Africa
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Africa travel stories and reflections.
At Home – Al Fin
I arrive home from Africa on a Monday morning at 2 A.M., drive down to the bay to see and smell it, to feel it blow and tingle. There is a strange light low on the night horizon glowing to the North Northwest, maybe Boston. The house itself is shocking in its level of disrepair and disorganization. I take off my Maasai watch and I get down to work, mostly on my back, in bed, in my office. The writer is in. Also the lawyer. And the lover. Once or twice the lawn and garden care guy. And, inevitably, the guy with foot-in-mouth disease.
I don’t leave the property until late Thursday afternoon – and then reluctantly – no car rides, no stores, no yoga, no phone. Glad I got home early given imminent PreTrial appearance date and obligations thereto. Even glad I’m here for the finals of the home renovation experience. Do a fair amount of straightening, laundry, floor sweeping, furniture moving, pissing off the crew. Watering houseplants. Measure out pills for the week. Hang out my shingle: “The writer is in.” Write. Play at being the housekeeper. Even cook. Listen to a lot of music. Don’t criticize myself. Clean things. Organize and put away things. Rest. Spend a lot of time feeding the fire. The house smells of smoke, incense, and paint.
I make cranberry lemon biscuits, cornbread, lemon-blueberry tea, pots and pots of coffee, Kenyan roast potatoes, and Zanzabarian sage merlot bean and potato stew with shallots and fresh garden kale.
Joy works. It’s what she does in addition to making music and spending a little time with me, even though I trust she finds me precious, even adorable.
I start to work in the yard and on the gardens. It feels so good to have clippers and a rake in my hand. Start to clean and organize the shed. Prepare witness lists and pretrial memoranda.
Sometimes I talk to Joy about Africa. But it is hard … and far away … and I’ve turned into a very here and now, present centered sort of fellow. I haven’t had a watch on for 5 days. And it is “crazy” being home, although if i don’t step outside the house i seem to be able to exert adequate stimulation control to stay grounded.
Cow!
The morning we leave Summerland, after we gather the other passengers, the Japanese couple who have been traveling together for nineteen months, another Japanese woman traveling on her own for the last nine months in South and Central America who says a Maasai offered ten cows for her, and the No Way girls, who have softened considerably and are on a fifteen week post college graduation round the world tour. Titus is moving at a good clip, as all the drivers seem to do, dancing around pot holes, passing on the inside of the road, missing sheep, goats, gazelles, and dogs by inches. One of the No Way girls asks Titus if he has ever killed anything in the roadway and he says righteously, “Never.”
We cross the equator line from the southern into the northern hemisphere on our way to visit Lake Bogoria, home of the famed pink flamingos who line the shores like a Christo wrapping and who fly off as we approach them like windblown fabric torn into thousands of flapping pink pieces. We also stop at a hot spring where the water is so hot it is literally boiling, steam rising from the surface, so we can drop in a dozen eggs in a plastic bag tied to the end of a pole and ten minutes later we are peeling and eating hard-boiled eggs.
On the way back from the lake to Nairobi I tell Titus I’d like to stop to buy some of the local honey that women are selling at the side of the road, where I can see hives made of hollowed out branches about two feet long and the diameter of a big man’s upper arm, hanging in the trees with holes drilled into them that apparently invite local bees to gather within. And then I’m asleep.
I am awaked by the sound of a loud impact, as I see the van pulling hard to the right off the road. When the van stops one of the No Way girls says we hit a cow and, when I climb out of the severely dented passenger door, laying off the road on its side is an already very dead, very big, brown and white cow who breathed its last and is leaking.
The van is quite smashed up, the front left grill collapsed in, the left headlight shattered, the door caved in, but all in all still useable. A crowd gathers quickly. The focus of conversation is about who is responsible, the driver of the van or the boy guarding the cow as it grazed and who has himself run away. Did someone say tort lawyer? I’m on it. Clearly the pedestrian has the benefit of a rebuttable presumption to the right of way. But the owner of the cow cannot or refuses to be identified. And the young cowherd has run away, all of which raises the quite reasonable suspicion/inference that they are afraid of being found responsible for the damage to the van.
On the other hand, the van clearly hit the cow, there’s a sign at the side of the road right before the accident site reading “Slow, cattle and children crossing,” and Titus saw the cow at some point before impact while moving at a fairly good clip as evidenced by the fresh skid marks in the roadway. Did someone say accident reconstructionist? And, of course, no one actually knows what the behavior of the cow was before the fatal impact except Titus, and his story is that the cow burst upon the roadway quite without warning and literally ran in front of the van as Titus tried to brake, turn, and avoid impact, and there are no witnesses to contradict his version of the events.
