des milles collines

This year a number of African countries marked 50 years of independence from their colonizers.  Notably, Tanzania celebrated this occasion on December 9th and Kenya on December 12th.   Never one to miss a long weekend opportunity, I headed to Rwanda.

Rwanda is called the 'land of a thousand hills' but the first thing I noticed when we arrived in Kigali was the order.  At a clearly marked visa line I presented my pre-approved application, my money was inserted into a machine, change popped out and my passport was stamped.  Upon leaving the airport, my friend and I were even more shocked.  We traveled along manicured boulevards, traffic politely and obediently ambling up and down the hillsides, pedestrians making their way along paved sidewalks.  Sidewalks!  Giddily we congratulated ourselves on our escape from Dar and eagerly awaited our chance to explore the city.

Daylight did not disappoint.  When cars stopped at pedestrian cross-walks, we were almost too astounded to move.  The high of our morning of sidewalks, traffic rules and strong coffee ended abruptly when we made our way to the Kigali Genocide Memorial.  The audio tour began at large unmarked graves that house hundreds of thousands of genocide victims.  Beyond the graves are the endless rolling hills of Kigali.  My immediate thought was 'how could such horror unfold amid such beauty?'  Pictures and testimonials inside the exhibit were macabre.  Although I'd been reading Shake Hands with the Devil, it was at this point that the heaviness of Rwanda's history began to settle upon me.  More questions began to surface - where are the poor, hawkers and beggars, whose presence is ubiquitous on the streets of other East African major cities?   Rwanda has been an economic success story under the Kagame regime, but no poor people!?! Something did not seem right.

I've heard Rwanda described as a place that feels as though something is lurking under the surface many times before.  Yes, that's a pretty unsurprising observation, to the extent that it is less than 20 years since the genocide that killed a million people in 90 days.  But it is not just the suspected tension amid the population, it's the sense you get of tension between the populace and the government.

Days later this sentiment was confirmed during a day trip to the Parc National des Volcans, where Rwanda, Uganda and the Congo meet.  We'd traveled to the far east of the county and were repeatedly overcome by the staggering beauty of the countryside.  The four people who joined us on our day trip up the Bisoke volcano had recently moved to Kigali.  When we raved to them about our impressions of the city, they responded with information about an island that poor people were relegated to and a ban on flip flop sandals in the city centre - designed to keep the poorest people out.  These anecdotes, while outlandish, helped us to understand what we'd seen: a peaceful, calm, beautiful landscape with hills full of densely packed homes clearly occupied by the invisible poor.

Back in Dar I looked it up.  In fact, there is such a 'rehabilitation island' exists.  As for the sandals, I've not been able to find a clear answer.  Confirming the existence of the island made me think back to my initial giddiness.  What is the cost of order in developing cities?  In our own cities in the West? Should be we be comfortable with the overt exclusion of the poor against the reality of the pervasive exclusion of the poor in the socio-political life of almost every country?  Can order, infrastructure and efficiency 'trickle down'? Or will it only be for the citizens of Kigali?  What does my comfort with the hidden dysfunction of Kigali say about me and the cultural paradigm that I come from?  One year in East Africa and I feel no closer to the answers -- but I'm relieved that I can still see the questions.

The seeds of contempt

Since moving here, I’ve been cognizant of a strain in my relationships with many Tanzanians.  Nothing overt, just a subtle undercurrent of something that I haven’t yet found a way to describe.  It’s something that I didn’t experience in either Laos or Singapore and because I don’t understand it, it’s something I think about a lot.

Here on the peninsula (the expatriate enclave), I regularly see people have grocery attendants carry their bags to their car.  That I am able to carry my bags myself has elicited more than one look of confusion.  I see house attendants walking family pets and a steady stream of domestic help making their way to our various households in the early morning light.   I’m not going to address the economics of this system, but the power differential is painfully obvious.

A word that has come to mind on more than one occasion is contempt.

