muslim residential neighborhood, complete with mosquito net, fan, and bed. You learn quickly that Stone Town, the old Arab labyrinth of narrow streets, courtyards, ornate doors, and crumbling facades, is small, with the sea to the east and the Creek Road markets to the west. With this orientation it's easy to feign confidence and not get lost.

At sunset, you watch the Zanzibarian acrobats (kids) flipping and splashing into the hot sea. You dine on skewers of fresh seafood - so many kinds - and BBQ'd bananas; sip lime and sugar cane juice, and spice coffee. Watch the sun go down. Amble over to groove to the mesmerizing music of Sauti za Busara ("Sounds of Wisdom").

Sauti za Busara

Our intent in visiting Zanzibar was to fulfill Greg's long held dream of becoming fully saturated in the rhythmic arpeggios of African music. Sauti za Busara is a music festival held annually in Zanzibar showcasing music from around Africa. We learned of the festival while listening to the best radio show in Seattle, the joyful Best Ambiance, KEXP's African music show (6-9pm and you can stream it at kexp.org).

Mingling of cultures at the festival resulted in irony. Zanzibar is a conservative Muslim island and a booming tourist destination. Full burkas (eye-slits only) are about as common as bikinis. At the festival, the mingling of conservative Zanzibarians and tourists manifested as a rather subdued Zanzibarian majority, who were content to sit on the ground and listen politely to the music, and a Western minority who stood up and shook booty to epic African rhythms.

Another obvious mingling of cultures was the Arab influence on the native Zanzibarian music. The Arabian Kingdom of Oman took over Zanzibar for about 300 years, including the Sultan moving his palace to Zanzibar. The resultant Swahili culture is a fusion of Arab and African influences. The island, indeed, has a dark history of international influence, characterized by trade and colonization, including the famous spice trade and the infamous slave trade. It wasn't until the mid-20th Century that the Africans at last took control of Zanzibar.

Hence, another highlight of the festival was taarab music, an Arabic-styled music characterized by powerful singing, driving rhythm (bongos, tabla, hand drum), string instruments (qanun - many stringed instrument played on the lap, the guitar-like oud, violins, and double bass), and accordions. Men led the taarab singing and a chorus of women in head scarves sang high, nasal harmonies in refrain. All the taarab musicians sang in unison, resulting in overwhelming shear power.

Also outstanding at the festival were the powerful, dignified female musicians. This was particularly unexpected considering the pervasive sexism and overwhelming passivity of many women in Africa.

The Maasai singer, Carola Kinasha, commanded center stage. She appeared statuesque, calm, radiating peace, and dressed from head to toe in flowing gold robes. Like a goddess, Carola sang with a booming voice and appeared absolute and eternal, as if beyond the scope of any single life. Next to Carola was her youthful sidekick, wearing a tight fitting Western-style red dress. The joker, she danced crazy and hyperactive to every song, shaking it for all she was worth, showing off all that she had, then collapsing of exhaustion at the end of a song. The supporting cast, incidentally, was a large group of men wearing gray shirts, who sang, layed down fantastic rhythms, funky bass lines, and an occasionally well-placed solo.

The star of the festival was Bi Kidude, a 95 year old Zanzibarian woman. Bi Kidude sings in the taarab and unyago styles (Arabic influenced Swahili music). She appeared frail and was led on stage slowly, wearing a blue print head wrap and dress of the same fabric that hung loosely on her thin frame. It was impossible to see whether or not her eyes were open. Behind her, the taraab band played furiously, rhythmically, a long Arabic melody with little quanun flourishes over quarter tones. Bi Kidude stood perfectly still for what seemed like a very long time swaying slightly. Could she hear the music? Could she see the microphone in front of her? Did she know where she was? The musicians played on. A local kept reassuring us in broken English, "She can sing! She can sing!"

Finally, her face broke, she licked her lips a little, and her powerful voice burst into a traditional Swahili song. The crowd went wild. Bi Kidude finished her song, bowed several times, and was led off the stage. In addition to her singing, Bi Kidude is legendary for her fascinating life and the role she has played in educating young women.

