Djib-Job

Freedom is the Only Way

2012-01-31T15:11:00.000-08:00

went with Ann to a Town meeting at the US embassy today. This massive facility, employing some where between 35 and 40 Americans and around 200 Djiboutians, exists to service the needs of, oh, I'd guess 20 American citizen civilians and 3500 military folk.

By massive, I mean it takes up about 2 square kilometers, has a pool that we can't use, and weighs a lot.

So there were some good cookies and some coffee. I met some nice people including a couple military guys that shook hands with Leon Panetta. We asked them if they had some inside scoop on the recent operation that freed those hostages from Somali kidnappers. They said they saw it on the news and didn't know anything until then... I scrutinized their countenances, wondering if they were telling what they were told to tell or if it was true. Like I could tell anyway...

I don't what to be a dick or a whiner but we all know that every sentence with the word but in it ends up contradicting what it said before the word but.

I love Africa but Arabia, I haven't gotten that feeling yet. And this place feels more Arab than African. It is OK for me, I tried to help one guy out and now he always asks me for money to feed him. I have no idea how to get him a job, no idea how to get him out of his rut. It hurts me in the dark part of my optimism because it seems so hopeless. His front teeth are brown and black and red and green and shaped like shark fins. His smile like a searing wound beneath bloodshot starry eyes searching for hope in a waterless plain of pain. His English like a surrealist rendering of a quaint English landscape peppered with French mispronunciations.

Yesterday, I was cashless, no money in the bank, and I was going to the gym to work out and he tapped me on the shoulder. I said "Hey Andi, I don't have any money." He took affront, saying "I am just your friend" and I momentarily accepted that and asked him how he was doing. No answer, he just said "I will see you later my friend.."

I come back home and find 1000 djibouti francs ($6) in some shorts that have a secret tourist pocket. Ann is going to the prison tomorrow and that always makes me worried and she has no money left on her phone so I know I have to spend at least 500 on phone credit for her. Which leaves 500 to buy ancient dried up copenhagen at the tabac.

I make that trek across the square and Andi hits me up for some cash and I try to ask him about his family, his day, he offers nothing. Refusing to relate. You know, I realize I am a fool, I cannot be his friend, I cannot help him in self realization. I'm not going to give him $3 because I am sick and sickened at this relationship with him. And also because I am jonesing for some tabac.

Today my paycheck came through and in the night I reflected upon my relationship with this guy. The first words he said to me were lies: "I am a technician." And he has lied since then. "You are looking for a bicycle?" he said,

I reply "Yes, a used one but a good one"

He promises "I will find you one".

I say, because he has a cell that can take pictures, "If you do, take a picture and show it to me". I already knew that people here will tell you they know something that is simply not the case. "Yes, you give me francs and I will find you a pair of green socks, no problem....a place to get beer after 8 oclock no problem...a guitar.." Always promising the world but delivering only an emptier pocket.

So I told him to take a picture of the bike and he said OK, but he'd have to get 1000df for cab fare to see it and take the picture. I fronted him that. Next day he told me he found an excellent bike a childhood friend was selling for a great price. "Cool" I said, can you show me the picture?"
My Djibouti sense tingled at his reply:"No, it was too dark to take a picture".

So I blow another 1000 to get to the place and back to see a bike that is too small and to see his "childhood friend" not even greet him properly. The bike was crap. And to me, this was two bad lies. You can see vague acquaintances, men on the street, walking hand in hand, they ALWAYS greet each other with a handshake at least. The bike seller barely managed a nod in Andi's direction and Andi told me they had played football together when they were babies. As he dragged the piece of shit bike out of some shack, I offered twenty bucks and was countered with 200. "Lets go" I said.

Anyway, I know life is hard and Really Hard around here. I just don't like being played. I gave him cash to check the thing out and he just took it. That's not a friend. That's a player, trying to play a sucker.

He lingers still, where the security guards' purview ends, waiting for me to feed him. And I buy cat food at the store to keep a stray alive that is already showing signs of pregnancy. To clarify, that means I care more about strange animals than I do about strange people.

I don't know, I used to think I was a good person, I felt comfortably tortured by reasonable decisions. Of course you give money to the poor, of course you help the less fortunate. Now, I think the me that thought that was an idiot. Yeah, and the me that thinks this is a jerk.

But the thing at the embassy was great. I am starting to like being an American.

Divine Contact WIpe

2012-01-30T12:34:00.000-08:00

So many things I don't understand, but I pretend to, to get by. I lie, walking like I'm confident and know where I'm going, or smiling at the dude with no legs on the bike that moves via hand cranks.

From 20120123

I did throw him 100 francs (=60 cents) and say "bon velo", to which he replied "merci". This was on my way back from the cold beer store with 3 frosty golden tuborgs in a bag.

As I was working today I heard some guy yelling and some other guys yelling back at him, it was like that game marco polo, but at high volume. It was getting into my ears and dislodging the music I was trying to crank to drown it out. So I went to the balcony and looked, one stumbling bastard shouting at nothing in the middle of the square. Two guys at their tables of crap they were trying to sell yelling back at him.

It would get quiet for a while and the guy, the rooster (same guy) was standing at the edge of the circle, holding a salute as traffic circled around him.

Yelling all the time, maybe its the way the language evolved, inclusive of everyone across the barren plains, and now it is just trying to be heard above the crush of hopelessness.

I rode my bike out to the Haramous area, where the new US embassy is, and took a circle around the mosque out there. I have been really down on Islam since being here. Partly because I read "infidel" and partly because at 4am two megaphones bathe us in their sonic Q'uran recitations thru our closed and shuttered bedroom window and one other crashes in thru paned glass and wooden door from the back. It is loud enough. It evokes a prayer on my part consisting of a single finger.

So as I'm riding my bike around this mosque, I saw the flip flops in the entrance, and considered the garbage clotted beach in front of it.

I started wondering if riding my bike instead of walking it was some how an affront. Wondering, but not caring.

From 20120123

I look at these streets. Richest neighborhood in the city, but you can't even look at a nice house without seeing a shack made out of cardboard and tarps on the trash strewn lot in front of it. And broken glass and nails and shredded corrugated metal all over the street. Forget Allah, I thought, and within minutes I got a flat tire.

From 20120123

Insha'Allah. If Allah wills it. A real smiter that one. Islam means submit, but really, its stupid not to have a patch kit when you are riding on broken glass and nails and shredded corrugated metal. So I probably just needed to "submit" to common sense. And here I was conflicted about blaming Allah versus blaming myself and that argument didn't seem to be doing anything for my tire, so I kept riding, thinking this is actually a better workout, and then one of the sprockets on my derailleur snaps off and nestles quietly into the roadbed.

Now I need a cab, so I take out my phone, because I have the number for 4 different cabbies in there, only to discover that every single one of my contacts has been deleted, I assume because its a crappy touch screen and its been jiggling in my pocket for 40 minutes. Every contact is deleted except for "Abdullahi" a guy that works with Ann and speaks 7 languages, and a contact with no number, just first name "Egg" and last name "J". Abdhullahi means "Slave to Allah". I figured Egg J just got dialed into the contact list by my thigh randomly, but who knows.

Now I'm walkin my bike, and a cab comes by going the other way. I figure I'll catch him on the way out, this neighborhood is like a gated community and most cabs are travelling with one way fares.

Sure enough he comes back out and I tell him the destination and he looks at my bike, like it is some great hardship to throw it in the trunk and somberly offers double a fair price to take me home. I'm just like, yeah, whatever (cab drivers always try to rip you off here you have to bargain and they still try to welch by pretending not to have change, etc.). He digs around in his glove compartment, and then digs around under the actual antelope fur covering the dashboard and comes up with a bent chisel looking thing, which he then jimmies into the trunk hole and wiggles for a while until it pops open. I throw the bike up in there, Jump into the front seat, moving his plastic baggie of Qat onto the center console.

He speaks no english, I speak no french or somali, we get along great in silence. Random photo below.

From 20120123

Wherever you go, you'll be better off respecting the local deities.

trailer and the rooster

2012-01-26T13:35:00.000-08:00

Just some random clips thrown together

This is the guy who wakes us up some mornings, yelling at cars and passersby. He's doing a little cleanup...

Toilet Nut Knob

2012-01-18T10:02:00.000-08:00

Rough day at work for Ann today.

So we scored some pizza and beer at the local Pizzaiolo. Decent. On the way out, saw this fellow with his sharp traditional Afar clothes, and his stick. A lot of these older dudes carry sticks of different lengths, haven't figured out what they mean. I saw a guy with a 6 inch stick and when they get longer they look like canes, maybe its some carryover from herding goats in the rolling scrub hills of Somalia. Maybe its some status thing, I don't know. Sometimes when they go into buildings they give the stick to a security guard to hold until they come out.

Anyway I noticed the guy's stick because it had a white knob on the top. At first glance I thought it was porcelain or camel bone. I gave him a nod as we walked by, thinking he must have some special status, and then got a closer look at his knob. It was one of those giant plastic nuts that cover the bolts of a toilet.

Earlier, watching the sunrise, I saw the guy making the noise that passes for the rooster's crow. Looking down from the balcony, the first thing I noticed was his giant ears. He was bugging the guy cleaning the street, yelling something at him, the guy swiped at him with a broom and he veered away. Then he started yelling at a passerby and that guy made a feint with open palm and the rooster cringed making aye aye aye aye noises.

Midday, I can see all the SUVs parked in front of the Planete Hollywood below me, and there are six kids in between two of them, 8-10 years old, maybe. 2 of them have shirts on that have colors, the other four are wearing clothes that have aged to grey. One kid, one whose shirt still has colors, has a pair of orange flip flops on, the others are barefoot.

