Zanzibar

The beach...

 This appears to be a really interesting fort, but it is in fact now a craft center where 20 women will try to splatter you with henna and a stoned lady keeps sticking scarves in your face

 Focus on the small blob at the top of the trunk- the heroic coconut retriever.

I miss the juice.

 Kite surfing. Crazy.

 We thought we were going to the reef to snorkel. Nope we were going to the reef to hike. Bring your walking sticks, girls.

Low tide does strange things.

 

 And people do strange things in low tide...

 Oh yeah, the water is greeeeen

Here and There, in Malawi

I spent the last week of 2010 traveling slowly up the northern shores of Lake Malawi and overland into Tanzania. On the long bus ride along the length of Malawi, I stepped off at a road block looking for a private spot in the bush to relieve myself. When the driver saw my surveying, he suggested asking the police to use their toilet. At first I thought that was a preposterous idea, until I remembered that Malawi is not Congo and the police are far less corrupt and can even be helpful. Right, I thought, Malawi is a normal country, and I tried not to pause and consider too much how somewhere along the way a place like Malawi became normal to a white girl from Jersey.

I stopped at Mwaya Beach where I used to volunteer as a nursery teacher to bring Christmas gifts to my teaching colleagues and check in on all of the staff. Thankfully everyone is still alive since my last visit. I found this remarkable because several people had died between the end of my volunteering and my last visit there, and because many if not most of them are HIV positive. When I got to the beach, I found myself totally alone in the bush, as it was in the evening and everyone had gone home. I had sent an email I was coming, but internet is less useful in these parts than the bush telegraph and I ended up spending a couple of pitch black hours in the sand before obtaining shelter.

I spent Christmas on Makuzi Beach, tranquil and secluded and fancy in a sandy sort of way. Christmas morning gingerbread cookies, miniature pies and coffee were delivered to my door and I spent Christmas dinner under the wings of three highly educated Malawian women and the henpecked British husband of one. We chatted about books, geography and public transportation. A German family passed around their traditional Christmas cake after dinner and the Italians at the table thanked them by singing Silent Night in German. The Malawians joined in in Chechewa and the South Africans in English. I kept my mouth shut since I only know the first 2 lines and I'm not much of a carroller. But despite being an irrelegious Jew, dozens of voices singing a Christmas song in 3 languages gave me the chills. Full of Christmas cake squeezed beside a huge dinner, we all staggered down to the beach were the Germans gave us our second treat of the evening: fireworks set off along the lake, exploding brilliantly against the stars.

After a quick, harassed stay in Nkhata Bay, I said goodbye to Lake Malawi, added bilharzia screening to my To-Do list and headed up to my favorite spot. WAY up. After a 10k hike uphill in midday Malawian heat with a 30 lb backpack, I was happy to rest my legs at Mushroom Farm. Not usually much of a planner, I made sure to request the second story of the brick and thatch hut weeks in advance. It is set on the edge of a cliff with only 3 walls so you can lie in bed watching the sunrise and the sunset, the night sky thick with stars or cut up by lightening.

 View from my bed

From there I began the 4 day journey over land and sea to Zanziabar. I stopped in a couple of towns along the way to spend the night, all unremarkable save for occasional oddities like the restaurant in Mbeya where the cook, perhaps hearing of muzugues hesitance to eat uncooked, unpeeled vegetables, served me a microwaved salad. But for the most part, it was long days spent in hot, over-crowded buses held together by duct tape.

I was so disoriented from heat and sun and sweaty car insides that when I finally reached Dar es Saalam, I wondered at the peculiarity of the bus depot where I was going to catch a quick ride to my lodgings for the night. It was the weirdest bus depot I had ever seen. There were no buses and I couldn't figure out how they got in or out. It wasn't until the ferry pulled up that the lightbulb went off. I spent the night on the beach to detox from car exhaust before boarding the island bound boat. I had heard vomitious horror stories about the ferry to Zanzibar. I shocked myself by not being ill, and I was able to ignore the retching around me by keeping my eyes straight ahead on the Jackie Chan movies.

Zanzibar was great, but the best part was arriving.

