jumble. life.: April 2010

I didn’t know what to expect on this most recent travel adventure. I was actually intimidated at the prospect of a trip south of the Tropic of Capricorn, but, with the help of a fantastic travel agent, we had the best time during our two week visit to Livingstone, Zambia, and northeastern South Africa. Now that it’s all done and passed, I don’t even know where to begin. I’ve put together some random thoughts and highlights so I could help myself remember, but it may not be entirely interesting to read. Pick and choose; this could take a while.

South African Airways
Just don’t. They pretty much suck, but the booze was free, which I was glad for since my TV screen didn’t work on either leg of the 11 hour flight from London. The staff was less than helpful, two of the toilets in our section didn’t work on the way down, and we were almost cancelled on the way back because some of the cabin crew called in “sick” so they could go camping over the Easter weekend (one of the biggest travel holidays in SA).

In this age of heightened travel security, I am left to wonder whether any airline doesn’t suck. I am so tired of airports, airlines, and the irrational fear of a fiery death. As of this second I do not have plans to fly anywhere for the foreseeable future. This is truly remarkable since I’ve had some “upcoming trip” on the calendar every day for the last 41 months.

Livingstone, Zambia
We arrived to Johannesburg, SA, in the early morning and caught a connection a few hours later to Livingstone, Zambia. We wanted to see Victoria Falls and dip our toes into a predominately black African country. It was eye-opening. Like pretty much all of Africa, the vestiges of colonialism are everywhere: in language (English being one of the official languages of this formerly British colony known as Northern Rhodesia), architecture, religion, etc.

Of course we had no idea of this before we touched down. We had arranged for an all-inclusive stay including an airport transfer.

Brightone, a 27-year-old Zambian guy, was our personal driver for the three night stay. He loaded us into a 4x4 Toyota van and off we went. In his heavily accented English he pointed out spots in Livingstone town – the museum, the school, the shops, the church. The buildings were brick or cement, painted white with corrugated metal roofing. Most of the signage was hand stenciled and painted or produced by the Coca-Cola company. The day we arrived was a Sunday and the dusty, hot streets were mostly quiet.

Livingstone is a small town. As we drove down the main drag, groups of well-dressed Zambians were walking everywhere making their way home from Sunday service. Having a car is a major luxury for a population living on wages averaging $3 dollars a day, so the shoulders of all roads were always lined with pedestrians and cyclists in remarkably bright whites and vivid colors despite the heat and red dust.

Taita Falcon Lodge
We turned off the main road near the Victoria Falls park entrance and traveled 11km on the most difficult dirt road you can imagine. The six mile journey took 40 minutes in the van and we wondered what accommodation awaited us this deep into the bush.

The travel agent’s description of the lodge included info about a nice, six-bungalow place with a deck overlooking the Zambezi river gorge and views of Zimbabwe on the opposite shore. What it actually turned out to be is an astonishing eco-lodge carved out of the unforgiving countryside by a white South African farmer and entrepreneur, Faan and his wife, Ann Marie. More on Faan later.

The Zambezi (and South African – at least where we were) bush is thorny, nasty, and dense. There are tall marula, baobab, sausage, and other shade trees that grow 30-50 feet high, and below the trees are bushes with inch-long thorns, tall grasses, nettles, and other scrub packed in. Mammals, birds, snakes, and spiders (among others) call the bush home. When it’s dry, it’s bone dry. But when it rains, the clay turns to bog and roads can instantly become impassable.

Anyway, the Taita Falcon “lodge” is a traditionally-built reed and thatch pole barn with comfortable handmade furniture, a fully-stocked bar, a pool, and a lovely deck overlooking the Zambezi. Our bungalow was another traditionally built reed and thatch house, just like the ones in the local village nearby, but ours had solar lighting and hot water whereas the villagers have candle and fire.

There was a living tree growing in our shower, with a small hole cut in the roof to let the trunk out. Our bed had a necessary, and romantic, mosquito net to keep out the malaria-spreaders. There were no windows, just spaces at the top of the walls to let the hot air escape. The thatch roof came down low enough to ensure privacy. It was the most romantic place we could have chosen to begin our African trip. The food was great -- most of it home grown in Faan's garden -- the atmosphere was remote yet charming, and we had the place all to ourselves for two of the three nights.