The notion that no one knows who owned a creature worth close to $1,000 US dollars seems very odd to me. Yet everyone in the village denies any knowledge of who the owner might be. Even when the local police arrive an hour later, alighting from a civilian car they flagged down after they’d walked from the police station to the main road, about ten kilometers away (having no car of their own or police vehicle), no one comes forth to claim ownership of the cow, or to identify the cow’s owner. Village solidarity is strong; the police effort to crack the wall of silence weak. Titus is of course quite concerned because it is he who will be responsible for repair of the vehicle.
I propose that, since the owner of the dead cow cannot be identified, Titus take it in compensation for his loses, and when he tells me there is no way he can get the cow in the van (duh), I suggest we call the butcher in Lake Namuku, have him come out and butcher the cow on the spot, and give Titus fair value for the meat. Titus quite likes this idea, especially the thinking outside the box it represents, and goes to the police to run the idea passed them. But the senior policeman, who is not the most articulate fellow, says quite augustly, as if quoting familiar statute and verse, “there is no provision in our law for the removal of a dead cow.” And so we are forced to leave our only source of potential compensation bloating in the sun and to wonder who will claim/harvest the hundreds of pounds and dollars worth of meat when night descends aside from jackals.
Back on the road we stop for lunch at a restaurant that serves freshly cooked meat from its massive outdoor grill, one of three such competing restaurants with massive grills at exactly the same junction on the road, this being the only highway going north from Nairobi for truckers and tourists alike, and this is the one good highway rest stop for hours in each direction.
It is like a comic scene in a weird movie to see at least a dozen African men, all wearing tall white chefs’ hats, come running into the roadway waving with long forks, trying to direct cars pulling off the road into their respective establishments. I have no idea how we pick the restaurant we do, but before long a man is standing at our table with a couple of grilled legs of goat, cutting chunks off the legs on a wooden chopping block, then cutting the chunks into bite size pieces using his hands to pull the pieces together in small piles, then leaving them, along with a big pile of salt, on the cutting board, whereupon we all dig in with our hands to the very tough, quite tasty and chewy, pieces of meat, the smoke created by the fat of cooking meat dripping onto the ten foot long grills and into our faces as we consume a good percentage of some goat who met its own fate in its own roadway.
Dancing in Summerland
I am leaving the tent camp at Maasai Mara with two men hitching a ride with us into Narok where we are again going to lunch at the Dreaming Garden Restaurant and where I will wait to switch to another van to go off with its passengers to Lake Nakuru, while Damian and Natalia (the Argentinians) will continue on to Nairobi. Another two men will ride with us to the point in the road where their cattle transport truck got stuck in the mud and where they have contracted to meet a local tractor owner who will try to pull them out. As we are waiting to leave camp I’m seated in the passenger seat of the van with the door still open. Maasai men in traditional garb with thick bracelets around their wrists and ankles are milling about the van, chatting with the drivers, checking out the vehicle, passing time, saying goodbye. I point to the watch on the wrist of one of the Maasai men shaking hands with me. The watch has a very unusual and attractive face, and I say casually and totally unconsciously to the man pointing to his wrist, “Nice watch.” I’ll learn not to do this one of these days, because in a flash he has his watch off and is attaching it to my wrist. So I take my watch off, one of probably comparable value, a Casio, or Timex, and hand it to him. He likes my watch. It has a much nicer Velcro band than his watchband that is plastic. Another Maasai man comes over to the van; he takes off his watch and places it on my other wrist. He takes my watch from the first man. He examines it. I give his watch to the second man. A third man comes over, not to be denied a part in the action of trade, and soon watches are being examined and moving from hand to hand. I end up with all three watches while they admire mine. I give back two of the watches and keep the one I first admired. The owner of that watch takes my watch. We each put our new watches on. The van driver arrives, says “Twende,” (we go). All of the Maasai men and I shake hands. I admire my new wristwatch – ascribe it with Maasai meanings, with the pleasures of time and travel, of possessions and value, of good faith and non-attachment. It acquires significances not associated with my one time watch now adorning the wrist of a Maasai man hundreds of miles away. I feel myself to be an inordinately happy trader.
As opposed to my new driver, the loud and sometimes impatient and annoyed Titus, who is definitely not happy with his current six passengers, two of whom are a young Japanese couple, a single man, a single woman, and the two somewhat dour (shy?) young women from Norway who the driver tells me never say yes to anything he asks or suggests and will probably not tip him well, if at all. I nickname them the “No Way” girls and commit myself to getting a yes out of them by offering cookies I’ve bought, or to buy them sodas. I even ask if I can help them out of the van, or carry something for them. By the end of the day I am batting zero in my effort to get them to yes.