I see an elderly gentleman done up in semi traditional garb with a stick checking his look in one of the SUV mirrors. The barefoot kid with colors in his shirt goes over and starts punching the old man in the shoulder until he leaves. It strikes me that these kids have assigned themselves protectors of the SUVs and hope to collect a tip when the owners get back.

The kid that punched the old guy wrestles the right flip flop off of the other kid and puts it on.

Life in the Turd World

2012-01-07T02:21:00.001-08:00

Ann takes to the blog....
One thing I’ve noticed here in Djibouti is a strange proliferation of animal body parts on the street. When we were living in Jordan I was walking home from work one day (and it had been an especially hard day) when I looked down and saw a dead kitten. This made me feel REALLY sad and I vowed to keep my eyes above waist level from then on whilst walking in (some) foreign countries.

From Our Place in Menelik Square

Unfortunately I keep forgetting about that. A few weeks ago we went to the swanky Kempinski Hotel for a little escape-from-Djibouti action. A day spent lounging at the pool, waiters with little bow ties bringing us drinks etc. Then we had to go home and since we don’t have a car and it isn’t 120 degrees out (yet) we decided to walk a bit. Almost as soon as you leave the hotel grounds you know that you are back in Djibouti. The bougainvillea and manicured lawns give way to thorny sticks clinging to life in dry, cracked mud puddles. The smell of cocoa butter is replaced by the smell of shit (because people are well, shitting, in the sea). But what really brought it home that we were no longer in Kempinskiland was that I looked down and saw something about two feet long with hair and what was unmistakeably, a hoof. “Is that a goat leg?” I asked Reed. “yup” he said and we kept walking.

From djib country

About a week later I was walking home from work (not looking down) when I came upon the IOM dog. I used to work for IOM and they are just down the street from our office. The dog is always out in front of their office and he only has three legs and is super scroungy in a very endearing way. The two times a year it rains he rolls around in puddles and then goes around caked in mud for the next month with his little pink tongue lolling about. He manages just fine with his three legs and it would appear that this happened quite some time ago. On this particular day when I strolled past him I had some stale cookies to give him but he was engrossed in something else and was chewing away quite happily and ignored my offering. Curious (no! bad idea!) as to what could be more enticing than stale French cookies I looked closer and discovered he was gnawing on an animal leg, no a DOG leg. Now the strange part is that it was not HIS missing leg as his leg has obviously been missing for a long time but it was some OTHER dog’s missing leg. It even had all it’s little nails still. Sadly I did not have my camera or even Reed with me to witness/process this.

If one does have an affinity for the four-legged friend it’s a tough town. I hit what can only be described as a new low-low when I chased down a pack of teen-age boys and threw a rock at them. They were throwing rocks (they started it!) at a dog and then a little cat and I lost my shit. Yes there are plenty of people that don’t have enough to eat here and I should save my energy for them and some countries just don’t have the same feelings for animals and blahblahblah. Fuck that. I work in a refugee camp and I know how bad off people are and it occupies 99% of my waking hours so excuse me if I want to focus a tiny amount of energy on animals. Wow, see what happens? Anyhoo I was a crazed banshee shouting at them, throwing my rock, stalking them for a few blocks shouting them down in English (I’m pretty sure they got the gist of it, most people seem to understand f-bombs). Reed said “I was right there with ya until you threw that rock…”. I’d like to say I’m not proud of what I did but obviously I am because I am writing about it.

From DjiboutiLicious - Shots from and around our apartment

Another fascinating (might be a strong word here) thing about Djibouti is that people talk REALLY loud. I would go so far as to call it SHOUTING. The lingua franca (besides Frenchy) is Somali and you really cant tell if the person shouting is happy/furious/excited/crazy/all of above. Sometimes they do it right in your face and we call it being “thundergunned” after an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadephia. It’s a good verb. “You know that short, lighter salesman with the Kanye glasses? He fucking THUNDERGUNNED me today when I was getting off the bus”.

Next to thundergunning horn honking is another national pastime. There is really little to no need seeing as there is one measly traffic circle downtown and not many cars but for some reason they can’t seem to negotiate it and end up jammed in these goofy configurations honking like maniacs, even though they could easily pass the blocking car. I suspect they long for a proper traffic jam so they could really let loose on their klaxon action so they just pretend to be mad and honk away all the while shuddering in ecstasy.

And then there are the beggars and qat-chewing drug addicts on the sidewalks (and I use the term ‘sidewalk’ loosely here). At first I resisted giving money to beggars but I felt like such an asshole that I started carrying a pocketful of change and when I remember I buy biscuits to give the rugrats instead of money (they scowl, one even gave me the finger). As for the qat I suspect the government doesn’t mind having almost the entire male population addicted to drugs as that effectively prevents them from rising up and demanding oh I don’t know, jobs? Education? Health care? Clean drinking water? Streets that don’t stink like piss? And yes people here pay taxes. You think WE get a raw deal ha!

We fall asleep to the pounding bass of Club Hermes (Herpes) and waken to the blare of the mosque (4 a.m.). Somewhere in between is another layer of hell which is the karaoke bar that caters to the Japanese soldiers. It's pretty bad but makes for interesting dreams.

One has to be able to HANDLE Djibouti and some days I can’t. But most days it is funny as hell and nothing ever goes like you think it will (should).
Happy 2012. Peace, love, and fresh air to all!

Xmas in Addis

2012-01-01T00:56:00.001-08:00

Ever since I read the Sign and the Seal, about the whereabouts of the real Lost Arc of the Covenant, I have wanted to go to Ethiopia. From here, it is a $350 round trip, and as long as there are no Eritrean stamps on your passport, they love Americans. So we head to Djibouti International (the only airport, there are no other airports in the country). We met an American we'd met before there, pretty cool guy, IT consultant for the US base here, while we were waiting for our flight. He gave us a short list of places to check out. As per our poor travel custom, I don't think we checked any of them out. We did see two US drones take off from the same airstrip. Our pal commented that it was funny that on base, there is serious security around the drone hangar and really no acknowledgement that they exist, but here from the bar at the airport we can watch them take off about 200 meters away. I got a little nostalgic for my home town McLean, knowing that the kids flying those drones were probably in Langley. Reminds me of Ender's Game.

We'd decided to check into the Sheraton, the 5 star hotel in Addis Ababa, so I figured we'd probably won't going to see much of the city. The rule of thumb I've learned from travelling is the nicer the hotel, the less you see. Actually I probably read that somewhere, but let me confirm it. Knowing this, I took some shots from the shuttle on the way to the hotel.

From 20111231-203010

Iron Like a Lion In Zion.

From 20111231-203010

No way this scaffolding would be OSHA approved.

From 20111231-203010

I didn't take pictures of the guard at the gate, they had these giant black mock pith helmets, almost like the hats the Keystone Kops wore. And when I got out of the cab, the guy that grabbed our meagre luggage had a top hat like tom petty wore in that one video. Taller than Abe's stovepipe, and flaired out at the top. It made me feel a little sad to see people wearing these costumes for a job, but then I remembered what I wore in High School in the marching band. Also that they had good jobs. No unemployment rates in Addis, that ain't published and it isn't on anyone's tongue that we found.

Still, first thing we noticed, Ethiopia is CLEAN. And the people are nice. And they don't try to rip you off. I guess I'm talking mostly about Addis Ababa, but also in Lalibella and the airport. And unlike Djibouti City, you can't smell either piss or shit or death at any given moment. You can smell frankencense and that spice, cardamom, and occasionally hash. Didn't see anyone throw garbage on the street, saw a lot of trash cans and people used them...

The difference between the third world and the turd world. They grow Qat in Ethiopia, it grows there like a weed, cultivated and a major export to the arab world. The stuff is a mild amphetamine that breaks down with time, especially in heat, and the amphetamine compound degrades. Over time. Like the mind of the users. The rapid degradation is one of the reasons that Ethiopian Airlines was founded, and before that, the Djibouti-Addis train, now defunct. Because Djibouti is a major port, serving the red sea, Yemen, the saudis, etc...

So you would think that in Ethiopia, where you can get the good stuff, you would see a lot of qat chewers, but in Djibouti they are everywhere, green teeth, slurpin a bottle of watered down coke in a Dasani 1.5 liter, grinning their green grins, exposing their wild stained and rotting teeth.

And I didn't see any of that in Ethiopia, maybe the good stuff hits you before the rot occurs. Maybe it hits you so hard you are finished forever. I don't know.

Next we went to Lallibella to see the churches hewn out of the rock. Here's a trailer of the trip:

some frame grabs

2011-12-20T10:15:00.000-08:00

If cruelty is beauty then the landscape around here is like consummation.

From djib country

This guy came up to us on the highway and got psyched for a piece of candy:

From djib country

And God made the ground like asphalt:

From djib country

OK. Looks like a marmot, but has hooves. This little guy, a hyrax, shares an ancestor with the elephant and the manatee:

From djib country

I went to visit Ann in Ali Sabbieh, where she was interviewing refugees, getting their stories. This is the outskirts of the big settlement an hour away from the refugee camp. It looks post apocalyptic, but its not. There is no coming back from the apocalypse

From djib country

Ali Sabbieh, equally close to Somaliland and Ethiopia. Me and Ann walked around after she finished work at Ali Abdeh

Walking back to our hotel from the office. Note the pride:

From djib country

This goat was just born, had to step in the afterbirth to get this shot:

From djib country

Djoy

2011-12-20T09:06:00.000-08:00

The spirit of Christmas has descended. Djibouti was colon-ized by the French and when they left, its hard to say what was left behind to enrich the country. As is the case, I'm sure with any colon-ial endeavor. French plumbing, e.g. may or may not be like the plumbing here, which separates us from sewage by a layer of asphalt. Most of the time.

