African Diseases

I keep telling everyone they must travel to Africa.  I am totally genuine when I say this, but I should include the disclaimer that if you are to come here, check your paranoia at the door.  

The amount of stuff to be paranoid about while in Africa is endless: personal safety, logistical issues, health, etc, etc, etc.  Within each lies many sub-issues to keep your brain busy, but let’s talk health.  Even before I left for Africa I got jabbed with a smattering of injections aimed at preventing various tropical, sub-tropical, sub-Saharan and equatorial diseases.   The list of diseases you can contract is seemingly endless; double that for the number of ways in which you can contract them.  Hence, travel here is not for hypochondriacs, germ-o-phobes or generally faint of heart.  

That said, the main ones that have cropped up during my trip include the following:

• Montezuma’s Revenge….or I guess we can call it Mandela’s revenge being that I’m in Africa: I’ve somehow managed to get by relatively unscathed by this.  Well, there was that time on a mountaintop in Malawi…but overall my record is pretty stellar, likely thanks to my Steripen (knock on wood).
• Malaria: the best prevention is not getting bitten by mosquitoes.   Ha, good luck with that.  The second-best prevention is to take malaria pills.  After 3.5 months and starting to get a nauseating reaction to mine, I decided to stop taking them.   Granted, I’m safe here in South Africa, but I’m about 4 weeks too early in aborting the process.  It’s cool, I plan to start back up when I get to Mozambique.  I still have a year-ish to find out if I'm in the clear, so that gives me something to look forward to.
• Bilharzia: if you get a rash after swimming in bilharzia-risk areas (pretty much any lake in Africa), you probably have it.  I got a rash.  I took the pills, though, so should be able to live past age 40.
• Putzi/Tumbu Flies: no one told me about this until after I hung my laundry out to dry overnight a bunch of times.  Apparently they lay eggs on damp clothes at night and then when you put them on the larvae burrow into your skin and you basically become host to a colony of maggots.  So that’s cool.  No run-ins yet...well, there was that one time I found 20 frenzied caterpillars on my shirt in Botswana...but I’ve for damn sure stopped doing my laundry in the evenings.
• African Nail: mysteriously 6/20 of my finger and toenails began to detach from the nail bed.  Lovely.  Seems to be returning to normal, though.  Not that I expect my nails to look good until I get home since it always looks like I have a reverse french manicure with brown tips anyways. 

This post is dedicated to my family.  Mostly my mom & dad who don’t already have enough to freak out about.  XOXO.

Christmas Ass-Kicking

(Disclaimer: I realize I’m WAY far behind on blog updates and pretty much skipped all entries about one of my favorite countries in the world – Namibia.  Once I’m done tourist-izing Cape Town, I plan to get back on that…)

Christmas.  I’m not particularly religious (read: not religious at all), so I’m not one of those people that gets all freaked out and bent out of shape if I don’t have something planned.  However, being that many places - be it businesses or entire cities - shut down to celebrate one of the world’s biggest holidays, you need to think outside the box to keep yourself entertained.  Such was the case yesterday in Cape Town.  Africa as a whole is very religious, Christianity being the backbone throughout most of the places I’ve traveled so far.  Hence, my options for what to do for Xmas consisted of not leaving my apartment* to read the rest of my book**, go to the beach, or climb Table Mountain.  My new Aussie/Dutch/American friend Ginger and I debated over beach vs. TM, but TM won out as it’s pretty much a must-do while here. 

We had talked about doing a little wine & cheese picnic thingy up top and envisioned a totally cute little Christmas afternoon overlooking the city and being one with nature.  We should have known things weren’t going to go as planned after hopping on one of the most hilariously ridiculous minivan taxi rides up to the trailhead.  Picture a heap of scrap metal with wheels glued on.  We couldn’t help but laugh each time we stalled out on a hill and the driver had to e-brake it, turn the damn thing off, on again and slam the petal to the ground to get this POS to lurch forward for the next 30ft before repeating the process. 

Finally we made it to the trailhead and set off up Platteklip Gorge.  After 20 minutes of hiking we realized that Table Mountain is a bitch.  We really underestimated her rocky slopes and the gale force winds we’d be faced with.

Long story short, Ginger and I basically threw ourselves into the neverending stairmaster from hell in which the 2 hour ascent consisted of us lobbing our legs up each behemoth step, repeating how we were not expecting this, praying that the wind would die down enough for the cable car to re-open service for the way down and asking “why don’t they tell people it’s this hard”?  

Finally we managed to hoist our out-of-shape selves to the top where the wind was howling.  I’m talking to the point where you’d have to catch your balance after each gust.  Thankfully the views were totally worth the effort.   Cape Town is probably one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever been to and seeing it from the top of a mountain was way cool.  We walked around, took some photos, awed at the type of footwear decisions people make for hiking (think leather business shoes) and managed to find a little sheltered cove to set up our picnic where we nourished up before our hike back down.   

