Sightings from the Road

I'm on the road again. Selous was mildly disappointing (expectations were probably too high) , got back to Dar and am getting to work. I am three days into a whirlwind tour of Tanzania, I need to visit VGIF sites (give them money: www.thegildersleeve.org/) all over the country as well as a few in Malawi, Rwanda and Uganda. I've already visited one (almost two) and it included a couple dozen women dancing and singing upon my arrival..

I am not a big fan of the actual travelling (sitting on buses, etc), but in the three days it's taken me to get from Dar es Salaam to Mbeya (South, near the Malawi border) there have been some high points. The biggest highway (if you can call it that) runs from Dar all the way to Zambia, and it has been a good re-introduction to actual travelling ( not travelling = sitting on the beach for a week before moving on to the next beach). And despite it being well paved it actually bisects Mikumi national park just 5 hours out of the capital.

I knew that the road went right through and was considering doing a little safari there later, but didn't realize the animals would come to me. While hurtling down the road in a full sized bus averaging a respectable 40 miles per hour, I saw (I eventually started keeping track):

a huge warthog
about 30 giraffes
probably 200 Impala
8 Elands
a couple troops of baboons
10ish Elephants
7 buffaloes
15 or so Zebras
a bunch of birds

I'm sure I missed at least as many animals on the other side of the bus, and who knows how much I missed simply because we were going too fast.. It was impressive. I probably saw as much as I did driving around for a whole day in Selous.

While I haven't seen much wildlife apart from the aforementioned 45minutes, the bus travel has not been as bad as dreaded, I've met some nice people, and have gotten far away from the tourist traps. While not spotting animals I have continued my quest to find the most awesome vintage t-shirt of the trip (are t-shirts more or less ironic if the person wearing it can't read what it says?). As you may be aware, much of the clothing that people don't want, ends up in Africa. But with today's crazy fashion trends, the shirts that people donated 10 years ago would actually be cool today, maybe Africa should start re-selling them back.. anyway I have seen a parade of obscure shirts that the hipsters of Oakland would die for, not to mention various Red Sox shirts that I considered making an offer for (an 1986 AL Champs shirt!!). However my favorite t-shirt, I spotted just the other day on a kid trying to sell stuff to our bus near Iringa:

Arlington Boys and Girls Club
Patriot Day Fun Run

sponsored by: Cambridge Savings Bank



as a CSB customer I felt proud. I tried to take a picture, but alas, somethings in life you can't capture in a picture anyway. And the regular occurrence of awesome t-shirts always brightens my day.

Malawi tomorrow.



(PS. I got a cell phone: +255 788 510 954)

Ice Cream and Camouflage

I am in the big city with all the accompanying hustle and bustle intensified by the hot equatorial sun, but I have to admit I am enjoying it. As much as I love going to wilderness (and I am going to the storied Selous tomorrow!!), I am a city-boy at heart.

One of the joys of city life here in Tanzania is ice cream. I don't think I have appreciated ice-cream this much in a long time. It has been a while since I have been some place this hot without much air-conditioning, but with a consistent enough electricity supply to support freezer technology. It is not Toscanini's quality by any means, but there is something very satisfying about the cold, creamy, sweet indulgence when you are still sweating after the sun goes down (and generally the ice-chip content is very low). All the fancy ice cream in the world is great, but it is a very different experience. I don't eat much real food during the day when it is this hot, but I am more than making up for any caloric deficiencies with ice-cream bars and shakes.

My second anecdote is not related to dessert at all. But is connected to Dar's quaintness despite it being a humongous city. This post was just going to be about ice-cream, but as this happened while I was walking in the street just 10minutes ago, I felt I had to share. I was walking along minding my own business when two police officers (or they could have been soldiers, it's a little hard to tell the difference, they all have big guns) stop me and ask me how I'm doing. I say fine and start to keep walking, and they tell me to stop and I am told that it is against the law in this country to wear the camouflage shorts that I am wearing..

Now I've actually been told this before by people that I've met, but since I only have two pairs of shorts, it's not really feasible for me to stop wearing one of them, and I am mzungu after all..

So I tell the cop I won't wear them anymore, but he says I need to pay a 20,000 shilling fine (about $16) or go to jail for a year. His partner doesn't seem as into this and asks me where I am going, and seems legitimately interested in helping to orient me (though I'm not lost). So I call his bluff, and say, "let's go to the police station so I can pay my fine". So we start walking around the corner, and of course the first one asks me for the money now, and I tell him I'll pay at the station. His partner meanwhile is pointing out the street that goes toward my hotel, so I ignore the guy trying to shake me down, thank the one giving me unnecessary directions and walk away.