Malawi Revisited

I spent my first days of my third time in "the warm heart of Africa" in Zomba plateau visiting friends from Lesotho (a former student and her parents). They had kindly purchased me a bus ticket from Lilongwe to Blantyre, several hours away, where we would meet. They also kindly arranged for friends in Lilongwe to bring me the ticket and transport me from the airport to the bus depot. Ethiopia airlines also kindly waited for late passengers to board my connecting flight in Addis Ababa, effectively eating away most of the 2 hour window I should have had to catch my bus. When I found no one in the airport was waiting for me, and realizing I had no phone number or address for my friends who lived a day's journey away, I put on my game face, texted my host's sister-in-law in Lesotho, crossed my fingers and hailed a cab to town. My plan was to head to Zomba and wonder around asking for an Indian professor and dentist.

While I would have been bemused by the idea of stumbling around rural Malawi searching for my friends, I was lucky that a message got through and they were able to meet in Blantyre as planned a few hours later than we had originally anticipated.

In Zomba I enjoyed magnificent rainstorms, picturesque runs in back country and Indian hospitality. I suppose the latter was both a blessing and a curse, which I should have suspected from experiences with the other half of their family in Maseru. As the father put it, in his culture, guests are sent from god and are treated as such. Doing so much as bringing my glass from the table to the sink was met with discomfort from my hosts. It took me two days to insist to them that I like to walk instead of being driven. Mealtimes became a battle much like open-air market haggling. They would scoff at the piece of chambo I put on my plate and insist on adding another, larger one. I would concede only if I could return my original choice. They would insist I eat both, the very thought of which made me feel painfully full. Finally they would allow me to put the smaller piece back. We shake on it and in the process of returning my chosen fish to the plate, it slips and splashes into my water glass. I profusely apologize only to be told that they like pre moistened lake fish. They practically thank me dropping their lunch in ice water. Indeed that I had water in my glass at all instead of soda or juice disturbed my hosts, as did my preference to drink my tea black and unsweetened and eat my food unadorned with globby condiments or plasticky dressings, all of which they took as signs I was uncomfortable in their home and they were bad hosts. I spent meals using my hand to shield host attacks of ketchup, salad dressing and second and third helpings flung in layered masses on to my plate while the first helping I was struggling to finish became buried underneath.

As my hosts were both working during much of stay, they shuffled me over to a Filipino doctor to take me hiking and to the botanical gardens. He had no fewer than 37 stuffed animal toys adorning his walls. I found it rather disconcerting but luckily we spent more time in the great outdoors than in his freaky living room. He was a shockingly fast hiker for his rather spherical frame. We hiked and plucked raspberries from their bushes- light orange in color but still remarkably sweet.

On my final day in Zomba, like a child you feel guilty for not spending enough time with, my hosts sent me to the market with the maid to get a dress tailored form local fabric. I packed it up in my backpack, said goodbye and boarded a bus to the north.

Who knew you could make a horse-shaped swing out of a tire?! A Malawian, that's who!

Rainbowed Plateau

Leaving: The Attempt

It seems that African travel stories often revolve as much around how you got to your destination as what you did there. This is one such story.

If there is a hell, I believe it is like a never ending check-in at Njili airport in Kinshasa. A never-ending check-in process would be only a slight exaggeration from the actual check-in process at Njili airport in Kinshasa. It may very well be the worst airport in the world. It may also be the only one in which it is standard procedure to hire a protocol, a man (in this case paid $100/person by my employer) whose job it is to get you to the gate with your luggage, and if you're lucky, dignity and sanity in tact. This seems to be accomplished through a shady but apparently legitimate and legal system of bribes from one checkpoint to the next. This particular airport experience was surreal, starting with a good hour of so of milling around the check-in area which is adorned with the scent of stale piss and advertisements for the national airline with has been blacklisted by international airline safety regulators. We were due to take off in 3 hours as are the hundreds of other fellow travelers but none of the dozen security guards laying around has yet even considered positioning themselves at any of the numerous counters and desks. So we mill.

When one security guard finally saunters to a desk and plops down with an elaborate sigh, luggage, elbows and insults went flying as harried passengers jockeyed for a position in the line where they would spend most of their day. Despite trying to not get separated from other teachers, I found myself between 2 giant Congolese,. The bald, pinstriped man in front of me has positioned his elbow one centimeter from my left eyeball. The bejeweled and bearded woman behind me has her disconcertingly large, squishy breasts pressed in the back of my neck. Both of these people look wealthy, yet it appears neither has taken the plunge to purchase deoderant.