Before setting off on our descent we longingly looked at the cable car station at the base of the mountain wishing we had the option of taking the luxurious 5min ride down, all the while well aware that the stairmaster of death was awaiting us.  The next hour-ish hike down consisted of much the same conversation as the hike up: this is nuts, I was expecting a trail not a monster staircase and why don’t they warn people about this?  Now that we've successfully made it down, I may have to start looking into prosthetics because I’m sure I just lost 20 years off my knees.

Despite the struggle, we were totally good-natured about it and laughing at ourselves the entire way.   It really was a great day and if anyone asks me what I did for Christmas 2010, I can tell them I got my ass kicked by Table Mountain.

*I’m lucky enough to be staying at a friend of a friend of a friend’s super cute apartment in Sea Point

**I’m halfway through book 2 of the Millenium series and am thoroughly hooked.

Over the Falls

Things that have been known to sail over the edge of Victoria Falls:

• Water
• Rocks
• Humans
• Hippos
• Crocs
• Elephants

Spontaneity in Malawi

My thought process in deciding where to go after my Habitat project pretty much went like, “hm, I think I’ll go to Malawi,” and next thing I knew it I hopped the next bus out to Lilongwe (capital of Malawi). What was supposed to be a 12-hour journey turned into a solid 16 sweaty hours of attempting to sleep to the soothing sounds of frenzied bus honking, African tribal music, African choir music, Beyonce, Tupac, Akon and R.Kelly. Lo and behold I arrived at my backpackers (aka hostel) in Lilongwe at some ridiculous pre-dawn hour and hung out in the lobby for a few hours before they opened.

The beauty of staying at a backpackers is that you glean a lot of information and opportunities by meeting other travelers and overhearing their conversations. This is what opened the door for me to buy my tent as well as what set the rest of my Malawi travels in motion: that morning, two dudes heard me talking about wanting to camp the rest of the way through Africa. Bam, they had a tent for sale. Later, I heard a group talking about going to Cape Maclear so inquired about an extra spot in their car. Bam, I rode bitch in their car on the way to Cape Maclear.

As it turns out, my little hitch-hike to Cape Maclear turned into a week-long caravan extravaganza complete with 5 Israelis, 1 Belgian, 1 German, 1 Aussie and me. We paraded around southern Malawi as part of our own little tour group complete with getting group discounts as well as setting up a kitty – i.e. pot of money – to use for buying groceries and necessities. Aside from getting stopped at every police roadblock along the way (show me your brake lights, where are your triangles, where are your reflectors, give me some Fanta) it was nothing short of fantastic.

The highlights were relaxing along the shores of Cape Maclear as well as our 3-day backpacking trek up Mount Mulanje. Cape Maclear was all-around good times between swimming, snorkeling, reggae jamming, hair cutting (a bday buzz in Noy’s case) and drum seshing. Mt. Mulanje was a bundle of joy, beauty, excitement, hilarity, accomplishment, illness, dread and exhaustion all wrapped up in a package of awesomeness. After a solid week together, we hobbled our way back to Blantyre (#2 city in Malawi) where we had our final dinner and began to part ways.

I continued up the coast with the Israeli crew and got to learn some very important Hebrew phrases. You know, stuff like good morning, good night, sleep well, whatever, that’s BS, kiss my ass, I am a hungry hippo, go shave your beard and a standard pickup line which I successfully used on another unsuspecting Israeli traveler in Nkhata Bay.

Sadly, this is where I had to say goodbye to my new Middle Eastern friends and was back on my own. This was also where, for the first time, I felt a bit homesick. The lake at NB reminded me so much of the ocean complete with what looked like ride-able waves. I unsuccessfully attempted some body surfing before taking on the waves in a dugout canoe. Helen Keller would’ve had better luck at a game of hide-and-seek. A dugout canoe isn't exactly conducive to much of anything but wobbling around the surface of calm waters, let alone sloshing around amongst crashing waves. I had to turn back after realizing 80% of the canoe was submerged in water. The local kids definitely got a kick out of the crazy mzungu nearly capsizing her canoe.

I spent the next few days in Nkhata Bay chilling out lakeside and meeting some awesome new peeps including a pair of girls from Seattle who shared my weird sense of humor and pace of life.

So now I am back in Lilongwe where I’ll be helping out some Peace Corps volunteers set up for the launch of the EveryOne campaign for the Save the Children Foundation to combat mother & child mortality in developing countries.  Should be great!

Oh yeah, and while I’m here I need to to stock up on bilharzia meds after all that time swimming in parasitic-worm-infested waters. Gotta love African disease paranoia.

Little Known Facts

Black mambas are not black
Black rhinos are not black
White rhinos are not white
Papayas taste like poo

A Little Blood, Double the Sweat & a Few Tears

I am learning quickly that keeping a blog is like giving yourself homework assignments. It’s something you know you need to do, always procrastinate on, and sometimes need to half-ass just to get something turned in (aka uploaded). Lack of internet access doesn’t help the situation, but I really do want to keep up with this.
That said, I’m a bit behind on entries. I haven’t gotten a chance to write about my first volunteer project along my travels, so here we go.

