A Year in Africa

A Year In Africa

2008-12-22T22:52:00.004-05:00

This is not a full circle.

It's life carrying on.

It's the next breath we all take.

It's the choice we make to get on with it.

--Alexander Fuller

It has been one year, to the day, since I left Nairobi. I last posted on this blog after my trip to Ethiopia in October 2007. I missed telling you about another trip to Cape Town to say good-bye (again) to the children of Bap, about time in Tsavo, the Aberdares and Mt Kenya, Lamu again, Christmas and New Years in Morocco with my family...before heading back to New York City in January 2008.

Each trip, each experience, topped the previous. It always just got better. Until I had to leave.

I did not know what to write. How to end this blog. How to end this experience. My 15 months in Africa. However, it has not ended.

I was in Morocco, watching the news daily about the post-election violence in Kenya starting December 27, 2007. I continued to watch, read, talk to friends, in stunned disbelief about what happened there during the Presidential elections. About what happened to Kisumu. What could I say about that, then?

But a coalition was formed and is still working to right what went wrong. I hope. Rebuilding has begun. Kenya seems back on track. I am told. I visited Kisumu in October 0f this year and, except for one or two burned buildings remaining on Oginga Odinga Street, I could hardly tell what had happened. They are hopeful. Yet cautious.

I have remained in touch, and feel as connected to my life and friends there as I did. Some have moved on as well. Some have received promotions. New ones have arrived. Some have experienced life-altering events. But they are still there, one way or the other.

I was in Kisumu during the US presidential elections. There is a renewed sense of optimism. Anything is possible they also believe. But there is a lot of work to do. 2009 is the start of many changes for the better. I think.

I last left off the posting of my blog in Ethiopia. 2009 will bring for me a child. Adopted from Ethiopia. I have been waiting, back in New York, since July 10, 2008.

2009 will also continue to bring Africa to me, in New York for now.

Many people said to me, you will leave Africa, but Africa will not leave you. Maybe cliche. But true.

So what can I really say to end "a year in Africa"?

Only that, for me, there is yet no end. And I am grateful.

AEH

Children of Ethiopia

2007-12-11T05:39:00.000-05:00

Pictures of the Simien Mountains

2007-11-30T03:48:00.000-05:00

Mohammed Contemplating

Endemic Gelada baboon

Simien Mountain National Park

Gech, Mohammed and Ababa relaxing with crowd of children

Beautiful Ethiopia

2007-11-30T03:14:00.000-05:00

In writing about the American southwest, Edward Abbey wrote: “This must be the most beautiful place on earth. There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary.”

Ethiopia. I found many such beautiful and mystical places while there, in between stops at churches, monasteries and mosques.

At Bahir Dar, we hiked one morning to the Blue Nile Falls, flowing out of Lake Tana, which ushers forth the journey of the Blue Nile into Sudan where it meets the White Nile. Lake Tana, the largest lake in Ethiopia, has 37 islands, 30 of which contain large round churches and monasteries, each with a conical thatched roof, on top of which sits an intricate gold or bronze 7-pronged cross with 7 ostrich eggs placed on the prongs, to symbolize care for the church. These churches date from the 16th – 18th C A.D. The beautifully painted murals inside the churches have been well-preserved and tell Biblical stories, meant as a way to teach the illiterate. The figures have wide circular faces and huge dark eyes – a style I had seen in museums before, and considered cartoonish. Now being in Ethiopia, I see how true to life these figures have been painted – Ethiopians really do have huge, beautiful, bright, dark eyes.

Driving from Bahir Dar to Gondar and then from Gondar to the Simien Mountains, we passed through fields and fields of teff, a yellow, light and wispy grain. Ethiopians use teff to make their main staple food, the sponge-like injera bread eaten at almost every meal, used to scope up tibs of mutton or pork, usually cooked spicy with peppers and onions; or shiro, the red paste made with chili and peas that became my favorite; or an assortment of steamed vegetables, cabbage, carrots, beets. The rainy season had just ended when I arrived, so the fields were patchworks of bright yellows and greens. As we drove along, I noticed children standing on the tops of trees in the fields. They stand there from sunup to sundown, with sling shots, to shoot at the birds that land in their fields. That seems like some grueling work!