The rest of the festival was a blur of guitars, drums, and harmonies. We saw everything from folk music to Swahili hip-hop to music documentaries. Every night, we returned exhausted to our Stone Town abode to await another day of music and being accosted by papasi.

East Coast Zanzibar

People are a lot more like folding chairs than the Western mind might imagine. They're a lot more rubbery, too, and rubberiness can be maintained well into old age. Men don't really need twenty-four inches between their knees to accommodate their manhood; manhood is squishy enough for knees and thighs to press fully together. Sitting on one's hands eases the piercing grind of the pelvic sit bones on wood. Disassociation from one's own legs, such that they become indistinguishable from the fifty or so other legs in the truck bed, is a normal coping mechanism. Twenty-five people and more can sit on benches in the back of a single pickup truck with seven big bundles of firewood, four buckets of fry fat, two oversized backpacks, two bicycles, bunches of bananas, bundles of metal strips, and a bucket of fish strapped on top. These are truths to be gleaned from a ride on a Zanzibarian daladala.

We rode a daladala from Stone Town to Bweju, a beach town on the eastern coast of Zanzibar. Here we found villages of limestone houses brimming with children. Ducks sipped from puddles. Straight-backed women clothed from head to toe in colorful wraps strode with perfect posture into the Indian Ocean, casting fishing nets. Cows plodded, ribs showing, across white sand beaches. Two men and thirty small children pulled a wooden dhow out of the sea. The pitiless sun bleached or burned everything; the merciful wind blew nonstop. A giant coconut thudded heavily in the sand narrowly missing one head.

In Bweju, we practiced our Swahili greetings:

Zanzibarian: Jambo! (Hello)

Mzungu (white person): Sijambo! (Hello)

Zanzibarian: Karibu! (Welcome)

Mzungu: Asante sana. (Thank you very much)

Zanzibarian: Habari. (How are things?)

Mzungu: Nzuri. (Good)

Zanzibarian: Mambo? (How's it going?)

Mzungu: Poa. (Fine)

Repeat two or more times, mixing in "sana" (very) for variation, and you have a rudimentary dance that will suffice as a Swahili greeting. Swahili greetings are extravagant. They repeat. They ramble. They know time to be slow and sprawling.

Our Zanzibarian proprietor, Ali, told us "karibu" fifty or more times. He prepared us each a whole fish fresh from the sea, complete with lips, jagged teeth, and eyes; eggs still hot from laying; lime-covered salads; roasted aubergine & potatoes; mounds of rice pilau. The villagers, Ali's big family, crossed through Ali's place freely, oftentimes stopping to charge a cell phone and exchange a lengthy greeting.

After a few days of exploring the east coast, we folded our rubbery selves into the daladala back to Stone Town. Wizened now, armed with a small cache of Swahili words, we wove through the papasi, to the ferry, back to Dar, and on to Kenya.

"Give me my money"

We are currently in Nairobi, returning from an excursion to Zanzibar for a music festival, seafood, and tropical beaches. More on that later. Now, we would like to address an elephant, not the savanna or forest elephants, but one of the elephants in the room.

On a typical Ugandan afternoon, we are walking along one of the ubiquitous red, muddy roads in a rural village, when three small boys appear out of the banana grove with machetes in their hands. "Give me my money!" one shouts to us and holds out his hand. We try to ignore him. "One hundred!" chimes in another. The other boy is silent - he is too busy peeling a large piece sugarcane with his machete. We chuckle slightly and keep walking. We know that we will encounter an identical gaggle of kids 100 meters on, who will appear bearing sharp implements, ask for money, and then fall into laughter.

This peculiar phrase, "Give me my money," is repeated daily by Ugandan children to passing white foreigners. The phrase begs many questions. Is "my" merely a poorly chosen possessive pronoun, or is this something deeper? Is this a demand for post-colonial retribution by the legacy of an exploited population? Is the child expressing the lopsided trading structure of developing and developed countries? Perhaps this is simply a communal view of property? Or a symbol of the longstanding foreign aid from the developed world to many African countries?