Nevertheless, I surmised that the French restaurants around here in Downtown Djibouti-ville would be run by stalwart Gaullish entrepeneurs and retain actual French chefs. So I talked Ann into roving down into the nearest one, even though she was not excited by the prospect. For vegetarians, I guess there is not much typically on offer. For meateaters, there is some serious weirdness. In front of the place, we saw this guy:

We go in, not much happening. They send us upstairs with the others. We try to find a table where the three unnecessary airconditioners are not triangulating on our heads, but the only table meeting that criteria is 5 feet from the toilet, which has no door.

We opt for a table by the stairs. I am unsuccessful in filtering out Ann's complaints about the AC blowing on her face and one waitress turns one of the AC machines off, and then another one turns on a secret fourth one that drives cool air into Ann's ear. We note small children in the room shivering and covering themselves with napkins, for warmth, from other tables, and finally get the secret fourth turned down.

I have been focussing on the menu. I know there must be some nice meaty things in here, its all in French, though. The steaks are obvious, but frankly, every piece of beefsteak I have tried in this country tastes vaguely of shit. To the point where it doesn't repel me so much anymore, I am beginning to find different qualities in shit taste. Not into this at the moment, Ann points out on the menu the pork loin. I think yes. Granted, haven't seen any pigs for three months. Have seen cows, but mostly goats. Not one single chicken. The waitress comes up and asks if we want a menu in English. Ann is totally confident in her command of the language, as am I. I have decided on the pork loin, so we are like: "Non".

They bring some fresh bread, no butter, and some other tablespoons of something and then comes the meal. The pork Loin looks small to me. Like a sausage. I know it is not a pork loin or a sausage that civilized people would eat upon the first cut, as the aroma comes out and saturates my senses.

After the first bite of this "pork loin" I reminisced:
I remember every time someone would leave Kibondo when we were in Tanzania, they would have a big goat bbq. You would get beer for a while as they roasted it, and when it would smell perfect and you got hungry for it, the line for food would start. I would be totally salivating from the smell, and get in line immediately. But after the first time, when I got a bowl of the stuff they offered before the bbq was ready, a stewy soup. I learned that they char the good parts beyond recognition and offer a bunch of pieces of intestine and stew that smells like crap and tastes pretty gaggy, like it takes some serious will power not to gag for me. And intestines are really chewy. I started to lay out the pieces in front of me that wouldn't chew down and wonder what their functions were, because they were clear examples of anatomically functional adaptations. But Ann was sitting next to me and she said "If you don't get that away from me I will throw up"

So I pretty quick wolfed down the sausage and washed it with rose(yeah, we totally drink pink wine here) and french fries, fully suspecting I was eating intestine. The parts of the pig that don't get into the hot dog. The unclean parts. I googled "Disgusting French Foods" when I got home and found out that my dinner actually made the list of "Stinkiest Foods"

Take a pig colon and slice up the other intestines around it and stick them in the colon. I was eating a pigs entire asshole. I hope its not true that you are what you eat. But fron the way the french around here act towards us, it may be the case.

Planete Hollywood

2011-12-06T13:17:00.001-08:00

There is a Planet Holly wood here in Djiboutiville. Not according to the thrice bankrupt company founded by Robert Earl, former president and CEO of the Hard Rock Cafe, with the cash from Hollywood stars Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

From djib country

The logo is consistent, and there are pictures of stars in this "Planete Hollywood" but the service is typical of downtown Djibouti.

I ordered a Double Cheese Burger and got it. You would recognize its ilk if you have ever microwaved a single cheeseburger at an AM\PM Mini Mart. I peeled the top bun back and showed the semi hot Djiboutian waitress the single layer of of debatable meat patty. I said "I ordered a double burger. Double. This is SINGLE." She said "Djibouti Double." She didn't even smile. But she's right. Here in Djibouti they gladly charge you double, triple for nothing extra. You get more for less and nothing for more sometimes, I guess.

This country should be prosperous right now. It has a huge port and it is the only port that Ethiopia can use. Ethiopia used to think it had its own port in Eritrea, but the war put a lid on that jar. So many trucks move through here.

Many trucks, many military personnel. But the government here gouges as much as it can, and rather than taking advantage of a momentary window to create a vital economy, the gov't here chooses to squeeze everyone until they have to leave.

That is what is meant by a Djibouti Double. Nothing more for twice the price.

There is, in the same building as the one we live in, a "Djibouti Olympic Committee." It is right next to the disco "Club Hermes" which Ann and I have started to call "Club Herpes" because there are a lot of Ethiopian Hos up in that joint.

Update: I finally gave in and went back to Planete Hollywood to get a burger, this time I ordered two single burgers, thinking to double up the meat patties and toss the bun. On the menu, the single burger is 900DJF ($4.80) and the "double" is 1300DJF ($7.80). So I get the two burgers and they are exactly the same as the "double" I got twice before, as I pretty much expected. Then I pull the one meat patty from one, trying hard not to look at the yellow lettuce, and stick it in the other bun. I look up and the waitress looks astonished. "Why didn't you order the double?" I had to laugh as I tried and failed to explain to her...

whalesharkskunk

2011-11-23T11:58:00.000-08:00

Whale sharks are the biggest fish in the world, 40 to 50 something feet. They have brownish beige coloring on top with white checkerboard or constellation patterns of white. In Kenya they call them "papa shillingi" because the white parts look like coins(shillings), and in Japan they call it "geger lintang," which means "stars on the back".

You can go snorkeling and harass these majestic animals here in Djibouti if you've got the cash. If you are more ecologically inclined, like Ann and I, you can shell out $180 to ride on a boat for 6 hours and NOT EVEN SEE their starry asses.

The boat:

wooden, my backpack smelled of diesel, washed the beach towels we brought three times and they still smell that way, quaintly primitive for 18 minutes and ridiculously inadequate for the 5:42 after that.

After a three hour motor, watching the crew cut up fresh fish into kebab sized chunks, assuming that was going to be our lunch, we arrived at a typically trash strewn beach which was apparently the milieu of our esteemed and large quarry. One group of 6 got off the big wooden boat about an hour before we arrived, and took a launch. As the wooden boat anchored (there was no name upon its bow or stern) a launch pulled up to take the rest of us to see the whalesharks. Our cadre consisted of me and ann and one amercan rancher from cali named phil and 13 french soldiers, 2 of whom were women. We roved around in the launch randomly for an hour and saw no sign of the checkerback. Made it back to the boat and I was alright, anticipating the awesome kebab lunch, but amazingly, even as they were finishing cooking those kebabs on the boat, we were offered cold cheesy croissants and salami sandwiches. I assumed they were appetizers for the kebabs and rice which was sizzling inches from my fist, but then they scooped all that tastiness into big platters, loaded it into boats and headed towards the beach. I looked at Ann, what the fuck? is that for dinner? Long story short, NO. Nothing.

Then the six who took the other launch reappeared, all flush with their viewing and swimming with the whale sharks, and proceeded to head to the beach to eat all that I watched sizzle and mature on the coals. How I tried not to hate them. How I failed. One 65 year old guy that will probably outlive me had a baseball hat that said "Crystal Mountain"

For us though, No whalesharks, no kebabs, weird food tease and I can no longer in good conscience recommend this sucky Djibouti travel bureau called "Lagon Bleu" which is blue lagoon spelled wrong which was a decent movie starring brooke shields before this horrible incident and now is only a bague whaleshark shaped inkblot on the dark part of my soul.

We did see a cuttlefish, the water was really clear.

On our way back, we got offloaded from the wooden nameless boat onto a fiberglass 19 foot long 6 foot beam piece of crap with an out board. The sun was going down and we were in an open ocean (indian ocean) shipping lane with no running lights and no life preservers. I had my arm around Ann as I realized that our lives were forfeit because I had not taken the proper precautions and the sky darkened and we rode ten foot swells toward the barely and less discernible lights of Djiboutiville on the wrong side of the channel bouys.

No big deal.

End of the Square

2011-11-23T09:33:00.000-08:00

I was working here today, on this west end of Menelik Square in Djibouti city, when a great shout rose above the daily noise of horns honking and people yelling at each other and competing mosque megaphones blasting out calls to prayer and monotonic sermonizing.

I took a look from the balcony and saw the police bus and a bunch of police. Broke out the video camera. Round up:

I think it may have been students protesting the kleptocracy around here but Ann thought it might be refugees.

It struck me that I had noticed this big police bus and couldn't figure out why they always parked it right in the square every day. There is a second police truck, a cab with a flat bed and a cage around it, with corrugated metal on top. Sometimes they park that here. Even though the city has a downtown spread that might accomodate 500,000 people, there is no industry here for the common person. The gov't sucks up all the cash from the port and it seems like the actual population is around 40,000, despite the municipal footprint. So I couldn't figure out why they would need TWO big trucks to haul away offenders every night. I found out today.

Djibouti borders Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somaliland. Ethiopia is the one you want to be aligned with around here, its big and moving in the right direction, and it has its own commodities market. Eritrea, to the north of Djibouti, has a port, one of the main reasons that Ethiopia didn't want to lose it, a reason that spent lives in a bitter war called civil by the Ethiopians and defensive by the Eritreans, supposedly ending in 2000. Djibouti is Ethiopia's port, and that's why Djibouti gets great deals on power,transport,Qat and military support from Ethiopia. Also, there is a big detention center in Djibouti for any native Eritreans, especially males of military age. Eritrean conscription is mandatory and lifelong.

But Djibouti doesn't get enough cash to maintain that detention center so the Djibouti police periodically head downtown and fill up a couple of police cattle trucks with refugees from Somalia who are downtown at the wrong time and use them to muck out the Eritrean detainees stalls and generally act as slave labor at the detainee center in the neutral zone between Djibouti and wherever, until their paperwork is discovered within the UN's statute of limitations, about 2 weeks...