While in Zambia we visited Vic Falls (and, no, we didn’t get to swim at the Devil’s Pool because the water was too high – rainy season. DAMN!), took an evening cruise up the Zambezi with a nice gay couple from Miami Beach to see the hippos, saw the game at the small Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park, and visited a local village.

Just a dollar a day…
At first I thought the local village near Taita Falcon was a tourist attraction, like Medieval Times or Colonial Williamsburg, but it wasn’t. It was a no-shit, thatched cottage, goat-filled, African village. You know those “just a dollar a day and you can provide clean drinking water to Ngwe for a whole month” commercials? Well, this was the “after” village.

A non-profit group has come in and installed three of those community water pumps for fresh water. Every time we drove through town we would see a child or adult with a plastic water jug on their head making a trip to the well. Another NGO has built an impressive K-8 school, but it still is too expensive for some families at $6 per semester. And yet another non-profit provides free mosquito nets to residents, 2,000 in all, and the government doles out malaria-prevention tablets. Although this place wasn’t in dire straits, it was still very poor. They are just now planning to build outhouses – the next project – and many young people still die of malaria each year. Brightone said it was one of the best traditional villages in all of Zambia in terms of quality of life.

Our guide, Ben, took us into homes, to the school, to the market (a shack with some spices and chewing gum and, ironically, the ability to add minutes to (top up) your mobile phone, which everyone seems to have), and introduced us to the village matriarch. We then spent some cash on curios at the little hut on “main street” near the donkey pasture. A group of 10 boys and men sat under two large shade trees in a pile of wood chips carving handmade bowls, animal figurines, and wall hangings that they then sell as a co-op to tourists and shopkeepers in the larger towns.

It was hard to resist the little children who followed us around town asking for “sweeties,” but we didn’t have sweeties, and the local custom is to not give them anything because they don’t want a Mexico or Egyptian-style army of kids wandering around selling “chicle” and postcards instead of going to school. The kids were shy and showing off at the same time, just like kids everywhere. Although they’re taught in “English” in school, they still could only understand about half of what we said.

Most Zambians don’t live in villages like the ones we visited. The country (pop. 12 million) is mostly urban, living in the capitol city of Lusaka or other metro areas. They, too, are very poor, but urban poor. More than 10 percent of Zambians are HIV positive. Brightone told us that he was sponsored by his older sister to the university ($600 per year tuition) to study electrical engineering, but when she died (of HIV or maybe malaria, I wasn’t too sure) he could no longer afford to go and now must work at Taita Falcon to support his wife and two-year-old daughter.

It was fascinating. I didn’t know how to feel. Brightone and Ben said something about how they, too, wanted to visit the UK someday (they’re all huge Arsenal and Chelsea fans), but how can they ever afford a plane ticket that is more than what they make in a year? And when they got to London, how would they react when a pint of ale is equivalent to a day’s wages? And what about Brightone and his dashed dreams of becoming an engineer? He is saving money to send his wife to become a teacher in hopes that she can get a “real job” and they will move up the economic ladder.

In all, the folks we chatted with in Zambia are the same as folks I’ve chatted with in Morocco or in the U.K. People are working to make their lives better. People are looking for an advantage – a tourist that will pay three times too much for a carved statue of a giraffe – and looking for a big break. I suppose most of us are just good people trying to make it. It just feels strange being the “rich white folks from America.” I think I would be a little offended if a billionaire wanted to tour my “quaint” house in Bury St. Edmunds. I just kept wondering whether I should feel guilty for having so much when others have so little.

Back to Faan
So Faan was awesome. A stocky, 60-something South African dude with a scruffy white beard always wearing the typical bush-man outfit – khaki cargo shorts, khaki or similar earth tone shirt with multiple pockets, leather work boots, and a farmer’s tan. He carries a loaded Browning pistol on his belt – life can be rough in the bush – and is full of philosophy and advice.

His story goes: Sixteen years ago, Faan was farming in South Africa and saw the agricultural market starting to crash, so he sold the farm and bought 250 acres of bush from a local chief in Zambia along the Zambezi River gorge. The property had no road (I would argue that it has barely a road now) and when he showed his wife her new home, she hightailed it back to South Africa.