This week was one of those occasions.

When I woke up Wednesday morning there was no power.  A transformer servicing Dar had exploded earlier in the week and our generator had been running non-stop, so my first thought was that it had broken down under the strain.  Given that most of my colleagues don’t have generators, I figured it was just my turn to experience some inconvenience.  Because there was an outside chance I’d used up my pre-paid credit I strained at my window to hear whether other tenants were also afflicted.

I didn’t have to wait long before I heard a raised voice directed at our night guard.  Since it was a building-wide problem and we don’t have running water when there is no power, I gave up on my morning run, dawned a headband and went to work.

That’s when the venom started.  The first email I read from a fellow tenant was the written equivalent of frothing at the mouth.  Capital letters, thirty-six point font, the works.  How dare we be inconvenienced?  Slowly an explanation emerged.  For reasons that remain unknown, the night guard had pressed the emergency stop, shutting off our generator.  Immediately the rallying cries began for his dismissal.

Now it’s true, this guard was not necessarily the sharpest or most dedicated to his job.  But let’s consider what his job is: he sits for twelve hours at our gate, opens it when we come in to park, theoretically protects us from some unknown danger.  Don’t get me wrong, there is value to this.  But when I come home and he is sleeping, my first thought is not ‘why is he sleeping?’ it’s ‘how does one endure such boredom?’  To me, sitting and waiting for twelve hours at a time to open a gate would be a form of cruel and unusual torture. 

A (not so) quiet evening in Dar

Yesterday evening I was feeling pretty good about myself.  I had just finished making mapu tofu, inspired by a link a friend shared with me after enduring my complaints about the Korean food here.  Sitting on my couch, I heard a rustling near the door of my bedroom.  This is not uncommon – I keep my windows open and so the occasional plastic bag gets blown around my apartment.  That said, this noise sounded a little more substantial. I was right -- I found myself looking directly into the eyes of a BAT!?!  

 

Reflexively I got up, in time to see the bat turn and scurry into my room and under my bed.  Scurry.  Did you know that bats scurry? That is when the screaming and jumping began.  If it took me a glass of wine to summon the courage to kill my last cockroach, what was it going to take to capture a bat?!?

Seconds into this meltdown I heard a knock at my door.  It was our apartment handyman, Juma.  (I’ve been having problems yet again with my shower door – this time it didn’t explode but suffice it to say I’ve been without one for the last 5 days.  He had come to move the now familiar bricks that mysteriously contribute to the (temporary) fixing of my shower.)  Unable to conceal my hysteria (I was still jumping around), I explained what had happened.  

Amused, Juma went to my room and began moving things around in search of the bat.  As he was riffling through my clothes, I began to think about how the bat could have gotten in.  How long had it been in my apartment?  would it really be hiding in my shirts? I asked him, trying to sound casual about the implications for my future dressing routine.  Ignoring the inner monologue scolding me for being blaze about rabies vaccinations on account of cost, I got down on my hands and knees and tried to use my broom handle to coax the bat from its possible hiding spot under my bed.  Seeing my futile attempts, Juma came over and moved the bed.  Success.

At this point I screamed and ran out of the room.  No need to lay eyes on the creature again.  Laughing, he picked up a small plastic bag, my broom and told me that he had to close the door.  Happily, I let him, listening to the commotion in my room with a mix of terror and giddiness.

Soon after he came out, the bag now dark with its contents.  Smiling he asked, “do you want to see?”  I’ll let you guess my answer.  Then Juma, the bricks, the bat and a tip left my apartment.   

Afraid of my room, I devoted the rest of the evening to making peanut butter cookies dipped in chocolate, which were excellent and time consuming. (I know, interesting choice, but my fight or flight response triggers the need to either exercise or bake... at least it’s both!) Resisting the urge to consume enough cookies to slip into a sugar coma, at the advice of a friend I slipped under my mosquito net and tried to ignore the fact that it wouldn’t prevent a bat from flying into my head. Lucky for me, none did.  Nor did I contract rabies (that I know of).  Just another quiet evening in Dar. 

