Islam

I figured I'd covered the other major monotheistic traditions..

I don't think you can call Tanzania a Muslim country, there isn't sharia or anything, but there are definitely a lot of Mosques and men walking around in kufis especially on the coast. One might think there would be a level of uncomfortabilty being a an American Jew and all (the embassy was bombed here btw), but most people seem tolerant even if I am the only person walking around in shorts. Reading Infidel surrounded by believers was a little awkward, but your English has to be pretty good to read over someone's shoulder. I wonder what Ayaan Hirsi Ali would have to say about a country like Tanzania; it seems like a pretty liberal form of Islam to me:

I think it would be difficult to be a conservative Muslim in a country like Tanzania. There are quite a few women walking around in hijabs, despite the heat, but they have to ride dalla-dallas like everyone else. While I may not be able to see anything but their eyes, I get a pretty good idea that there are women beneath all that cloth when I am squeezed between two of them in the back of truck.

Furthermore, the Call To Prayer is nothing compared to the orthodox chanting in Ethiopia. Sometimes the morning prayers wake you up a little early in the morning, but it's over before you know it. Just put your pillow over your head and go back to sleep.

Then there are the Rastas (we had them in Ethiopia too). They tend to congregate at the coast as well, most were raised in Muslim families and consider themselves Muslim. This apparent contradiction was explained to me on a beach in Zanzibar with the dubious rationale that, "Rastafarianism isn't really a religion." I guess in the Tanzanian sense this is true; I think the real reason for the dreads and the red,black, green and gold is so that mzungus can know who to buy bangi from.

Moderate Islam.

You can buy cigarette lighters with Osama's picture on them.. they are finally embracing capitalism now too.

The Last Supper

I'm not very Jewish. I don't go to temple. I am anti-Israel. I never set foot in a synagogue. My knowledge of Yiddish is very limited. I don't have many Jewish friends. Most of what I know about passover I learned from Charleton Heston.. I didn't even get BarMitzvahed. And I definitely didn't know that they had Jews in Uganda. But there are, and I don't mean Holocaust escapees selling bagels in Kampala, these guys are actual Ugandan Jews. The reason I know this is because about a week ago I spent Passover with them.

You might be wondering how such a unJewish person such as me ended up spending Pesach with black Jews in Uganda.. You have to blame my friend Shira for that one. I didn't really know what I was getting myself into, but it was definitely an interesting cultural experience.

There were a fair amount of mzungus there, mostly Israeli but a bunch on Americans too. In reality there was quite a range of Juadism on display, many Israelis aren't religious and there were even some gentile junior-year-abroad (SIT) kids who were just there with their friends. This made me feel a little better about myself. Overall I felt about as out of place as I usualy do when I'm around real Jews on a high holiday; they were all using words I don't know mixed in with their regular conversations, and singing songs I didn't know the words to (or even the language). In fact with these things it's probably better I don't speak Hebrew, I would have felt more uncomfortable if I was more than passingly aware of the fact that all the throat clearing and babbling meant "O' God.." , "Master of the Universe.." etc.

There were some things that were different than your average American Seder (other than all the black people). They didn't give out yarmulkes at the door, not even the paper ones. There was no matzo-ball soup. There wasn't even any wine. Those last two really hurt. And many things were pretty similar to what I remember from their American counterparts; most people weren't listening to the rabbi, other people were just moving their lips during the songs too, and most of all we skipped 80% of the haggadah (just like home).

And that's how I ended up spending one of the holiest days of the year with the Jews of Uganda. Getting there was really the hardest part. I had to check out a VGIF site the day before, so I had split up with Shira and had to find my way there by myself. I got to the town of Mbale and asked a moto-taxi to take me to "Moses Synagogue", he said, "sure" we agreed on a price and of course he had no idea where we were going (in his defense, Jews are a few kilometers from town hidden away safe from the gentiles). Though he repeated "Moses Synagogue" like a pro, he didn't have a clue what I was talking about. I told him, "take me to the Jews". He had at least heard about them, and we headed off in their general direction. It turned out that he was an Evangelical Christian and he spent most of the ride trying to convert me.. He didn't have much luck with that, but after asking "Which way to the Jews?" to a half-dozen people, and a couple wrong turns later I was staring at a big star of David, and I knew I was in Abayudaya..

