Journal Entry 57
October 27th, 2005
"East Coast Exit"
FIRST SOUTH...
I'm in Zanzibar,
Tanzania, merely days away from leaving
Africa. My last update left off in
Durban, South Africa, where I stayed a week
and a half with my friends there. It was a good glimpse of 'real' life in the
country, staying in suburbia. Like America a bit, aside from the gated
communities (well, after all, maybe not THAT different). It was nice to have hot
showers, a bed, salad, to hang out with friends each day, meals with the parents
(if not my own), even take-out pizza!
We did a camping trip in the Drakensburg mountains...amazing
scenery! And a braai. South Africans are crazy about two things: cricket and
braai. Cricket is a complex charade that I can't attempt to explain. To watch it
and realize it's serious, almost makes a person giggle. 'Braai' is Afrikaans for
'barbeque.' What do they cook? 'Boerewurs' (like kilbasa, or Polish sausage).
And 'potji kos', a stew slow-cooked in a cast iron pot. Not a braai tradition,
but another interesting food, is 'bunny chow'--half a bread loaf, hollowed out
and filled with curry, favoured by Durban's Indian population.
The day I left my friends, I found myself serving fried bacon rolls at a
retirement home's annual festival, then making my way into Zululand, back in
black Africa, arriving at a private landowner's
place in a brand-new game reserve (my friend's mom and her husband are living
there). So I found myself in the middle of African veldt, sleeping in a room
with a dead zebra on the floor, in a solitary home where white rhinocerouses (or
is that rhinoceri?) wandered into the yard every day. They're huge, truly
dinosaurs! And this rhino baby (the size of a fat pony) made sounds like a
squeaky bath toy.
Score, huh? No tourists. Just me, my new friends, and lots of animals: zebras,
giraffes, wildebeests, the rhinos, warthogs, impalas. Not a bad deal. Everyone
in South Africa
talks about the 'BIG FIVE'--the five animals that you're 'supposed' to see so
you can tell everyone at home. I don't know what the hell the big five even are,
but I've always wanted to see rhinos, and giraffes and zebras (which these
safari-types evidently don't give a rat's ass about). So I was in heaven! I got
to stalk giraffes, get a meter from rhinos, and had dinner with Afrikaans
landowners discussing country and game-park politics. A great experience!
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THEN NORTH...
From there, I hitched-hiked into Swaziland,
and caught a bus to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique.
Now, really back to Africa. Blowing plastic
bags, the smell of urine, a slow border crossing where one dude was booted back
to the country he came from. You know, typical stuff.
After a day there (and seeing a surreal, pastel-green train station designed by
Eiffel), I began my way up the coast. First stop: Tofo Beach.
I dove with manta rays. Giant: close to 3m (10') across! And they pass within a
meter of you, as they gently swoop/sail along! Eerie, majestic creatures. Sea
was rough, I got sick, rest of day I've repressed my memory, things are hazy.
Then, on to Vilanculos, another beach further up the Mozambiquan coast. A day
trip out to an archipelago yielded sand dunes amid the most picture-perfect bit
of beach/coast I've seen anywhere in the world!
North, north, north through
Mozambique, the roads getting worse, worse,
worse. Stranded a night on the Zambezi
River, sleeping in a minibus. A day in Quelimane,
a city and region reminiscent of Senegal's
Zuiginchor and Basse Cassamance region. Good markets, cheap cashews, bumpy
roads.
Lots of days on the road, leading to Mozambique
Island in the north, former capital of
Portuguese East Africa (for 400 years!). Vasco
de Gama landed here in 1498. Now? Crumbly and dilapidated, white-washed,
sedated, palm trees. A skinny island that you can circle on foot in about an
hour. But nonetheless, a perfect couple-day stopover. Great seafood, a return to
the world of Islam. I felt like I was in a crossover of Indonesia/South America,
but with black people.