Titus is just not my favorite guy. He is opinionated and believes things I don’t … that Obama hates Kenya, that Tanzanians are lazy, that I should help support his kids. He is critical and annoyed with other drivers on the road. The father of three young children, two of whom are in private school, he is also very obviously trying to see what he can get out of me. Nothing ventured nothing gained.
When we get to our overnight guesthouse on the far side of Nakuru, a bustling town one hundred miles northwest of Nairobi on the main (only?) Mombasa/Nairobi road that goes to the Somali and Ugandan borders and is filled with big trucks making their runs, Titus takes me aside and asks if I trust him.
“Sure,” I say hesitantly.
“Would you like to stay at a better guesthouse, the one I stay at?” he asks. “No extra cost. Nicer rooms. Better showers. We’ll have a drink and dinner together.”
“Sure,” I say … hesitantly.
So we drive to a part of town that I would say is definitely seedy. On the way we pass what I’m sure will forever be my favorite store name in all of Africa, the “Pentagon Butchery.”
The gate to the guesthouse/motel-like structure we will arrive at is opened by one of the armed twenty-four hour security men on duty. We are again the only guests I can see and we park inside a gravel courtyard, surrounded on all four sides by the motel, a barricade, a fort. My room is meager but fine. I do yoga, have a shower, play with the functions on my new watch, do not use the hair pick left so considerately hanging next to the room mirror. Titus comes to call me for dinner around seven. We pass through a small locked gate opened by another security guard on the other side of the courtyard, pass through an open air restaurant with a few customers, pass goat carcasses hanging in the open restaurant kitchen, pass some private dining rooms, and end up seated at a table with a pool hall on one side and a bar with a big dance floor on the other. Some men are playing pool, but no one else is dining and no one is in the darkened dancehall. Titus has preordered our dinner, a big single plate of stewed chicken in a light tomato sauce, steamed spinach, which I tell him is kale (which it is), and he insists is spinach, and roasted whole potatoes that are just fabulous dipped in the sauce. There are no utensils on the table. A waitress comes over with a plastic pitcher of quite hot water and a basin. She pours hot water over our hands, which we “wash.” The meal is shared and eaten with our fingers. Titus tells me he always sits at this table so he can see people coming from all sides.
“If something is biting you it’s inside your clothing,” he says.
Titus calls his wife in Nairobi. He puts me on the phone with her. She is delightful. He next puts me on the phone with his eleven year old daughter Elizabeth who wants to be a doctor and loves science and who I encourage with all my heart to live her dream. Then I take my leave, and retire for the evening by eight, falling asleep quickly.
I am up again at midnight, awakened by fabulous throbbing music coming from the dance floor on the other side of the gate. I so want to go and see what is happening, but this exploration seems beyond even my comfort zone and sense of prudence; that I would walk into a bar somewhere in Kenya where I’ll be the only white person and watch people dancing. I don’t think so. But I so want to go. I really do. I want to see Africa. Isn’t this what I came for? So I get dressed. Then I get undressed. Then I dress, struggling gaily with myself about the potential risks and potential rewards. I think I must have taken off and put on my pants three times. I’m laughing at myself having such a good time not knowing what the hell I’m going to do and enjoying my struggle. Of course in the end my pants are on and I cannot deny myself the experience of seeing what can be seen.
I leave almost all my money in the room, taking just a little cash, my passport, and one credit card, as I head out into the night, cross the courtyard, am admitted through the small locked gate that separates the motel from the rest of the complex by an armed guard, pass tables filled with people, and enter into a totally transformed environment, the music loud and pulsing, the dance floor, complete with strobe light, in what is a very well designed bar and tables surrounding the dance floor, a night club atmosphere, busy waitresses taking drink orders, and the dance floor filled with sixty or seventy people moving in delight.
I park myself in a corner of the room, but it is not long before a quite attractive woman in a lowcut blouse finds me and asks if I want to dance. I decline. She smiles. She comes near enough to rub her leg against mine. She has a genuinely lovely smile.
“Buy me a drink?” she asks.
“I left my money in my room,” I say.
“Well let me go to your room and get it with you,” she says. I say no.
A man comes over to introduce himself. I recognize him as a guide. He says he’s headed to Maasai Mara tomorrow. We have a pleasant conversation about where I stayed in Mara, who my guide was, what animals I saw. He tells me again that he is a guide, as if I didn’t get it.
“You are about to have a real taste of Africa, my friend,” he says smiling and nodding toward the woman, “Just watch your passport and your money, I don’t want to find you crying in the morning.”
The dancers are absolutely wonderful. Mostly men are dancing with men, or dancing by themselves, or dancing with whoever is next to them. There are also women dancing, some with women, some with men, some alone. The movements are subtle, feet often hardly leaving the floor, shoulders and hips so fabulously expressive in such a narrow range. Some men dance with women whose backs are turned to them, the man’s hands on the woman’s thighs, pulling her into him as she dances and moves. Some women caress their breasts as they dance. Older men are dancing alone. Big men are dancing lithely. The strobe light magnifies the movements. The dancers seem so happy, so lost in delight.
