Into Israel

Left Amman around 9am. Had some last minute decisions like, do we bring the guidebook to Israel? It's called Palestine, which is what most of the Middle East Countries call most of Israel. Ann couldn't find a book about Israel in Amman that didn't call it Palestine. But, we reasoned, if we brought a book called "Palestine", would they let us in? We had no idea, so we left it behind.

Getting from Jordan to Israel involved getting into a cab in front of our flat and telling the guy to take us to the King Hussein bridge, because we wanted to go to Jerusalem. He says 20 ($28) dinars and we are like, OK, good deal. So as he's driving we try to engage in the normal Amman taxi banter, but he doesn't really have any english. After about ten minutes, we notice that we are going the wrong way and start to try to ask questions. Eventually he pulls into some parking lot and says "shigrug salem, akasikia Hussein." Like, we're here. Ann and I groan and say, no , we want to go to the King Hussein bridge, and he asks a couple of people in the parking lot of this place, it looks like a community center or something, if they speak english and then eventually some guy pokes his head in, we tell him where we want to go, and the taxi driver takes off. About 3 dinars later he pulls into the bus stop, and there are a bunch of taxis. These guys speak english and they want to take us to the King Hussein bridge for 20 dinars. Meanwhile our cab driver wants 4 dinars for the wild ride over here. So far we are about 40 minutes on the road and about 5 minutes from our flat. We give the guy 3 dinars, and hop in the cab for Israel. After about 10 minutes in this cab, we pass right by our apartment. Big circle. Eventually we get down to sea level:







Finally get to the bridge, the cab drops us off, and we go through the whole ramshackle chaotic customs rigamarole. We miss the bus by about 30 seconds, while buying our exit stamps from the duty free shop. Guy says next bus in 30 minutes. Two hours later, we get on the bus to Israel. Now we cross the King Hussein bridge and then the Allenby bridge and we are in the West Bank. There is no line, just a crowd, to get our luggage thru the check point and we jostle up to the front and push it through and then go through an xray machine and then there is some air jet thing that not everyone goes through and then finally we get to wait in line for about 1 hour as the Israeli customs officials grill various people on their grandparents names and what they are doing in Israel. All kinds of people cutting in line all the time. Except the obvious tourists, like ourselves.

Ann has briefed me on what to say and what not to say. Like "Do you know any Palestinians?" Answer "No." "What, you live in Amman, which is 90% Palestinian, and you don't know any Palestinians?" "No." You know, obviously we do know some Palestinians, but the secret truth is that they are Jordanians, therefore this is not strictly a lie. Also, we wanted the stamp to go on a piece of paper, not our passport, otherwise Ann wouldn't be able to work in other Gulf States. Sometimes the Israelis will do this, but we had recently heard that they wouldn't. If they didn't, we'd just have to turn around and go back to Jordan. That was another thing Ann briefed me on. The main reason she couldn't get an Israeli stamp was for work, because she is technically overseeing the office in Syria. But we couldn't say Syria, because that would make the whole thing harder, we would have to say she had work in "some other Gulf States." I've noticed that dealing with borders is a lot like dealing with people who have borderline personality disorder. If you say the wrong thing, the reaction can be totally out of proportion. Not that I know anyone with borderline personality disorder (at least no one reading this).

Anyway we get up to the passport person (all of them are women) and first we ask if we avoid having our passport stamped. She says "No, it is impossible." So I say "Well, then we can't enter, can we have our passports back please?" She kind of waves at us and says "One moment, one moment.." Asks us why, makes a phone call and then says "Maybe we can do this for you." The one thing she got stuck on was my middle name, Kazis, which is very similar to a palestinian name. She asked me what it meant, and I didn't know but thought it might mean shoemaker (later I realized that was what the last name of the person I was named after meant, Kazis Krauchunas). Ann interjected "It's Lithuanian," and then the passport lady said "OK" and we got thru. We were in Israel. 50 kilometers from our apartment and it took about 6 hours. Not bad, really, considering the Israelites took 40 years and Moses never quite made it.

Right when you cross the border it looks pretty much like a desert without any scrub. You're still pretty far below sea level and a lot of it looks like the badlands. Around this part you sea some shacks made of plastic and corrugated metal with sheep pens. Like one every couple of miles or so along the road. Once I saw the sheep pens I could see that there was a little bit of green on some of the desert hills, just a very dim shading, like a green 5 oclock shadow. As you come up out of the valley, you see these walled developments, which look like big castles, situated in the upper reaches of the hills. The West Bank. Here are the text message Ann and I both got from Orange,Israel, when we entered Jerusalem:



Huh?

Dead

So, we've been in Amman for a couple of weeks. Ann is settling into her job, and I am getting my office situation. The Iraqi refugees have added somewhere from 1-10 billion dollars to the economy here. There are poor and rich refugees from Iraq, and many of the rich ones are here because they got rich helping the US. I was just reading this other very interesting account of the arrival of Iraqis here and will just provide the link so I don't have to repeat anything.



You can look across from the Dead Sea in Jordan and See Israel. They call it Lot's Lake, here. The west bank. From the road:





Two different guys speaking arabic rubbed slime on my back. One guy asked me if I knew why this was the lowest point on earth. "Is it because this Sea and this valley sits on the crevice between the Arab and African plates, and they are pulling apart, creating the Great Rift which extends 3000 miles to the south all the way down to Tanzania?"