Which totally explains why the police are always hanging out downtown but doesn't explain why the refugees keep getting caught, since getting caught is kind of the anathema of being a refugee. Once you get caught, you aren't a refugee anymore, but do you want to be?

I went to the store today to get some food and all the guys in the city always yell stuff, hard not to laugh, like:

wassup brutha?
rambo tu!
YES!
NICE! yes?

Today I cracked up because somebody yelled:

Sup Nigga!

The Gate of Sorrows

2011-10-13T15:43:00.000-07:00

Bab-el-Mandeb - the "Gate of Grief"

That is what the piece of water that goes from the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea is called. It's hard to navigate. According to legend, there was an earthquake when Arabia and Africa separated and this water was named because of the many unnamed who perished during that mythical upheaval. 75 miles west of here, Lake Assal (-509 ft )is the third lowest point on earth, a salty lake separated from the Red Sea, perhaps during that same upheaval. The lowest point in Africa. I was in the Dead sea once (1338 ft below Sea level) , and some guy asked me if I knew why it was so low, and I started to babble about the African and Arabian continental plates but he stopped me and said "No. It is because an angel turned the land upside down, for man was wicked." I didn't have the heart to tell him that turning the land upside down didn't fix that. But I did ask him to take his hand off of my balls.

Here in the city, it sounds like a train is going by about 10 hours out of the day. There's no train, taxis honk all the time, people yell and now, late in the year, the wind is starting to blow. I am grateful for that wind. I can hear the disco pumping out the jams, but so far Ann won't go.

The sun goes down and the crows gather:

I didn't thnk it rained much here, but the wind was howling yesterday and something was pelting the windows. I looked outside and it was really coming down.

3rd world cities. You think you got problems. Can't get enough money out of the ATM to pay rent. All these women with babies holding their hands out. And kids calling you chief, looking for some francs. And everyone else wants to help you. I go get water at a stand 20 feet from the entrance to my building everyday and always some guy wants to show me how to get there. "My friend! What do you need?"

Or walking to the Casino ( that's the name of the grocery store a block away) I hear guys going "YES!" I stopped turning around after a while. They say "YES!" as if they have the answer to the question you haven't asked. The answer is usually "Nice massage, coca, drinking, yes?" Or sometimes they have a briefcase with sunglasses (I point to the ones I'm wearing ) watches (same) giant lighters (I've learned to feign disinterest) , black switchblades (still feigning), and Tiger Balm. I get confused at the Tiger Balm, its not like the other things, but I realize I need to be strong or there will be some consequences, like I might owe the guy a drink or something.

After a few weeks I hear "YES!" and I think "no..." But I don't think its bad, it is an affirmation after all. To pay rent and the deposit I had to go to a cash machine and take out the max 4 days in a row. I couldn't take out the max in one go, because the ATM had its own limit, I had to put my card in 3 times to get out the max the bank decreed. The security guard for the ATM seemed to think I didn't know how to work it, because I kept putting in my card and pulling it out. He made some gibberishy moves with his hands and possibly quoted part of the Q'uran and then said "francs" one time. I got my cash and thanked him and walked away. Ever since then, when I get cash there, he watches me and say "YES!" when I get the francs. The look on his face, his demeanor, its like an observer fascinated by a chimp who puts the square block in the square hole.

And that's kind of when it dawned on me that from the locals' perspective, we do need help. They have this concept of Europe, or America, and see all these fat happy people coming from those places. The have cable TV and high speed internet here, but a lot of people are totally poor. Malnutrition is around 30%. But why would we leave these Entourage-like milieu's and venture to this stinky sweaty town? They might think we aren't making good choices in our lives. They might think we need their assistance.

It's like when cats bring you dead birds or mice. It is clear to the cats that we are too clumsy and noisy to hunt up some decent prey.

Better

2011-10-09T22:12:00.000-07:00

So we get up and we know there is an Island 45 minutes away in the Golfe de Tadjoura. Djibouti is shaped like a Rhino's head with its mouth open and the inside of the mouth is the Gulf. In the middle are a lot of islands, really small and undercut, like Moucha. Doesn't seem like much grows on it, it looks like it is made out of dead coral reefs that ended up above water somehow. Deeply undercut all around

From 2011922-20111003

Really good snorkeling. Apparently good diving but we haven't tried that yet. Plus the beers on tap are cheaper than in the city, 25cl of draft Stella for 600 Djibouti Francs ($3), versus 1000 downtown. WTF?

From djibouti mousha island

Next time maybe we can dive with whale sharks, biggest fish in the world.

From djibouti mousha island

I kept feeling like I was in a different country on this 3km circumference island. We were there for 4 hours but it felt like a longer, slower time. You could still see Djibouti city, the cranes that offloaded cargo from here if you tried.

I tried not to.

Our Place in Menelik Square

2011-10-04T22:12:00.001-07:00

Menelik was the bastard son of The Queeen of Sheba (Makeda) and Solomon according to the Kebra Nagast, a part of biblical text shaved off by all but the coptics and the rastafari. He brought with him the Arc of the Covenant when he left Israel. We got an apartment in Menelik Square, I don't know if the lost Arc is here, but there are a lot of poor women in bright colors begging for money with their babies. One view from our balcony:

We are on the third floor and right at the end of Menelik Square. It is an active part of town. A lot of the time, after it starts to get dark, we hang out on the porch and watch people roam around. We watch the guy paint the circle white and watch the cabs picking people up and dropping them off. But its pretty boring. The interesting part of the city we can only hear as we drift off to sleep.

The beat sounds at first like a bad bearing in the overhead fan. Or maybe some gas in Ann's belly, next to me. Possibly some late night construction?...

No, it is the disco, Club Hermes, which Ann and I have dubbed "Club Herpes". In the basement of our building, it may yet make our brains gelatinous but we resist and reach toward sleep. Our dreams are bent, but as yet our intent is not. Though how would we know?

Look man, I love this place. It is so weird. People call me "Rambo" at first I thought they were talking about "Rimbaud" the poet, the guy who wrote "A season in Hell" before he actually moved to this region after being shot by Paul Verlaine and becoming an arms dealer and never writing anything else in his life unless you count signing for the weapons that the ethiopians used to repel the italians as writing. Because in French Rimbaud and in American Rambo sound exactly the same. But the Rambo they are talking about is probably Rambo 5 who is like 50 so its not so cool. Clearly I need a haircut.

There are these two screened vents close to the floor in the kitchen. The pigeons like to hang there, we walk in and hear the coo and its kind of nice. It is somewhat disconcerting to be cooking breakfast with a pigeon's butthole mere inches away but in the grand scheme of things...

From Our Place in Menelik Square

Entering Djibouti

2011-10-04T22:11:00.001-07:00

It is hot here, but cool for Djibouti. How hot? Hotter than the outside of Uranus, but in the winter, about the same as the inside of your anus (thx Scottie).

We went for a walk to check out the local scenery. Walked along the beach, the local people sleep there in the summer because their homes are too hot to sleep in, I'm told. Quickly veered away from the beach because it smelled like human turds and we have yet to repeat that particular walk. Here is some local scenery:

We arrived about midnight on september 20 something, and had a little trouble getting a visa. Just another lesson in not believing that getting a visa before arriving isn't worth the effort, despite what anyone tells you. Although it wasn't bad, and it is funny that the officials that questioned us looked so grim and dire before they let us in, and so jolly once we convinced them. People don't always look the way they feel, but they often look the way you think they feel. Or the way you feel. Didn't get close enough to them to figure out if they felt the way they looked.

And then some 90 year old Djiboutian grabbed our 30kg luggage despite our protests (because we had $20 US money for the cab ride, zero Djibouti francs and only some kenyan shilling amounting to about $5) and dragged it to a cab. The cab driver dutifully told us the ride was $20 (3600 Djibouti Francs) and since our luggage didn't fit in the cab, the trunk was open and I kept an eye on it. The toothless valet was befuddled at our Kenyan Shilling tip, but we left him in a cloud of fine Djibouti sand as he uttered his righteous curses.

Arriving at the Alia Hotel, our reservation was lost, although Ann managed to pull it up and show it to the concierge on her laptop, and we slept in a single that night. Everyone including Ann speaks french here, except me. Later that day we got moved to a double room, here is the view from that window:

So it was hot this first week, and we finally got into a permanent place, out of the hotel room. Me and Ann went on a couple of walks trying to find the charming shoreline we envisioned. It smelled at the waters edge. Even at the hotel Sheraton and places cordoned off. In fact, it seemed that there was a whole road made of human turds blackened and hardened by the sun on the northernmost edge of this place. We called it the rue de poo. There were herons there.

Tel Aviv

2008-06-04T23:25:00.000-07:00

Soo...

We checked into the Alexander Suites at the beach. When we got there we unpacked and went for a walk on the beach. Right where the path from our hotel meets the beach there are these chairs on the sand. With waiters. It's about 4pm, lots of people have beers.

We didn't get much further down the beach for a little while.

Some Russians behind us are sharing a joint with the waitress and there are some other Russians to our right dumping vodka into their water glasses and drinking beer. Its still pretty bright and warm and there are people walking around and hanging out just wearing swimwear. Lots of skin. In Amman, they have rules that you can't be naked in the locker room. Sitting out on the beach, it felt like a light was releasing a part of my soul that had lay in shadow. They had Shakshuka.

I don't know if that's how you spell it. Poached eggs mashed together in some kind of red chili wine sauce. Spicy and eggy. Like I like it.

We walked up and down the promenade, very wide, crowded with cool shops and restaurants. Lots of fathers with kids. After a long walk, we grabbed some dinner by some little fishing harbor. Ordered too much food.

Then we walk down the boardwalk to speedos. The boardwalk is ripply, like gentle waves with 5 foot crests in parts. Very cool. The boardwalk is more like a massive deck, really. The boardwalk is vast.

Then we turn in.