Over the next two years, Faan hired some local villagers (part of the deal in buying the land is hiring the locals), taught them how to mix cement, pour foundations, wire the electricals. He said that the first few months the men could only work three hours a day because they were simply too hungry. He included meals with the wages; the guys grew stronger. Taita Falcon was carved out of the bush. His wife came to check progress and never left. It’s that nice.

Why doesn’t he have more rooms at the lodge? “Akch, I don’t do it for the money. I do it for the company. To share this. To enjoy it.” Each evening we sat at the bar, Faan drinking whiskey on the rocks and asking the barman to put on some of his favorite Western music. “I love the western music,” he says.

What he said when about the U.S.: “I disagree with your country’s policy in the Middle East. I think they should have just gone in and made the place a parking lot to start with.”

What should you do when you come face to face with a lion: “Keep facing the lion. Don’t run, then slowly take one step left, one step back. One step left, one step back. Repeating. Why? So you don’t step in your own shit.”

The spirit of South Africa is like the spirit of the American West or Australia. It makes a tough, self-reliant, down to earth person who loves the land, loves a challenge, and sometimes loves to share it with others. We loved Faan and his lodge and his hospitality.

On to South Africa
After three days with Faan, we didn’t want to leave. But we went onward to South Africa. We spent a day in transit and picked up a crappy Toyota Yaris rental car from the Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport. Why the heck they would give out plastic cars to people planning on driving on dirt-roads for two weeks, I’ll never know. When our bumper almost fell off on the highway, we thought about pulling it all of the way off, setting it in the backseat, and delivering it back to the rental shop in pieces. We beat that Yaris to hell. Don’t buy one.

Anyhoo, our first stop was Hazyview, SA. A small crossroads. Another town like Livingstone, but more lush. More rivers. More people walking on the shoulders of roads. More roadside fruit stands. Another charming B&B hotel, but this one with “Beware of Hippos” signs in the yard. A little surreal.

We spent two days touring the Blyde River canyon, visiting waterfalls, buying curios, and petting the local elephants at an elephant sanctuary. I love elephants, but who knew how destructive they can be! They need to eat 600 lbs. of food a day, and if they find a farmer’s crops are tasty, they’ll keep coming back for more. There aren’t a lot of fences that can keep out a parade of elephants. Anyhoo, some of the troublemakers are culled from the herd, some are put down, and others are rescued by sanctuaries, zoos, or sometimes circuses.

At the Car Wash, yeah…
Dan decided a detour on a rural dirt road would be “fun,” that is until it started raining.

The road took us through some lovely ranchland along the escarpment and down in a valley. We saw monkeys and trout streams, cattle and sugarcane. It reminds me a little of an African version of West Texas. However, the rain made the red clay road a slippery mud pit. By the time we slid back onto the pavement in the little historical gold-mining village of Pilgrim’s Rest, the car looked like it had been pulled out of a swamp.

“Wash your car, sir? Wash your car, sir?” About five guys rushed Dan when we parked at a local eatery in Pilgrim’s Rest.

“No thanks,” Dan said about ten times. We had lunch and drove through town. It’s a restored gold-rush town, complete with iron mining carts, hitching posts, and wooden buildings like those seen in all the cowboys and Indians movies of the 1950s. We parked again to have a pint at the historical saloon in the old hotel – a wooden building with a broad front porch, tall glass windows, and corrugated tin roof. It is so much like the old west, but a tropical feel with shuttered windows and a slowly turning ceiling fan. We glanced out the window at the trusty Yaris midway through our pints of Castle and noticed that it was spotlessly clean.

We’d been hit by a drive-by car washer.

I asked a local guy next to me (come to find out he is sixth-ranked in the world at competitive gold panning. Impressive, right? I was actually more impressed that there is such a thing as competitive gold panning), anyway, I asked him: What is the deal with the car washers? He explained that the city has an actual problem with aggressive car-washing. There are sniper teams of men that wash cars without permission, then when you go to get in your car, they try to guilt you out of 60 Rand (about $9). He pointed out a 2 foot by 3 foot poster in yellowing paper tacked to the saloon door that had all of the rules about car washing and payments and permits.