43 Hours in Nairobi

I spent last week in Kampala on the shores of Lake Victoria, first for a workshop and then for a conference.  Because my flight routed through Nairobi, I decided to take the opportunity to reconnect with urban life on my way home.

Turning my phone on amid the chorus of Nokia start-up sounds, the first message on the screen was “traffic is terrible, if there is a bar at the airport, I suggest you go there and have a drink”.  It was past 10 pm.  If you haven’t spent time at the Nairobi airport, take my word for it, you’ve missed nothing.  After a day of travel I quickly decided that braving the traffic had to be the better option.

Arriving at the customs desk, I was granted a $20 transit visa (pretty awesome in contrast to the $50 regular one).  I handed my hundred dollar bill to the officer and after a brief examination she told me that it was too old and she could not accept it.  I responded with the obvious – I do not live in America and do not have a ready source of US currency to draw from.  She responded with her equivalent: I should go to the Forex back in the terminal and switch my bill.  Why? Because bills from the nineties are worth less than those printed after 2000.  I asked what would happen if I could not find a newer bill, would I have to wait stranded in the airport like in that movie?  She replied: “don’t be ridiculous”.  My inner monologue queried: “seriously, as though that is the only ridiculous part of the exchange we are having?”  

Alas, despite my reservations that this was a reality in the world markets, I dragged myself back to the terminal.  Unable to find the Forex, I decided to withdraw money and pay them in Kenyan Shillings (yep, recipe for an argument).  That was until I noticed that the amounts on the machine were in Pounds!?! Resigned, I looked up, right at my boss who was doing some shopping while waiting for her connection to Europe.  Amazing! 

One bill exchange and twenty minutes later we were snaking our way out of the airport, which had areas blocked off owing to the threat of retaliation from Al-Shabab.  The roads were empty and I thought the traffic had finally dissipated, until we reached the city.  There a scene of chaos waited at every turn.  Heavy rains had made driving an exercise in skill and patience.  Not to mention foresight: dozens of cars were parked on the sides of the road, presumably because they had ran out of gas.  Luckily, my driver wasn’t having any of it and somehow he managed to get me to my destination – off a dirt road that had collapsed into a series of craters – in record time!  Insert some wine, yahtzee and the lights of a big city to make the journey worthwhile.

The next day we headed to the National Museum.  Perched on a hill over botanical gardens, it is a spot that I’ve wanted to visit on numerous occasions but never found the time for.  Kenya being home to the Rift Valley, i.e. the cradle of civilization, natural history is the obvious highlight.  From the remnants of Lucy to those of the Turkana Boy, we were treated to glimpses of our ancestors from 1.7 million years ago.  Illustrations on the walls of early hominids eating, hunting and relaxing on the savannah, much like the animals I saw on safari weeks ago, was fodder for the imagination.  It seems incredible, but it brought home to me the fact that without forced removals from national governments, there are groups of people who would still be living that life on the savannah.  Not too much about that in the museum, though.

anniversary

As an energy conservation rule, I only acknowledge the others who also enduring the trauma of attempting to exercise in a steam bath.  Today during my morning run, a guy running in a two piece windsuit responded to my wave with an energetic point and snap.  I found myself unusually buoyed by this gesture and thought to myself “yep, go me, what a great way to start the day”.  For it isn’t just any day.

It’s my anniversary.

With myself.

Twelve months ago I set out with a dream, because I had run out of excuses to not to follow it.  Unsurprisingly my dreams have built upon each other to create new dreams.   But what I hadn’t expected was that I would finish this year living out a dream completely different than the one I started with.  From the land of my dreams I traveled to the land of my ancestors.

Those of you who know me (or have read this blog) know that it hasn’t all been magical.  Creepy people have followed me, constantly having to figure things out has overwhelmed me and loneliness has overcome me at times.  But wouldn’t that all have happened to me anyway? YES!