“Welcome to Summerland,” the same woman says to me, “I’m Kendin, would you like some company tonight?”
“Well yes and no,” I say.
“Tell me three reasons why no,” Kendin says smiling coyly.
“Well one is that I have a woman at home I really really love,” I say. “Two is disease. And three is that I’m just not the kind of guy who goes off with women he meets in bars, women who go off with strangers.”
“You not fear on me,” she says, and I cannot hear if she is saying fear or fair. But it doesn’t really matter.
“Come, dance,” I say, and walk onto the dance floor where the music literally doesn’t ever pause or stop, the sound and the Afro pop beat awesome, the dancers in some state of delight, and before long so am I, other women coming near as we dance together, no one paying the slightest attention to me as best as I can tell, except for one slightly drunk man who comes over to bumps fists with me and shake my hand as Kendin leaves the dance floor, and I am alone … with about sixty other people, in a bar, in Africa, dancing in delight.
Later Kendin asks again if we can go to my room.
“We don’t have to do anything,” she says, “Just be friends. Have company. Be fear on me.”
She is thirty three, and beautiful, a beautician with a three year old son. And my answer is still no. The fact is no. Fear or fair is no. And when I say goodnight to Kendin I almost feel badly for her. Later, when the first rooster calls at four in the morning and wakes me in my room, the music is still playing.
Planning
I am planning on traveling in sub-Saharan Africa and hope to be there for two full months. I intend to begin my journeying there in late November, 2012 going from Johannesburg, SA, where I first arrive and will stay a day or two to recover from the flight, to Meseru, Lesotho. I have a lot of work to do before I depart. And it is not gratuitous to say I’m not as young or fit as I used to be and that my aging spurt since returning from my last voyage requires immense accommodation including carrying a complete pharmacy of daily and emergency medications that take up half my little pack.
I record my “plan” here to see how much comes to pass, leaving boston 11/26 to Joberg, SA and some local travel including Lesotho b4 returning to Joberg and b4 camp Sizanini starts. I plan to fly from joberg to dar es salaam tanzania on the afternoon of 12/19/12 with my sister Sheryl, who will also have been at the camp. in Tanzania we plan to go on safari, and then on to Zanzibar, after which she’ll return home and I’ll go on – inshallah – to Moshi, Arusha, the Serengeti, Olduvai, Ngorogoro, and from there overland to Nairobi –despite state department warnings – and then on by air to Addis and Lalibela in Ethiopia, letting Eritrea go, based on state department warnings, and maybe if there is time to one west African country (Senegal?) … and, if sam is in euro, to come home via a visit w him and a return flight to boston probably around 2/4/13. Man tracht got lacht.
My sister Sheryl plans to rendezvous with me in Joberg in early December before we spend 10 days as international volunteers at Camp Sizanini, http://www.globalcampsafrica.org/programs/, a camp aimed at enhancing the lives of vulnerable South African boys and girls aged 10 to 15 by providing HIV/AIDS prevention education and training through high-impact residential and day camp experiences and continuing education. I trust there will be more to say about Sizanani anon. Camp ends 12/18, after which Sheryl and I fly to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and from there on to a tenting safari deep into the bush. http://www.kwihala.com/ruaha.htm. Christmas morning we fly from Kwihala to Zanzibar, after which Sheryl will return home and I’ll go on – inshallah – to Moshi, Arusha, the Serengeti, Olduvai, Ngorogoro (all inTanz), and from there overland to the Masai Mara and Nairobi, in Kenya – despite U.S. state department warnings – then on to Addis and Lalibela in Ethiopia, (but not Eritrea – in deference to U.S. state department warnings), and maybe, if there is time, to Senegal in west Africa, returning home around 2/2/13. But as I need to say … and as we all know too well … man tracht got lacht. So I’m counting on your good wishes. And the good intentions of the guides.
Random Travel Notes
Random Travel Notes
- I’m walking late at night through the somewhat busy streets of Madrid when I approach a very chunky obvious woman of the night in short skirt and tights standing on a street corner with her eyebrows. She catches me looking at her, her excess makeup, her sad alert face, and says to me in Spanish, “Come on. Let’s go.” And I say, “No, thank you.” Yes, I really do say, “thank you,” ever the well trained, polite, courteous if not courtesan older man. And she, of course, says, “Why.” And I can say, in Spanish, which gives me immense pleasure, “Because I have a woman I truly love very much.” And, although I know this is purely my projection, she looks at me admiringly, respectfully, acceptingly, as she smiles and turns away.
