Nairobi Nairobi!

Back here, again. Feels good.

Okay, so apparently I don't have 24 hours in London as I once thought. I have 6 hours. I think I thought somehow I could time travel, but that is not the case.

I will be arriving in PITTSBUARGH at 10:35 pm on the 2nd of June! Oh my goodness! I hope it is super warm there, as it is in Nairobi, as it was not in Capetown.

Also. Today I have planned to do all my shopping for everyone. Buying Kenyan things and whatever. Trolls with flags on them, whatever I can find (TIIDBIT! Kenya's flag is the only national flag that has a weapon on it! Interesting?). However, today is also Madaraka day, which is something like Independence day, I think, except that there is another holiday called Jamhuri day, which literally means independence. The few Kenyans I've talked to can't explain it, so I'm stumped. I think the slow unclenching on the colonial fist has something to do with it. I'm nervous the curio shops won't be open, but we'll see. If I can't get hand carved so-and-sos, I'll buy some cheap ass spices and delicious alcohol.

Speaking of the colonial fist, I'm reading an incredible book. It's called Britain's Gulag: the brutal end of empire in Kenya... or something. Caroline Elkins. Affirmed yet again that the British sucked/suck.

But I have trinkets to purchase! Curios! Cheerio! See you soon!

All sides of Africa

About a year ago, I was in Egypt. A few months ago, I was in Mombasa, swimming in the Indian Ocean. Two days ago, I was in Luderitz (umlaut over the u--the first place I've been with an umlaut!) on the Namibian coast, dipping my feet in the icy clean Atlantic. Today, I'm in Capetown, South Africa.

Capetown is our final destination. Sure, we're flying out of Johannesburg, but this is really our end point. And we've got here. I think tonight we'll take some time to reflect on that. It's hitting us, hard, that in about 9 days we'll be back in the US, and this will all be behind us.

So, from Windhoek, we took an overnight train to Keetmanshoop. From Keetmans, we hitched in a petrol transporter to Luderitz, this weird little Bavarian town in Namibia. I wish I knew more about architecture, but it was very bizarre. The houses were painted extraordinary colors. We stayed in this huge mansion that had been converted to a guest house. We made fish n chips, spent a lot of time looking at the ocean. It was a vacation that a middle-aged couple would take, and it was wonderful.

At the gas station back to town, we met Rashid, a peace corps volunteer. We hitched back with him, and hung out at his house with his girlfriend for 10 hours or so, until our bus came. It was nice. We drank South African box wine, I read part of this really sick book. It's called Africa (or some shit), and it's by the dude who is the Africa editor for the Economist. The dude covered stories all over sub-Saharan Africa, and he's extremely knowledgable and a good little writer, too. Some highlights--his chapter about genocides in Rwanda and Burundi, his explanation of the Goldenberg scandal in Kenya (an absolutely convoluted, evil genius money-laundering scheme that until now I've only had a faint understanding of. He untangled it all, showed how absolutely fucked up the president-kings in Kenya have been), devastating discussion of HIV in South Africa (made me remember Ukwala real hard, also never sighed so much in a 30 minute span), and his personal anectodes about Idi Amin. He was teaching English in Uganda when Amin came to power. He went to one of his rallies, and saw Amin driving himself around Kampala in a Jeep. Crazy!

And helpful, too. He described communicating with Africans south of the Sahara, how you don't get to the point immediately, you don't get angry, you work indirectly. The exception, he noted, is Afrikaaners. So, in Capetown, we don't bullshit around, hum and look away for a few seconds until we get closer to what we want. We say what we want and when. I don't like it.

Another thing I don't like--the lack of extended greetings. Everywhere else we've been, interactions start with a lot of questions. How are you? How is your day? How's business? Even at kiosks, just buying a coke, these are the questions you ask. Here, I've been tripping over my tongue, trying to be brief.

So, Capetown will be historical and hedonistic. Both Kat and I love love love museums, and Capetown has a shitton of them. We're also going to hit up Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and Jacob Zuma, among others, were imprisoned. We will also maybe eat sushi. Kat really wants to see penguins, and I'm down. I think we'll do a wine tour, catch a movie, climb Table mountain.

Again, the world is an oyster. I will be home late on the 2nd of June, tired, most likely. Wanting to come back, definitely. But how do I do it?

Like German, but if you're dying

Is what Afrikaans sounds like.

Yes! It's true! We've reached the south of Africa!