Eating breakfast at the buffet, I hear some conversation:

Lady:
"He provided for his family by using his hands and his power."

other Lady:
"He was a laborer"

L:
"He was a survivor"

I'm sitting down at the table and Ann giggling a little:

R
-"You heard that?"
A
-"He was a suh vy vah!!"

And the visuals on the beach were killer.

Cyprus not to be

2008-05-25T01:06:00.000-07:00

Ann's been jonesing for some ocean and liberal values for about five months, and set up a jaunt to Cyprus for a few days. She had an extra day off because of Jordanian Independence day, and we were going to celebrate by getting independent of Jordan. Got the e-tickets off Cyprus air and we were ready to go.

At 5 am we go to meet or driver in front of Shaer Apartments, our erstwhile home, but he's not there. Ann gives a call to the driver service and the guy there, Rajid, says that the driver was told to come back at 6am.

Ann-"by who?"
Rajid-"By an American at Shaer Apartments. Your friend told the driver that he was early ad didn't need him until 6."

A-"What? My friend? He's not my friend! You should have given the driver my name!"
R-"But your friend sent the driver away..."

A-"Look, I don't even know who you are talking about. Where is our driver? We need to go now so get him here."
R-"But your friend-"
A-"Send the driver NOW!"
R-"ok"

So we get out of there around 5:30am, and the driver is going fast. We get to the airport in time and get to the desk before 6. Hand the e-ticket, the guy prints our boarding passes and then says there are no tickets. We have reservatios, but no tickets.

There is one guy working behind the counter and two guys in uniform in two other counters, possibly working. One of the slacker guys, whose name is Hussein, is apparently senior, and our no-ticket problem gets bumped to him. Now you'd think that this guys function as a manager type might be to offer additional customer support. It becomes apparent very quickly, that his role is exactly the opposite. To remove any support at all and try to extort money from us.

He repeatedly says there is no ticket and manages to deftly straddle the line between arrogance and ignorance as we repeatedly remind him that money was taken from our account, that this is fraud. His refrain is "we cannot pay for your ticket." Often delivering it with a laugh as if it was the most absurd thing in the world.

We checked online and couldn't get a receipt but could see the funds had been taken. It was too early to reach Cyprus air and we asked Hussein if we cold see the manager of Cyprus air, he stretched up to his full bureaucratic weasel height of 5'4" in inch riser heels and said "I am the manager." Around 6:30 (the flight leaves at 7) we figure we'll be able to recoup the cash somehow and bow to Hussein's demands to buy another ticket.

H-"If you don't want to go to Cyprus, why are you here."
Us-"Of course we want to go to Cyprus,but we don't want to pay twice."
H-"If you don't pay, how can you go?"
U-"But we did pay. We don't want to pay again"
H-"Ah. Then you do not want to go?"
U-What? Yes we want to go, but we don't want to pay twice."
H-"So you don't want to go to Cyprus then. OK."

You know steam is coming out of Ann's ears and bodily harm to Hussein is eminent at this point. I figure that since we bought the ticket with a credit card, we'll just throw the fraud word around and get our money back somehow. I don't think the word "Fraud" is in Hussein's vocabulary, or perhaps his definition of it is as a synonym for "profit." So we decide to buy another ticket. He charges us 100 euros more per ticket and starts printing up the boarding passes. I'm thinking we should just snatch them and bolt, but there are too many ways that could end badly. He asks for 440 dinars and I hand him the credit card.

He looks at the card and says
"what? Cash only"

"Huh? you're kidding. We don't have that much cash"

"go to cash machine"

"We can't take that much out at once."

"Ah. then you do not want to go to Cyprus."

He rips the boarding passes up. I take a picture of this bastard with my cell phone, and then I ask to see his ID badge. He flashes it so quickly I couldn't even tell what color it was, much less get a snap of it. I ask hi to show me his badge again, but he's tucked it into his coat. I keep yelling "Show me your badge!" but he is now stuffing all sorts of paperwork into a vinyl bag and casting about with shifty eyes and pretending we are not there. Then he grabs his vinyl bag and sprints to the end of the conveyor belt that the luggage rides on. One final glance back, like a weasel expecting pursuit, and he bends down and crawls through the hanging flap doors that the luggage goes through. He is gone. It is 6:45am. No flights to Cyprus available from any airline, no flights to anywhere we want to go.

We We met this guy Sebastion, who was trying to get home from France after spending 10 years in Japan. He had the same vapor-ticket problem we had. As we are leaving the airport, they make us put all our luggage through the x Ray machines and make us walk through the metal detector. But it doesn't go backwards, so we have to go outside the airport, walk thru the metal detector with our luggage, put the luggage on the conveyor belt, walk back thru the metal detector back into the airport to get our luggage, and back out again. This would have been funny, because the whole barrier was within 100 feet of the ticket desk.

We get in a cab and head back to Shaer apartments. I still can't raise cyprus air on the phone. Everything is closed in Amman. Back at the apartment, we decide to go to Israel and hang out in Tel Aviv. Because Amman is becoming ever more oppressive now that we feel trapped here.

So we call Rajid and he comes in person to pick us up at 9:30am and takes us to the King Hussein bridge. This is the closest border crossing, but they have no VISA issuing facilities for Jordan. Should not be a factor, because Ann has a residency until June and I have a VISA good until June as well.

After and hour car ride to the border, we grab or bags and head into the Jordanian customs to pay our exit tax. Here is where the spirit of the weasel again raises his eager pinpoint eyes, greasy whiskers eagerly twitching. The immigration guy says tat Ann does not have a valid VISA, so she cannot go without paying for the additional days she has been in Jordan without it. Ann repeatedly points ot that she has a 6 month residency stamp, so as a resident, she doesn't need a VISA. That's the whole point of residency status. Weasel agrees that she has a resident stamp but says that only allows her to stay in Jordan, and she can't leave without also having an up to date VISA. And she can't pay for the additional days she has been in Jordan at this border because they can't issue VISAs. We must go to the SHEIK Hussein bridge, 2 hours to the north, to take care of this. We call Rajid, and he turns around and picks us up. Ann is inconsolable and it feels like we are stuck in hell. No Exit. It is 11:30 am.

It is in the car heading north that as Rajid starts to make light of the situation, saying "Jordan wants you to stay here Miss Ann." "You are going to wander here like moses for 40 years.." Jokey stuff along these lines, and I'm kind of waving at him from the back seat, doing the throat cut gesture, laughing too loud to drown out what sounds like a litany of Ann's fears at the moment and Ann starts sobbing, her head in her hands beside me. "Sorry" says Rajid. I put my arm around Ann and try to hold her in the car, excruciatingly aware that this type of display is Haram (forbidden) in public, and this just compounds my frustration, but that's just in the background, really, because you can't not reach out to a loved one in despair. She gets it under control after a while, and I wisely decide not to do a quick in car video interview asking how her day is going so far.

At the Sheik Hussein border, it is very easy to get through. It's 12:30pm. The only snag was that they didn't understand why we had paid for exit tax stamps at the Appleby border crossing, so we had to go meet with the border big man in his office and explain that we bought the exit stamps but ten were refused exit. He smiles and they all say welcome, and everyting is OK. While we are waiting in line, a mouse goes scurrying through the passport control area, and some of the officals chase him, but he gets away. An smiles at this and says to them "He's going to Israel." The guy smiles back , after translating this to his buddies who start laughing, and says "It is OK, he paid his exit tax."

Finally we make it to Israel. A very easy crossing. I can't help but notice that there is nothing wrong with Ann's credentials and she doesn't have to pay additional VISA fees because, of course, she has a RESIDENCY stamp. Weasel two has earned a special place in the pantheon of petty customs tyrants.

You come into Israel, and everyone there is 19 and female, except for some guards, and they are just total slackers, flat of affect with us while joking and texting among themselves. It strikes me that this type of job is the equivelant of working at McDonalds for teenagers in a america. Its a McJob, except that its part of mandated military 1 year service for Israeli nationals.

Anyway, we get a taxi and for $100 we are conveyed to Tel Aviv. We arrive at 3:30PM. Five minutes on the beach and you feel all these repressed emotions slip away, and immediately feel more alive. It was a long day, but totally worth it.

surf jet

2008-04-27T03:01:00.000-07:00

me learning to walk on water

Egypt

2008-04-08T08:07:00.000-07:00

Egypt. Cairo. Colorful Bedouin tents in the sand next to monolithic
ruins and a wide lazy river? Not even close. More like New York City
with exponentially crazier drivers and more stuff open after 2am. And
more horns.

Our cab driver picked us up at the airport and drove us to the hotel,
Om Kholthoom, explaining that half the drivers in Cairo were crazy.
Then he demonstrated which half he belonged to, straddling the white line
on a narrowing exit ramp at forty until the less crazy drivers on
either side dropped back. He called the car horns "the music of Cairo."
And it goes on 24/7.

I guess there are 20 million people in Cairo during the work week. And
almost everything stays open all night. I mean stuff like candle
shops and autoparts stores were still open at 2am as we made our way back
from dinner. I suppose this comes from a desert culture that sought
shade and rest during the heat of the day, toiling thru the night.

We started in Cairo, because Ann was working there, and I worked at a
cafe overlooking the Nile on Zamalek Island. I heard there were a lot
of ExPats on the Island. The city has this sand colored dust that coats
everything that doesn't move. Like the hotel room windows. It seems
like taxi drivers are trying to rip you off and at first we felt preyed
upon to some extent. But then I walked Ann to her office and she got
cash at a cash machine on the way. On my way back this guy is yelling
"sir! SIR!" from across the street. I walk over there, figuring he's
mistaken me for someone else (that happens a lot). He says "you cart
visa you leave it" I'm trying to figure out what scam he is trying out
on me as I make sure I have my passport and wallet. He goes "cart!
CARD!" He's pointing at the cash machine. "Inside!" He says. I go
inside and there is a guard in there with Ann's debit card, which she left
in the machine. All of the sudden Cairo seems less predatory. Of
course I have to cough up a tip for the guard and the guy on the
sidewalk. There is no question of a tip in situations like this. It's
just a question of how much.