I set off on assignment with Habitat for Humanity Zambia in the rural village of Kaoma, 6 hours’ drive from the capital city of Lusaka. I had no idea what to expect when signing up for the program, except that we were going to be building houses, conditions would be rugged and it would be super hot. Needless to say, all 3 expectations were met. Let me elaborate:

The Cause: to eliminate poverty by providing simple, decent houses to families in need
The Group: We had a total of 12 people between volunteers, our group leader and HFHZ liason. It was a good mix of people overall, except when taking into account the fact that the whole volunteer group was women. Why is it that women dominate any kind of volunteer work? Seriously, any volunteering I’ve done in the past has been at least 80% women. I’m gonna have to look up the psychology behind why men are so cold-hearted. I keed, I keed. But I digress…
The Conditions: We stayed at a small community center in a village at the edge of Kaoma. There was no electricity or running water, but we came prepared with our headlamps and there was a local well where we were able to pump water for bathing. We slept six to a room, were given straw mats to lay our sleeping bags on, had some shelves to explode our stuff onto and rigged our mosquito nets up along the rafters. Sure, we had some creepy crawlies, the odd stench of death and decay and a resident mouse trying to chew into some granola bars, but you just have to ignore all of that and it’s totally fine.
The Work: The work was tough. Temperatures hovered around 100 degrees every day with relentless sun blasting our skin and eyes. We hauled bricks & lumber, shoveled rocks & dirt, mixed mortar & concrete. We stacked, laid, lifted, pushed, pulled, scraped, stabbed, slammed, jammed, hammered and painted. Thanks to our stellar teamwork and group of seriously tough chicks, we finished 2 homes in a matter of 10ish days. This came as a surprise to the locals, as they didn’t anticipate a team of all women could tear it up so hard.
The Food: I was surprised to hear we’d be buying most of our food from the Shoprite grocery store in Lusaka before heading to Kaoma. Naturally, being a group of Americans, we loaded up on the standard necessities for survival in the African bush: chips, cookies, Nutella, soda & candy. Thankfully, HFHZ hired some local women to cook us authentic meals during our stay: rice, maize-meal, veggies, beans, greens and chicken/beef/fish.
The Community: I love, love, loved our little neighborhood! Every day we walked the 5min stretch between “our house” to the build site, greeting the local families along the way. There was a group of about 15 kids that would walk with us, holding our hands and helping us carry our supplies. They’d hang out under the tree all afternoon waiting for us to come play with them during our water & shade breaks. We worked alongside the local masons, Liswaniso, Sililo-Sililo and Humphrey, who made sure we weren’t screwing anything up. We taught them the phrase “chop chop!”, which they got a huge kick out of, and would accompany any request with “chop chop!” and a huge grin.

Notable Happenings:

• Ali and I got to play some netball (bball) with some Zambian secondary school girls. We didn't do too shabby.
• We got to celebrate Zambian Independence Day by checking out a Sunday church service followed by a celebration at a nearby soccer (football) field. By the time we were ready to leave, we pretty much had the entire town’s population of children following us around like we were a mzungu freakshow.
• Halfway through our stay, we noticed our well got super crowded with people lining up their buckets. Turns out an elephant knocked down the power lines in Kafue National Park, where the power is routed through from Lusaka. They had no other way of getting water but from our little well.
• On our last night by the campfire, our van driver showed up from Lusaka bearing marshmallows. We’d been on the hunt for them since Day 1, so it was a fantastic surprise. We then showed the masons and kids how to make s’mores. They were skeptical at first, but by the end of the night they were all about it and had melted marshmallow all over their faces.
• We had some serious black mamba paranoia that was exacerbated when Humphrey told us we were at the start of the rainy season, which is prime black mamba time. As a storm brewed in the distance, we envisioned BMs raining from the sky. Molly added to the freakout factor by sharing some little-known facts about mambas, including the fact that they are not black. Well that's nice.

Overall, it was an amazing experience. It felt great to be able to lend myself to a worthy cause and become a part of the community in Kaoma.

Makua Pale Ale

I decided it would be funny to start a line of beers all named after the local words for "white person" around the world.  They'd all be pale ales, obv.  So far the line is made up of 3 main brews: Mzungu, Makua & Gringo.