"No," he said, "Wrong wrong wrong wrong. Nothing to do with geography! It is because the people turned away from God for 500 years, and they invented being gay, and the angels came and told them to stop and when they didn't Gabriel lifted up the land that Sodom was on and turned it upside down."

This from a guy who came up to me with a gob of greasy mud in the Dead Sea and started rubbing it on my back., purring "this will make you skin like a six month old baby!" And the mud is very effective. Ann tried it out first.



But it still doesn't make sense to me that if you turn something upside down, it gets lower. Take a shovel, stab some dirt, turn it upside down in the same spot, you have a high spot. But if you think that way you confuse reason with theology. Observable fact with legend. And you might begin to confuse the promised land with a desert.

I remember going to the great salt lake. It was supposedly pretty floaty. The Dead Sea is hyper floaty. We were floating in six inches of water, here:





The music that we hear everywhere is Lionel Richie (worshipped), Bryan Adams, and Celine Dion. Cheese factor generally high.

Ann in Amman in na

Trying to make a palindrome out of the title.

We went from Dar to Zanzibar to meet my parents and Mimi, who had just come off of a Safari in the Ngorongoro Crater and places. They had a great time, saw cool stuff like hyena's feasting on bloated hippos and a lion in a tree.





In Zanzibar, I pretty much saw every dawn and took video of every one except the last one, the spectacular one. Then me and Dad would go on a run followed by a hop in the pool.





We also took a quick tour of stonetown one day.




From there, Ann and I went to Amman stopping in Dubai enroute. It struck me, as it has many times while traveling, that my American perception of other countries is so wrong. I remember going to Kuala Lumpur, and having this perception of Malaysia as a jungly place, which it is, but the two tallest buildings in the world are there. That city is ultra modern and ordered and there are certainly things they have figured out about running a civilized city that the US can't get together. This same realization dawned on me as we walked through Dubai airport. It had a 5 star hotel that you could spend your layover in (hourly rates) and was a bustling supermall with a health club and everything. Walking around in there, I was surprised at my surprise, because I've seen pictures of Dubai. But my American lens clouded the fact of Dubai's ultra modern character, as it had Kuala Lumpur, until I actually saw it.

I wonder if there is a way for people to get this without going there.

From Dubai, we went to Amman, Jordan.








A big sprawler of a city, with all kinds of topographic extremes.

Looking east from our hotel room. Full moon.





Seems like all the buildings are made of white or cream colored stone, or stone-like concrete blocks. Makes it look cool at dawn and twilight. So far, we haven't seen much, took a taxi downtown and to some of the ruins. I walked around for an hour near the hotel, without coming to a single stoplight or crosswalk.

A lot of the buildings look like mausoleums.

Here's Ann in front of her office.




We managed to go out once before both of us got some weird flu that had us both waking up in the middle of the night with intense rib cage pain. Here's a shot looking west from a rof top coffee shop:

Mrs. Todo Cokfect's wild ride II

Mrs. Toad's Wild Ride II

After saying adieu to the next batch of fugees to head for American soil I made my way to my trusty haunt the Jacaranda Hotel. I have stayed there now four or five times and this time I decided, after one night spent mainly on the pot, that it was time to upgrade in light of Amers visit.

The Jacaranda's frayed blankies and lack of decent water pressure were ok in the beginning when I was a bright-eyed relief worker but now that I have tasted the good life in Dar there was no going back. I made my way to the oasis that is the Nairobi Holiday Inn and secured our spot. At around 7 I made my way to JKIA airport and waited by the gate jostling against the aggressive taxi drivers for a view of my twin descending the stairs.

Finally she emerged from the surging tide of humanity and we had our tearful and giggly reunion-reminiscent of our other greetings when we had been apart in foreign countries-London Heathrow, Kuala Lampur, Tokyo and of course SFO and Denver.

Despite the fact that it is 'winter' the weather in Nairobi was beautiful. It was fun to see Nairobi at night through Amy's eyes-'terrifiying'. Nai-robbery as it is unaffectionately known is best seen in the daylight when your chances of getting carjacked-while still astronomical-are diminished.

We headed to the bar and had a celebratory Tusker-the local boozy fare-and got caught up. Every few minutes a 'holy shit I can't believe I'm/you're here!'. As this warm fuzzy reunion unfolded something else was unfolding in my innards.

Until this time I had prided myself on the fact that despite eating greasy roadside donuts in Kibondo I had experienced nary a runny stool. Now the stools they were a-runnin. As was a fever. This started to seem serious. The next day Amy got to see the IOM medical facility as it seemed important to make sure I didn't have malaria or cholera or one of the many other diseases that start to appear in your vocabulary on a regular basis when you live in Africa.

The doc didn't like the way I grimaced in pain when she touched my abdomen so she sent me to the clinic. Amers was a trooper. We had hoped to visit the animal orphanage so she could meet my friend the cheetah but instead, we spent the rest of the day stuck first in Nairobi traffic and then in the waiting room with hacking children and sniffling Somali refugees as we waited for me to get my blood drawn. Welcome to Africa sister!