Four days in Cairo, the pyramids visible from the top of our hotel, and
we left the island once to go on a dinner cruise.

Pretty cool cruise
on the Nile with a killer Egyptian buffet, belly dancer and a male
dancer that was spinnning for 20 minutes with these big hoops skirt thing.

Ahmed, who took us out, said the belly dancer was a turkish wedding
tradition to made sure the groom was fully aroused before bedding his new
wife for the first time.

Aside from the cruise, we went out one other time, but were mostly
working. We made up for that over the next four days.

Feb 15th, 7:00pm. Drive from our hotel to Cairo airport, boarding a
flight to Aswan.
Feb 15th, 11:30pm. Check into the Cleopatra Hotel in Aswan.
Feb 16th, 3:00am. Check out of Cleopatra Hotel, get into a van.
Feb 16th, 3:30am. 35 people in the van. We are driving to Abu Semple,
something
Ann was told that we must see and we did. 4 hour drive, desert
dawn.

Feb 16th, 10:00pm 4 hours back to Aswan.
Feb 16th, 2:00pm Falafels
Feb 16th, 2:15pm The granite quarry. THis is where the unfinished
obelisk is.
Feb 16th, 3:30pm The Aswan High Damn. 16 times the material it took
to build the great pyramid.
Feb 16th, 4:00pm Get on a speed boat head upriver on the Nile.
Feb 16th, 4:30pm The Temple at Philae. Isis gathered Osiris' body
parts (minus one) and buried them here.
Feb 16th, 5:30pm Get on a Train to Luxor.
Feb 16th, 10:30pm Arrive Luxor (Arabic word, plural of "palace").
Check out the Sunset Hotel. Too shabby.
Feb 16th, 11:30pm Check in to the Pinata hotel.
Feb 17th, 06:00am Hop in a car. Head to the valley of Kings.
Feb 17th, 07:00am Valley of Kings. Hot. Hotter inside the tombs.
Mind blowing.
Feb 17th, 09:00am Hop in a car. Head to the Hapshupset's Temple.
Feb 17th, 09:30am HapShupset the only female pharoah to build a temple
to herself.
Feb 17th, 11:00am Hop in a car. Head to the valley of Queens.
Feb 17th, 11:30am Valley of Queens.
Feb 17th, 12:15am Hop in a car. Head back to Luxor.
Feb 17th, 12:45am Stop to view TutMoseII statues, called Memnon?
Before rennovation began on these giant statues,
the wind made it sound like they were weeping.
Feb 17th, 1:00pm Hop in a car. Onward to Luxor.
Feb 17th, 1:30pm Falafels.
Feb 17th, 1:45pm Karnac. 27 temples inside this 140 square kilometer
complex. Place is friggin huge.
Previously blown mind is re-blown.
Feb 17th, 3:30pm Decide to skip the Temple at Luxor and hit the roof
top pool. Did I mention it was hot?
Feb 17th, 4:00pm Sunning by pool. Beer involved.
Feb 17th, 6:00pm Pool is cold.
Feb 17th, 8:00pm Dinner. Chinese.
Feb 17th, 11:00pm Crashed.

Feb 18th, 6:00am Check out. Get in car to airport.
Feb 18th, 8:00am Fly to Cairo.
Feb 18th, 10:00am Arrive Cairo.
Feb 18th, 11:00am Driver takes us to the Zaccara. First pyramid,
temple of Zuul.
Feb 18th, 12:00pm Hungry, cold. Driver wants to take us to a carpet
making school.
This is where they teach children the trade of making carpets. We
pass, demanding food.
Feb 18th, 12:30pm Cheops. Food. Coffee. Good.
Feb 18th, 1:30pm The Great Pyramid.
Feb 18th, 2:30pm The Sphynx.
Feb 18th, 3:00pm Back to Cairo.
Feb 18th, 4:00pm Dinner at Chiles (the chain).
Feb 18th, 5:00pm The big market at cairo. Been around for 10000
years?
Feb 18th, 6:00pm Airport.
Feb 18th, 7:00pm Fly back to Jordan.

petra

2008-02-19T02:04:00.000-08:00

We decided to head to Petra. It's about a 1 hour drive. Built by Nabatteans former nomads who roamed the Arabian Peninsula. The treasury:

Made famous by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, may not actually hold the holy grail like Indy showed us. It's called the treasury because there was a rumour rhat the urn at the top held some pharoahs gold:

But it's really a temple. There was some mention of great hordes of gold near the dead sea, in the dead sea scrolls which were found not far from petra, but no one has ever found it. In Petra, our guide told us he had lived in a cave growing up and I wondered why all the places where people lived looked like, crummy, like this:

(That's Monica our friend and neighbor in this picture). See how the house looks like a cave. But all the places where people didn't live, the temples and the tombs, looked really nice. There may have been a nice palace somewhere, but I dind't see it. The other interesting thing about the Nabbateans is the representations of theuir Gods are totally abstract. Here is the most ornate and detailed figures of their two Gods:

(Ann on the right) See, the God on the left is Dushara, and the one on the right is al-Uzza. No, there isn't anything else to them, just rectangular blocks. Suddenly that episode of SpongeBob square pants makes sense.

We decided to ride donkeys up to the monastery, 900 stairs, and that was interesting. Donkeys on uneven steep stairs with a sharp drop off to the right. It was OK until my donkey started wheezing and stumbling.

The cab drivers in Amman sometimes point to someone driving crazy (you can randomly point in any direction and usually be pointing at a crazy driver) and call them a donkey. I never quite got it until this donkey ride. The stairs are maybe 5 feet wide and there is a wall on one side and a cliff on the other and my friggin donkey is trying to pass Ann's donkey, or just repeated ram into it until he became too tired to do so. THis is kind of how we drive in Amman. No stop lights, you just kind of shove your car into a space too small for it in moving traffic and everyone has to adjust, or you get a dinger.

We made it to the monastery, which was a temple, not a monastery, and met someone from Seattle up there.

Next, we went to Egypt.

Snow in Amman

2008-01-30T05:17:00.000-08:00

While I was working last night the wind was howling outside. There are a couple of tall thin cypress trees about 20 feet from our back deck that kept snapping against the railing. I had threaded the internet cable through the sliding glass door and so I was getting a steady breeze in my work space in the living room.

We woke up this morning to about a foot of snow. It was pretty much little slushy balls almost exactly like raw material for slushies. Or for Farheed the snowman:

There are a couple of snow plows in this city of 2 million, but most of the people seem to call it a day off.

Going back a month, to new years, we got to go into the Intercontinental hotel because of Ann's coworker Fires. Its hard to get into these parties because they need to do a security check on everyone who gets in. But Fires was a former bartender there, so we managed to get fast-tracked:

Today: by Ann

2008-01-22T10:37:00.000-08:00

Hope your holidays were Merry .Here's to a 2008 filled with Peace and Happiness to all of you.

Reed and I spent our Christmas holidays in the Occupied Territories (Jerusalem and West Bank) and in Tel Aviv (Israel). We were in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve and stood in the very spot where Jesus was born (true story).

At sunset we gazed over Shepherds Fields and tried to imagine what the voices of those angels who were heard on high sounded like as they announced the birth of the baby Jesus but it was really hard because the Israeli construction crews were hammering away.

Busy little elves building illegal settlements. What would Jesus say about the flagrant violation of UN Resolution 242? (WWJSAFVUN242?).

Not sure who promised this:

Thank God George Bush showed up to make peace in the Middle East. He's only been in office for 7 years.

My job is pretty amazing. Today I chatted with a former aviation engineer who had visited Seattle in the late 70's. His host from Boeing took him Sockeye fishing in the Sound and their dinghy deflated and they had to be rescued. It felt surreal to be having this conversation with a refugee en route to resettlement in Utah.
Words like Mosul and Anbar have taken on new meaning as there are faces and stories to go with the names of these places. I have met engineers, doctors, lawyers, librarians, cartographers and artists. The stories are sad and heartbreaking but as always there is a whole lotta hope in the room that the US will offer a new start in life. I try to feel hopeful too- that people will be kind to them and recognize what they have been thorough and not call them terrorists and beat them up at the 7-11. And that all the lost husbands, wives, parents, children, neighbors, and limbs are not in vain but of course we all know that nothing will ever be worth it.

Meanwhile we work out at our swanky gym across the street from Starbucks and Bennigans. On TV I watch Oprah, Dr. Phil and Shaq's Big Challenge (the latter being my favorite). Hummers careen through neighborhoods of McMansions that would make Carmela Soprano swoon. There is still the odd empty lot with a few Bedouin families and their grazing sheep but soon they will be gone as the Gulfies build their summer homes in Amman to escape the heat and the mall craze continues. We go to dinner parties with relief workers where conversation topics include the rising land costs in Kurdistan and the best carpet shops in Damascus. Our friends are Palestinians, Circassians, and Assyrians-not to mention Serbian, American, Italian and Romanian. I love the blue, blue sky and the olive trees and the kindness and complexity of the Arab culture. It's a fantastic place to be at a pivotal moment in history .

We are excited for spring (it's snowing today!)

and more days at the Dead Sea wallowing in the mud. In a few weeks I'll go to Cairo for work so we will spend Reed's birthday in Egypt.

