August 14th, 2005
"The Life of Brian"
For a changeup, I've attempted to follow quite closely what
I've done and thought in the past eleven days to answer the question: 'What do
you DO all day?'
Beware: I think this'll be a long one, and there's a good mixture of events, in
normal text, mixed with thoughts and tangents [which are in square brackets].
The result probably tells a lot more about me than my route. But probably they
all do. Get what you want from it.
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Tuesday last, woke up 6am-ish in
Game on.
Mad dash back to the guesthouse. Take my sopping laundry off the line and pack
it into my backpack [Travelling, I am a collector of plastic bags. I save 'em
all. Big, small, blue, clear, red. You never know when you'll need one. And a
bag full of wet laundry is precisely one of those situations.] [You need to
double-bag in
I have 30 Rwandan francs left (about 6 cents) when I get to the station.
[Changing money is a game to me. It's all about having precisely what I need, no
more, no less.] I dive into my international currency collection, and pull out
7000 Ugandan shillings, just enough for my ticket, one souvenir 100-franc note,
and a pack of biscuits for the road.
Ride to the border, site of a beautiful waterfall. Take some pictures. Walk up a
hill and into
Nine people in a taxi, then switch to a packed minibus. [A joke, compliments of
my friend Ian: 'How many people can you fit in an African bus?' ... 'Two more.']
Back door flies open en route, several bags fly out. Not mine. Good good.
100 km further, the road turns to dirt. I find myself stranded, so order a meal
at a little shack, hang my laundry to dry on their roof, and read a bit of
'David Copperfield' while I wait for something to happen. [I'm not good at this.
I get restless. Pro-active always wins out over waiting, for me.] 30 minutes
later, I walk over to a police checkpoint I'd seen back a ways. Within minutes,
I get a lucky hitch in a lorry.
70 km further, in the dark, we pass Congolese refugee camps and little else. I
arrive in Kibondo at 10pm. A dude named Moses brings me to the bus station and
helps me find a hotel. I give him my new flip flops, which hurt my feet too
much. He's happy. So am I. Still 260 km to go.
Wednesday last, up at 4.38am to catch a 5am bus. [5am in
Four hours, one flat tire, one corrupt police checkpoint, and two dead dogs
later, I'm at the next juncture. [Nobody gives a damn when we hit a dog. It has
no cash value. In
Board another minibus, 100km to go, it's gonna be tight, morning's closing out.
[There's strategy to this. Get as far into a bus as you can. I find that midway
back, and next to a window, is best. You're best insulated from the overcrowding
that way, and don't have people crawling over you, and you can easily buy stuff
from vendors out the window.] We're getting close. That boat leaves at 4pm. At
1.20pm, we get a flat tire.
One bus to go. I get to Kigoma, 300 shillings left (about 25 cents). Race
against time. Get money. Get new flip flops. Buy a pineapple. Get my boat
ticket. Board, at 3.30pm! I made it! After 29.5 hours on the road, I had a full
30 minutes to spare...why the rush?! [There are so many timely meetings,
coincidences, happenstances, of which if only ONE were lacking, I wouldn't've
made it. It's always like this!]
This boat's going to take me to
[Now, going back to
Thursday last, full day on the boat, down the big long lake that divides
Friday last, get off the boat in
Joined Nico and Albrecht. Spent the afternoon in the back of a dump truck with
25 others, driving through more MMBA [An old British guy introduced me to this
acronym: 'Miles and miles of bloody
Saturday last, up at silly o'clock [thank you Angel, for that expression], to
catch an all-day bus [with a few dozen people standing in the aisle] through
more MMBA. Albrecht continues on to
I'm down to no money again, and get cash. I quest for a new journal. [The QUEST:
these things keep me going for days. The concept is that you invent a quest,
like getting a new journal, or some decent non-Chinese AAA batteries, or the
perfect toothpaste. Then you spend eons of time wandering a city looking for the
object. I've passed many such days. They always take you places you hadn't
planned, and quite often you forget what you were questing for in the first
place. But it's always fun and interesting.]
I'm very picky. I visit 8 stationery shops and don't find what I want. Quest
unfulfilled. No matter. Another day. [I didn't find the journal for a reason.
Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes you just don't know why until much
later. My philosophy is to accept fate, yet still try my damndest when I can.]
Giving up the search, Nico and I talk to a local who recommends his favorite
little hole-in-the-wall, where we have a killer meal!
Sunday. So we're in Mbeya now.
We'd started this walk in dry scrub-land. And minutes later we'd entered
rainforest! After a losing bout with evil biting ants, we made our way to the
thickly-forested, mist-enshrouded crater rim, and one of the best-ever picnic
sites, where we feasted on pineapple, oranges, and bread with honey. [Few things
beat a good picnic.]