Then came the news-the blood test was inconclusive. Could I give a stool sample? I might have been able to provide a watery squirt but the 5 Immodium I had swallowed in a panic had had the desired effect and there was no way I could produce for the doe-eyed lab technician. Amy, more schooled in third world living than I, recognized that her weekend would be spent dealing with poo if we didnt make this happen and urged me into the bathroom with the little plastic match box with the universal biohazard symbol on it.. No dice.

Doe Eyes said it was ok, go home, send later. Amy in her infinite wisdom asked for a q-tip. Whilst unpleasant, something appeared and we cheered. A few minutes later Doe Eyes came back shaking his head, 'Pole Sana not enough'. Gaaaa. When Amy asked for a lubricant I had to put my foot down. My anal probing was done for the day.

It was not gonna happen. We decided to go back to the Holiday Inn and try our last-and most trusty resort-Chardonnay. Now this might not seem like a good idea to most people--but most people aren't Strandoos. Outside of Ballard anyways. The Chard did the trick-hurrah! I managed to squeeze out a brown portion the size of the last joint in my pinky, secure it in its biohazard emblazoned container which was then concealed in an innoccuos Holiday Inn plastic bag.





The sample was sent off to the lab with my favorite taxi driver in the whole world, Daniel.

We went to bed satisfied with our accomplishment (mine really) and woke to a new day full of the promise of answers to this nagging question of 'salmonela, ghiardia, parasite...?' I got a call from trusty Daniel telling me he was in the lobby and could I meet him right away? When I got to the lobby he was seated across the room on a sofa and with an apologetic (but wry) grin. Slowly, he held up the bag that I had given him the night before (Me: 'um it's a blood sample for the lab,,,' ).


Well my boy Daniel made his way to the clinic alrighty but of course I wrote down the wrong clinic so by the time he found Doe Eyes it was too late. 'Not fresh' was Doe Eyes' verdict. We both dissolved into giggles as only two people who have shared a stool sample debacle can. I retrieved the bag and asked the haughty receptionist to dispose of it for me (HAW!) .





At this point I decided to continue with my current (as of night before) regime of Chardonnay,Nachos (the first in five months how could I say no?), and Amy's Arythromiccin. The combo had a winning effect.

We took a day trip to Nakuru, the place where Reed and I saw a cold-eyed Leopard consider his chances. Amy and I saw Rhinos (white and black), the millions of flamingos on the lake, baboons (those red bottoms-ew!), lions (ok only their swishing tails as they were all asleep) a leopard (again only a dark shadow in a tree), giraffes, and the usual warthogs (so ugly! but endearing) and all the other bushbacks and buffaloes that dot the landscape.

In more true Strandoo fashion we forgot a camera and binoculars and could only giggle jealously at the other tourists with their telephotolenses. We bought a camera at the gift shop and after the shopgirl had dusted it off (phooofff!) we loaded it with another relic of the 90's-film-and proceeded to take a roll of film mainly of bushes that we accidentally exposed later (culprit-Chardonnay).

In the morning Daniel picked us up for the airport (more embarrassed yet conspiratorially giggling) and we made our way to Mwanza, a small city on beautiful Lake Victoria where we embarked on the next leg of our Tanzanian adventure.

One bonus was that we had a few hours in Dar es Salaam where we had enough time to have Gerard my next favorite taxi driver in the whole world take us to the Irish Pub at the Peninsula Hotel for lunch so Amy could see another favorite haunt. Dar is a beautiful seaside city on the Indian Ocean and a breath of while not so freshy fresh air a different scene from Nairobi. We sat overlooking the the Indian Ocean, a beautifully restored dhow in front of us, the Masai guards in all their glory and cell phones on their ears) and had a quick lunch before setting of for Mwanza.

Mwanza airport is a tiny airstrip and we found a quick bite. We were hounded by bees and amused the locals as we constantly jumped out of our seats and swiped unsuccessfully at the African bees.

The flight from Mwanza is on the UNHCR plane-a twelve seater that goes direct to Kibondo. I told Amy that if I had to draw a graph of entry into Africa Nairobi-Dar-Mwanza-Kibondo is the prefect gradulation. Kibondo is in the middle of nowhere in nowhere. Recently when Reed was in Dar he was told by a guy who grew up in Kibondo. "Man' he guy said, 'Thats like living in Africa within Africa!'.

The airstrip appears out of nowhere, we get picked by the LandRover, and tarmac is a thing of the past. Its all villagers in bright kanga clothes and buckets or firewood on their heads, goats, long horned cattle my jogging nemesi). The next few days were spent at Kumwayi where we live-exploring the countryside with the hordes of kids following-thrilled to see yet another white woman-this one even more white if thats possible! I worried Amy would be bored but was reassured that she relished the down time as she explained that she hadn't been able to read her mysteries and snooze al day long in three plus years. We gushed over photos of Gunnar and Tove and got caught up on their latest exploits and developing vocabulary.

We spent the week in Kibondo, not realizing that the ordeal of getting in would be trivial compared to the logistics of getting out.

Mrs. Todo Cokfect's wild ride

Ann went to Nairobi to meet her twin, Machacha (swahili), and from there they had work to do. The kind, you know, where you repair the damage that distance has done. She boarded the flight with the refugees from kibondo and promptly broke out into a cold sweat.

This is called escorting the refugees. You show them how little there is to worry about, even though, for the first time in their lives, they are placing all of their faith in a technology that, up until then, has offered them only noise in the sky.