Overall it was definitely an interesting experience. The location was great, beautiful sunset views I ate some Matzo. I am Jewish after all.

The Rolex

As a traveller there is rarely much access to kitchen facilities or the financial incentive to use them. So to avoid paying mzungu prices for substandard food one needs to eat closer to what the local population eats (i.e. paying local prices for substandard food). Most people in the world however cannot afford to eat in restaurants, so there is an apparent dilemma.

Thankfully this restaurant problem is overcome by stepping out of the restaurants and into the street. If you don't want to pay the dollar or two it costs to sit down in a local restaurant you can eat while standing for half the price. Unfortunately street food is not always very conducive to vegetarianism, often greasy meat is one of its primary ingredients. In Uganda this problem is overcome by the ubiquity of chapatis. The chapati in East Africa is a little different than its Indian counterpart; they are bigger and appear to use less whole wheat flour (though I think they use some!) and are cooked on a hot iron with a little oil. They are delicious and cost less than 25cents.

In Uganda the chapati has even been improved on with the invention of the Rolex. A rolex is simply a fresh chapati rolled up with an omelet with a few vegetables thrown in (hot sauce, salt and ketchup to taste). A delicious and nutritious meal for less than 50cents. Some places even have avocado! Needless to say I am a big fan. The only shortcoming is that the griddles don't usually get fired up until after dark, and while they are an amazing late night snack, they would be a perfect breakfast as well..

Rwanda Recap

Rwanda has it together a little more than most of the countries I've been to. Kigali is reasonably cosmopolitan; cafes, nightlife, cheap internet.. it has it all. The rest of the country isn't quite caught up yet, but it is on it's way. The roads are excellent (paved and sans potholes), and they appear to enforce traffic laws. And the buses are great. They even run on a schedule! One time I got on a half-full bus and it departed when it was supposed to despite the fact that there was not only breathing room, but actual empty seats. Miraculous. If you are investing in East Africa, I recommend Rwanda.

It really isn't that backpacker friendly though. I didn't have a good guidebook, I may have missed out on some hidden gems, but overall I don't think I am the clientele that the country is looking for. They charge outrageous prices for national parks. Not just $500 to spend an hour with mountain gorillas, but 75 to go on a hike.. And I don't really have a problem with them taking money off wazungu, but it would be nice if there was some level of service provided and they weren't trying to nickel and dime you for extras the whole time. Once you got off the beaten track a little bit there isn't much to do or see. Kigali and Butare (a nice little university town) had a lot of white people running around (a lot of aide dollars are definitely flowing), but in the countryside I was usually the only mzungu. There was a lot of staring (not just kids). Rwanda does not have an overabundance of things a tourist might be interested in, and what little there is, is expensive.

It was an interesting place though. The countryside is beautiful, even more heavily cultivated than Ethiopia, nice, cool, green terraced hills, and the food was pretty good. The genocide of course was always in the back of my mind as well. I couldn't help but think about how old each person I met was 15 years ago. To their credit the country really does seem better off then their conflict free neighbor, Tanzania. But being within spitting distance of the D.R.C. the specter of conflict was still present (there really was a noticeably heavy amount of air traffic going in and out of Goma).

Then their was the French issue. I really felt like an ignorant tourist most of the time I was there. I couldn't speak a word of the local language (Kinyarwanda ), and if a person spoke a little of a colonizers language, they were usually francophone. They couldn't understand, I have white skin, but I couldn't speak French.. They are trying to move to English in the schools, but they are not there yet. Outside of Kigali and Butare, people spoke very little English. I realize, I, not them, am to blame for being mono-lingual.