But had I never packed all my things into my parents’ basement (still sorry, dad), I certainly would not have stood at the base of Mt. Everest, developed an addiction to Bourbon biscuits, become an East African frequent flyer or had the shores of the Indian Ocean as a refuge. 

So this morning, I seconded the point and snap… because this journey has been challenging – and I’m still on it! Whoever reaches a milestone without disappointment and elation?

I would like to say that this year has left me with some profound wisdom.  In a way it has – I am now convinced of the strength, creativity and bravery of the woman I see in the mirror each morning.  If I could share one piece of unsolicited advice it would be this: your life is now.  This is your big adventure.  Do something, anything that you’ve always wanted to - the most important thing I’ve learned is that you won’t regret it.

crush my heart down

Spurred into action by the visit of an old friend, this past weekend I embarked on my first Tanzanian road trip with yours truly at the helm.  Destination: Bagamoyo.

Seventy kilometers north of Dar, it's a town with a rich and, sadly, dark history.  Bagamoyo, according to Rough Guides, translates to "lay your heart down".  According to the guide we picked up outside of one of the crumbling edifices in Bagomoyo's Stone Town, it means "crush your heart down".  

Arriving at the indiscriminate rubble that comprises this part of the town, I felt vaguely depressed.  Of course, it is fitting that arriving at a former slave port should be a sobering experience.  Along the shores of the Indian Ocean, thousands of Africans, many who had spent up to 9 months traversing the continent, arrived at their last stop before the massive slave trading markets of of Zanzibar.  As the capital of German East Africa, Bagamoyo was one of these such places.

The East African slave trade saw thousands of people captured and sold against their will.  Our enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide traced the last steps of this journey.  From the prison cells in a slave owner's basement that eventually would become the headquarters for the colonizing Germans and later the British after the first World War, to the unrecognizable slave market which now houses the local bounty of generic souvenirs, women hovering over pots of simmering beans and gatherings of unoccupied young men.  Even less recognizable (but easier to guess about) are the ruins along the shore.  Crumbling walls stand over a beach crowded with fisherman dividing the spoils of the day's catch.  The ocean is encroaching upon these ruins steadily at a rate of 60m a year.  Now just metres away, thoughts have turned to ways to relocate the remnants of the building to higher ground.

Standing on the steps that now lead to a tangle of fishing boats and their anchor ropes, I tried to imagine what that last couple of kilometers would have been like.  Starving and shackled by my neck and ankles to my neighbour, would I care about the fate that awaited me beyond these shores? Would I lament not having perished along with countless others? Would I even be capable of thinking? Bagamoyo may very well be the place where these slaves left their hearts, for those who still had them to give.  However, regardless of the translation or the true origins of the name Bagamoyo, hearts were not laid there.  No, that is too benign a descriptor.  This was a dissociation that was violently imposed.  Their hearts were crushed down.

speaking of truth

For the cynics out there, this was sent to me just as I pressed "publish". Truth? No comment - it's subjective!

I escaped

On a recent trip to Zanzibar, we found ourselves in conversation with the taxi driver taking us to the beach.  Over the course of the hour, he regaled us with information on topics ranging from the celebration of Ramadan, his favourite childhood foods to how he ended up driving a taxi and his dreams for his children. 

At one point he told us that he had not finished grade school.  When asked why he answered 'because I escaped!'  Granted, part of what he meant to convey might have gotten lost in translation, but we all still had a good laugh about his response.  

Technically, escape means to break free from confinement or control.  In North America, we probably would have described his behaviour as 'dropping out'. But when you think about it, maybe what he said gets to the heart of what he really meant -- having left school, he felt free.

While I'm not advocating leaving school at grade seven, I think his description is on to something.  By saying that he escaped, he didn't dilute his reality.  Instead, we clearly got the picture of his resulting freedom. 