Back at the shop where we'd opted to sleep the night, we're told there's no
food, but we follow some kid to a little village. En route we're invited for 'pombe'--local
corn beer, served warm. Sound bad? It is. But in no time, we've gone from no
meal, to a cludged-together meal of our own tomatoes and onions (and a packet of
curry spice I carry with me) chopped over fried plaintains and potatoes. All is
well.
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This is getting long. Sorry. I accelerate.
Monday, Nico and I split. I cross into
Tuesday, I hang at the beach. Buy some bracelets from local kids [I abhor giving
handouts, but I'm happy to contribute in this way. These kids are making
wonderful little bracelets from copper and electrical wire, and bits of rubber
tubing!] I dig out a water bottle from the trash, having left my latest one on
the last minibus [I've bought less than 10 bottles of water in
Having travelled nearly non-stop for a solid week, I spend the day relaxing,
reading, and playing guitar, and walking to the village for food instead of
eating with white people at the expensive guesthouse. And I've probably got
bilharzia now from the lake. I'll take some pills in six weeks to nip that one.
Wednesday, I leave my friends: a local kid named Emanuel, a samosa-shop owner
named Niga, and a tea-shop owner whose name I forget. [I go through VERY
different moods in regards to sociallability. I'd recently been quite
isolationist. And then I travelled with Nico, who interacts quite a bit, so I
slip back into 'observer' mode. Then back on my own, I flick the switch into my
interaction-self again. It's all mood-dependent, not in a good-mood/bad-mood way
though, some sort of natural cycle though, it seems.] [The instinct of knowing
who talks to you because they want money vs. those who are genuinely
friendly--less than 1 in 10--seems to develop over time.]
I head up to Livingstonia [named after the famous David Livingston, of fame from
Here, I set up my tent on the most spectacular tent-site I've had in my life: on
the edge of a cliff, overlooking
[Book supply running low...I'm always on the lookout for swaps, but disdain most
anything claiming with covers claiming 'New York Times #1 Bestseller' or '____
arrives home one day to find...' or '...when ____ is accused of a terrible ____'
or 'the latest thriller by ____' You get my message.] [Ultimately, I do manage
to swap for two quality books though: 'David Copperfield' and 'One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest' for 'A Room with a View' and 'Confessions of a Middle-Aged Opium
Eater'.]
Thursday and Friday. Walk up to Livingstonia village, an old Scottish mission
town full of red-brick buildings. Hang out at a bakery run by a Zambian woman,
dipping milk-scones in tea. Back at the camp, I relax, read, practice guitar
some more. Plan my future home and contemplate life while listening to Yo La
Tengo. Invite myself into the guesthouse kitchen and watch them cook, jotting
down recipes and ideas [...something I commonly do, usually without asking. If
you ask, they can be shy and say no. If you just stand there and smile, they're
usually quite obliging.] Alone for these three days, sitting about, eating nice
dinners by an oil lantern above the lake below, whose surface glimmers with the
lights of fishing boats at night, just like stars!
That's my last eleven days. And I write this. [I've been asked how long these
entries take. Well, I usually spend about 30 minutes perusing my journals and
jotting down key notes. Then about 90 minutes writing it. And I usually go back
once more for about 30 minutes more, doing a quick spelling check and moving
things around. This one's been about average time, though that last check was
closer to 45 minutes this time 'round.]
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All in all, it's been a pretty regular spell [in whatever sense 'regular' can
mean.] For those interested in what I do DO all day, I trust it's filled in some
blanks. For the rest, I've bored your tails off, or you've just skipped down to
this part. But they'd all be like this, if I didn't edit out so much of what
happens on a day-to-day basis.
[My recent days, I've decided where I go from here. It's sometimes difficult to
discern between what you really WANT to do, and what people/books tell you that
you should do. You have to be quite in tune, not always as easy as it sounds.]
So I've come from
'His sentient nature was intrinsically joyous, and novelty and change were in
themselves a delight to him. As they had come to him with a great deal of
frequency, his life had been more agreeable than appeared. Never was a nature
more perfectly fortunate. It was not a restless, apprehensive, ambitious spirit,
running a race with the tyranny of fate, but a temper so unsuspicious as to put
Adversity off her guard, dodging and evading her with the easy, natural motion
of a wind-shifted flower.' (Henry James)
[My quotes are usually taken from something I've recently read. I have a habit
of dog-earing pages, marking margins, copying down bits and pieces I like. I try
to choose ones kinda applicable to put at the bottom of my entries. This one's
from 'The Europeans'.]
Away Awhile is hosted by Josh Trutwin.