So Ann boards the plane, gives thumbs up and smiles, and in Mary Lou tradition, crosses herself and leans back, glancing over to the window. Then she notices the movement around her and turns around, to see that all the refugees have begun crossing themselves and one taps her on the shoulder and asks if it is OK if they begin singing hymns. And so, as the plane rises, so do the voices of the free. Their songs say goodbye to Tanzania, the country they appreciate but where they have never been free, and the joy adds lift.

Everytime there is turbulence on this short flight, Ann yells Sawa sawa (it means OK, OK in swahili) and the restlessness settles. Meanwhile, in the belly of Ann, a different turbulence threatens her equilibrium.

Ann says,

"As the flight descended into Nairobi many of the passengers became restless. One of the passengers who spoke french said to me ' this is our last view of a developing country.' When we landed in Kenya they thought they were in America. I explained that they were still in Africa as I escorted them through the airport. It struck me then that they were on the way to their new lives in Las Vegas and Mobile and Boise. Places I was their notable authority on. Places I had never been.

How do I even explain my saying goodbye to them. Parting ways. Giving out my email address to everyone. saying "tell me when you get there". Knowing or not knowing what lays ahead of them. They with their plastic bags containing all of their belongings. They say, "You are not going with us all the way". Ann says, "Everythings going to be OK. OK."

And, "Someone like me will be on the other end."


She always tells them: "You have survived this long in the refugee camps. Its going to be hard, but not as hard as it was there. If you have survived that you will survive this. "

There is something stronger in some people. Once you arrive you will see that you have this thing. There will people that help you who have seen this thing. It is a thing outside of you, attached to you but not yours. It is important. You will forget it. Still it remains a part of you. You will remember it.





there wil be people to help you.....but it will b e hard. Its hard to

Meanwhile, Amy's plane begins its descent.

Dar Kibondo

Late July, TCRS (http:\\TCRS.or.tz), invited me to Dar to do some consulting. They needed a backup for their small network and some other things that I could do and they were willing to fly me over there and put me up. Sweet! A trip to the big city.

So I set up a computer backup in Dar for TCRS and it took about a week, It's not complicated to do that kind of stuff, but it's not easy. It's not cheap, but if it is cheap, it's sketchy.

They have these deep ditches where run off and garbage collect. I see kids in there with nets catching minnows and also somewhat larger, dollar sized fish.



Ann called me In Dar and mentioned that she went running, and when the usual 20 kids were running behind her, she felt something in her shoe. She thought it was one of those plastic seals from a water bottle so she took her shoe off and this bug (I took a picture of it in the bathroom before leaving) drop out. Still alive:



After Dar, the trip to Kibondo consisted of a flight to Kili Airport, 2 hours layover, ad a flight to Mwanza, followed by a 6 hour ride to Kibondo.

At Kilimanjaro International Airport, I had a 2 hour layover. Ended up hanging in the departure lounge. The first thing I noticed was this poor little bird on one of the end tables.



I was at the airport there in Kili, and I sat down in the departure lounge, such as it is, and noticed immediately two things. 1) Only I and one other person (the guy I sat next to) were sitting in the departure lounge. 2) there were dead birds along the windows. At least ten. I just said aloud, "What's with the dead birds?" the guy next to me, a german who had just climbed kili says"Welcome to Africa".

The way the airport is set up is that here in the lounge, the ceiling is open in the middle, with some traditional looking straw roofing edging the square hole in the middle. But the glass of the lounge is facing the tarmac of the airstrip. So you end up having a ton of flies moving down the chimney of the hole in the middle to score food particles from the humans waiting to fly. These flies then apparently forget how they got in and spend the rest of their short, full bellied lives, banging into the giant windows that offer such a resplendant view of the mountain and the planes TAKING off in front of it. Then the birds come down the chimney and bang into the glass at full speed, maybe trying to get the flies.

From KIA it was to Mwanza, the last part of my flying journey back to Kibondo. It was a car from Mwanza on. I got a picture of this eagle with my cell:



Mwanza is a pretty big city, but until now I've only ever seen the Tilapia and the road to the airport. At the Tilapia, you get a lot of mining folk, because the Gaeta gold mine is a couple hours away. When they are talking about the environment, they are talking about changing it. I'm sitting in the restaurant hearing these South African accents and thinking about how Leul mentioned that they used to pay some of the miners in opium, and how these guys would end up injured or something but die from withdrawal in the hospital. Or the mine would close down and they'd become criminals, junkies looking for a fix. I don't think that is the case with the Gold mine near here, Gaeta, but when I get around mining talk, that's the kind of stuff that pops into my head. It is hypocritical of me to have this negative feeling about mining, since I enjoy the fruits and would suffer without them. I assume an air of affront, magically mitigating my part in exploiting the environment and adding to humanity's suffering.

The car sent to take me back to Kibondo had some errands to do, but picked me up promptly at 8:30. Then I sat in the car for about four hours as we picked up various things in Mwanza. I bought this cool knife for 3,000 shillings:



One other passenger was a little girl named Salome. She helped me learn a little swahili and I made a comic:



At one point on the road, we followed this container truck for about 50km and this guy was hanging from it, catching a free ride. It was a little scary to be too close to him, because if he fell off (I saw his feet slip a couple times) he'd be hard to avoid. He made it, though.