Lots of people ask how to help. The resettlement agencies always need help-always. Many Iraqis are very highly educated and skilled... if you would like to help with job or financial assistance I can put people in touch with an agency in any city in the US. And of course the Burundians are still en route-I was interviewed for this article in the Des Moines Register: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008801130331

As always Reed updates the blog and if you click on a photo it will take you to the gallery: http://blog.reedko.com/

So here's to Peace on Earth. Let's hope that it actually materializes this year- Inshallah.
Mucho love, Ann

Bethlehem : The House of Meat

2008-01-18T15:39:00.000-08:00

Bethlehem: The House of Meat

Beit Layhm. It means the house of meat. But we just think it means where Jesus was born. From Israel, Jerusalem, to get to Bethlehem, you have to go through a check point. There is a wall. A huge wall, 40ft high in places, made of steel reinforced concrete sections that were maybe made somewhere else to preclude terrorist involvement in the manufacture and dropped into the ground and linked by giant helicopters. It is very grey and ominous, as we approach on Christmas eve, with nary a red or green light. You can see the lights in the watchtowers, but they aren't very festive, being spots to ease the aim of snipers picking off suspected destroyers of peace. Not very festive at all. But still, hope abides, because its quiet and it looks like we can all get along for one more day.

The taxi driver from Jeru drops us off for 20 shekels at the cattle gate and we weave through it gazing at the razor wire. Like sheep making our way to slaughter we wander into the building made of half inch thick rumpled steel. Just like at the border with Jordan, all the checkpoint officers are women. They are so bored. So bored, and still they ask the cursory questions and try to see if your eyes dart when you answer.

And I make the bahahahah sheep sound as we scuttle thru the turnstile. But its pretty grim here, and no one laughs. The grimness doesn't wear off for a while, because we quickly cop to the fact that there is some active oppression going on here.

And the grafitti on the bethlehem side of the wall confirms it.

Temple Mount

2008-01-13T01:50:00.000-08:00

We didn't expect so many people in Jerusalem to speak Arabic. 9 of 10 Taxi drivers were Palestinian, 1 was Israeli. It depends where you catch the Taxi. The Arabic taxi drivers said that a lot of Hebrew words sounded like Arabic. That the languages came from the same root. Proto-semitic, I think is the root language.

The rock is under the golden dome behind us:

Jerusalem is a city with a walled city inside that has inside of it the core of three world religions.

And that part is very quiet and hard to get to if you look a certain way or can't answer questions a certain way or betray a certain bent. But still its way too easy to get there. Ariel Sharon got there and 3000 people died.

Inside the Mosque that was built on top of the ruins of the second temple (destroyed 70 AD by the ROmans) that was built on the ruins of the temple of Solomon (destroyed ~500bc by the Babylonians, when the Jews were first exiled from Israel), there lies a rock.

This rock is where Mohammed ascended to heaven for a day and got the stories from the Angels that we call the Q'uran.

This rock is where Abraham checked the mortal descent toward the throat of
his son of a sacred knife. When the Ram appeared. Jews say that son was Isaac, Muslims say it was Ishmael.

This is the Rock where Jacob dreamt of a ladder where angels went up and down from here to heaven.

Some say this is the rock where creation began.

I always thought that the second temple was utterly destroyed except for the western wail (wailing wall), but I read somewhere that all four walls remain and a number of pillars. They call it the wailing wall, maybe, because the Jews mourn the destruction of the Temple.

Here's us squatting near the east wall:

So we were standing at the entrance to the dome and a guy was sitting on a plastic deck chair there, so we figured he was some kind of guard. There are doors on each side of the dome but we didn't try them because nobody else was, until we got to the western side where we saw people going in, but they were obviously Muslim. I thought the guy was a guard, but it became pretty apparent that that wasn't the case when he went to have a smoke and left his 6 year old son at the door while he meandered over and chatted with the guy sweeping cigarette butts up off the holiest site in the world. We went to talk to him anyway to see if it was OK to go in, about the same time a guy with a Yankees baseball cap was talking to him. He had some English, but I picked up "Blame king Hussein" and "Forbidden" and "welcome". So we decided not to go in, not to risk offending anyone. But we talked to the guy in the Yankee's cap and he kind of moved his toe around in a circle on the ground and pointed, and then indicated the whole whole area saying "You could pose as a muslim and go in, but not a good idea, really. This piece of real estate is the most contested land in the world right now. Right here. War and destruction over the rock of creation. I don't know why that guard was saying 'blame king Hussein'". I tried to interject here that Hussein of Jordan made the Mosque off limits to no Muslims but Yankee hat was on a roll.

So the current King of Jordan, Abdullah is the son of Hussein who is the grandson of King Abdullah, who was assassinated pretty close to where we were standing on the Temple Mount because, they think, some Palestinians thought Abdullah was trying to negotiate peace with Israel. Always dangerous work. Work his grandson eventually completed.

So we left the Temple Mount and made our way to some bakery in the Christian quarter. We'd been hanging out with a couple from Florence who were working in Jordan since 6:30 am, and I knew that none of us had eaten yet, so I figured this would be breakfast. Coffee and pastry for everyone else, but by God breakfast for me. Or brunch, for it was well nigh on noon. Hummous and pita.

So we went back to the Hotel, it was 12/23. On Christmas eve we planned on going to Bethlehem.

2008-01-08T13:12:00.000-08:00

Coming into Jerusalem, we hopped a bus heading for the Damascus Gate.

It was December 23rd, apparently a pretty high traffic day in Jerusalem. The last day of the Islamic Eid and the beginning of some thick Christian inflow. We had a booking in the 7 Arches Hotel which they lost, which didn't surprise either one of us at all. The hotel had the ambiance of an institution like, say, the Department of State in D.C. Perched on the top of Mount Olive, where somewhere in the bible it says the Angels go for vacation, it commands a splendid view of Jerusalem. This is totally true.

What they don't tell you is that there are 197 rooms and only 7 enjoy this view. Those seven are all booked. They also don't mention that the comforters on the bed are so worn the frigging cotton is drooling through the liner. Threadbare. Before I get a chance to see what kind of holy book is in the drawer, Ann peels out of the room and back down the hall, the afterimage of her approbation momentarily burned into my retinas.

We check into the Ambassador, there is no holy book in the drawer.

From here it is a 15 minute walk past the American Colony Hotel to the walled part of Jerusalem. Five out of six world religions agree: This is the part where a lot of significant events occurred. Stuff like the 14 stations of the cross.

We walked by most of these stations but surprise! There is some argument about where they are between protestants and Catholics.

Wouldn't it have been cool to go to every station and take a picture of one of us posed there? Wouldn't it have been cool if we even walked to every station and considered for a moment what happened there? Yeah probably. We got to some:

Across from the first station:

Near the second:

I was surprised by how many people spoke Arabic in Jerusalem. In the taxis, for instance, we had 9 Arab taxi drivers the whole time we were there and 1 Israeli taxi driver.

Into Israel

2007-12-23T20:46:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-14T06:13:00.000-08:00

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

2007-10-26T02:23:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-04T14:14:00.000-07:00

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

2007-09-01T10:18:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-20T23:09:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-08T06:43:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-22T05:24:00.000-07:00

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

2007-07-05T01:45:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-27T08:23:00.000-07:00

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.

Blind bowman

2007-06-16T06:50:00.000-07:00

Ann met the president of Tanzania.

Well, things in Kibondo are OK. Every now and then, someone from one of the NGOs leaves and we get to go to a going away party. The majority of the people working at these NGOs are Tanzanian, and so there is a customary process, which involves many speeches, the giving of the gift , sometimes a line up to embrace or shake hands goodbye, food and then the disco. And then, after the disco ends, some people go to a local disco until 5am. Some people.

It is a little strange to be at a local disco as a minority of one, i.e. the only one who can't dance right, but at least you get a lot of room. Which helps because the floor is dirt and uneven and its pretty dark and pocked with ankle breakers.

Last night one of the doctors left, he got a posting in Tibet, I think, to help with the refugees from Bhutan. They meal started with soup, which I ladled into my bowl and took a spoonful without really looking at it or smelling it. Then Ann said "If you don't move that soup further away I will puke." At which point I caught a whiff and the after taste of the broth; that quality you'd associate with a certain ambiance. Somewhere between a slaughter house and a latrine. Then I noticed that the things floating in it looked like unscaled sketches from Gray's Anatomy. There was a trachea, oh and is that an esophagus attached? It is good to eat every part of the goat, but the parts that have some of the stuff the goat has eaten in them...I'm not that hungry. Not ready to experience that part of the culture. The barbecued meat parts of the goat were very good, though.

I've been trying to help with computer problems and network stuff for TCRS and Ann's organization IOM. Also, getting ready to do some teaching of Office applications to locals and Refugees. So I got a tour of Kibondo's Folk Development College. The IT Technician at TCRS, Innocent, took me there. They've got 12 PCs on a satellite dish and the teach Modern Computing, Mechanics (Cars and trucks or Gari's and Rollis in Swahili), and some textiles related stuff, I think. We walked around, checking out the buildings, and greeted some people. Towards the edge of the Campus, an old Kibondan walked by us, and I noticed he carried a bow and arrow. The little arrows. So I looked at him and said Salaama, and he kind of stopped and said something, and I realized he had no pupils or irises and one eye was all brown with some marbling and the other was kind of silvery. "He's blind," Innocent told me, after we'd walked on a little. "But he's got a bow and arrow," I said. Innocent was silent, leaving me to wonder and draw my own conclusions.

The ongoing construction of our future home and the IOM offices is going on. And on. Some of the construction pictures on my album illustrate the pace.

A lot of gravel is made by men with picks smashing rocks, which is then sorted by women into different sizes, including sand. Then the women, some of them with babies on their backs, fill up five gallon buckets and balance them on their heads.

This is how many tons of sand an gravel get transported. You know, I have a really good job.

They use the construction hard hats to mix mortar in, they're too hot to wear.

We went and looked around the other day after a sunset run.

Our house will be the second from the left.