Driving has become one of my favorite activities in Africa, to see so much beauty and life along the road. While driving to the Simien Mountains, we saw villagers carrying a sick person, stretcher-like, over their heads; a funeral procession, with the men walking first and carrying the body and the women following behind, all while wailing loudly; two women dragging a large, freshly-killed goat down the road; men dressed in robin hood green holding long staffs while walking their goats or cattle on the side of the road; and children idling around and appearing to watch over fields or herds. No, you can never be bored while driving in Africa.

Then we hit the Simien Mountains and a marvelous landscape opened up immediately before me. I looked across a huge gorge full of amethyst peaks and stupendous crags. The clouds formed shadows darkening, while around the corner the sunlight lightened, the many colors of the Simiens, ruby, sapphire, emerald. The formations seem alive, constantly changing color and shape with the shifting clouds and light of day. The Simien Mountain National Park is one of the most beautiful and peaceful places on Earth. Its many summits are hard cores of volcanic outlets from which the surrounding material eroded away. The highest summit, Ras Dashen, rises to 4,543 meters and is the fourth highest peak in Africa.

We walked for one full afternoon and the entire of the next morning. It was just me; my guide from Gondar, a young man called Gech; a local woman guide, named Ababa dressed to the nines; and a scout, named Mohammed, who carried an old British rifle that did not appear to work, but it made me feel safe nonetheless (although never quite certain “from what”). We mostly walked in silence for hours. You could tell how much they all loved this land, but especially Mohammed who had grown up living in the Simien Mountains. He looked out across the gorge as if looking at a lost lover. I always wondered what he must be thinking. We stopped at times and just sat, watching an eagle for a half hour, circle over our heads. We stopped at the end of the walk on our first day to rest, and all four of us laid down in the grass on our backs, looking up at the shifting clouds. Again, completely silent, but connected by what, I believe, we all felt being in the Simiens, something spiritual, peaceful, beautiful.

(Pictured: Me at the Blue Nile Falls; Ura Kidane Monastery on an island in Lake Tana; From Hotel in Gondar, fields of teff in the background beyond the city; boy in a tree guarding his field from birds)

Historical and Religious Ethiopia

2007-11-28T15:49:00.000-05:00

Life’s, and Africa’s, distractions have kept me away from this blog for the past month. I’m about to wrap up my time here in Africa, in a few weeks actually, but cannot do so without sharing a little more with you – starting with my trip to Ethiopia.

I spent the last two weeks of October traveling in Ethiopia, the only country on the continent of Africa that was not subjected to colonial rule (after defeating the Italians, who tried to colonize it, in 1896). It is a fascinating country, with beautiful and kind people. It is an old country with its culture and traditions dating back more than 3000 years – actually, even earlier than that lived “Lucy”, one of the earliest hominid fossils ever discovered, in Ethiopia. And, it is a land of extremes – of wild and remote places – and contrasts – with some of the highest points in Africa in the jagged Simian Mountains and some of the lowest in the Danakil Depression.

I began my trip in the capital of Addis Ababa, and spent almost the entire time on the “historical route” from Addis, in the center of the country, north to Axum, near the border with Eritrea. For most of the trip I flew from place to place in the government-owned Ethiopian Airlines (which has an excellent safety record!) and stayed in the government-owned hotel chain of the Ghion Hotels (which does not have an excellent upkeep record!).

Before leaving, I knew very little of Ethiopia’s history and grew amazed at discovering how much history there is, and how that history is so deeply rooted in Christianity. Ethiopia’s history spans several thousand years – no other region in Africa has seen such continuity of existence. Ethiopia has a favorable climate, largely as a result of the large amount of high ground to be found there (80% of Africa’s land above 3000 meters is in Ethiopia) and several rainy seasons in most of the country, both which contribute to favorable agricultural conditions. Its rugged escarpments form natural barriers which have protected the country from outside invasion. It is largely for these reasons that Ethiopia then fostered a literate civilization and rich culture for many thousands of years, with a trading empire that at times extended from the African hinterland across the Red Sea to southern Arabia. These factors, and the domination of the population to traditional Christian beliefs, have contributed to such a unique and long lasting civilization.