On the drive back from Mwanza to Kibondo, I mostly slept as we cruised for 6 hours or so. Many towns have a "barricade" at the entrance, usually consisting of a long wooden pole precariously balanced on a couple forked sticks in the ground. The car rolls up, and a kid in a uniform comes up and maybe walks around the car, maybe makes the driver sign something, ad then slides the pole out of the way and motions the car onward. We came into one town and the barricade was askew, so the driver kind of slowed down, and muttered something about "no police" or something, and then we rolled through town. After about 50 meters, I see this guy with an orange vest on, in the middle of the road, waving us to the side. I'm thinking, "oh, here's the cop," but the drivers says something like "this guy!" and swerves around him. Only then do I notice that the guy is barefoot, has no shirt on under his vest, is wearing cut off jeans with the fly open and has a ruined grin and crazy eyes.

THere are these storks, called Maribou, that get to be 4 or 5 feet tall. They eat anything, and sometimes you see them around dumps and places that smell bad. So we are still rolling through this town and this guy with a big nose and a trench coat comes strolling out of the crowd of villagers to the side, right into the road in front of us. The driver honks, and the guy starts running ahead of our car and then spreads his wings and takes off. It was a Maribou, but they are so similar in proportion to people that my eyes tricked me at first.

So, back in Kibondo.



kibondo mump

Bye Bye Buja

Take a picture of this:

You are in a cab with clogged fuel injectors crawling its way across a third world tarmac road. It is two and a half hours before dawn. You're in Burundi. A country at peace, yes. But Peace lays across this land like a grandmother's shawl across the shoulders of a fitfully slumbering grizzly bear. Its dark as the cab rolls to a stop, but you can still make out the barricade in the mountain road and the cloaked figure coming towards you. You might begin to wonder if you will catch that flight seven hours and a country away. That's if you're an optimist.

Turns out the military keeps the road closed until seven am. But we will definitely miss our flight if we have to wait. The soldier speaks french, kirundi and some swahili. Vic, who I'm travellng with, speaks about as much french as I do swahili, maybe a slow toddler's vocabulary. Our driver, Ray, speaks swahili and a little english. Fortunately, there are bridges that reach across the language barrier, and they come in denominations of a thousand here. Ray gets out of the cab, leaving it running, and follows the askari back and out of our sight to engage in some cultural exchange. The car starts rolling backwards. I'm sitting in the back, so I reach forward and yank the emergency brake. Of course its useless, and we roll a little further before I hear Ray cuss and grunt, stopping the car's rolling with the help of the askari. They continue their negotiations leaning against the trunk of the car. Then the soldier strolls back into the darkness, Ray gets in the car and says "Bossi." Meaning the soldier went to get his superior. The superior comes back, Ray puts about $5 into his hand, and the barricade is raised. We are on our way.

As we start moving up the road which winds up through the mountain range bordering Burundi and Tanzania, I'm thinking about a few safety issues. For one, I am wondering why Ray took the tire off of the left rear wheel and replaced it with the donut spare while we were in Bujumbura. We had him put the real tire back on, it had less tread than the donut but still had good pressure, but I'm sure Ray had a reason he didn't or couldn't communicate to us. As it turns out, it was a pretty good reason. I'm also wondering about the emergency brake, which is pretty handy to have on steep mountain roads with a drop off to one side. But, what the hell, its Africa, I think, looking at the fading dashboard light and listening to the music on the lone cassette tape we had for this journey, wondering for the 20th time if the singer is really saying "I wanna be your body lotion." I'm soon lulled to sleep by the soft roll of the utterly spent shocks and the rattle of the doors.

When I wake up, we're in Mbanda. Still in Burundi, but this is where we encountered the time bending customs agent, who took our money so slowly when we entered Burundi that it seemed painless, like that parable about the frog in boiling water. It's before 7am, and there's guys walking around the customs office in towels with cups of coffee. Two offices are used as offices, the other two are rented out as bunk houses. No one we see seems to work here, and they all seem a little amused. Amazingly, one of the kids in a towel opens the actual office and beckons us in. Then he gets dressed and returns and we get our exit (Sortie) visas stamped and are on our way. We cross the Burundian side of the border no problem and then go through the neutral zone, the actual line on the map, which is a road going through a forest of Eucalyptus trees 60 feet high planted in a grid. By the time we get to the Tanzanian side it is about 9am. The immigration office here is under construction, getting a new roof, and there is rubble everywhere. One of the construction workers goes to wake up the official, and he meanders over, beckons us inside. As we are ducking under scaffolding and dodging around chucks of concrete in the hallway, I see a pile of Tanzania drivers licenses on the ground. We get into his office and exchange greetings, and then it turns out my visa in TZ was a single entry visa so he wants $50 for a new 3 month visitor visa. This brings my total cash on hand down to $50, plus 12,000 burundian ($12).

By the time we are allowed back into TZ it is 9:30. We've got a plane to catch in Kigoma, about two hours away, that leaves for Dar es Salaam at 12:15. Hakuna Matatiso (No problem). Vic keeps telling Ray to go faster, but Ray seems to ignore him, cruising slowly on the flat parts and taking his time on the slight grades. Downhill, we go fast enough.

