Mozambique: Day 1

Mozambique is unlike any city I have been to in a really long time....its quiet, its organized, its "clean" (for African standards) and full of character.  It doesn't look like a capital or port of a desperately poor country that is in dire need of a properly functioning government, nor a country that only 20 some odd years ago recovered from one of the bloodiest civil wars in world history.  Your first impression as you land is the beautiful airport that must have been built with the mining and oil money from the northern districts near Tete.  The second is the flag....the only flag in the world that has the AK47 on it.  From there, a large port city with old Portuguese architecture and sprawling avenues, with "skyscrapers" dotting the skyline, flash by as you drive through the city past corrupt police barricades (who get very nervous when they realize that two white guys are sitting in the back seat).  

I sit here now dazed with jet-lag watching South African rugby with a full stomach....oh yeah, let me tell you about the food.  Piri piri sauce is possibly the best chili sauce ever created by man, and somehow it comes from Mozambique...who would have thunk.  With this drizzled over fresh prawns the size of your hand that were sauteed in garlic butter (yes, mom, I ate prawns), I can't wait to have more.  Tomorrow we are having dinner on the beach of grilled piri-piri chicken.  If you live in DC, I'm bringing back about a gallon of homemade piri-piri sauce and may share if you are lucky.  

Rwanda: The Scenery

As I peeked out my window today, I saw nothing but green; green hills rolling one after another, covered in various crops terraced to as close to perfection that one can achieve with a hand-wielded hoe.  Bent double, hacking in a rhythmic motion, farmers (mostly women and children) labored the day away on their small plots of land that some call farms.  These farmers are working on their .5 hectares or less plots of land to produce a monthly salary of nearly $10. The contrast of the lifestyle that these farmers live and the beauty that I had the pleasure of witnessing is so stark, one cannot describe it.

The farmers produce everything under the hot, equator sun: bananas, coffee, maize (corn to us Americans), yams (sweet and white), soybeans, etc.  The food feeds the nation, but not enough to be food secure for the entire year.  This is the problem that has brought me to this country; investigating how we can help, how American’s can indirectly provide food for the population of Rwanda. 

               

Back to the scenery…imagine yourself sitting atop a mountain and as you look down across the vista before you, all you see are terraced hillsides from a quarter of the way up to the top.  And in-between these hills, the glistening water of the rice patties reflecting a sun that highlights the checkerboard arrangement of them.  This land is so pristine and untouched by modern hand that only a few places on earth can equal it.  Driving along the road, on my left and right, the street was straddled by huge eucalyptus trees, allowing only seconds of beauty to peak through, teasing you, until you reach the peak of the hill where you can look down and behold the magnificence laid before you. Pictures do not describe, words to not describe, but I will try to do my best with both (pictures to follow, upon my return).  

Rwanda: Only a few days on the ground

People always say that a country never recovers from a civil war.  Neighbors have killed neighbors. Families torn apart and or wiped off the map.  A friend here told me that it would take her 3 days to be able to eat again if she went to the memorial in Kigali, where the bones of the genocide’s victims are on display to represent the war.  It is hard to believe that a country that was ignored by the world, when it needed help the most, continues to survive, moving ahead; constantly looking over their shoulder staring the ghost of their past dead in the eyes. 

As I walked around Kigali today, I couldn’t help but feel as if there were a thousand eyes watching me, while simultaneously watching every other person‘s movement, gesture, and expression.  Each time I looked to my left, a man clad in dark-blue police fatigues and a crooked hat stood with a military-grade shotgun.  I looked to my right, the same scene.  But if you were to remove yourself and look down on this beautiful city, you see them doing the right things that even a place like America should be doing; only by the wrong means.  (Case and point: it is illegal to possess a plastic bag in the country, so much that they randomly search arriving people’s bags as they get off the plane; if they catch you with a bag they charge you $4 to buy a reusable canvas bag.  For the people here, they live in fear that G-d forbid they have a bag, they will be beat by the police or imprisoned. Important to note, this is only one example.) 