I just kept thinking of a poster: “Wanted: Dead or Alive, last seen headed west with a chamois, a bucket, and pruned fingertips.”

And the law won
Throughout the trip we noticed that most of the hoteliers were white, all of the employees were black. All of the service people were black, most of the managers were white. All of the people walking along the roadsides were black, all of the whites had cars. It was such a strange separation of class and race. I am unfamiliar with the economic situation of South Africa, but it seems apparent that the black population is much poorer than the white population. We didn’t hear any racist remarks or anything, but it was still very separate. When we were in a shop or restaurant, the white South Africans would start up a conversation about our travels and ask us questions about the U.S. They were outgoing and friendly. A black person never spoke to us unless he or she was helping us as part of his or her job.

In the literature from our travel agent, she advised that if one gets pulled over by the police in Africa, the police officer should provide you with his or her badge number, then write a ticket, and then give a receipt for payment. The police officers were black. Sometimes the police will try to get you to bribe them, she warned – more commonly in places like Zambia, but sometimes in SA, too.

Of course we were speeding, and we see a policeman standing on the side of the road. He waves us down. We pull over along with two other cars, driven by white people obviously going camping for the weekend. He takes Dan’s driver’s license. He walks away.

He comes back and ascertains that we are going to Kruger park, we are from the USA, we are sorry. In thickly accented English he says something along the lines of “I will give you a ticket. It is 250 Rand (about $38). You will then have to go to the police station. It is a very big hassle. You don’t want that, right? No? Well, then, I will give you warning for just 100 Rand and then you are on your way. Ok? Just 100 Rand. Easy. Off you go!”

I pulled out the 100 Rand bill, passed it to Dan, passed it out the window, and off we went. It definitely made me scared. More scared than of a lion or a black mamba snake. If the cops are corrupt, then who can you trust?

No fences
So Kruger National Park is a gigantic place – 19,000 square miles – about the size of New Jersey. It’s bordered by another 10,000 or so square miles of parkland in neighboring Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Additionally, there are thousands of additional square miles that run along the western edge of the park that are “private game reserves.” Some of them are fenced off completely – cheetah sanctuaries or hunting reserves – but others are just extensions of the Kruger park itself, albeit with less rules about driving on roads and curfews. This parkland has similar geology and flora as the Livingstone area of Zambia – thick, nasty bush.

We spent two nights at a private game reserve in a placed called Gomo Gomo Game Lodge. Like Taita Falcon, we had our own bungalow, but this time with electricity and A/C. Gomo Gomo is twice the size of Taita Falcon, and was fully booked – 16 guests. The schedule was this: 5:00 wake up, 5:45 sunrise game drive, 9:00 breakfast, 12:00 – 2:00 nap, 3:30 sunset game drive, 8:00 dinner, 9:00 the guide escorts you to your room.

The reason for the escort: no fences. The lions and hippos are free to wander in and out of the space between bungalows on their way to the Gomo Gomo watering hole. If you decide you need to run up to the lodge for a late-night G&T, then you might find yourself a midnight snack for Mr. Leopard.

Although we didn’t get eaten whilst at Gomo Gomo, our Yaris wasn’t so lucky. As we packed up the car to leave, we noticed an obvious clean bite mark straight through the thick plastic of the rear bumper. It matched the size and shape of a hyena bite exactly, according to the hotelier. Our car was that much of a piece of crap that a hyena mistook it for prey. Either that or a tasty snack was sitting on the bumper and the Yaris got in the way. We were pleased with the awesomeness of having a hyena-bitten car, but the guys at the rental car returns weren’t so impressed.

Game Driving
It’s just like it sounds. You climb in the back of a Land Rover equipped with three rows of bench seating and look for wildlife. At night and in early morning you have a spotlight. Sometimes there is a tracker helping out the driver. Sometimes not. In an area the size of greater Kruger, it seems lucky that you would find anything at all, but there are so many animals: 130,000 impala; 31,000 wildebeest; 26,000 zebra; 16,000 cape buffalo; 12,000 elephant; 7,000 giraffe; and 2-3,000 each of kudu, lion, hyena, warthog, and white rhino. There are also 250 or so cheetah; 1,000 leopard, 350 wild dog, and 300 endangered black rhino. Of course there are a ton of other mammals (60 or so species in all), more than 150 species of bird, and plenty of creepy, crawly snakes, spiders, reptiles and bugs.