Settling

2007-06-01T07:04:00.000-07:00

THis is what we look out over when we eat lunch:

If I turn away from that, I am graced with this beautiful view:

We've both been working a lot. Ann has been teaching classes this week because they had a scheduling mishap and she had to pick up the slack.

Scheduling mishaps are pretty much the norm here. I was trying to find the swahili term for happy birthday but it turns out there isn't really such a phrase because it is impolite to refer to a specific date or something. Like celebrating a certain date violates some cultural more. Also a lot of people don't know their birthday. This is probably changing.

I've been helping with some IT stuff and learning about satellite internet. In exchange, I get to use the internet to keep up with my work for PMI. There aren't internet cafes in kibondo.

Also, we are taking swahili lessons every day and its starting to sink in a little.

Kigoma

2007-05-30T00:56:00.000-07:00

We took a weekend trip to Kigoma, which is on the shore of Lake Tanyangika.

A gigantic, crystal clear lake which is between Tanzania and the Congo. The drive was 4 hours along a narrow red dirt road. I'd have to classify the drive as adventure travel. Our driver, whom Ann calls Mudi Andretti (Mudi short for Mohammud), hit speeds of up to 75 mph on this rutted track. It is barely wide enough to fit two cars, but because of all the ruts, huge holes, and streambeds cutting through it, there is rarely two lanes that are flat. Besides, on both sides of the road the are people walking and biking, carrying things. As we go screaming by, they are all vying for room in the ditches and surrounding brush. It's not nice.

Women carry 40kg loads on their head, children hauling logs, and the stuff they put on their bicycles is impossible. These heavy steel fixed wheels with iron racks on the back are their trucks. You see piles of firewood about 4 feet wide, 3 feet high, and maybe 3 feet deep. You see 8 foot wide bundles of sugarcane, which must weigh about 30-50kg. Those kinds of wide loads had a hard time getting out of the way as we drove by. I pointed out a kid, about ten, pushing a bike that had 3 50kg sacks of rice on the back. Thats 330lbs. I thought that was impossible until our friend Dr. Leul said he saw a full grown pig on the back of one of these bikes. Plus, sometimes you'll see a whole family on one. Pretty common to see a bike with two single mattresses strapped to it or fifteen or so chickens in a wicker cage.

Anyway, we made it after 4 hours with only one fatality, a chicken. The president of Tanzania, Mr. KiKwete, was there. Ann had met him and he had called her by name to say goodbye when he left Kibondo. So we were joking that maybe he could score us a decent pizza. Pizza is highly coveted by the people working in Kibondo, because the diet is pretty monotonous. The food seems OK to me, but it's kind of a universal gripe around here. I'm trying to get enough bricks to build a pizza oven, and we are starting to learn to cook over the little Hibatchi's you have to use. No electric ranges or gas stoves here.

But Kigoma was beautiful, and I put some pictures up before the server froze.

Ann was happy about the hot water:

It is the starting point if you want to take a boat ride to the GOmbe stream to see the chimps. We didn't make that ride, but maybe next time.

Our trip back was another adventure, trying to beat the rain on Sunday, because the roads become rivers when it comes down, and getting back would have been a definite maybe if we got caught behind the water. But we made it, again with only one fatality, one dove of a pair that dipped below the grill.

In

2007-05-23T04:31:00.001-07:00

This morning we were walking to the office and I said 'beats rush hour eh?' there were kids running alongside us holding our hands, goats meandering in the road, and ladies with bundles of sticks on their heads walking by. We just had our breakfast at UNHCR where we eat every meal. It overlooks the most amazing view I have ever seen. The light here is amazing-there is something to be said for twelve hours of sunshine per day-my nails and hair grow like crazy here!
Last weekend was the first flight out for this group of refugees.

It was a very emotional day to see the people we have been preparing for life in the US actually getting on the plane and leaving. They are so hopeful and innocent-I know it is a better life but we still cant help but worry for them.

We will send some pictures-there were dancers and drummers

and the local villagers who look worse off than the refugees. The kids are literally wearing rags.

It is the same airstrip where we picked Reed up. Literally in the middle of nowhere the plane just appears in the distance and pops down on the airstrip which has to be cleared of cattle before landing.
It is great to have Reed here to share this with. We will try to take video of our jogging along with a pack of squealing little kids who chase us and want to hold hands and touch knuckles. They scream 'Mizungu' and come racing out of the bushes. The other day I was nearly gored by a herd of longhorn cattle while I was jogging! It was a close one but they veered at the last second-I felt like a bullrunner in Spain. We are still waiting for construction to be finished on our houses and offices so meanwhile we live in the guesthouse with other staff. It's like college-we all work together, eat together. This weekend we went to two UNHCR parties so that was fun to meet other people doig the same work form all over the world. Most staff is African with some Europeans.
Better run.

My work load is terrifically light. I supervise the staff teachihg the orientation classes five days per week in the mornings out in the camp since I am not teachinhg I have lots of down time. But I am going to get some extra classes going for women and youth.
Hope everyone is well-miss you and love you all.

Ann

In Kibondo

2007-05-16T00:50:00.000-07:00

Short post, internet is spotty at best. Tried emailing pics with cell but connection bites the deep red dust before anything happens.

Reunited with Ann at the airstrip after a short hop from mwanza on a UNHCR two prop.

Been working on getting the internet here to work better in an exercise of enlightened self interest.

Hard to read anything on a turkish toilet.

It's getting close to lunch, when they shut down the power, so I better post this and move on.

2 gone

2007-05-12T09:04:00.001-07:00

OK. Right now I'm at the Tilapia Hotel on Lake Victoria. Went to a reserve last night, Saanane Islad, means 8 o'clock islanf to check out some wildlife. There were kingfishers, egrets, ibises, cormorants, kites and eagles, as well as some little yellow bird tat weaves its nest together. Alo some free roaming Gazelles. Then there was a spootted Hyena and a Lion in cages.

Plus, some kind of party. Went over in a boat with 10 people, came back in the same boat with sixty people. A little sketchy, ut the chop was only a couple of feet so no big deal.

2nd 2 last am in Nairobi

2007-05-11T23:08:00.000-07:00

Well, getting ready to go. Tomorrow, I'll be on a two hopper to Kibondo. Spending Saturday night in Mwanza on Lake Victoria.

Nairobi has been good. I had a lot of fun hanging out with Pindie and David, and we went out to dinner last night with Shana and Louisa. They are doing the same thing Ann did last year, having been chosen to check out the Cultural Orientation program. As we chowed down on Lamb, Frog Legs and Gnocchi at the Mediteraneo, I couldn't help but see something like Ann's present in their future. As well as something like Ann's past in their present.

I really have only left the house to go pick up stuff at Sarit Center. Been working, setting up possibilities for working remotely (using my cell as a modem) knocking back Tuskers and listening to the bullfrogs at night. To me, when the frogs get the call and answer thing going, it sounds like an asthmatic giant breathing.

Monday is going to be a national day of morning here in Kenya, for the people of the Kenya Airlies flight that went down en route Cameroon. I think it was David last night who pointed out how these deaths united the country, while as many Kenyans die in tribal war, there is no similar mourning. Hope lies is resolving this contradiction.

The enemy is the we that is they.

Nairobi

2007-05-08T08:49:00.001-07:00

This is the second time I've been in Nairobi in the last four years. Pindie and David have opened their beautiful home to me, and it makes me feel totally different about Nairobi. The first day here, there was a little gathering here celebrating David's birthday, and I got to meet a few expats and got a real warm feeling. I thought six months in Africa was a long time, but it seems like a blink after hearing these folks talk about it.

Went down to the Sarit Centre, a shopping mall, to get a cell phone. Outside the mall, I walked by a blind guy reading a braille bible out loud right next to a guy who looked like he might be a leper. The power blinked out three times while I was in the mall, once while I was talking to a salesperson about a phone, and I saw no visible reaction. It happens a lot.

Arrived Nairobi

2007-05-07T05:04:00.000-07:00

30 hours later, I'm in Nairobi. Trying to get cell squared away etc. Was a 7 hour layover at heathrow. Slept most of the flight from Heathrow to Nairobi, then took a cab to Riverside Park. half asleep now.

The Eve of the Eve of departure

2007-05-04T01:17:00.000-07:00

In two days I'm going to Africa. I've been there twice. Once in Tunisia. And we went there because of a dream I had in Anacapris. It was the day after Ann lost a contact swimming in the grottoe(sp?) and we towed an Italian couple with engine trouble to dock. Still waiting for the promised free dinner. Anyway, one morning I was dreaming about being some jedi guy and I was sitting at a long table with a podium in the middle, and I had a feeling that behind the curtain lurked a spoiler. Because the event in my dream was that peace had been brought to the galaxy and I was the celebrant. I ended up fighting with some invisible guy whose only weakness was that his light saber only had a six foot extension cord to power it. I cut the cord and once again saved the galaxy, only to wake up in the world.

Rubbing my eyes, I noticed Ann was not in bed. It was morning, she was on the patio reading a travel book and catching some morning rays. I started telling her about my dream and said "I think I was Luke Skywalker or something." She said "Oh my god, we have to go to Tunisia. You are freaking me out. Read this." And she handed me the book she was reading with her finger on a section about MatMata, where part of Star Wars was filmed. The part about Luke before he realized his destiny.

So we went to Tunisia. There was a lunar eclipse the day after we got there.

Three years later, in 2003, we went on a safari in Eastern Africa. Before the safari, we landed in South Africa, in Johannesburg. As usual, we did exactly what all the guide books said you shouldn't, and took a ride from the airport with the first people who offered us egress from the airport. Spent the night by their pool on our backs watching a lunar eclipse.

Last year, April 20 something, Ann got honored with a Cultural Orientation appointment in Kakuma, Kenya. There was a lunar eclipse while she was there.