While in Ethiopia, I was constantly moved by the deep religious convictions of everyone I met, from my tour guides to the man on the street always eager to engage a tourist in conversation. Traveling in the cities of the northern historical route – first to Bahir Dar, then to Gondar, on to Lalibela and finally to Axum – felt like stepping back into the Jerusalem of Biblical times. Everyone I met loved their history, their churches, and their religious stories. The women wear long white robes, as a symbol of their Christian beliefs. Priests, monks and religious students can be seen praying or reading the Bible at all times. Life in most of the northern cities seems to revolve around religion, and most of the touring there involved visiting churches and monasteries. All of these were beautiful, but none compared to the magnificence of the 11 monolithic churches in Lalibela, carved out of the pink granite rock in the 12th C A.D. by King Lalibela – Lalibela is truly an entire city dedicated to the glory of God by the King, and still seems as it must have been 1000 years ago.
The final stop on my historical route north was in Axum, a city that stood at the height of Ethiopian civilization in the 4-5th centuries A.D. Axum was a trading empire where Africa’s only indigenous script (Ge’ez) developed. It also was in Axum that Ethiopians adopted Christianity in the 4th century A.D. However, belief in Ethiopia dates its connection to the Bible back to the 9th century B.C., when the Queen of Sheba traveled from Axum to meet King Solomon in Jerusalem. According to Ethiopian tradition, Queen Sheba gave birth to the son of Solomon, David, later to become King Menelik I of Ethiopia. Legend has it that as a young man, David went to visit his father, Solomon, in Jerusalem and while there stole the Ark of the Covenant (a wooden box, lined with gold, in which the 2 stone tablets with the Ten Commandments were placed) and brought it back to Axum, where it is believed to still reside to this day, in a sanctuary guarded by monks. There are many historical inaccuracies in this story, but for Ethiopians, it is history, not legend, and a replica of the Ark is enshrined in each of Ethiopia’s thousands and thousands of churches.

After spending almost a week and a half in northern Ethiopia, I headed back to Addis for a day, then west to Harare, a much different type of place, being mostly Muslim. Harare is a labyrinth of small streets surrounded by old city walls – reminding me a lot of Lamu or Mombasa in Kenya or Stone Town in Zanzibar. It largely dates to the 16th century and its 80 or so mosques make it a pilgrimage destination for many Muslims, regarded as one of the most holy cities in the Horn of Africa. It was interesting to see the contrasts, from the northern cities and Christianity, to western Harare and Islam, however, the same theme predominated every single location - Ethiopia and its people are steeped in history and religion, which make it such a rich tourist destination in Eastern Africa I think!

(Pictured: Church of Bet Giyorgis in Lalibela; observing a Sunday outdoor church service in Lalibela; priest with Lalibela crosses; Sanctuary where the Ark of the Covenant supposedly rests, in Axum)

Foreign Investors in Kisumu

2007-10-20T04:58:00.000-04:00

After the trips to Zanzibar and Rwanda, I had a busy September and October with Millennium Cities. At the end of September, we launched the Kisumu Investor's Guide, the first investment guide for an African city. This guide will be used as a marketing tool to attract sustainable investment into Kisumu. Pictured here is the Mayor of Kisumu receiving the Investment Guide from the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Planning and National Development.

We followed this up with the first foreign investor mission to Kisumu, which began last Sunday and ended yesterday. With a group of 12 German investors and an equal number of foreign investors already established in Kenya, but not yet in Kisumu, we spent two days in Nairobi and three days in Kisumu. The purpose of the mission was for the foreign investors to visit local companies and meet with local business people and government officials to explore investment opportunities in the Kisumu area. We had cocktails with the German ambassador, lunch with the Mayor and Town Clerk of Kisumu, dinner again with members of various business associations in Kisumu and visited a geothermal plant, sugar mill, ethanol factory and rice farm, amongst doing many other things.

On Wednesday of this past week, 17 October, we had a major event in Kisumu as part of this foreign investor mission, we called Kisumu Day - a day of highlighting Kisumu's investment potential. I had expected only 100 people to attend, but 200 showed up at the Imperial Hotel in Kisumu, including many top executives, government officials and members of NGOs or foreign missions. It was a full and lively day with discussions on Kisumu and its opportunities. We launched a new investment promotion office for the city during the day as well. All considered it a big success, and it was covered widely by the national press.