 

It is certainly not a revelation that words can be powerful.  But to strive to use them as Abdul did, (intentionally or otherwise), in a way that emphasizes truth, is a worthy challenge.

choices

People sometimes ask me: how did you end up in Tanzania?  The extended version usually includes ‘I’m not really sure why’ and ‘I just had a feeling’.  But by any definition, I chose it.  This reality often moves to the forefront of my mind when I am feeling overwhelmed or frustrated, which ebbs and flows in a manner similar to the tides here (i.e. dramatically).  

A recent encounter brought home to me something more significant: despite my untidy explanations, every single day I choose to be here.  Last week, planning on a weekend at the beach with some of my girlfriends, I spent the second day of Eid running errands.  In one of the shops, I ended up in a long conversation with an employee.  She explained to me that she had come to Dar in order to avoid an arranged marriage.  Why Tanzania? Because it was one of the first places to grant her a visa.  Why Dar? Because she was able to secure work and a corresponding airfare from her home country.  The catch? A long-term contract doing work that she is over-qualified for.  

The next time I was about to utter a complaint, it caught in my throat.  I choose to be here. Granted, clearly she also made an active choice to be here.  But it underscores the layers of privilege that inform volition.  She chose between an unacceptable position and tolerable one.  I have been lucky enough that most of my life I have been able to choose between a good position and an even better one.  

So today, I’ll choose to be thankful for that.  

you can be blaze about some things, but not about a giraffe

Last week my parents came to visit Tanzania.  First on our itinerary was a visit to Mikumi National Park, in central Tanzania.  Initially they were reluctant – no one in my family is particularly into animals, as pets, in zoos, or otherwise.  Plus, the costs of doing any kind of safari in Tanzania are generally speaking prohibitive. Nevertheless, at my insistence, you cant come to Tanzania and not see some sort of wild animal! – there we were.

In our circa 1970’s Land Rover, equipped with a good driver but without seatbelts, we moved at a slow clip.  It wasn’t long before we were rewarded with impalas languidly grazing the tawny grass (it’s the dry season) and giraffes ambling amid the trees.  Each time we spotted an animal or group of animals, the driver dutifully halted the car to allow us to take about a million pictures alternating between our point and shoot cameras and the video camera.

Standing with my upper body poking through the elevated roof of the vehicle, I became increasingly bored with the spot – slow – photograph pattern of the afternoon.  Another giraffe? Big deal.  A couple of weeks ago I was walking among giraffes – alone!  And then it struck me – did I really just think that?  For those of you who have listened to me quote Titanic for the last fifteen years, it won’t surprise you that the first thing that came to my mind was “you can be blaze about some things, chomey, but not about giraffes!”

And it’s so true.  The animals of the savannah: giraffes, elephants, lions, impalas, wildebeests, buffalo, elands, hippopotamuses, crocodiles and warthogs, to name a few are hardly animals that I see every day, here in Tanzania or at home in North America.  On top of that, lets not forget what a privilege it is to observe them interact with each other on endless golden planes, and not in the confines of the local zoo.

I revamped my attitude just in time for one of the highlights of our trip.  Our guides stopped to assist another vehicle that had busted its tire.  Afterwards, as that car moved down the road ahead of us, its driver pointed out the window to a number of trees at the side of the road.  Arriving at the trees, a bloodied carcass was visible in the clearing.  Knowing that whatever killed that animal was likely to be in the vicinity a hushed silence fell upon us.  Our driver murmured, “I’m not supposed to do this” and proceeded to drive off the road towards the trees.  Lying prone in the scrub were three lionesses, panting heavily under the stress of the giant meal they had just consumed.  They didn’t even turn to look at us frantically recording them and then afterwards, staring at them in awe. 