October Haps

I have been (and will continue to be) totally disconnected for the month of October, so will just do a quick recap of what I've been up to:

• October 1: Picked sister up in Arusha!  On-time and with (shockingly) no issues!  Met up with Giraffe at local bar where he told us he used to throw rocks at bush babies when he was little to knock them out of the banana trees.  He also said they ripen bananas by scratching through the peel and then urinating on them.  All bananas are now inspected for bush baby scratch marks before I eat them.
• October 2 - 9: Safari extravaganza.  
• Parks visited: Tarangire, Lake Manyara, Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater.  
• Animals seen: name it and we probably saw it.  Most notable included:
• Giraffe fight! Bendy neck clashing and all.
• Explosion of what I would liken to a "lion bomb" that went off all around our car.  i.e. a huge pride (2 Mufasas, 7ish moms, 4ish "teenagers", 7ish medium cubs and 6ish tiny kitten cubs) spilling around and under our car as they were on the hunt for gazelle.
• Elephants visiting our campsites.  The first included a herd of about 10 "sneaking up" on us in the Serengeti and the second included an elephant coming to drink from our shower water reserve in Ngorongoro.
• October 10 - 15: Zanzibar relaxation.  Probably one of the most beautiful beaches I've ever been to (Kendwa).  Did some scuba-ing and kite-boarding.  Scuba-wise, we saw a bunch of sea creatures including turtles.  Kite-boarding-wise, I crashed their kite and then had a solid 4 face-plants at the end of the sesh.  All in all and ish-eating aside, I totally want to get certified as a kite-boarder. 
• October 16: Successful vuvuzela acquisition from Tyrone Biggums-esque characters in Stone Town.  Saw sister off, ran into scuba buddies at outdoor food market, went to cultural center for traditional Zanzibari live music followed by getting magically transported back to the USA when we happened upon a bar full of what I'd guess as the entire 20-something white tourist population in Stone Town slamming beers and dancing to Gaga.  Caught a midnight cab to the airport which turned into the unfortunate luck of sleeping there for the night.  It was closed, mind you, and the security guard showed me to a dark corner where I could set up camp for the night.  Except there were huge ants all over the ground, so I wedged myself under the armrest of a row of glued-together chairs and caught maybe 45 min of sleep before my ridiculously delayed 6:45am flight.  Narrowly made my connecting flight from Ethiopia to Zambia.  Met up with Habitat for Humanity group and head to the Zambian bush tomorrow for 2 weeks building houses, sleeping on the ground, showering from a bucket and squatting over holes in the ground.

Locals Night

As of late, my social schedule has been a slight step above that of an AARP member. Getting up at 7am, eating dinner at 5pm and getting ready for bed at 8pm. Granted, I’ve been taking part in all kinds of cultural activities that have overshadowed my need to be social, but there comes a point when you need some evening entertainment.


My bus got into Arusha around 6:00 PM yesterday, just in time for me to eek out the last bit of sunlight in order to walk over to where the cheapo backpackers are. I met Ziggy who showed me to, as asked, “the cheapest room available.” Ziggy apparently appreciated my shysterness and invited me out to play some pool at a bar around the corner. I met back up with him around 7pm and he introduced me to his friend Giraffe. Yes, the dude is rather tall.

So Ziggy, Giraffe and I hit up the local pub, where, shockingly, I was the only mzungu around. They helped me translate my dinner order of the African standard of rice, greens & meat soaked in mystery sauce. Giraffe ordered another African standard of a plate of chips (fries) with chunks of meat slapped on top. Over food & drink we chatted about our backgrounds, interests, jobs and travel before hitting up some games of pool.

Ziggy has a Chagga background and helps manage the place I’m staying when his parents are away and/or sick of managing it. Giraffe is a tour guide and has lost count of how many times he’s climbed Mts. Kili, Meru & Kenya. He’s laid off all the mountain climbing because he says he’s too lazy for that anymore. He just focuses on the safari circuit now and left his old job to start his own tour company.

We pretty much played pool the rest of the night where I got my ass kicked many times over by the locals. They ended up calling me “itsy” since a) I’m short, and b) I always came within an “itsy-bit” of the pocket, but could never seem to sink the ball.

I also met some super drunk girls that swore they were speaking English, but you could probably classify it as Engswili because I understood maybe 3 out of every 10 words. The one chick certainly enjoyed “talking” to me because there was a lot of nudging, back-patting, shoulder-slapping, hand-grabbing and hysterical laughing going on.

Overall, the experience was not unlike that of any other sports bar I've been to, except minus TVs, fat people and western toilets. You had your guys in the corner playing pool, people mingling about at the bar, sloppy chicks being super loud and your handful of overly drunk people creating their own dance party wherever there’s free floor space.

Good times, good times.

Just the Tip

Finally, after nearly a week of hanging around in Moshi, Mt. Kilimanjaro rears her head!  Up until now I've only seen her from the neck down due to stubborn cloud cover.

I leave for Arusha later this afternoon and would have been super bummed if I came all this way and didn't even see her glorious, snow-white peak. 

Ironically, today only her peak is peeking out above the clouds.  Oh, silly Kili...

A Little Determination Goes a Long Way

I know you are all on the edge of your seats biting your fingernails down to a bloody stump wondering whatever happened with my little money exchange dilemma. Well fret not, my friends, because the universe was on my side yesterday. I successfully changed my Rwandan francs into Tanzanian shillings and totally broke even! HA!