But then, that night at a dinner hosted by the Ministry of Planning at the Kisumu Yacht Club, something unexpected and very frightening happened. We were almost through eating dinner - 100 guests were enjoying a nice cool evening, sitting outside by the shores of Lake Victoria, mingling among foreigners and locals, listening to traditional Luo music played by a live band, while eating a mixture of Kenyan and Indian food - when we saw coming from the parking lot a group of men, towards our tables. Then, there was some shouting, rushing of men from around our tables towards the men in the parking lot and the pop pop pop pop of what seemed like fireworks. We saw running and movement in the dark. And more popping sounds. It happened withing split seconds and someone yelled to get on the ground. I had been sitting at a table with mostly the white foreigners, and a few Kenyans, near the front, closest to the parking lot from where the noise came. I turned around to look behind me, and saw the tables now completely empty, as the other 80 guests - all the Kenyans - had hit the ground, some were behind bushes, under the tables, hidden by table cloths. The band had stopped and were also on the ground. It was dark and silent for what must have been 10 minutes. It was surreal. Our table just sat there, not at all sure of what was happening, in stunned silence. Finally, more police arrived and the Provincial Comissioner made an announcement that all was under control now.

A group of armed thugs had approached the Kisumu Yacht Club to rob us. The Yacht Club guards were unarmed, but when attacked managed to alert, somehow, the 4 armed soldiers accompanying the Provincial Commissioner. If we had not had those soldiers, we would have been robbed at gun point. The soldiers chased after the men, into the parking lot where the gun fight ensued. One thug was killed, another captured. Last I heard, they had not caught the other 5. We believe we were targeted - of course - a group of investors with some dignitaries. It was an unfortunate event, as one of the positive aspects of Kisumu, versus Nairobi, is in how safe and secure it is - since January I have not heard of a single incident like what happened to us at the Yacht Club - it was a strange, freak occurrence for the area, but not a welcoming way to try to bring foreign investment into a community!

***

After two months of heavy work - yes, I am working - I'm now off again. I leave this afternoon for two weeks in Ethiopia, back on 3rd November. I'll post all about it when back!

Zanzibar

2007-10-20T04:16:00.000-04:00

Yes, my blog is still back at the end of August, but I'm catching up quickly today. So...back in August, I took two weeks away - the first in Zanzibar with one of my best friends from the US, Kari, and the second in Rwanda.

Zanzibar, is paradise. We spent the first few days in Stonetown, shopping while navigating our way throughout the old twisted alleyways and eating incredible Swahili food, usually while seated on big pillows on the ground. We also saw a few obligatory tourist sights, such as the slave caves, and went on a spice tour.

After a few days in Stonetown, we headed to the beaches of Ras Nungwi, the north of the island, where the water is a beautiful turquoise blue and lends itself to walking on the beach, reading by the beach, sleeping on the beach, talking on the beach, and of course, eating fresh seafood on the beach.

After Ras Nungwi, we drove to the east side of the island, the beach town of Bweju, where we mistakenly went on dolphin swimming tour. Yes, we saw dolphins, lots of them...but so did the other 25 boats that were with us. We chased dolphins like crazy people and jumped into into the water. You could not help but be more worried about getting cut up by the motors of other boats than with seeing the dolphins. A completely ridiculous experience.

After Bweju, it was back to Stonetown for a night, where we took a drum lesson, just Kari and I an instructor, patting away on an old drum, while seated in an old arabic stone building, with windows open, breeze blowing in from the Indian Ocean, and sun setting. Yes, Zanzibar is paradise, but so is travelling in Africa with a good friend!

(Pictured: Kari in the rooftop restaurant at our hotel, Emerson & Green, in Stonetown; Jaws corner, where men gather to drink tea, talk and play chest in Stonetown; Kari - dressed (as a joke, I am quite sure) as Bob Marley, on our deck in Ras Nungwi; our cottage, Evergreen Bungalows, at Bweju)

Being in Rwanda

2007-10-20T03:50:00.000-04:00

Besides the gorillas, I also went to Rwanda to learn more about its history and the genocide of 1994. An excellent book on the genocide is “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed by our families” by Philip Gourevitch. During the entire week there, the events of 1994 did not escape my mind. Only 13 years ago, 800,000 Rwandans (or, as some estimate, 1 million) out of a population of 7.5 million, mostly of Tutsis minority, were killed in only 100 days. Most were hacked to death by machete-wielding interahamwe, gangs of young Hutu men who killed with the joy of being in a carnival romp. But also, priests killed their flock; mayors killed their constituents; colleagues killed colleagues; neighbors killed neighbors. With every Rwandan with whom I spoke, every man and woman whom I watched till their fields, every child to whom I waved, I could not help but wonder if they were Hutu or Tutsis? What had they seen or done? How many deaths did they witness or effect? I had heard estimates that 4 out of 5 children had witnessed some brutality during 1994. What must that do to the psyche of an entire generation? I was incapable of finding these answers.

