Egypt

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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







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

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

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

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



Huh?

Dead

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



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





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

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

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



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

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





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

Ann in Amman in na

Trying to make a palindrome out of the title.

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





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





We also took a quick tour of stonetown one day.




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

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

From Dubai, we went to Amman, Jordan.








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

Looking east from our hotel room. Full moon.





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

A lot of the buildings look like mausoleums.

Here's Ann in front of her office.




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

Mrs. Todo Cokfect's wild ride II

Mrs. Toad's Wild Ride II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





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

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


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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mrs. Todo Cokfect's wild ride

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

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

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

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

Ann says,

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

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

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


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

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





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

Meanwhile, Amy's plane begins its descent.