Not South Africa, but Namibia, birthplace of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt and a bunch of other people.

We're in Windhoek now, the capital and largest city. We blazed through Zambia in a few days. It was an adventure. Spent a night in Chipata, then Lusaka, then we broke down on a bus from Lusaka to Livingstone--the six hour journey took about 19 and we had to sleep on the bus.

Then Victoria Falls, where we were soaked to the skin. Who knew! I have a funny story but only 11 minutes left on this computer, and I want to tell you about Namibia.


Namibia: the strangest place I have ever been.

For a while, while we were coming through East Africa, and then even down Malawi and into Zambia, I was starting to feel a little worried. We were heading out on this big expedition, but each country felt the same as the last. I mean, sure, in Western Kenya the huts are circles, and in Zambia they're more like triangular prisms, but still there's ugali, or nsima. There's dirt. The transportation is the same. I was worried that I wouldn't find anything that I couldn't have found in Kenya.

And then we got to Namibia.

I wish I could give it justice. Let me just tell you about last night, maybe.

We made some friends at the place where were stayed last night. They live in Namibia, but it was a mixed group. One of the dudes was from Uganda, two were Kenyan, and a third was Namibian but grew up in Sweden, came here a little after independence--which was, mind you, in 1990. We spoke Kiswahili, which felt so good.

In anycase, they showed us Windhoek. We were barred from a bar while every white face passed, no questions. In the next bar we went to, a man came up to us. He was tall, very blonde. From Johannesberg, but, as he said, "basically a local." He made conversation with all of us, just chatting about where we are headed, where we've been.

He went away, we kept drinking. Some 20 minutes later, he came back, leaned over to me, and said, "Beware."

It was incredible. I guess I've never been in a situation so overtly racist. This place is soaked with it, everywhere.

And then, a few more days in Namibia and on to South Africa.

On the long rides between places, I think about coming home, and I get very scared. I'm excited, definitely, but how am I going to do it!

Oops, or mea culpa

So, I realized a few moments after pressing publish on that last pot that it had actually been only three days since I had checked my email. I am very sorry. Down to the good stuff, though.

I am in Lilongwe, Malawi. One time I had a conversation with Miriam about cities that had beautiful names, and Lilongwe is one of them. Unfortunately, Malawi also has a hot election coming up in about a week, so it seems like it's not exactly the safest place to be at the moment.

So what happened between the last blogpost and this one? About a billion things.

From Jinja, we hightailed it to Kampala. Kampala is huge and crazy, hot and hilly. We were only there for a few hours, and didn't do much to really feel the city. We went to the white mall, saw a movie--Duplicity, which was surprisingly okay, but maybe that's because I've only been watching Nigerian movies--and drank beer and ate ground nuts on the roof of the white mall.

From there, we took an overnight bus to Kigali--sorry Mimi, the overnight buses are jut too convenient to miss out on. We got to the border a little after dawn. It was chilly and misty. The most striking thing about Rwanda, I think, is how clean it is. Besides outlawing plastic bags, there are cleanup crews all over the place. My friend Peter peeled an orange while we were waiting at the border. Like he would have done in Kenya, he dropped the peel on the ground. A man came over with a piece of paper, picked up the peel that had dropped, and put it near Peter's feet for the rest of the peel. Bizarre.

And into Kigali. Rwanda is mountainous, and incredibly cultivated. It seems like every inch of the mountains is covered with farms. A few kilometers in, I saw the first memorial of the genocide. It was a sign fixed into a rock wall, with some words in black letters in Kinyarwanda, and "Jenocide" in red.

So Kigali is beautiful, Milles Collines or whatever. But really not worthy of an "or whatever."

I don't know how Rwanda has done it, really. Kigali is clean and beautiful, and in the countryside, people plant gardens that are just for beauty. There are decorative gardens! We couldn't find any foreign banks in the city--maybe that has something to do with it? All of the motorcycle drivers--motos are a legit form of transportation here--wear helmets, and carry a helmt for their passenger. They're also only allowed to carry one passenger.

Went to the genocide memorial in Kigali. Peter asked a man on the street where the museum was. The man said, "there is no museum in Kigali." Peter said, "the genocide mueum," and the man replied with a "gai gai gai," which is the noise you make when you're surprised.