- I am on the Metro headed for the Madrid airport and my flight home early on Sunday morning. Across from me seated alone on the train is an African woman staring at me. Very odd for an African woman to be starting at me, especially since she is obviously not a “business” woman, and when she sees me looking back at her she points to my shirt, a lovely purple T shirt I bought for three dollars at the Monastery of Debre Libanos in Ethiopia that has Amharic writing on it saying “Debre Libanos,” that I already deeply prize, but has faded with multiple washings very quickly, as has the obviously Ethiopian Orthodox cross on the front of the shirt faded, such that the shirt appears old and well worn.
“I am Ethiopian,” she says smiling broadly at the mystical and unlikely possibility of connecting with Ethiopia – and an Ethiopian guide – as she heads for church of a Sunday morning on the Metro in Madrid, “and I couldn’t help notice your shirt. Are you from Ethiopia?”
“No, I bought this shirt when I visited the Monastery at Debre Libanos,” I say laughing and pointing to the lettering on my shirt.
To which she says, “It must have been a very long time ago.”
And although at the time, it had been actually less than two weeks, it did already seem like an eternity, and I said, “Yes, it was.”
Tales From Africa
Cancelling Sam’s Trip
I talk to Sam filled with ambivalence, fearful I will disappoint him, but equally if not more fearful he will have a lousy time here, as I am having a lousy time here, and for me the trip feels over. I think of the Kenny Rogers’ song, about knowing when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em and about how hard it is to fold – because once you’ve folded you’ve surrendered, accepted defeat, ended your engagement in the hand, come to accept that although possible, the odds of improving your position are just too slim for you to remain in the game, and you surrender hope to practicalities and probabilities. No good player throws good money after bad, and those players who win most often fold early most often, not seduced by the remote statistical possibility of improving a particular hand they’ve already become attached to, knowing that while every hand can be a winner, every hand is more likely the loser, and, in this regard, hard as it is to fold Sam’s trip to Africa cards, I’m convinced it is the right decision for Sam that forgo the trip, notwithstanding how much saying so fills me with regret.
It takes me an entire afternoon on the Internet to change plans and planes, to cancel and reschedule flights, but there’s also nothing else compelling me, it’s not very costly monetarily, and when it is all done I feel I’ve made the right choice, although I also still feel quite shitty and guilty at the possibility i’ve disappointed Sam, although, as I write him, “trust me, if you didn’t like dharamsalah … you wont like dakar.” All small potatoes in the big picture i trust … but I am anxious and feeling guilty about it all until Sam has the grace to say in an email, “Don’t sweat it my man! Honestly, I feel in my heart it was not the right place or time for me to take this trip. I’m much happier getting back to my workout/work/basketball routine after being so sick (and finally feeling better) than hopping on a plane and make a long journey to a foreign land. Happy you are headed home and looking forward to seeing you.”
*****
Arriving Home
And since the sign on the door into my office now reads, “The Writer is In,” herewith 2 last vinettes from Madrid … and then perhaps good-bye to Africa for a while.
******
Museo del Prado
The city of Madrid is so alive, so vibrant, so clean. There is so much good public transportation. The architecture is phenomenal. The streets are wide and thronged with people who speak beautiful Spanish. The food is fantastic. There is a vibrancy, a liveliness that is alluring. I wish Joy was here to share it. I drink too much coffee. I eat only Spanish ham. I spend hours at El Prado, truly a mind boggling museum, whose only competition I see in this city of four million is the not equally well known, but truly equally bustling and fantastic Museum of Ham, where I also sample the art.
El Prado displays what are truly miraculous talents in vast numbers of works, all so well preserved, mostly 1,000s of oils over three or four hundred years old, all by men – Rueben, Goya, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Durer, Brueghel – portraiture paintings, religious paintings, paintings which change perspective depending on the angle from which they are viewed, paintings with far more than a thousand figures and a thousand faces, paintings of one dog, one horse, one cardinal, one Christ, bloody scary paintings, paintings of Maja Naked and Maja Clothed, Spanish paintings from as early as the 1100s, Italian paintings from the 1300s, front lighted paintings, back lighted paintings, the details almost beyond belief so realistically do they appear, the range of expression on the faces, the blacksmith’s shop, how alive and full the larder, down to a red boiled lobster.
But most of all as I stroll the streets of Madrid, I’m ready for home, and again concerned about what I will “do” when home to fill the time and feel useful, relevant, and with purpose, besides my one engaging upcoming trial, my summer gardens, my occasional visitors, and Joy. I’ve become such a loner, perhaps the most loner person I know, sans clients, students, men’s groups, study groups, card games, church socials. And although there is always the dream of writing in a more focused, useful, disciplined way … and/or of doing and being yoga in a way that truly deepens me … and/or contributing to the effort to promote greater social justice in a substantial way, knowing war and the inequitable distribution of wealth still turn the human wheel and that, at least theoretically, it could so easily be changed. But the bottom line for me is that this trip is over … and although I don’t want to be on the road right now, I’m also really not sure I’ll find home at home.