About a half hour into TZ, we come to a complete stop, and Ray keeps revving the engine, but we don't move. Some long horned cattle cruise by on the right, and Ray shuts off the cab. We get out after the cows go by. We are on a ridge about 200 meters wide, which drops into a valley on either side about 1000 meters. Two taller ridges envelop this one. The place feels remote. Ray pops the hood on the car and as I study his face the place begins to feel more remote. I go start the cab and he starts pulling plug wires to see if they are sparking. He thinks we are losing power because not all the cylinders are firing, something I've seen before with our VW bus. It looks like all the plugs have spark, though, which means there's probably a fuel flow problem or air/fuel mix, ie. something not fixable with a crow bar and my computer tool kit. I'm thinking, remoteness-wise, siberia or the open ocean. Yeah, so now I walk around the car, remembering the donut spare we changed to a real tire in Buja, and both rear tires are looking very bad. The one I was worried about, left rear, is about half pressure. The right rear one is totally flat. No signal on the cell. Nowheresville is a sprawling metropolis and this road doesn't go there.

Vic gets out of the car and starts talking about the fuel pump and I'm trying to remember all the things we did to try to get the VW to go. We turn off the car. Ray puts the donut on the right rear tire. Three bicycles and a 60 year old lady with a sack of rice balanced on her head pass us. Its 10:15am. Time is behaving like a ho, spending herself on nothing good.

At 10:30, we start the car and it struggles up this slight grade and rolls down the next hill. We are about 50 kilometers from Kigoma. We could call a cab from Kigoma to come and get us, but still no cell signal. Everytime we get to a flat part or an incline, Ray has to rev the engine and pop the clutch. We lurch and glide, the engine dies, Ray hits the brakes and starts the car, revs it and pops the clutch. rev-pop-lurch-glide-stall-brake-start. Like that. Theoretically, we are coming down out of the mountains, but there are still a lot of inclines. At one point, we are on this one lane bridge in a little valley, and the car gets the front tires off the bridge, but will go no further. The rev-pop gets us no lurch glide, the brake comes late, and we start rolling backwards, actually passing someone on foot going the other way. 11am and most of our hope is about 15 minutes behind us.

I try to remember all the tricks they say to try when you lose power. Its probably the fuel injectors clogged with the dust, or the fuel pump failing, as Vic says, or possibly the fuel filter, although Ray says he changed it in Buja. We cold get the fuel filter off and blow through it the other way, but before I get gasoline on my lips, I remember something about cleaning the air filter. So I ask Ray if the air filter is clean "It's fine, fine" Yeah, right, so I pull it out and it is totally clogged with a gunky oil. Knocking it out is a sad waste of time, so Vic yells, "we don't need it, throw it in the trunk," and he gets in the driver's seat."Close the hood, get out of the way!"

He starts the car and proceeds to rev-pop-lurch the car all the way up to the top of this particular hill, without even waiting for us to get in. We're running after the car, which is a pretty good feeling, considering that moments before people walking were leaving us in the dust, and catch it at the top of the hill, where its idling, as Vic is walking from side to side trying to get a cell signal. Still nothing. We all pile in and Ray says its another 20 kilometers to town. 11:30 am. Grim.

As we are lurching along now, I hear this sickening loud metal on metal kind of banging sound that I associate with a flat tire. I look at the faces of people we pass trying to get a reading on how flat the tire is. Not that it matters. Vic gets Joseph, our friend in Kigoma, on the phone, but he is out of town with his boss, unable to come to our aid. We give the cell to Ray and tell him to call us a cab to come and get us--no more minutes left on the cell. Vic's been using Ray's phone, and my battery's been dead for a day or so. But, I happen to have a celtel voucher. I give it to Ray, he dials someone, they get into some argument in swahili (his mechanic?), and then we see pavement. Once we pull onto it, you can hear the left rear rim on the tarmac making that noise. This car is done. We probably don't have time for a cab to come from town and bring us back to the airport. As we are pulling our bags out of the cab and Ray is looking down at the shredded tire and scratching his head, it seems like we should have a pistol or something to put that car down.

My last $50 goes to paying Ray the remainder of our agreed upon $250 round trip, and While Vic is finishing that transaction, a white pickup full of people pulls up and drops off a kid, who starts walking up the mountain road we just came down. I go to the driver and tell him our cab is finished and we need to get to the airport by 12:15 (15 minutes), could we please have a ride? "Of course", he says (Kwa Kweli!). He even lets us sit in the front seat. We learn his name is Father Gaspari, a catholic priest. I notice people paying him as they are jumping off the truck, and I ask Vic if he's got anything for the church when we get to our destination. He pulls out 5000 shillings ($4.37) and offers it to father Gaspari, our frigging savior. "No," he says, "I'm glad to help." I invite him to come by my place in Kibondo and say thanks, and, incredibly, Vic and I board the plane.

Lately

Now there is a homish place to go to, and we've been cooking dinner and it feels more humane. The beef here is actually pretty good, its just that whenever we have any it is scorched beyond recognition. Finally got a fillet (no idea what part of the cow) the other day and cooked it on the hibatchi thing after marinating in some teriaki Ann made. Tasted lifelike.