The next few hours consisted of being shuffled from desk to desk where official after official would ask for the same documents and handwrite your details each time on forms to be boxed up and left in an office to rot.

After a final official scrutinized my vaccination card which he did not seem to notice he held upside down, I was sent to "security." Last time my carry-on was inspected in this airport, I was detained over having a few corn kernels in a plastic bag left over from my standard traveler's breakfast of popcorn. They demanded to know what the unpopped, black kernels were. I asked my friend how to say garbage in French (I later remembered it's "poubelle") and he said, "poulet." I knew it was wrong but I said it anyway. "It's chicken," I told the guard. They made me hang around until I asked them if they wanted to keep the dud kernels. They did and I carried on my journey through the airport.

This time I remembered to throw away any corn kernels before going through security but it didn't alleviate much. When baggage is inspected, it is not for dangerous objects, but for anything interesting the security guard might like. In fact, he moved razor bland and scissors in my carry-on aside to inquire about a packet of bath salts I hoped to used if I came across any clean bath water during my travels (Kinshasa water is brown). They "inspected" my wallet next, presumably to see what it contained should they find a reason to solicit a bribe from me. In the absence of metal detectors or scanning machines they just grope your chesticles and you on your way.

I was the last teacher to emerge into the gate area. The principal had already opened a bottle Jack Daniels and most of my colleagues were already half-smashed, trying to obliterate the airport from their consciousnesses. The plane should have already taken off, but as always at this airport, the flights don't leave because no one is a the gate- they are all caught in the maze I had just emerged from. We sat around for while longer until round II of groping and carry-on checks where a guard tried to steal my $30 2 liter metal water bottle. I insisted that he dump out the water and give the bottle back but he was stubborn and drunk, partially from our duty free Jack Daniels which he had pilfered from our little party. I finally said "Let me help you" and I gently took it from his hands. He put his fat, greasy ginger in my face and in a wave of liquored breath, told me to never bring a bottle to the airport again. I went to dump it in a plant and he shouted at me to pour it right where everyone was standing. Within 5 seconds we were standing in a 2 L puddle of water and when I boarded shortly after, I left wet footprints from the door to seat 14C.

More Rain

I got mauled by the rain today. A 40 meter roundtrip dash to the French teacher and back (to ask her to teach the kindergarteners in my classroom instead of hers so they wouldn't have to walk in the rain) left me a sodden, demoralized mess. I dropped by mud-wrecked sandals by the door and borrowed a swimming towel from one of my students.

While my children were were occupied with French songs, I was shivering, indecent in the bathroom while my clothes hung to dry on the towel rack. After my brief sabbatical ended, I spent the rest of the day damp and barefoot.

At lunch the little girl I refer to as the UN Interpreter approached me and said in low tones, "For one thing, you have no shoes on. And first of all, your leg is dirty."

It's Time

The rainy season is here, even though as I type right now with blinding sunbeams slanting through the spaces in my curtains, it is hard to believe. But when the storms sweep in, walking becomes more like swimming, and the pounding sound of rain on the roof shatters any concentration I once had.

Last weekend it rained so long and so hard, that, I stayed in bed for days, reading book after book,  emerging from my mosquito netting only to make zucchini fritters and look out the window.

Our campus has turned technicolor green and the running trails are overgrown with bush. The mosquitos are out in thick clouds and the Nairobi eyes or acid bugs I have been hearing about have started to emerge (they land on your skin and when you attempt to brush them off they excrete a rash-producing acid). Meanwhile the black flies have been retreating and spend the last moments of their season crashing kamikaze style against my eyeballs, or in the case of one, in the back of my throat as it rode it on a gulp of mid-run oxygen. It's wings beat damply against my uvula for several minutes before curling up and dying yet refusing to be swallowed. The cockroaches drowning beneath my leaking roof routinely crawl out from between my walls, flip onto their backs and die a slow, leg-wiggling death.