Probably this is simply an example of poor English and an encounter between poor people and people who are richer than any villager's wildest dreams. Our skin color tells them that we are rich and they are right. The phrase is an ill-executed business venture, a simple plea to get what they want and we have, like us broadcasting our resumes when we are desperate for employment, even for positions for which we are not qualified and have almost no chance of getting.

Witnessing widespread poverty has a deep effect on one's emotional and mental state. We all know that poverty exists, but it is usually a concept. When one travels, the concept becomes a reality. People react in a variety of ways to this reality; they react with humility, pride, sorrow, guilt, anger, irritation, confusion, or even paranoia. Humility comes from knowing that your own wealth is largely a product of the place in which you happened to be born. Pride is the result of knowing that your bank account is full, that you and your ancestors did something right. Sorrow and helplessness often accompany scenes of widespread poverty, like watching a legless man crawl up to you in the hot sun from 100 meters away, only to wave hello to you at your knees (this happened while we were haggling with a truck driver for a cheaper ride). Guilt and anger come from pondering solutions to poverty, observing the historical legacy of North-South relations, and at the fact that so few of our resources (human or other) are channeled into humanitarian purposes. Irritation, confusion and paranoia come from the constant harassment that can be traveling: you are a target, a walking dollar sign, a young, tremendously rich person who must continuously bat away advances from all directions.

In Uganda, there are many hardworking subsistence farmers, many thousands (perhaps millions) of small business owners, as well as many people with vast tracts of idle time. From the western viewpoint, this is a vast waste of potential.

One story comes to mind. On a sweltering afternoon, we strolled into Bigodi to arrange a wild-life walk in a local wetland sanctuary. Having decided to do the walk the next day, we idled away the hottest hours in an empty restaurant, drinking warm soda and chatting with the proprietor. After a while, we decided to play pool on the uneven pool table under the thatched roof in the front of the establishment. In no time, an audience of twelve people had gathered, including kids on break from school, old men, and men of working age. These observers huddled close and expressionlessly watched us play. Good shot, bad shot, scratch, jump shot: nothing riled the crowd. They only politely moved out of the way when we were setting up a shot and about to whack someone in the head with a pool cue.

We played a single game (Cindy somehow won despite being ignorant of the rules), and walked back to our campsite through small fields of banana, cassava, rice, coffee, maize, and other crops. We realized that not only did our "fans" not have 500 shillings (25 US cents) to play a game of pool, but that the best thing to do, indeed the only thing happening that afternoon, was to watch us play pool.

We travel through a land of economic conundrums. What is going to happen to this place? What should happen to this place? Is this situation good, bad, or neutral for the average Ugandan? Which way is this region moving? Besides observation and conversation, we have some books in our heavy mobile library to help us ponder these questions.

We arrived on the continent in the midst of the economic "crisis" in the US, with the relevant book Origins of Financial Crisis by George Cooper. The book debunks the free market myth, showing with simple examples that while the "invisible hand hypothesis" applies to commodities markets, it does not apply to lending and investment markets where rational lending and investing creates bubbles and busts. Fascinating as these concepts are to us in the West, they do not apply here in Africa, where the basic foundations of wealth-generating markets scarcely exist. There is no bailout for Africa.

Two reads offer strikingly different takes on corruption in Africa. The Fate of Africa by Meredith is a 600 page post-colonial history of the nations of Africa. The book is a mass of names, dates, cities, and improbable events, but the major thesis is that leadership in African countries has been so atrocious that all potential has been squandered. Until the very last page, Meredith describes a tangled mess of corruption from which he offers little hope.