Not gonna lie, I’m extremely happy with that outcome and pretty proud of myself. Sure, perhaps I was overly determined to find a way to get rid of my francs, but with nothing else to do but obsess over this little errand of mine, I was able to accomplish my goal in just 36 hours. All without having to wake up at 5am, spend 20,000 shillings to go to the airport and spend a few hours harassing people at the RwandAir ticketing counter – in which case, I’d say I came out ahead.

Long story short (unless you read my previous blog), I found 2 Rwandans here in Tanzania for training that are headed back home on Friday. After a bit of math and a few visits to www.xe.com, they so generously traded their shillings for my francs. I gave them better rates for their kindness, but we all gained in the end based on the lack of a middle-man shaving money off the top. Have I mentioned how much I love Rwandan people?

I dug into my Haribo Goldbears as a celebratory gummi feast.

Wild Goose Chase

So, Nat, what have you been up to lately?  Well, let me tell you…

• Woke up at 7:30am
• Brushed teeth
• Made a PB&B&J (second B = banana)
• Ate the PB&B&J and threw back a malaria pill
• Made a regular PB&J and threw it in my makeshift lunchbox along with banana.
• Counted and cursed my leftover 75,500 Rwandan Francs ($130 USD) that I figured I’d be able to change at the airport in Tanzania upon arriving. False.
• Got dressed, brushed teeth, washed face, put hair in piggy-braids and hit the streets on a mission.
• Stopped in Money Exchange Bureau #1 to ask about changing Rwandan Francs.  No.
• Stopped in Bank #1 to ask about changing Rwandan Francs.  No.
• Stopped in Bank #2 to ask about changing Rwandan Francs.  No.
• Stopped in Money Exchange Bureau #2 to ask about changing Rwandan Francs.  No.
• Stopped in Money Exchange Bureau #3 to ask about changing Rwandan Francs.  No.
• Stopped in Bank #3 to beg them to change my Rwandan Francs.  No
• Stopped in Bank #4 and groveled at their feet to change my Rwandan Francs.  No.
• Stopped in Travel Agency #1 to ask about any clients traveling to Rwanda.  No.
• Stopped in Travel Agency #2 to ask about any clients traveling to Rwanda.  No.
• Stopped in Bank #5 to beg about changing Rwandan Francs.  No.  But you have branches in Rwanda, isn’t there any way you can trade currency back and forth?  No.
• Stopped in Postal Courier to ask about any slight chance of changing Rwandan Francs.  How much do you have? 75,000.  That’s a lot.  I know.  I could maybe do a little bit of it, but probably not. Try asking Precision Air.
• Stopped in Money Exchange Bureau #4 to beg for help in changing my Rwandan Francs.  No.
• Stopped various groups of tourists around town to ask if they or anyone they know is traveling to Rwanda.  No.
• Stopped in Internet Café to ask around about people traveling to Rwanda.  No, but you just missed a family that left yesterday.  SOB! Try the Hoff Hostel up the street.
• Stopped in Travel Agency #3 to ask about any clients traveling to Rwanda.  No.
• Stopped in the Hoff Hostel (complete with awesome cardboard cutout of  David Hasselhoff a la Baywatch out front) to ask about any guests traveling to Rwanda.  Yes.  Really??!! I am meeting him in 1 hour at the YMCA. 
• Stopped in the YMCA, ate PB&J and banana for lunch while waiting/anticipating.
• Guy from Hoff Hostel found me to tell me the other guy left for Rwanda that morning. Grrr…
• Stopped in Travel Agency #4 at the YMCA to please, please, please tell me they have clients traveling to Rwanda.  No, but there is a girl from Rwanda that might be coming here tonight.  Another lead!  I will leave you my contact info, please let me know if she can help. Ok.
• Stopped in Bank #6 as last-ditch effort to ask about changing Rwandan Francs. No.
• Stopped in Precision Air Office to tell sob story and ask if I could ride their shuttle to the airport Wednesday morning before the flight to Rwanda to find people to exchange my Rwandan Francs with.  Ok, be here at 5:30am on Weds, but it will cost you 10,000 each way.  Fine.
• Stopped in Coffee Shop for tea & biscuits, apparently thinking I’m British.
• Ate dinner leftovers from the night before and recounted ridiculous day
• Stopped in Internet Café at 6:30pm to check email for any leads, meet up with new Norwegian friends & post exhilarating day to blog.

To be continued…

Killing Time in Moshi

I’d consider Tanzania a bit of a culture shock in comparison to Rwanda. Sure, there are probably more similarities than differences, but after a week by myself in Rwanda, the differences are much more apparent. I’m making general statements here, but Tanzania (at least northern Tanz) is more on the beaten path/tourist track, bringing with it more paved roads, influx of cultures and variety. I’ve seen more white people in one hour here than I did in an entire week in Rwanda. Good, bad or indifferent, I can’t say. Just different.

What I will say is that after feeling totally by myself in Rwanda for a week, it is nice to come into contact with other like-minded travelers for a chat and story-sharing. Then again, there is something to be said about traveling solo and coming into more intimate contact with the local lifestyle. People tend to shut themselves off much more when in groups. The same can be said when traveling with lots of money. Solo, budget travel necessitates openness and really throwing yourself out there.