The genocide is something I've been interested in since high school, one of those obsessive fixations people have, but I still can't understand it really. I've read that there's a culture of obedience, that people who didn't participate were risking their lives, but it still seems unimaginable. I told my friend Kat that I wish I could go back in time and stop it, and she said that I should think about how to stop things like that happening in the future. Hello, Kenya 2012.

IN ANY CASE then we went to Tanzania, where everyone lied to us and we were tangled in transit for 5 suckful days. Tanzania sucks.

And into Malawi. Where there is not much of anything. We were going to take a ferry down the lake, but we got to the launch point and the price had gone up $150 since our Lonely Planet was published. So we said no way and got a room for 400 Kwacha, about 3 bucks, (100 Kwacha too many in my opinion) and spent the night in Chilumba. Chilumba, Malawi, where there are two things to do: drink and watch people drink. I had a beer, it started to pour, we sprinted to our room.

Next morning, we walked to Chitimba, had a weird interaction with a girl named Grory which I won't forget and which made me feel angry, and terrible for feeling angry.

Everyone--and I mean everyone--asked us for money in Malawi.

We stayed by the beach in Chitimba for 2 days, which was perfect. Lake Malawi, despite having some raging Billharzia, is beautiful. The waves were big and pushed you around, but they weren't salty, so we didn't mind.

So yesterday we hitchhiked to Lilongwe. The very first car we saw stopped, and lo and behold, was heading to Lilongwe! So we jumped in.

Our companions were two men. One named Rafael, from Tanzania. Short, bulgy eyes, talked fast. The other was the most massive man I've seen. He turned around in the drivers seat, pronounced some deep syllables that I think were his name. He had a scar over and under his right, bloodshot eye. He was wearing a green, leopard-print shortsleeve shirt of indeterminate slinky material, along with a gold chain around his neck, and some serious wrist bling. Rafael exlained that he was from the DR Congo.

They said they were going to Mozambique on business. When we asked them what kind of business, they laughed. Turns out they do some hustling of diamonds and other gem stones and precious metals around DRC, South Africa, Mozambique. We didn't have the guts to ask if what they were doing was illegal.

And now we're in Lilongwe. It's been ages since we've been on computers, so we decided to do it, finally.

Also, I understand that my phone isn't working. I haven't had service since coming into Malawi, but I am alive, and hope to get some service in Zambia. If not, South Africa will hook me up, I'm sure.

In any case, I'll leave you with a joke. In Kenya, when you call a person whose phone is off or out of range, you say they are "Mteja." This word just means "customer," but it has to do with the message you get when you call the phone, which goes somthing like, "Samahani, mteja ya nambari uliopiga something something iko sasa." Since we've been out of range, Kat and I have been making jokes about the most terrifying Samahani (which means somthing like excuse me) messages.

Samahani, your daughter has been kidnapped by diamond smugglers.
Samahani, your daughter's night bus has rolled somewhere between Lusaka and Windhoek.
Samahani, your daughter has decided to marry a Kenyan.

Kwa heri!

There's no word for yes in dholuo, there's no word for no

There are just tones.

Also, the word for ndengu, greengrams or lentils, is olayo. The word for he or she is urinating is olayo. The tone is what differentiates the meaning. I'll never know it, but I'll always make people laugh.

I left Ukwala, went to do my exams in Nairobi, wrote three of the worst papers ever, and then came back to Ukwala. I was there for two days, two two two days, and then I left with some friends for Uganda. Which is where I am now, in an internet cafe, after eating Indian food and tasting spices for the first time in weeks. We're in Jinja, and this is the beginning of the great adventure south. Next is Rwanda, then Tanzania, Malawi, then some countries starting with Z's, one starting with an N, and SA, and then Nairobi, then home.

One thing, people, friends. How can you expect me to want to come home if you don't send me letters or emails or messages or anything? I understand that I've not been good at communicating, but really. When I go for three weeks without checking my emails and have nothing but admin stuff from the Philosophy department? It makes me feel like there's nothing left for me. I guess I'm just confused and sad. Who knew leaving Kenya would feel like this?

Concoction

Last night I opened a bottle of Coke with my teeth. Sorry ma, it's just too much fun.

Then mixed it with Guinness, and some liquor distilled from sugar cane. Then spent the night with friends watching one of the hilarious DVDs they have here that are compilations of music videos. Britney Spears, Westlife, Lionel Ritchie, Celine Dion, Bonny M, Backstreet Boys, Boyz II Men.

Just wanted to let you know there's fun too, along with the rest of it.