Despite the police state, I could not be more impressed with this city.  It lays claim to the safest city in Africa, which I believe (see above).  Unlike Nairobi, I don’t feel threatened every time I walk down the street.  It also lays claim, in my eyes, as the most beautiful, untouched paradises in the world.  Despite the 5 million (slight exaggeration) white, NGO workers in this country, you don’t see the ugly skyscrapers everywhere; you don’t see a single piece of litter (see above, Example 2); you don’t see the obnoxious globalization (save Coke) that you witness in every other country.  I sit every day next to the pool of my hotel and look out over a valley that is as green as any stretch of jungle you can imagine. The hills surrounding are dotted with white houses that breakthrough the canopy to only show the top floor capped with red, clay tiling.  The roads streak through the many farms at the base of the valley red from the clay that makes them.  This is truly a paradise that all should witness before it turns into a Nairobi or Cotonou.

Now you may be wondering…why am I here? Isn’t this a work trip?  Well, of course it is.  But if I can’t sit back and take in the beauty around, then my work is wasted.  I am here on a fact finding mission to research a project for work. If I didn’t enjoy the scenery I would hate what I do and that is why I love my job.  I get to witness the uncommon life that the “other half” lives, summoning my inner Jacob Riis. 

But seeing as it is close to 11PM local time, it is off to bed I go, hoping to experience another aspect of life in Rwanda.

Rwanda: Thoughts from the Air

It is amazing the emptiness of the skies over North Africa.  I know you are thinking, DUH, but there is a difference between the black, bleak sky of North Africa and the Ocean.  As you fly over the Iberian Peninsula, the entire landscape is dotted with the picturesque, hilltop villages and towns of Portugal and Spain.  Even the Med is dotted with islands, ablaze with the lights of civilization.  But not North Africa.  Looking at the in-flight map, it shows that I am less than 30km from a town (Constantine, I think Morocco possibly Algeria??) large enough to warrant a dot on the map, but when I look, nothing.

Bouncing across the sky in my cocoon for the past 10 hours and as I will be for the next 10, I am off on another adventure.  Unlike my previous trips, I will be in a land completely foreign to me, meeting with people I have never met before, known only by an obscure name I can barely pronounce and the sweet, accented voice on the other end of Skype.  Rwanda is the scene; the mission is work; and the hope, to come back enlightened and touched by a culture that has known nothing but war, betrayal at the hands of neighbors, and rapid reconciliation.  None of this will be realized until I have successfully set foot in three countries, boarded three planes and hopefully collected a small token from each.

In my imagination Kigali (the capital of Rwanda) is a dusty town, crisscrossed by terre rouge roads, with innumerable motos weaving to miss the people doing the most ill-advised thing one can do in Africa…cross the road.  Every building will be caked in red dust, from tin roof to the dirt ground the buildings have sprung up from.  Of course, this was probably the scene some 25 years ago, but now I am sure the buildings are modern, the streets are “paved” or as close to paved as one can be, cars and motos alike, sharing the road, and the hustle and bustle of a large town.  We shall see…

Thoughts from Kenya

So I have had some time to sit back and contemplate my experiences in Kenya and I have come to the following conclusions:

- I must go out and buy more khaki colored clothing or else I will never fit in.

- Where does it say that when going on a safari, that one must buy a stupid hat?

- Why is it that all white men that work in Africa are typically the only guys sitting a business lunch not wearing a tie and/or jacket?

- West Africa food = saucy and spicy, East Africa food = dry and under-spiced. As my coworker told me, East African's don't spice up their food because the meat actually has taste while West African food you are doing everything you can to hide the graininess of the meat. And I agree, the food was great and simple but that was the beauty.

- I want to go back but this time with a group of people and must stay in the Mara, visit Amboseli and Tsavo and stay at the Whitesands on possibly the most beautiful beach in the world.

Hopefully soon, I will be travelling to another exotic and different place.

Kenya - Aug 2010

I hope you enjoy the photos attached from the Safari.

A Man Living a Boy's Dream

This is one of those moments in life that make all the shit that one puts up with in life worth it and allows me to say, “I love my life.” For those of you who know me, know that I grew up a malnourished and deprived child that was never allowed to leave my own house, let alone my country of residence; but trust me, this is possibly the most beautiful, serene, and peaceful places I have ever been, only to be challenged by the cliffs of Gozo (Malta) or the hills of the Collines (Benin).