Mango trees which dot our campus are a truly generous thing, especially after the rains start. But high up in the trees, the most unreachable fruits turn golden, then rot, before falling dozens of feet to the ground. These are known with a mix of wonder and fear as mango bombs. It is only one reason why it is dangerous to walk under mango trees. The other is the slime underfoot, slick and emitting the rotten mango smell of sewage and vinegar. In my own garden, which once gave weeks of bountiful salads, the tomatoes first began growing to the size of my face and before turning red, dropping off the vine with rot, or else growing to the size of marbles, turning a freakish, speckled pattern and dropping off the vine in rot.

The enormous snails creep up my steps in the damp evenings leaving behind trails of slime for me to find when I come home at night. I have stepped on one in the dark and the sensation of my flip flopped foot cracking open the shell and sliding on the rubbery body was more than a little disgusting.

And when the sun peaks through after hours of rain, the dirt path in front of my door is clogged with lizards rejuvenating in the brief and brilliant sunshine, which sounds pretty good to me.

How to Ask for Something and Not Get It

In DRC I am learning the art of asking for something you have no intention of getting. Let's start with school supplies. Now my school really likes bureaucratic and lengthy systems. Example- How my kindergartners get lunch:

Step 1: Come in the class in the morning and indicate if they brought lunch or are buying.
Step 2: If they are buying, ask them which of the two meal options they would like.
Step 3: Field their questions about various choices. "What's a beef carbanado?" (You might as well ask me what wicket is) and "Is rice and beans that spicy thing I don't like?" ("No, that's chicken curry.")
Step 4: Ask them if they want juice.
Step 5: Tell them you don't know the damn juice flavor and they can commit to an unknown flavor or else drink water.
Step 6: Tally their choice.
Step 7: Write their name on the juice list.
Step 8: Give them a necklace with their meal choice of the day to keep in their cubbyhole.
Step 9: Enter cafeteria lady.
Step 10: Hand over the tally and juice list.
Step 11: Label juice boxes with juice-drinkers names
Step 12: Cross off the dollar amounts of various lunches off of children's lunch cards.
Step 13: Fill in forms of how much money each student has left.

Step 79: Several hours later, children have eaten lunch and after briefly considering walking across campus to eat with the other teachers, pass out in the reading corner.

Requesting supplies has fewer steps, but is no easier in practice. First of all, the supply closet opens once a day and once a day only. That is at 3:30 pm so if you need something, you better know the day before. And when you do order something, be prepared to have to reorder it the next day and the next as your request is continually screwed up from your dutifully filled out request form. For example, I asked for a notebook and got a grade book, I asked for an ink pad and I got an ink cartridge, I asked for sticky tack and I got a thumb tack, so I re-requested with the brand-name Bostik and was given post-its. When I finally stuck a sample on to the request form, I was told that "this thing" does not exist in Kinshasa. The thing is, every time your request is messed up, you have to wait another 24 hours for the next request to be filled. I once waited 3 days for a pencil. The best (by which I mean worst) was when I requested paper and they gave me one sheet-literally. Why on earth would I use a piece of paper to request another identical piece of paper?! Really, this goes far beyond a language barrier. My classroom is completely out of erasers but I'm afraid to ask for more for fear that I am going to get a bunch of razors in my mailbox.

Of course my neanderthal French also contributes to my not getting things I ask for-even something as simple as a name. When I first met the custodian in charge of my classroom. I introduced himself and asked my name. He apparently didn't understand my busted French so he clarified, "Mon nom?" and not realizing what had taken place, I called him Manome until I was embarrassingly corrected.

Asking for things in the grocery store is futile if you don't know the right nouns. Craving popcorn, I approached a man in the store and said "Do you have popcorn?" (This was all in French except for the word 'popcorn'). He looked confused. I said, "I don't know the word in French but do you have these small things that say pop pop pop?" "Do you play with it?" he asked me. "No," I said, "You eat it." He looked baffled so I went on to say, or at least attempted to say, "It is a little thing from corn. You put it in a pot with oil. When it gets hot, it says, 'pop, pop, pop' and you eat it." Now he looked absolutely mystified and like he wanted me to go away. So I did, and eventually found a bag and brought it back to the guy and asked him what the word for this thing is in French. The name was so wordy and long and I repeated it several times to remember. Later, someone told me that popcorn in French is pop-corn. Maybe the man was making me say, "Help, this small, white girl is bothering me."