Case in point: back in Rwanda I was walking with Emmanuel from Gitare to Kidaho. As we walked through the villages, everyone smiled, waved and said hello to me. I mentioned to Emmanuel how nice everyone was and he told me that it was a treat for them to see a mzungu walking around. They infrequently see mzungus in the first place, but to see one actually walking as a form of transport was truly special. The only time they really see Westerners is as they whiz by in safari Land Rovers or taxis, waving from the windows.

It’s so true. Even walking around Moshi, if I veer off the main street or into the market, I’m usually the only tourist around. But if pop into a hotel’s bar/restaurant, it’s filled with Westerners. We certainly love to find our little sanctuaries, hovering above and not really scratching the surface of getting to know a place. Whatevs, to each his own. It does seem awfully boring to me, though. What makes the inside of a hotel in Moshi any different than that of one in New Jersey? Perhaps the paranoia associated with drinking the water, but I wouldn’t drink the water in Jersey, either.

Rwanda Recap

Rwanda is totally underrated.

The Scenery
The landscape here has blown away my expectations.  It's beautiful.  Rolling, terraced hillsides; lush, banana plantations; large, picturesque lakes; massive, looming volcanoes that are home to the last remaining mountain gorillas on the planet. 

The People
Yes, it has a nasty past, but it is very stable now and no one should be scared to visit this place.  I've been harassed WAY more in Italy and Cabo than I have been in Rwanda.  Granted, I've gotten a lot of stares, smiles and giggles, but none of them have been threatening.  People are just curious and are trying to muster the courage to say hello to the mzungu.  You get used to it after a while.  Still expect to get mzungu pricing on stuff, but if you insist on paying half of what they quote you, they will smile in agreement and tell you that you're a good customer.

I have experienced many random acts of kindness and people that will go completely out of their way to help.  My favorite was Sam, a guy in Kigali, who escorted me over to the Hotel Auberge where he asked to see a room and made sure the shower and toilet worked before he gave me a big, smiley hug and went on his way.

With each new friend, warm reception and generous act, I am beginning to wonder if the less-touristy parts of the world (excluding war-torn destinations) are much friendlier than those on the beaten path.  In which case curiosity rules out over the desire to scam.  On the flip side, the lack of infrastructure certainly adds an element of difficulty.  I will have plenty of opportunities to test my theory, so I'll let you know...

Rwandan Homestay

Last night I arranged a homestay with a lovely Rwandan family about 5 miles outside the town of Musanze (aka Ruhengeri) where I've been hanging out lately.  

Dad (Joseph) & Mom (Clementine) were very hospitable and their little girl (Peace, 2) and boy (David, 4) were super cute...even according to me, and I don't even like kids all that much.

Despite a bit of awkwardness since only the dad spoke some English, I had a great experience.  I helped out with the cooking, cleaning and keeping the kids entertained.  It really doesn't matter what kind of language barrier there is with kids, they always respond to goofy faces, funny noises, ridiculous dance moves and rousing games of peekaboo. 

What was most interesting to me was their social status & neighborhood.  They are a middle-class family living in what used to be considered a rich neighborhood before the '94 genocide during which many of the families fled the country.  Looking around, I envisioned the neighborhood being picked up and plopped into Anytown, USA where it would certainly be considered very poor to American standards.   Without a doubt, we'd be focused on what they don't have.  Whereas, here, these "don't haves" are no matter as they have the basics that are enough to get comfortably by. 

American POV:
Don't have a front door
Don't have a bathroom (and therefore, no toilet, shower or sink)
Don't have a kitchen
Don't have enough beds for each family member
Don't have reliable electricity
Don't have proper sofas
Don't have a car
Don't have a TV
Don't have a closet full of clothes

Rwandan POV:
Have a roof
Have a floor
Have access to food & plenty of space out back to grow banana trees, beans, tomatoes, yams, etc
Have access to clean water
Have places to sit
Have enough clothes to get by
Have firewood
Have matches
Have a radio
Have a school for their kids
Have friends
Have a loving family

Ape Sh!t

I've been meaning to write about my gorilla trek experience, but haven't found the time.  So here goes:

EFFING. AWESOME.

If you want more detail, you are going to have to ask me personally because there is no way I can write it down.

B&J and a Hard Boiled Egg

...for dinner again.  Note the missing P in B&J.  Yes, that means I had a butter & jelly sandwich for dinner + a hard boiled egg.  I couldn't figure out a way to use hand gestures to get the server to understand the word peanut.   I could have probably gotten pretty creative with that, but decided regular butter would do just fine.  Again, I doggy bagged it from the free breakfast this morning.  What do you expect from me?  Honestly...   Although I did have lunch at a local cafe/bakery for about $1.50, which included "pizza" (ha) and lemon Fanta.  Hell yeah. 