So we drove. Hours and hours a day in a Land Rover and/or our Yaris. I thought it would get boring – driving and staring at bushes for hours at a time, but every time you whip around a corner and come face to face with a two-ton elephant or a ridiculous-looking giraffe or even a spiral-horned kudu, it gets exciting all over again. Except for the impala. They were just like sheep in New Zealand.

We saw “the big five” – a million elephant, a herd or three of buffalo, a pride or two of lion, a dozen or so rhino, and even a single leopard. We wanted to see more leopard and maybe a cheetah, but we had just as much fun finding new and interesting birds from our bird chart or seeing mongoose and chameleons. It was amazing.

Probably the two major highlights, aside from the leopard, were our too-close-for-comfort encounters with some lioness. On one game drive in the Yaris, we cruised out to the lion hot-spot and saw from a distance of about 100 yards the pride snoozing in the shade. On our way back to camp (curfew is 6 p.m.) we stopped behind a pickup truck and about 30 yards off the passenger side of the car was a lone female lioness. She was drinking some water and stopping to take a pee. I got some great photos of her and then she began to walk right toward me at a very steady pace. Soon 20 yards, then 10, then she was so close that my camera lens couldn’t focus. I panicked and rolled up the window just as I ran out of memory card space. Holy crap. She was literally touching the front bumper of the Yaris and walking around to the driver’s side.

Dan grabbed the other camera to take another picture as she practically grazed the side-view mirror and I whisper-yelled “Roll up the window!” Click-click, goes the camera shutter. And she just kept right on walking, across the street and out of sight. It was awesome.

We learned that a car registers on the animal radar as giant, harmless beast. Too big for prey; too boring to be scared of. So the animal may give you a look or wander off (or run if it’s a skittish animal like the black rhino), but mostly they just glance at you to make sure you’re not doing anything sudden, and then keep on doing what they were doing before you showed up. Now if you get out of the car, you’re lunch or the animal charges you or runs away. Humans are the enemy.

A couple of nights later on a game drive, we came up on a pair of female lions lying in the road. As the truck crept closer, we saw one of the lions had three little cubs with her. They scampered off into the bushes as the car pulled up, but the mama and her friend just

lounged on the cool pavement. A few minutes later, the female made a low growling noise and the cubs promptly returned to her. They started nursing and then playing and then cuddling. The camera flashes were no bother and the lioness just kept a close eye on the big truck. It was amazing. If they ever figure out that inside the open truck was a happy meal waiting to happen…

Jurassic Park
Staying in the actual Kruger park is sort of like staying in Jurassic Park or on the set of LOST, without the velociraptor or the “others” of course. You’re not allowed to leave the road. You’re

not allowed to alight from your car, except in marked places, and even then it is “at your own risk.” Each night the gates lock everyone inside enclosed circular camps at the 6 p.m. curfew. The camps range from 10-30 acres in size, with places for trailers and tents, with bungalows, restaurants, and swimming pools, all with 15-foot-high electric fences keeping the wildlife at bay. Hyenas stalk around the camp edges at night, coming in and out of spotlights, waiting for scraps or brave South African rednecks. It is crazy.

To conclude
We didn’t see the infamous black mamba, or any snakes for that matter, although some of the other game drivers did during our stay. We didn’t see a cheetah or a leopard in the daylight. We didn’t see a baby rhino or a black rhino at all. We didn’t see enough. Even with two weeks, we didn’t even touch the surface. There are other countries. More people. Different landscapes,

languages, food, animals, and dangers. They say Africa gets in your blood. I think it might be true; I could see myself going back. Maybe back to Zambia or to Botswana or Namibia or Mozambique. Africa may just be in my blood; I just hope it’s a “travel bug” and not malaria.

I’ll let you know in 7-14 days.

jumble. life.

Friday, April 30, 2010

a first time for everything

Monday, April 19, 2010

school of life

Saturday, April 3, 2010

In to Africa

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