On the other hand, in The End of Poverty, Jeffery Sachs writes about his experience with free market reform in countries all over the world. In a chapter about Africa, he argues forcefully that precious little foreign aid to Africa actually goes to helping Africans develop economically. Rather, foreign aid goes to crisis management (i.e. emergency food aid) and expensive Western consultants (who often propose solutions that assume Africa to be far more like the west than it really is). Sachs argues that corruption in Africa is not the cause of Africa's failure to thrive; that corruption is on par with similarly poor countries elsewhere in the world; and that only education and economic opportunity will reduce corruption, and not the other way around.

In The Shadow of the Sun, Polish journalist, Ryszard Kapuscinski, interweaves his personal tale of traveling as a journalist in Africa with African political history. He emphasizes that for people who are struggling to survive, all else is irrelevant. Education has very little meaning to a subsistence farmer; rainfall, a few tools, peaceful neighbors, and a decent supply of charcoal are life.

We conclude this entry on poverty from an internet cafe in Nairobi, a place where we feel very much at home. We are surrounded by middle class Africans who move like they have places to be and socialize like they have things to talk about.

So what can we conclude from life on the ground? Our observations and conversations show that many struggle every day trying to fulfill basic needs in a place where the safety net does not exist. Regardless, people survive while demonstrating mind-boggling acumen: the man walks down a chaotic Kampala street carrying a refrigerator on his head; our guide, Bosco, grabs a metal pot of boiling water out of the fire with his bare hands; the knee high child bounds silently up the steep rocky trail from the bottom of a deep valley. Material progress comes slowly: a few roads are built, a few cell-phone towers are put up, a few schools are opened, a few opportunities are gained.

Who knows, perhaps someday the boy with the machete and the poor grammar will sit all day at a computer terminal with a little roll of fat hanging over his waistband, filling his bank account with shillings.

Until next time,

C and G

30 hour bus ride

We sat in a European-style cafe in Jinja, enjoying the perfect chi of perfect decor while sipping perfect espresso drinks when one thing became unquestionably clear: we would be taking a 30 hour bus ride from Jinja to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Having just returned from a five day trek in the mountains compounded our enjoyment of our splurge at the cafe. However, we did not interrupt our routine lives of pleasure and comfort in Seattle merely to step into a travel life of the very same routine and pleasure we find at home. There are many ways to get from Jinja to Dar es Salaam, but in the decadence of that cafe, only the 30 hour bus trip seemed right for us.

We left Jinja (and dearest brother, Joe) on Monday afternoon at 4PM. Our Akamba bus was not special: no AC, no frills, and probably no shock absorbers. But the driver was proficient and in some respects heroic, as he bounced us tenaciously along unimaginably riveted, pot-holed dirt roads. We crossed into Kenya in a few hours and at 7PM the orange sun set, the hazy moon rose, and the Kenyan night came fast.

Those nighttime hours en route to Nairobi blurred with dozing, restless sleep, heat, humidity, and interminable bouncing, like a ship in rough waters. We reached Nairobi around 4AM in a half-asleep stupor and waited for two hours for our bus to depart for Dar. In the meantime, we found African milk tea, news on the TV, and a really nice freshly scoured Asian squat toilet that smelled like Ajax and was worth much more than the thirteen cents we paid to use it.

At 6AM, we joined our African colleagues, who were bundled up against the "cold" of night in coats, scarves, and hats, to board the bus to Dar. The conductor passed us small cakes, pea samosas, and boiled eggs for breakfast and we set off at 6:30. The sun rose at 7AM, revealing a landscape very different from the fecund, populated greenery with which we had become familiar in Uganda. Dry, flat, brown lands peppered with shrubs, herd animals, and lone herders sprawled into the distance. Time passed in arrhythmical spurts of sleep and hazy consciousness for another few hours until we crossed into Tanzania around 9AM.

After wading through touts, hassles, and confusion at the border, we boarded the bus again around 10AM. We drove on and on....it felt and looked similar to driving though Montana. Grand purple mountains rose in the distance all around us. The land appeared vast, parched, brown, and far less populated than Uganda. Herds of cows and goats grazed and mud huts were covered with metal rather than plant fibers. The villages were only slightly greener than their surroundings and the ubiquitous Ugandan farmer was naught to be seen. As the day wore on, the luscious smell of meat roasting wafted through the bus.