In the gloaming as we traveled back to our hotel along the main road that cuts through the park our driver stopped one last time.  In the bushes set back from the road, a family of elephants was dining on the surrounding trees.  Too dark to photograph, I sat quietly, respectful of their majesty and eagerly anticipating the promise of another day in the park.

cheat post

My parents are two hours from Dar and it is finally clear that this week I wont be writing about my recent trip to this nation's capital.  Instead, here's my latest column - which draws on things I've written about here and manages to feature a picture of where I went, far better than any that I took!  So any way you look at it, this is a cheat post, pole (sorry)!

http://twssmag.com/2011/08/16/column-d-the-joys-of-travelling-solo/

Got fuel?

This morning I got invited to a new facebook group. It is not a joke.  Last week legislation that reduced the price of fuel by 200 TSH ($0.10) came into effect, causing gas station operators to freeze their pumps and refuse to sell.

I had gotten wind of this through whispers in my exorbitantly priced gym’s change room.  Spotting a friend on a treadmill, I advised her to fill up her tank.  After a particularly painful workout, sitting back with my evening soda water, I realized my oversight – I’d forgotten to go to the gas station!

Of my colleagues, I’m the lucky one.  I live a ten minute drive from the office and have for the most part maintained a quarter tank of gas at all times.  There were rumblings that the government was going to ‘solve the problem’, and I figured that by exercising some prudence I could make it until the weekend.

And I did.  The problem was solved when the owners agreed to reduce the price after depleting their residual stock.  So Saturday morning I filled up my tank and Sunday I headed out for some much needed beach time (it was a long weekend here – literally ‘eight eight day’ and yes, there was a ‘seven seven’ holiday last month!).  Tuesday morning my assistant said that on Monday her neighbourhood was packed with people crowding the gas stations – on a holiday! 

A quick read of the daily paper explained the situation - sort of.  Yet again, owners were refusing to sell petrol.  In Dar, this is a heightened crisis because of the abysmal traffic.  People can literally spend hours commuting at a standstill, burning fuel.  Public transportation (which most people rely on) has begun to grind to a halt because buses have nowhere to fill up.  I’ve written countless times about the pathetic state of power generation here – a problem that is compounded when there is no diesel to fuel back-up generators.  Yesterday there was apparently a command that the stations had 24 hours to open or face the revocation of their business licenses.  If the impasse continues, quite literally the city will stop working (comments on its functionality aside).

And so, the facebook page.  I was even able to contribute by sharing a lead when our driver got word of an open station in the neighbourhood! Hopefully this isn’t yet another false start to resolving the problem- only time will tell!

what is the plot?

Lately I’ve started to ask myself “what am I doing here?”  I am back at a desk, far from the exhilaration that comes with a daily venture into the unknown.  I started this “spirit quest” as my wittier friends have termed it, back in August of last year when I decided that I could no longer wait for my life to happen.  Today, while devoting too much time to reading other people’s stories online, I came across this quote on a blog by someone who had set out on a year of travel: “my life has a superb cast, but I can’t figure out the plot” (Ashleigh Brilliant).  Perhaps owing in part to my blogosphere induced haze, I felt as though my reality had leapt up off the page – this is exactly what I feel like most of the time! As though I am constantly searching for the plot in my own story.

 

Naturally this inspires a lot of questions in me: why is it that I feel like I don’t know the plot in my own life? How should I go about finding it and then what should I do with it?

As my yoga practice has fallen substantially off the rails, I cannot answer these questions.  It occurs to me that instead of figuring out the plot I’ve been spending a lot of time checking out potential locales, testing travel equipment, sampling the meals that will be eaten by the characters and so on.  I’ve went around the world seeking additional cast members, auditioning for both supporting and leading roles.  All the while, I’ve captured images (in pictures and in writing) to aide my memory when the story is eventually told.

In the process, surprisingly few people have asked what the story they are participating in is actually about.  Likewise (and fortunately), they seem equally uninterested in what the protagonist (myself) is ultimately set on doing.  Unequivocally, the cast I’ve assembled is superb.  Isn’t that a feat in itself? Which brings me to an (I think better) question about the plot – should I care?