And, of course, the ham was also really fantastic.
***************
Camp Sizanani
http://www.sizanani.org/
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2012/09/28/camp-south-african
COMING SOON – My entire Africa journey begins in part because of Phil Lilienthal. So let us review that part of the story … https://brucetaub.net/into-africa/phil. This whole voyage starts in part with Phil Lilienthal as guide and manifestation of the Great Spirit. So let’s start there. Coming soon.
Joan – from the old world –
Jerry – scions and apples
San Francisco
November 18, 2012
First, however, San Francisco. Sort of a practice run at living out of my backpack again. Far from home, very safe, yet “on the road” enough to test out my traveling skills, my memory and organizational skills, my back, my heart, my laptop. More than one person who has observed the planning and deliberation that go into preparing for any of my low budget comings and goings has said, “I thought you were such a free spirit.” To which I always reply, “You can’t imagine how much work it takes to be a free spirit.”
San Francisco remains a most amazing city. The weather can be change very quickly and frequently over the course of a day. Bright sunshine in cloudless skies often followed by rain, sun, rain, fog, and a special Pacific drizzle that leaves me cold to the marrow. In the summer the plants here want for water. In the winter the earth is lush and Mediterranean flowers bloom everywhere. San Francisco is also, of course, the home of my beloved 43 year old daughter, her husband, and their two delicious children. And before I start any of these major voyages – which are always also possibly where my tale will end – I want to see them. Parts of San Francisco are even in strange ways how I imagine parts of Africa will be, walking on Mission between 17th and 18th after midnight, the taquerias open, the 24 hour stores, the smoke shops, the homeless people, the haggard prostitutes, the derelict junkies and the smooth talking junkies ready to exploit me and any other opportunity that presents itself.
I am currently holed up in an old SRO (right) for 70$/night with my laptop and my writing. But the outside world calls me to set this down and otherwise engage. Grandchildren. Daughters. Pumpkins. School plays. Halloween. World Series championship celebrations. Ex-wives. I imagine that the two photos below – of the dwelling taken from the west side of Bernal Heights, and of my shadow photographed facing east in late afternoon – could have been taken in Africa … or maybe not. It’s part of what we’re going to find out, this 72 year old, with arthritis, atrial fibrillation, the residue of a law practice, macular pucker, and a fabulous life partner very into her work. www.alinearchitacture.com.
I live on Cape Cod which I must tell you is a horrible place, that I advise all visitors avoid and stay away from (unless they are good personal friends) what with ticks, lyme disease, poison ivy, street crime, and sharks – besides the traffic is terrible, the weather unpredictable, and the crowds unmanageable. Go to Long Island. Or Deer Island. Or the Thimble Islands. Remember, Cape Cod is a shifting sand bar that will be washed away in another 15,000 years. Property values are sure to fall. Don’t visit. Don’t buy. There are thousands of absolutely amazing, charming, comfortable, easy, beautiful places to live on our planet, thousands. Visit them. Turn back before you get Cape sand in your shoes. The spirit of the people who lived and hunted here 500 years ago is abounding. So too the whale, the dolphin, the crab and their kin. Turn back before it is too late.
I finally get out of my SRO room having spent the morning corresponding, writing, exploring the world available thru my computer and the internet, news, poetry, photo exhibits, blogs. Hard to put aside, and after a few blocks walk, and a couple of buses, and I’m back on the computer in a Peet’s Coffee waiting for my outrageously expensive outpatient medical appointment, because insurers don’t cover optional things, like travel immunizations. Oh well. Obsessing about the question of what might make these writings interesting when I’m not in Africa, or elsewhere on the road less familiar. I saw a new blog site today entitled, “The Adventures of Amanda in trying to organize her life.” Not what I want to be writing. But sitting in a Peet’s drinking coffee goes only so far in holding a reader’s attention.
I think of myself as an ethnographer, trying to describe what I see of the culture and environment I am encountering without judgment or presupposition. I also think of myself as being on a “spiritual” quest, that experiencing spirit wisdom and sacred wisdom, whatever they turn out to be, if noting more than a greater attuning of my sensory instruments to the vibration of the others’ sensory instruments, the other hearts beating, the other molecules spinning in ritual dance. I am also no longer sure “the mind” is contained inside the skull. But let us move on.