Ann and I walked to the market the other day to check it out. There is a gutter on one side that's about 2 feet deep. It creates an effective nausea barrier. If it were in a video game you would lose about 2% health for every second you stood within a foot of it and it would emit a greenish haze. On one side you smell human fecal matter, and when you step over it changes to a refreshing odor of rotting meat. This mixes with the pervasive dead fish smell beckoning you deeper into the market and finally a nice wash of body odor and trash fire completes the milieu. There was a random assortment of plastic bottles on the ground, 12oz orange juice, 20 oz water, 1 liter water, etc. just laying there, in front of some stall selling something brownish green in 10 gallon diesel containers (not diesel). The little plastic bottles looked like garbage to me, but the lady in front of me picked up the 12 oz empty orange juice bottle (with top!) and was carefully inspecting it. I saw the stall guy seemed to be somewhat attentive to her and realized it was for sale. Don't know what something like that goes for in Kibondo but I'm sure a smart shopper can find a real bargain.

We also found board shorts for $2 and actual designer labels. I'm pretty sure there was a t-shirt in there from every state in the US (and most of them spelled correctly).

I wandered into a hardware stall and once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, there was an electric guitar. It had 200,000 written on it in red magic marker (thats like $176) and a piece of twine for a guitar strap. It weighed about 48 pounds and had no markings of any kind. It's the only guitar I've seen in Kibondo, although Ann tells me the refugees make them. Having no amp, I decided not to buy it.

Anns Anniversary Update

We spent our anniversary day meandering around the market in town until I tired of the bad smells (goat meat baking in the sun I suspect) and the constant 'Mizungu!' shouts. We ambled back home and went out for beers with our Ethiopian sidekicks. We laughed about our wedding day and would we ever have guessed six years ago that we'd be living in Africa?





Life is good here, no complaints. Our little house is adorable and comfortable. The countryside is so beautiful-I never thought I would love being in the middle of nowhere so much! It is winter here now so that means long pants and a light jacket at night but really the weather is like Seattle on a perfect day-never too hot.







Last week Reed and I went on a escort convoy. 1300 refugees were moved from another camp up here to our camp by busloads.











We went in the afternoon, spent the night in a nice place (by nice I mean the toilet had a seat) and got up at the crack of dawn to go to the refugee camp. It was nuts-people had all their belongings in piles (mainly one bag and a straw sleeping mat) and they were loaded onto buses.








I was bombarded by refugees coming up to me and asking for help-it's terrible to have to turn people away but there are so many thousands of people it is totaly hopeless.




We rode back in the Land Cruiser(4 hours) with an old man who had an infected foot-it was wrapped in a dirty rag and smelled sooo bad it was terrible.








When we got to the camp here I took him to the hospital which is pitiful. There is only one doctor for 50,000 refugees none of whom have ever had medical attention. One sixteen year old girl on the convoy died after we arrived-terrible stuff. It is so hard to understand how such a rich world can let people suffer like this. People here die or get seriously sick of the most basic of things-malaria, measels, mumps, meningtis. Believe me it puts a whole new spin on the anti-vaccine crusade. I almost elected to not get the meningitis vaccination before I left but the nurse talked me into it. Now there is an outbreak in the camp-yikes.

OK enough sad stuff.








Today is Sunday and we are at the camp. I'm going to go visit the old man with the foot. We will try and film the camp so you guys can see. From the moment the car enters- a steady stream of little rugrats start chasing and by the time I get out the car I am surrounded. It's great.

Dar Es Salaam - the Harbor of Pizza

Every 8 weeks, Ann gets a R&R for a week. I still had to work, but the high speed internet wasn't working at Ann's office, yet, so I figured any populated place would offer me a better working situation. We decided to go to Dar Es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania and its biggest city, on the Indian Ocean, and from there to Zanzibar to scope out the beaches. Our stuff was being moved from the Guesthouse to Kumwayi while we were away and our return promised to be as refreshing as the break. Also, the rooster was being moved. Ann had sent one of the maids to buy us some chicken one day, and she returned with a live Rooster.




It was a test of Ann's compassion for annoying creatures the two weeks before we left on R&R. The friggin rooster cooped up one door away from us and started crowing at 5:45 am every morning. Then it would roost in the sink and drop rooster turds all over the fibreplex surface. I stopped shaving and brushed my teeth in the shower. On the plus side, it ate a lot of our garbage and many insects, including this barely alive roach which I put on a dollar bill for perspective:






After bagging up our stuff and leaving it in Kumwayi, we were off.


Dar Es Salaam, the harbor of peace, on the coast of the Indian Ocean. Ann gets her one week leave after working in the "bush" for 8 weeks and I look forward to faster internet connections. The food options in Kibondo were limited and there has been this yearning for real Pizza, and Dar shines as a beacon of hope in this quest for queso and tomato sauce. So I call it the harbor of Pizza. After spending a night at the Millenium Tower, pretty much a typical western Hotel except for the view of the cemetery, we found our heart's desire at the Slipway.





That was some good pizza. I'm not a big pizza fan, but Ann's desire was infectious. The menu said they had sausage pizza, but the kitchen had a different story. Hard to complain.

We spent the rest of the night irresponsibly, taking pictures of the moon by the pool of our hotel and paying for 2000 shilling ($1.50) half liter Tuskers (outrageous prices, they are only 1000 in kibondo). The other item on our quest, draft beer, was yet to be found. YOu ask for draft beer and they bring you Miller Genuine Draft.





