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.”

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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.

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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.
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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 …
photo (18).JPG

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.