… doesn’t everyone from Cape Cod begin their Africa journeys by going west to San Francisco …
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I think of myself as being on a “spiritual” path, on a spiritual quest, that experiencing spirit wisdom and sacred wisdom, whatever they turn out to be, if noting more than a greater attuning of my sensory instruments to feel the vibration of the others’ sensory instruments, the other hearts beating, the other molecules spinning in ritual dance. But let us move on.
I am planning on traveling in sub-Saharan Africa and hope to be there for two full months. I intend to begin my journeying there in late November, 2012 going from Johannesburg, SA, where I first arrive and will stay a day or two to recover from the flight, to Meseru, Lesotho. I have a lot of work to do before I depart. And it is not gratuitous to say I’m not as young or fit as I used to be and that my aging spurt since returning from my last voyage requires immense accommodation including carrying a complete pharmacy of daily and emergency medications that take up half my little pack.
I record my “plan” here to see how much comes to pass, leaving boston 11/26 to Joberg, SA and some local travel including Lesotho b4 returning to Joberg and b4 camp Sizanini starts. I plan to fly from joberg to dar es salaam tanzania on the afternoon of 12/19/12 with my sister Sheryl, who will also have been at the camp. in Tanzania we plan to go on safari, and then on to Zanzibar, after which she’ll return home and I’ll go on – inshallah – to Moshi, Arusha, the Serengeti, Olduvai, Ngorogoro, and from there overland to Nairobi –despite state department warnings – and then on by air to Addis and Lalibela in Ethiopia, letting Eritrea go, based on state department warnings, and maybe if there is time to one west African country (Senegal?) … and, if sam is in euro, to come home via a visit w him and a return flight to boston probably around 2/4/13. Man tracht got lacht.
My sister Sheryl plans to rendezvous with me in Joberg in early December before we spend 10 days as international volunteers at Camp Sizanini, http://www.globalcampsafrica.org/programs/, a camp aimed at enhancing the lives of vulnerable South African boys and girls aged 10 to 15 by providing HIV/AIDS prevention education and training through high-impact residential and day camp experiences and continuing education. I trust there will be more to say about Sizanani anon. Camp ends 12/18, after which Sheryl and I fly to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and from there on to a tenting safari deep into the bush. http://www.kwihala.com/ruaha.htm. Christmas morning we fly from Kwihala to Zanzibar, after which Sheryl will return home and I’ll go on – inshallah – to Moshi, Arusha, the Serengeti, Olduvai, Ngorogoro (all inTanz), and from there overland to the Masai Mara and Nairobi, in Kenya – despite U.S. state department warnings – then on to Addis and Lalibela in Ethiopia, (but not Eritrea – in deference to U.S. state department warnings), and maybe, if there is time, to Senegal in west Africa, returning home around 2/2/13. But as I need to say … and as we all know too well … man tracht got lacht. So I’m counting on your good wishes. And the good intentions of the guides.
The American Elders Meet the Hadza
A group of thirteen all white American men, all over the age of 55, travel together in East Africa on an “inventure.” The goal of the trip is to meet with male tribal elders from three separate African traditions – a pastoral, an agricultural, and a hunting and gathering society – to ask the elder men what they “do” and what their role is in their society. The trip grows out of travel and anthropological curiosity, as well as an explicit effort on the part of the American men to make this adventure a part of their experience of transition into elderhood, to find meaningful ritual, to acknowledge and honor the psychological, sexual, and societal transformations that mark becoming an elder male in America, the equivalent of a tribal elder.
While visit with the Hadza, a hunting and gathering people who live in the Lake Eyasi basin area of Tanzania in Paleolithic hunting and gathering bands, as we all did 15,000 years ago, the Americans and the Hadza sit around a campfire on the second night of their gathering. They are drumming, chanting, singing, and chatting. The Hadza songs are spirited, rhythmic, and harmonic. The Americans find songs they all know but are not as spirited, “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” for example, and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” They are aware of their limitations, how song and chant do not play the same role in their lives as it does in the lives of the Hadza. Still, the Hadza quickly pick up and join in singing “Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”
“So, what do the male elders do here,” the Americans in their brash direct manner ask the Hadza. And after huddling together to discuss how best to respond to such a question, when the Hadza do answer, it is to share their creation/origin story, how in the beginning was the Darkness. Then the Great Elephant stepped on the serpent and the valleys were formed. Then the elephant took a piss and the rivers were formed, that sort of stuff. Only the story goes on for about three full hours and contains its fair share of begats. And as they’re listening the Americans recognize that at least one function of male elders in Hadza society is that of oral historians who store, share, and perpetuate the legendary and historical origins of the Hadza people.
“And where do you originally come from,” the Hadza ask the Americans, “what are your origins?”