Dar was very refreshing, as any peice of civilization would be after being Kibondo. I didn't really expect to get so excited about food or TV, but its something that gives you a rush of energy. But, as I wandered around the area near the Millenium Towers, I saw this rather emblematic roadkill:




A Raven with three legs. Thats omenous.


The next night we went to the Sea View. Known as the Dar Irish Bar, we got there on Canada day. They had these guinness signs all over the place, and even had Guinness listed as an appetiser, but no Guinness. We settled for Tusker and Began to wonder what Canada Day was as the sun set on the indian ocean.

Close to moving

I'm sitting here waiting for my office computer to load. Today I convinced these guys to cut part of a tree down because it was right in front of the satellite dish that supplies internet. I didn't want to do it, that tree was really thriving on the bandwidth it was poaching. But the more lovely and lush it became, the more dismal the internet was. The signal strength doubled when it was cut, so hopefully it was worth it.








In other news, the accommodation center that the American people paid for is ready for us to move in. So for a mere $1 million and only 3 months overdue, we get some pretty plush digs for 4 months or so. CENSORED So nice to contribute to the community! It's half a kilometer from Kibondo town, so not quite the short walk that the guest house is, but still close, I hope.




I've been trying to volunteer for some of the agencies out here, but some of them are pretty strict about it. The amount of politics and bureaucracy is mind numbing at times. CENSORED. I'm sure that's just a vestigial wave of paranoia that comes from living in a once communist country, but I'm not really that sure. CENSORED. See, the theory is that if refugees become aware of the opening of a transit center for the ones that will be resettled in the U.S., they will no longer want to go back home and voluntary repatriation will drop off. As with many things, there are so many sides to this issue that it comes to resemble a sphere. More like a jawbreaker right before you crack it. The other thing that the taxes I got a six month extension on taking care of paid for is about 400 brick homes for the chosen refugees to live in. The ones being resettled score these beauties partly for security, because they become kind of singled out from the rest of the refugee populace. The first time I saw these, they looked very picturesque and at the same time like the opening credits to Weeds. I got a very emotional feeling coming out of there, but I'm still not sure what it was. Lets just say there was no bile involved.

The dust is rising out here. It hasn't rained for a few days and people are starting to get coughs. The sun sets higher and higher each day because of the amount of dust in the air. When we are driving on the road, it takes less than 2 seconds for a bicycle to vanish in the dust rising from our passing. The dust is red, but it doesn't taste like iron. Someone probably said it is red from the blood spilled in African wars but then it would probably taste more salty. No, it just tastes like chalk, except at night, when it tastes like wet chalk.










I've been trying random eating options in an effort to have some variety. I like the samosas, but they are often cold and that's when the grease gets a little mucky. Samosas are triangular deep fried things with ground meat and veggies or just veggies in them. I've also tried something one place calls a pizza, but its really just a meat pie with pizza dough like skin and a boiled egg inside. They have veggie ones of those, too. So far, nothing has made me sick. A common roadside treat is some kind of meat on skewers and chips mayai. The skewers are typically, upon close inspection, bicycle spokes and the meat can have a kind of woodsy rancid taste after 4 pm. Chips mayai is just french fries embedded in scrambled eggs. Sometimes you get chapati on the road, which is kind of like a tortilla only more greasy and a little more bready. Chapati is the most likely to give you the runs, according to my informal poll. Suffice it to say that they reuse the grease. What they used it for in the first place I will gladly leave a mystery.

If the old rule of thumb about the cleanliness of restaurant kitchens being indicated by the cleanliness of the bathrooms applies, you do not want to eat in Kibondo. The typical bathroom, with its various nesting insects, patchy ruddy color from the dust and mud of which the walls seem to be composed, parts of small animals and birds in various stages of decomposition, floor (if there is a floor) festooned with bits of newspaper (not for reading) and tissue, and enormous maw that somehow still isn't big enough to catch all the human waste spewed at it, makes a very good appetite suppressant. And at most of these places you need an appetite suppressant. Beer, or "Bia" in Swahili (see, I am learning a language), also fills the helps stave off the hunger quite nicely. And it works in conjunction with the bathroom imagery, so the 2-5 hour wait for food seems like a mere 1 to 4 hours. You can order ahead, but then they act surprised when you get there an hour later, and won't start cooking until you've been there for 30 minutes or so. Actually, I'm basing this on only a couple of places. The roadside stands are more responsive. But we did wait five hours for Samosas once, until one guy went and stood in the kitchen until the food got cooked. We dined that night at around 11:30. You also commonly run into the situation where there is no more food. Most of the time you just have to keep asking and something will happen, but sometimes there is just no more food. So Ann and I have started cooking at home. We need to get a gas stove, because the charcoal habatchis that they use around here take a while to fire up.





Right now she is sick in bed. We live with the medical coordinator, Dr. Leul, who we also hang out with all the time and within hours of Ann feeling ill she had both kinds of malaria tests. She got the results back within a half hour of taking them (negative). For comparison, when I started showing symptoms in Seattle, it took 3 hours of waiting in the emergency room to get the test, and another 24 to get the results. There are some unexpected things going on over here, which I guess makes sense in the land where humans became dominant amongst 1 ton carnivores and the virulence that took them down.