Overall I think Rwanda would be a pleasant place to live (especially if you have a cushy USAID job), but it shouldn't be first on your East Africa list to visit (Uganda, where I am now is a backpacker paradise btw). The ATM situation is a good microcosm for the country as a whole. In every other country I've been to, ATMs that accept Mastercard and Visa are ubiquitous, even in small towns, and they have been my source of currency throughout my trip (love my Cambridge Savings Bank card that doesn't charge any ATM fees). However in Kigali (the most expensive place I've been) I had to get a cash advance (with the accompanying fee). After an extended search I am confident that there is not one ATM in Rwanda that accepts foreign cards. I can only assume this is because the government is trying to gouge credit card companies with some tariff or another. I understand their desire to make money off rich foreigners, but even I (registered green) think the free market could do some good towards this end.

The Obama Factor

Americans have long suffered from a (deservedly) negative image abroad. The fat, ignorant, loud American complaining about the lack of Wendy's in Paris is a tough caricature to overcome. However over the past eight years George W. Bush has successfully helped Americans get beyond this stereotype. The rest of the world became so focused on the destructive policies our government chose to pursue that they forgot all about their previous reasons to revile us.

During the course of previous travels, while not universally shunned, I definitely left the assumption of my Canadian citizenship uncorrected (People never wanted to offend Canadians by asking if they were American). As I have mentioned before, the Obama election and inauguration gets a lot of play in this part of the world. And one tangible effect of the Obama administration so far is that it's a lot easier to tell the truth about the color of my passport.

Especially during the election and around the inauguration pretty much every person's response to the "Where are you from?" reply was "Obama!" or "Obamaland", "Obamacountry" or some other corruption of the name of the hour. And the positive reactions are not just from locals. Even my fellow travelers (mostly European) were caught up in Obama fever. The fervor has died down a little, but I'll be in Kenya soon and I know they are proud of their native grandson..

Inevitably the question I get nowadays is, "How's he doing?" People even ask me this knowing full well that I haven't set foot in the good ol' U.S. of A. since September. I generally try to lower people's expectations and remind them that he is still a politician after all. However, amazingly despite all of the goodwill he is generating, very few people have told me they expect him to start handing out visas. The American presidency is a largely symbolic position, and in this respect President Obama is already an unequivocal success.

Now that I am headed home soon, he'll have to start working on the economy.

The Paper

I like to read the newspaper. I always felt bad for myself living in the Bay Area that there was no good paper. Especially given the relative literacy of San Francisco and Berkeley, the SF Chronicle is atrocious, and the Oakland Tribune and Contra Costa Times don't even qualify. I never liked reading on a computer screen, so my only saving grace was the fact that one can get the New York Times delivered anywhere in the country.

I have come to know a new level of unreadable while traveling in East Africa. There have been English language newspapers readily available in every country I have traveled in, and uniformly, they have been terrible. Not only are they full of grammar mistakes and misspellings (I realize the writers may not be native speakers, but they could still use a spellchecker), the content is unconscionable.

They are mostly full of opinion pieces, that either have nothing to say, are idiotic or offensive. I read an article that implied a women was raped because of what she was wearing. I read another op-ed saying the problem with Tanzanian schools is that the teachers are lazy, and they should be punished like their students. There was a regular section in one paper giving love advice, and the premise of the response to one lovelorn reader was that you can't be mad at your boyfriend for cheating, because men can't possibly only be with one woman (I only assume it was regular based on it's format, I would not waste the energy it takes to turn its pages again).

Despite the general dearth of reading material, I have given up on newspapers completely. Even when they are sitting on a table in a cafe I resist the urge to pick them up because I know I will be disappointed. I think they literally makes you stupider. Thank God for the internet, yes I do now read nytimes.com. I have even resorted to dated issues of The Economist, and the business section used to be my least favorite section, there isn't even sports in the back..