So the 13 American men over 55 huddle together to discuss what story they can tell, because, truth be told, no one has ever before asked them this question in such a way. And there are only two origin stories they know. One is called “Genesis,” where the earth was without form until the spirit of their God – the Great God – moved within His kingdom of heavenly emptiness to form on one day the darkness and the light, and on the next the firmament, and on still another day the sky and oceans, and on the fifth, or is it the sixth, all fowl, cattle, great whales, humans, and a woman, the great mother, from the rib of man. And on the seventh day He rested, whereafter all human knowledge of death derives from the biting of an apple, brothers slay brothers, there is a great flood, first kings as children kill giants with pebbles, people wander the desert, bushes burn, commandments are handed down from mountains on tablets, and some poor kid dies on a cross to expiate everyone’s original sin, leaving us free to come to terms with God on our own.
The American male elders decide the Genesis story is just too “unscientific,” not truly representative of their beliefs, and probably a story the Hadza have heard in some form from missionaries anyway. The only other “origin story” they know is called the “Big Bang,” and they begin to tell this tale, which surprisingly also takes hours, a story where in the far, far distant past, so long ago it was before Time, there existed the great and infinite Nothingness. And from this Great Nothingness there arose a faint and unexplainable vibration that acted inside the perfect vacuum, so that a very Dense Singularity was formed, something about the size of a pebble, only extremely, extremely, extra extremely dense, so dense in fact that the pebble explodes (or implodes, a fine semantic and scientific point they don’t argue before the Hadza). And from that first explosion of the tiny Dense Pebble the entire mass and emptiness of space, the entire universe, every star, mountain, zebra, ocean, and planet is formed.
This, the Americans say, is much more “scientific.” This, the Americans say, really happened. This, the Americans say is “true,” because, although they don’t say this, they know that rivers don’t come from elephant piss, although they accept that something came from nothing to form the first pebble, made of invisible teeny, teeny little atoms that have teenier, teenier electrodes spinning around their nucleus, and from this very small pebble, came a very big bang, out of which sprang the hottest fire and the fastest moving expanding “energy” ever known, more powerful than a million suns, that then cooled over the course of billions of years so that all matter, all planets, the stars, the mountains and the oceans of earth were formed.
And then, the American elders say - this part being essential to their narrative - some of the inert matter on at least one small planet in this vast and expanding universe of billions and billions of stars, a universe which may in fact be only one exhale to be followed by a massive redensifying inhale or contraction to form a new Dense Pebble, to be followed by another big bang, in an endless series of fourteen billion year long cycles of godly eternal inhalation and exhalation, creation and destruction – some of this inert matter on one lonely planet becomes “alive,” by which we mean it can reproduce itself.
The Americans tell the Hadza that this is much more “scientific” than the Genesis story. They say they know it to be true because their “scientists” have proven it with things called waves, pulses, and radiation, and that over another billion years or so - that’s one thousand millions the Americans tell the Hadza - tiny one celled organism arose, organisms that could divide and reproduce themselves, which over billions of years then become multi-celled organisms that emerge onto land from the warm sweet sea. Which brings us, the Americans say, to about a billion years ago, where organisms have gotten so complex that the ancestors of worms and shellfish, of antelope and cattle and humans arise, a time where terrible beasts ruled the earth, dinosaurs, and pterodactyls, and tyrannosaurus rex, and anyhow, rushing ahead about a billion or so years, about one million years ago on this very spot in East Africa the ancestors of humans, one of whom was an Australopithecus named Lucy, who were themselves hunting and gathering people, much as the Hadza are today, were running around making stone axes and arrowheads and becoming men and women.
And as the Americans relate this story they realize they are indeed very near Oldivai Gorge, in the great rift valley, where the Leakeys first found Lucy, the common ancestor mother, and that these Hadza people may well be direct descendants of Lucy, as are we all, only they live here, here where Lucy lived, on this very spot, on this very planet, under these very stars. And the Americans tell this to the Hadza, but before they can get into more evolution, into fire, and cave drawings, and the domestication of plants and animals, to the invention of airplanes, and George Washington the father of their country, and rock and roll music, and nuclear weapons which mirror the powers of the sun and the great exploding pebble, the Hadza elders begin to stir and beg the Americans stop.
“Stop,” they say. “This is too incredible, you are saying that we Hadza are the descendants of the first people, living here, where the first people walked, hunted, gathered and reproduced, we, the Hadza. It is all too much to take in,” they say, “too much to integrate into our origin story. We must share this news with our people. We will have to think about what this means, about our ancestors, about ourselves, about our obligations and the future. You have shocked us,” they say, “and we must think about it together.” And they leave us to do so while we Americans are left at the dimming fire, thirteen men over 55, in the immense darkness, inside the vast emptiness, under the same very stars as Lucy.
The Discovery of Origins – as told to B.R.Taub by Craig Neal
AFRICA
TRAVEL DIARIES