Some places, you get the feeling that your zipper's down, the way people look at
you. This was one of those places. I learned not to visit the shore at night; it
seems that that's when all the villagers go down for their daily shit in the
ocean.
In theory I could get along quite well with my Spanish in Portuguese-speaking Mozambique.
But I found that not only am I quite rusty, I've infused it with vocabulary from
the French and Indonesian I've picked up in the past years. Oh well, it
sufficed.
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AND FURTHER NORTH...
Getting across the remote border-crossing with Tanzania was an endeavor that
involved two days, some lucky hitchhiking (since I missed one bus that would've
simplified my life), a night-time ride in a truck that nailed a chicken, a deer,
almost killed two kids sleeping in the middle of a road, and drove off from an
angry police checkpoint at full speed. My backpack, once again, was pilfered.
This time I lost a $2 clock and a small piece of cloth I use for sewing patches
(stolen from the same pocket that contained a nice Swiss Army knife and some
money, which they left untouched...dumbfucks...some people can't do anything
right!). A 5-hr rest for the night, somewhere dark, then a 4WD truck down a
sandy track, a river crossing, and a meeting with four Ethiopian refugees stuck
in no-man's land. All this to reach a border where, according to the Tanzanian
embassy in Maputo,
I could NOT get an on-arrival visa. I didn't believe them.
I got the visa. Ha! Though it cost me $20 than I expected. But the mad journey's
not yet ended: a ride in the back of a truck with 20 Tanzanians, standing room
only, pelted by the blazing sun. Damn. And on arrival in Mtwara, southern
Tanzania, I immediately boarded a twice-weekly ferry to Dar es Salaam, luckily (or not?) leaving in
two hours. The ferry trip was a joy: 1000 people, completely packed, 24-hour
journey, and I was one of about, say, three, people who wasn't puking as the
boat pitched like mad all day and night. And a bonus is that being a foreigner,
I get to pay double-price! Three well-timed sleeping pills saved my soul.
=================================================
AND AN IMPENDING DEPARTURE...
Dar es Salaam.
Hot, power outage the day I spent there, and the cheapest hotels are full. But
brilliant bananas, the best in Africa! I did
some shopping for a flight off the continent, and wasted no time getting a slow
and cheap ferry to Zanzibar
Island.
And Zanzibar?
Love it. Forget the beaches. I'm staying in the historic old Stone Town.
A dizzying maze of alleys. Men in skullcaps, women in veils. Spices. Ancient,
carved doors with metal spikes sticking out of 'em. Mosques. Closed shops
(Ramadan). I'm lost a lot. I've moved in to my guesthouse, setting up my books,
hanging my clothes...truly a mini apartment. I've experienced both a flood
(result of a downpour--some alleys get nearly knee-deep in water) and a
night-time power outage (makes navigating the alleys quite interesting) here.
Have a routine...full breakfast morning: my own honey on fresh bread, two boiled
eggs--yolks removed, fresh fruit, and hot cocoa. One medium-sized papaya with
fresh-squeezed lime for lunch. Dinner comes in two parts: first I go to the
touristy waterfront market for grilled shark, hot naan bread, and salad for
dinner (all for under $1). Then I head off to the local market, where I don't
see a white face as I enjoy chickpeas scooped out of a plastic bucket with a
coconut milk and cardamon sauce. Coconuts, bananas, and sugarcane juice fill in
the gaps throughout the day. Afternoons are spent on the third-story roof of my
guesthouse, reading and playing guitar (I'd decided to swap it for a painting,
but then decided to keep it after all).
I just purchased my onward plane ticket, again dealing with the inherent hassles
of one-way tickets and restrictions. Zanzibar
is a great place to end my trip to Africa, and
being a crossover between the black and Arab worlds, it's a perfect transition
to my next destination!
Tomorrow, I leave Zanzibar.
On Sunday, I leave Africa.
'I think that the sweetest freedom on earth for a man consists in being able to
live, if he likes, without having the need to work.' (Salvador
Dali)
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