It was almost cute how unpersistent this representative of Dar es Salaam's finest was. This really is a big frantic city (as evidenced by the 6 dalla-dalla rides I took yesterday with a person from a local NGO), but I could definitely imagine getting to like it.

My Father's Photos

Here are some pictures from my dad's camera from when my parents visited me..

JakeAfrica

p.s. I just got to Dar Es Salaam.. big city living; real internet, phones, cheap Indian food, etc. Starting VGIF work tomorrow!

Kilimanjaro Photos

Kilimanjaro definitely exceeded all expectations, It was beautiful, but I guess I didn't really know what to expect before I got there. I thought there wouldn't be much snow, but the glaciers were pretty legitimate, no California 'glaciers' here, but I also thought crampons etc would be necessary, not so much. It was really just a big hike, but pretty different than your average backpacking trip..

Kilimanjaro

So things I noticed:

Luxury:
I am not used to having my bag carried for me and all my meals cooked and brought to me in my tent while I rested.. and I went with a 'budget' operator. Felt a little awkward watching my backpack go up the trail with my stuff in it, but saving 2% of the total cost so I could carry it didn't really seem worth it. (Does every porter in the world smoke cigarettes?) There were about 3-4 people supporting each client on the mountain (guides, porters, etc).

It wasn't really that tough of a hike:
I think the altitude gets a lot of people, but since I was in Ethiopia at 9,000ft for the previous three months it wasn't much of a problem for me. I was at camp most days before 2pm and I think I gained weight with all the good food I was eating. The summit day was tough, but overall it was very enjoyable.

Obama:
My first night on the mountain happened to coincide with the Obama inauguration. I thought I was going to miss the speech, but my cook had a portable radio with him, and I listened to the historic speech huddled in the cold at 7000ft listening to el presidente with some locals 6000 miles from Washington DC who were as rapt as I was.. pretty memorable.

Zanzibar

I'm on Zanzibar!

I don't think I knew Zanzibar was a real place. I thought it was one of those made up places whose name is meant to evoke the ends of the earth, like Timbuktu or something.. even being here it doesn't seem quite real; turquoise water (SCUBA not surfing), powdery white sand, dhows, spice plantations, etc.

A nice place to visit. I was able to have my visit coincide with the Sauti Za
Busara (words of wisdom) Music Festival as well [www.busaramusic.org/]; East African music festival, big party in an old fort with really great music, good times.. Stonetown itself is really cool as well, a historic city (carved doors, sultans, tiny twisting alleys that sooner or later end up on the beach..

Zanzibar

Swahili Time

There are a number of boats one can to get from Pemba to Zanzibar. The "fast ferry" takes 2 1/2 hours, and costs 45 dollars (well it costs $45 for wazungu, about 10 for locals). My plan was to take a slower boat ($20, 4.5 hours).. So I arrive in the port town the night before, find the one (awesome) guesthouse on a hill overlooking the water, and in talking to people there find out that there is another boat that isn't really advertised to tourists that is even cheaper, though it is slow and it leaves in the middle of the night and gets to Stonetown in the morning. So I go down to the port to check it out, and amazingly there is a stand right there selling tickets. I pay slightly more than locals ($11 instead of $8), there is some confusion about how much to charge me, and the woman gives me an official looking ticket with only a couple things scratched out in pencil, and writes in the check-in box: 18:00, and departs: 9:00..

But I am getting ahead of myself. I should first explain that in Tanzania (and I believe Kenya and other places) there is something called "Swahili Time". It is not a state of mind like "island time" or "african time" where everything is late (though things are often late). There is actually an alternate clock where our 6am is 12:00, it is still a 24hour system, but everything is off by 6 hours. They actually do the same thing in Ethiopia (Habesha Time), but they had a different calendar and everything (13 months in a year, and they were like 7 years behind). However in Ethiopia they were a lot more consistent about it, when people told you times, especially if it was in Amharic it was usually Habesha Time. In Tanzania the problem is lack of consistency (it's not that hard to add or subtract six hours, but you have to know when to do it). Here I think people are a little more wazungu focused, so they try to help you out by converting, but when language is an issue it can be a little confusing..