We stopped briefly in Arusha, where clouds obscured Mt. Kilamajaro. Each stop was brief...barely enough time to find a toilet. On one stop, Greg got yelled at for peeing outside the loo. At another, Cindy got swindled into buying two rotten bananas for $1. The sun set at 7PM. The heat was intense; sweat was profuse; all inside the bus was sticky.

Akruba was scheduled to arrive in Dar at 7PM, but we didn't get in until 10:30PM. The hyper-vigilant taxi driver who stormed us after we got off the bus informed us that the hotel where we planned to stay was closed. He knew a better hotel - just as cheap and brand new. He'd take us there.

We believed it was a scam. But we were too tired, dirty, and unempowered to care. We bounced another few blocks along unpaved roads to....a really nice, clean, cheap hotel with AC? Yes, we did. We never would have found the place ourselves. It was gem hidden amidst piles of rusty corrugated metal roof panels.

We took the room, showered, watched the TV, slept, and in the morning decided to stay another night. After a day exploring Dar, we ferried off to Zanzibar, where we now sweat by the sea - more about this decadence later.

Peace,

C & G

Snaps and Haikus

We are currently in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, after a 30 hour bus ride. . . more on that later. For now, we are writing about the eight days we spent in Eastern Uganda near the Kenyan border, including three nights in Sipi, five days backpacking on Mt. Elgon, and a night in Mbale.

Backpacking allows one to settle into a place, live with rhythm, heighten the senses, and suffer miserable discomfort. Five days in the wilderness left us with calm spirits, remarkable images, and a mad desire for calories. We gazed at a distant peak covered in clouds, we slowly and gruelingly ascended, we slept in a cave as bats plopped guano on our tent, we weathered inclement rain, we brewed coffee and tea, we devoured food fit only for the hungry, we had interesting conversations in smokey huts, we labored under a thin oxygen supply, we rediscovered the endless farm that is Uganda, and, finally, we gazed back at a distant peak covered in clouds.

A narrative of a backpacking trip would be fine ennui; the feeling of backpacking is better represented in images. The following are images in pictures and haikus. The pictures represent scenes and landscapes in moments that a finger happened upon the camera trigger. The haikus depict little observations that stuck to our minds, which we then stuffed into the 5-7-5 syllable haiku format. We amused ourselves by writing them on a windy afternoon in our tent at Mude Cave. We had to reduce the quality on the pictures by 90% to get them to upload. We had to reduce the quality of the haikus to make them digestable for the public.

-C and G

Matatu: Jinja to Sipi

Boy sitting on man,
brother sitting on sister,
four people; one seat.

Sipi Farm Girl

Girl walks goat through town
rope tied to goat's leg stretches
across red mud road.

Below Sipi Falls

Red winged starling tied
to a string, last gasp flapping.
The boy shows it off.

Lunch in Sipi

A local hotel:
mud walls, dirt floors, three benches.
We eat rice and beans.

Trekking Mt. Elgon

Heavy backpack, hunched
head down, watching feet step on
tough tiny flowers.

Night in Tutum Cave

Waterfall slapping
on left. Crazy bats squeaking
on right. Fall asleep.

Supper on the mountain

My legs like basalt,
heavy with lactic acid.
Squat down and eat gruel.

Wagagai Peak

The everlasting
flowers bloom on the extinct
volcano Elgon.

Morning Alarm

"Cah!" - We from the tent
burst, to scare Raven from food.
He makes a poor thief.

While boiling afternoon tea

Why are these little
white butterflies falling from
above? Are they dead?

A smoky conversation with Beca at the fire

In Kapchorwa, the
boys are circumcised at age
18. They can't cry.

Descending Elgon

Enter a new world:
"Wahhhh!" "Mooooo!" "Cock a doodle doo!"
Civilization.

A conversation in Mbale about polygamy

The first daughter of
wife number one vows to us
never to marry.