Happy Belated New Year!

What'd you do for New Year's?  Drank your face off?  Cool.  Well I touched a Great White shark.  Chomp on THAT!

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.