In between my two gorilla treks, I drove through the spectacular, terraced landscape of tea and banana plantations to Gisenyi, on the shores of Lake Kivu, right at the border with Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo. Along the way, girls in bright blue dresses and boys in khaki shorts and shirts, the national school uniform, stopped walking to wave as I passed. There seems to be more children in Rwanda than in most African countries in which I had driven through, I thought – scores of them lined the roadside.

While in Gisenyi, I stayed at the Lake Kivu Serena, which the Hutu Power government had used as its headquarters before fleeing into the DRC after the rebel Tutsis army, the Rwandese Patriotic Front (led by current President Paul Kagame), captured Kigali in the summer of 1994, just a few months after the start of the genocide. Lake Kivu is a beautiful lake – it looks like the sea – surrounded by volcanoes. One afternoon there, I went out for a walk along the lake shore, on a tree-lined avenue where homes of wealthy Rwandans sat. As usually happens when a white foreigner is out walking, children started following me. On this day, I was not really in the mood for company and wanted simply to walk on my own, but one young boy, aptly named Patience, stuck with me, talking and questioning me with great persistence.

Patience is 18 years old, articulate and bright. He is an orphan. He lost his entire family – mother, father and two sisters – in 1994, right before his eyes, he saw them killed by what he believes were Hutu neighbors. He wondered out loud to me why he had survived. They had just left him there alone in the house, he said, surrounded by his family’s blood. It brought tears to my eyes, which I tried to hide behind my sunglasses, but he sensed my crying. Don’t worry, he said to me, I feel lucky that I did survive. You should not feel sad for me, he said.

Then, he asked me if I had every heard of Harvard? Yes, I told him. And Oxford? Yes. That is where I want to study, he said. Although he had fallen behind in school by a few years due, naturally, to all that had happened in his life, he is working hard to do well in secondary school, then go to Harvard or Oxford, and become a lawyer. He did not know anything about me at that point, so I told him that I am a lawyer. He wanted to know what I was doing in Africa. I told him, and I also told him I was trying to decide whether to go back to the US and to the practice of law. This just astonished him, stopping him dead in his tracks to turn and stare at me for what seemed like 5 minutes. He could not believe that I would give up the opportunity to be in the US and to continue as a lawyer – his dreams. But, I said, I love Africa and want to help people here. As if I was talking to a wise 60-year old man, Patience then said to me, but you can, and I think you will be able to do more for people, and for orphans like me, by being there, not here. Point-blank he said, you should go back to the US.

After hitting the border with the DRC, we turned around and walked back, with Patience then playing tour guide to show me around the town of Gisenyi. At this point, we had also picked up another follower, a young beautiful girl, wearing a bright red thread-bare dress with a white lace collar. She walked behind us, never saying a word. When we stopped, she stopped. When I turned to look back at her and say hello, she smiled at me with wide-eyes and bright teeth, but said nothing. She walked with a pile of fire wood secured gingerly on top of her head with one hand. We turned off the lakeshore avenue into town. She continued to follow. Life for children in the US is easy, isn’t it, Patience asked me? Yes, it is, I said. Finally, we must have made one too many turns away from her path of destination, because she stopped and ceased following as we turned to walk up another street. When we got to the top, I turned back and she still stood there watching after us, with gleaming red dress, bright eyes, firewood. Did she want me to give her anything, I asked Patience? No, he said, she simply wanted to walk with you too. These two children, Patience and the girl with the red dress and firewood, touched my heart.

Then after Lake Kivu and my second day of gorilla trekking, I went back to Kigali for two days before flying back to Nairobi. There, I stayed at the Hotel des Milles Collines – the famous Hotel Rwanda from the movie. It was in this hotel that the manager, Paul Rusesabagina, a Hutu, sheltered hundreds of Tutsis from the Hutu Power and the roaming interahamwe. Again, being in the hotel, looking out from my balcony to the swimming pool that had been used for drinking and bathing, down to the streets below where in 1994 I would have witnessed a blood-bath, gave me an eery feeling. In Kigali I visited the Genocide Memorial sight and museum. Although informative and well-done, it was a heavy experience – with many Rwandans openly crying. There is a room filled entirely with skulls, all of which had suffered some blunt trauma. There is a room devoted only to the children that had died, brutally. I cried there as well, and it made me sick to my stomach. Although being in Rwanda was an amazing experience, I could not grasp it all and know I will never fully understand how something the genocide took place and how, most amazingly, a country and its people are able to pick up and move on from it.