I finally got cash out from a local bank.  Granted, I probably got slapped with a sweet 4% fee, but whatever, I have cash, which means I can continue bouncing about northwestern Rwanda a bit longer.   Schmisa, Schmastercard, credit cards are pretty much useless around here.

I went to a local nursery school today with a British girl named Kat I met the other day who's in town volunteering as a teacher.  Cute kids, but I needed at least 8 more arms for each one that wanted to hold my hand.  I was like a human jungle gym for a solid hour.

Tomorrow I was going to go to some nearby volcanic caves, but was told by a local that they are filled with rabid bats.  So that's out.

PB&J and a Hard Boiled Egg...

...for dinner.  Both doggy bagged from the hotel breakfast.  That's true backpacking right there.  My inner mooch certainly helps.

I'm now officially traveling solo and 100% on my own.  And 100% winging it.  Day 1 of solo travel and I've already run into a plethora of issues.  Rwanda is not exactly set up for backpacking -- or travel outside of an organized tour in general -- so I've been having to do a lot of improvising and problem-solving. 

Problem #1: No access to cash.  Rwanda is notorious for piss poor ATM service/access.
Problem #2: No record of me being booked on my flight to Tanzania.
Problem #3: I'm a Mzungu.

Problems #1 and 2 are totally solve-able, albeit frustrating and aggravating.  Problem #3 is just something I'm gonna have to get used to.  Mzungu (muh-zoon-goo) means white person.  White people are rich.  Therefore, I am rich and have plenty of money to spare to be "makin' it rain" all over the streets of Eastern Africa.  Kids will literally walk up to you with their hand out asking for money, pencils, the shirt off your back.  It's sad, really, but what do you expect when all they know of the Western world are stories of economic prosperity and us setting a precedent of giving things away to developing countries.  I'd do it too if I were in their shoes.

I will say that the people of Eastern Africa have surprised me.  They are supremely smiley, welcoming, curious and helpful.  I've met some really cool locals and have had some very interesting conversations.  Everything from stories about life during the '94 Rwandan genocide to Beyonce's awesome booty shaking.

Class Chuck Norris

We went white water rafting on the Nile in Uganda the other day - holy hell I've never seen raging water like that in my life.  The rafting rating system goes up to Class 6, which basically means you will probably die unless you are a professional.  I was shocked they even took us down Class 5 rapids.  All you could see were giant 15-ft walls of water coming at your face.

We had time in between rapids to float, chill, swim and chat.  We mainly talked about fat people and Chuck Norris.  We decided that Niagara Falls would be rated Class Chuck Norris in rafting terms.

One of the river guides was this dude who looked half-lion.  He just wandered out of the jungle barefoot, shirtless, dirty and with tattered shorts on.  We were just waiting for him to dive into the river and emerge with a fish in his mouth.

Just being patriotic

There are some other Americans at our campsite.  Some of which are in the Marine Corps.  We figure they are here to scope out our next foreign invasion.  There must be oil nearby. 

I decided I'm going to go introduce myself so we can all join in on a "USA! USA! USA!" chant as is customary among groups of Americans.

Various Trip Shenanigans

Token American
I'm the "token American" on my tour and can't seem to remember that pants means underwear.  So any reference I make about my dirty or stained pants is immensely hilarious to everyone.

Unemployment tan
Most everyone else is a pale Brit so I am also the tannest of the bunch.  Christen calls it my "unemployment tan" seeing as though I had a lot of time sans job to hang out at the beach (accurate).

Niko njaa cama kiboko
It means "I am a hungry hippo". I blurted this whilst getting harassed by a group of souvenir hawkers and was rewarded with seriously confused looks followed by mutual laughter.

Statues of the world, prepare yourselves
I've already ridden a lion and an elephant statue.  Many more to come.

Goodbye/You're Welcome confusion.
The words are kind of similar in Swahili...in that they both start with a "k".  I accidentally mixed them up so have been telling people "you're welcome" when leaving their shops.  Like, "you're welcome that I graced you with my browsing presence."

Name game
We decided that certain people have the wrong names.  I.e. Fred doesn't look like a Fred, Jessee doesn't look like a Jessee, Martina doesn't look like a Martina, Darrell doesn't look like a Darrell, Doug doesn't look like Doug, etc, etc, etc.  Hence, we changed their names which is adding to the confusion over people's actual names in the first place.  Then me and Christen were given shitty names, so we changed our minds and decided the whole thing was a bad idea.

Scantily clad gorilla trek
Me, Christen and Darrell decided it would be ridiculously hilarious if we went gorilla trekking in just our bikinis & hiking boots.  Darrell would wear his neon green Borat mankini, obv.  The gorillas would go...ahem..."ape shit".

Sleepy peepy
We've taken quite a few photos of people caught sleeping throughout the trip.  Fred was literally passed out at a 90 degree angle on Rachel's shoulder, but unfortunately no one had a camera to capture the moment.  We are going to upload them to the Exodus website as our sarcastic review for the trip.