The Setting. I currently find myself sitting with my feet up on the front veranda of my “tent” at the Siana Springs Camp Grounds on the edge of the Massai Mara National Park in late August. I use the word “tent” loosely because when someone mentions that word, the image of a lean-to in the middle of a clearing. No, not in Kenya. A “tent” is for intents and purposes a bungalow with a poured concrete floor, a zip up front door, two beds, a flushing toilet, hot water shower, and electric lamps (when the generator is on). The hot water is provided by a wood burning stove behind the “tent”. On top of the sleeping arrangements, the food…oh, the food. I just finished a lunch that started out with light and airy cream of onion soup with a garlic crouton floating in the middle. Then, had a rack of lamb, (as they say) infused with a scent of mint over white rice with a curry and potato sauce. Um….yeah it was tasty. Of course, I finished it off with my favorite beverage of choice, Pilsner Lager (I know that’s a contradiction but TIA).

The Drive. On the drive in one was struck by the barren beauty of the Southern Tip of the Rift Valley. I staring at the "Cradle of Life". I was expecting either a more barren landscape or a bountiful land built on organized farming, but I found a little mix of the two; spots were incredibly well maintained farms while others was the barren landscape I thought would be more widespread. Somehow in the middle of it I found the greatest contradiction of all, and I choose the word “contradiction” above juxtaposition because to have a large satellite relay station for satellite TV, radio and internet in the middle of the barren landscape of Africa is wrong, at least to me it is. This is a problem because there are two types of Africans (I generalize but you will understand in a second): those that want modernity and embrace the western life and those that fight, (and I mean fighting with guns and wars, see the Boer War or Zulu Wars to name two) in an effort to keep their traditional ways. This is also coming from a man that just drove across the landscape in a newish Toyota Prado wearing Ralph Lauren, sporting a nice designer watch and holding a digital camera. But walking hypocrisy is normal for a tourist of my nature.

Anyway, I digress, to the land I just covered. The Roads. Take a bad dirt road or an off-road track in the US and add craters the size of the hole a cannon ball would cause. Travelling at 100 KPH through these pot holes, the road ends and it is a thin corrugated, beige line in the middle of a beige country, dotted with low lying trees and wildlife. The wildlife…yes the wildlife is what the Masai Mara is known for. The issue with driving 100KPH is not the bone jarring bumps, it’s the inevitable chance of a four legged animal jumping out in front of your car. In my case, that was a giraffe. (By the way, Giraffes are possibly the most graceful creatures I’ve ever seen run). It scared me shitless at first and then it finally set in…I was staring at a giraffe, no make that TWO giraffes!!! I was so scared at first, I forgot to take out my camera until they were further away.

The Safari. This is truly one of those moments that cannot be explained. Imagine a little boy with a dream that he still dreams about today at 24. Now imagine trying to explain what he is feeling and seeing in words…it’s impossible. Really the only thing I can describe are the facts and show you the pictures. We drove around the park in search of lions. Everyone goes to the Mara under the auspices of looking at the Wildebeest Migration (if you don’t know what this is, watch the Grasslands episode of Planet Earth and try to get Attenborough’s, BBC version and not the knock off Sigourney Weaver version), but everyone is truly there to hunt the King, the Lion. On Day 1, I was left disappointed until on our way out of the park, we passed a mother lioness fast asleep. But this beast was so fascinating I sat there and stared at her, gracefully sleeping, as she gains the energy for the big hunt tomorrow.

That next day did come and all my dreams came true. What does 50 billion Wildebeest wandering the plains mean to the rest of the world? Easy pickings for lions and a very good chance to see them hunting for the tourist. And this is exactly what happened. Sorry for everyone else but I was selfish on this one and was too intrigued watching the lioness chase down the wildebeest that I completely forgot to take a picture of the hunt. But there are lots of pictures of the lions sitting around and being the badass they have always been.

I sign off this time, sitting comfortably back in my hotel in Nairobi sipping the delectable Pilsner and pondering the possibility of adding three or so days in Kampala at the end of this trip, again for business.