So when the person selling ferry tickets indicated that it departed at 9:00, I tried to clarify. My strategy is usually to say the number in the local language indicating Swahili or Habesha Time, and say the corresponding time in English, but with my poor Swahili, it can be hard to tell if everyone is on the same page. I tried to confirm the departure time (The check in time made no sense to me, it was at least 3 hours prior and may have been 9). I had been told that it left in the middle of the night and got there in the morning, so eventually I came to the conclusion that it left at 3am. So I went back to the guesthouse, and even confirmed with a kid working there, and settled in for a 3am departure, set my alarm for 1:30 (there really didn't seem to be a reason to 'check-in' too early) and mentally prepared myself for a restless night..

I was reading a John Grisham book on a lounge chair at 9:15 when the owner of the guesthouse comes running up to me a little frantic, telling me I am going to miss the boat. It was in fact scheduled to leave at 9:00pm, and though we could see it was still at the dock from our vantage point, it was to be leaving at any moment! So I drop the book, grab my backpack, hoped I had everything (no electricity, so no lights) and I run down the hill towards the town. My bag is heavy, so it turns into more of a determined walk, but thankfully the owner comes after me on a moped; I jump on the back, and we speed down all the way down the jetty to the ferry.

The boat doesn't actually end up leaving until around 10 o'clock, and I'm not sure I learned anything from the experience. Usually six hours is enough to make it fairly obvious which time is in question, but not always.. The night on the boat wasn't even too bad. Being the only mzungu made me lots of friends. I did get into a delicate conversation about the book I was reading, Infidel (the coast and the islands in particular are very Muslim), someone even gave me a wicker-type mat and I was able to stretch out on the deck, and I slept most of the way. Ended up in Stonetown 9 hours (and only 50km) later, not too much the worse for wear, though I'm thinking of taking a faster boat back to the mainland..

Safari

Belated Safari photos!

The best pictures may be on my father's camera as he had a zoom, but I got some good landscapes and shots of animals that were really close to us. Pretty amazing to see really, check it out:

Safari

TIA

This Is Africa:

So I am eating breakfast Monday morning (the morning after the SuperBowl) watching the news on television. It is tuned to a local channel (TBC, Tanzanias Broadcast Corporation??) but it's an English language broadcast picked up from a Russian station. The news seems pretty normal, at little Soviet centered (they were advertising an special on South Ossetia) but it’s enough to keep me occupied while I am eating my eggs. Then the sports news comes on (or "Sport" as the rest of the world seems to call it), so I expect to at least get a score from the game. The coverage was pretty indepth; it covered most of Europe's major soccer leagues, even got into track and field a little bit, but there wasn't even a mention of the Superbowl.. silly American.

The next day (I really don't like the Steeler's) I am taking a quick 5 hour ferry over to the island of Pemba in the Zanzibar Archipelago. The boat ride is pretty uneventful (there was a loud noise and a little smoke at one point, but evidently it was inconsequential) and as we are getting to our destination a man comes up to the deck I’m on, selling soap. Now this in itself is not unusual, one is never lacking opportunities to buy food, toothpaste, bed sheets, or anything else whether you are sitting on a bus or in a café. However what made this particular moment in capitalism auspicious was how many customers the guys had. In the 15 minutes he was selling his soap he probably had 20 customers, buying an average of 5 bars. I guess I’ll never know if it was great soap or a fantastic bargain because I didn’t buy any, but I can’t imagine the set of circumstances that caused so many people to purchase soap on the Pemba ferry…

Superbowl Sunday Update

Trying to upload my Tanzania pictures, but not having much luck. I can't complain, the internet here is way better than it was in Ethiopia. I have been at the beach north of Pangani, and am now heading towards the islands (Zanzibar and Pemba).. if god wills the boat to arrive. I actually really like the town I am in (Tanga [pictured]) it is a pretty big city (for Tanzania) but it is really laid back, maybe because it is so hot, maybe it's because there aren't too many wazungu around.


I have been reading in the shade with the nice ocean breeze, etc.. I still have plenty of good books from my parents resupply that I don't have to worry about using up my good ones (that is a real thought I have sometimes, the bookexchanges are slimpickings around here) and I am building up my good karma by leaving good books for other people, so it should all work out.


Visited some caves today that are supposedly the biggest limestone cave network anywhere in the world, they were pretty impressive (see picture). I wasn't even planning on stopping here, I have been doing the major tourist highlights (Serengeti, Kilimanjaro), after Zanzibar it will definitely be more off the beaten track, and I am looking forward to that. Hopefully Indian food will remain prevalent..