What I've been up to

Ok, fine, I will write an actual post to keep people in the loop.  I plan to make each of these types of "update entries" relatively short because no one likes to read long, rambling blogs.  Just like no one cares to see all 5,000 photos from your trip.

• I traveled for 26 hours from LAX to NBO.
• I arrived in Nairobi on the morning of the 4th.
• I stayed in a cute guesthouse (the Sandavy) and slept most of the day.
• I met up with my tour the morning of the 5th.
• We drove to Lake Naivasha via the Great Rift Valley.
• We took a boat ride and saw hippos a mere stone's throw from our campsite.
• I woke up laughing at the hilarious hippo noises in the morning.  
• From the 6th through 8th we "excursioned" over to the Masai Mara game reserve.
• We spent about 2 day's worth game-driving and saw a ton of stuff.
• We've seen 4 out of the "Big 5" so far.  Only rhinos are left.
• We took a visit to a local Maasai village.  Cool, but a little awkward as it almost felt like a human zoo with all the white tourists snapping pictures of the Maasai. It's mutually beneficial, tho...
• I learned some Swahili.  Mostly greetings and niceties.  I am learning how to say "I am a hungry hippo."
• We head to Lake Nakuru today.  The campsite we'll be staying at is known for a lot of man-eating things, so I will hold off on drinking anything after about 3pm today so as to avoid having to leave my tent in the middle of the night.

Hippo Haiku

Pink-bellied and huge
Muddy, wet, snorting, pig-like
You silly hippos

Losing my Virgin virginity

Virgin Airways, that is.  I imagine this is what air travel was like back in the '60s.  Straight up classy.

------
" 'ello, love, welcome aboard. You've got a window seat! Jolly good! Straight away toward the rear and on your right."
------
"Would you like some tea, love?"
"No, thanks, just some water would be great"
"I see you've got a water bottle there, I reckon you'd fancy a fill-up?"
-----
"Could I trouble you to put your seatback up for landing, love?"
------
"It's been splendid having you on board, love.  Cheerio!"

Clean unders and a sense of adventure

That's all I'm really gonna need.  And probably some bug spray.

So my "Final Thought", a la Jerry Springer, is this:  life happens.  You can cash in on it or just let it pass by in a haze of cube walls, shopping malls and pub crawls pointless monotony.  I'm choosing to take this bitch to the bank! The World Bank heyoooooo!

First stop: Kenya.

Let me be clear

If you haven't already deduced, there will be no real substance to this blog other than cranial diarrhea as I happen to be in front of a computer.  Perhaps a gem of an insight or short story every now and then, but mostly just brain waste.

1+1=58008

Someone please explain this math to me:
1 4 x 6 photo of "Natalie plaid" (aka a grid of 6 identical photos of my face) = $13
1 4 x 6 photo of anything else = $1

Clearly the passport photo industry is made up of shysters and 58008

(if you had a calculator in 3rd grade, you should know the 58008 reference)

Dolphomania!

Today was one of those days that will forever be seared into my memory.  I had an unreal dolphin encounter while surfing at Emma Wood.  Matt and I went out for a morning sesh and got pretty discouraged by the beating we were taking.  I decided to paddle out past the pounding breakers and take a minute to chill.  While catching my breath, I noticed a few dorsal fins in the distance.  Once I determined they were not sharks, I decided to rub the side of my board to make a squeaking sound, not really thinking anything would happen.  Holy hell was I wrong.  The dolphins literally stopped what they were doing, turned 90 degrees toward me and swam full force in my direction.  I distinctly remember saying "ohhhhhhhhhhhhmygod" out loud to myself and immediately propped my feet up on my board...not gonna lie, I was mildly freaking out at the sight of a pod of dolphins b-lining it right at me.

Three of them came up for a breath about 5 feet in front of me and then dove under and surfaced just beyond the tail of my board.  Matt was on the beach watching and told me he saw their grey bodies swimming through the swell under me as I was floating up at the crest.

For the next 15 minutes or so, I continued the board-squeaking and the dolphins continued to check me out, doing all kinds of aerial acrobatics as if they were showing off.  I'm talking full bodied, full frontal, flinging themselves out of the water.  I could hear them coming up for breaths, I could hear them making their echo-locating noises and I could see all the details on their shockingly massive bodies.  I swear I made eye contact with one of them.  I just kept screaming "oh my god! no effing way!" and grabbing my head because I could not believe what was happening around me.

Matt quickly paddled out to get in on the action and we stayed another 30 minutes hanging out with these guys.  There were multiple groups of dolphins, with what I'd estimate at around 15 total going back and forth between their breakfast session and checking us out. 

It's one thing to swim with trained dolphins in a pool at Sea World or see them from about 20 feet up from the deck of a catamaran, but it is a whole other thing to get to interact with them at such a close distance in the wild.

NATURE!!!

Soiled Pants

Living out a dream : excitement :: realization that year-long RTW trip is under 2 weeks away : pants-shitting

BFD

Woo! I'm blogging!