(Pictured: Lake Kivu; Avenue along Lake Kivu shore; Genocide Memorial with Kigali in the background)

More pictures from the second day of trekking

2007-10-11T09:08:00.000-04:00

Karisimbi, one of the Virungas volcanoes

Being briefed on the Susa group by our guides

Crowd of children waiting for us when we returned from the trek

The Virungas at sunset, we made it down just before dark

Second Day with the Gorillas – The Susa Group

2007-10-11T08:48:00.000-04:00

High fives went around by a few people when they learned that they, like me, had been assigned to view the Susa group. I was a little embarrassed by my group’s outright display of competitive behavior, but also very glad to be able to view this group. The Susa group is popular because it is the largest of the gorilla groups, with 36 gorillas, including 3 silverbacks and many young ones, a few of the gorillas were part of Dian Fossey’s research groups and, for the more adventurous tourist, seeing them involves a more difficult trek through the mountain forest.

After my first visit (Saturday 25 August) with the Kwitonda group, I decided that, while in Rwanda, I had to try to see the mountain gorillas again. So I went on to Lake Kivu on Saturday afternoon, where I spent all of Sunday, and worked to procure another permit. This was not easy, as most days the permits are sold-out, requiring booking months in advance. But with a lot of phone calls, I landed one and then headed back to Ruhengeri on Monday afternoon to spend the night there, and view the gorillas in the Parc National Des Volcans on Tuesday morning.

After being assigned to the Susa group and briefed by our guides, we drove an hour to the base of Karisimbi, the highest volcano in the Parc at 4507 metres. We began our trek at 8:30 a.m., first walking up gently sloping Irish potato fields – neat rows planted in dark black soil along the hillside – until we hit the start of a bamboo forest – beautiful and surreal looking We kept climbing up and up, and on this day, so did the Susa group. One of the younger silverbacks had recently been abandoned by the rest of group after he remained sick for too long and could not keep up as the group moved throughout Karisimbi for food each day. That morning, the trekkers spotted him, alone, and following the rest of the group from a short distance. They believed this might have spooked the rest and caused them to move within their home range further, and more quickly, than usual.

The group kept moving. After passing through the bamboo forest, we hit dense, swampy forest of Hagenia trees. The guides used machetes to help us push through thick brush and crawling vines. Stinging nettles were everywhere and burned our skin through our clothes. Noon came, then 1:00, and still we kept climbing up, and so did Susa. I became a little worried with the passing time, as I had carried little food and water, mistakenly expecting us to find the gorillas within an hour or two. But finally, the trekkers radioed our guides to tell them that the group had turned around and was heading back down the volcano slopes. We were lucky, at just that moment we were discussing whether to continue on or turn and head back down. Upon this news, we continued and at 2:45, the trekkers radioed us again to tell us we were now very close and should be prepared to stop, leave our belongings and move closer to the Susa group.

I’ll never get used to the feeling I had upon first seeing the gorillas each of the two treks, cannot imagine how my heart would not ever race, or my breathing would ever remain steady – it is overwhelming. Susa did not disappoint, and the trek was worth every muddy uphill step and stinging nettle to get to them. There were gorillas everywhere, so many of them sitting together, playing or eating. Most gorillas consume about 50 pounds of roots, stems and leaves every day – bamboo, celery, blackberries. We followed the dominant silverback as he moved through the brush. When he moved the rest of the group did, and so did we. He tore apart branches, pulled down trees. One startling moment came as I crouched on a “path” only a few feet from the silverback, watching him. He then stood up – a giant beast towering over me – I stumbled over backwards, worried he was about to come crushing down on me, and covered my head. He grabbed onto a tree limb over his head – over my head – and lifted himself up off the ground, using his entire weight to pull down the tree. Leaves and branches covered me. He sat back down, and ate. And I sat back up, exhilarated, and continued to snap pictures – him not paying much attention to me, but me completely fascinated by this male silverback mountain gorilla, and his large family, in the Parc National Des Volcans, Rwanda.

(Pictured: Gorillas of the Susa Group; the third picture was taken by me on my back, after I fell backwards as the dominant male silverback stood up to grab a tree limb over my head; the fourth picture is the aftermath of this, the silverback sitting and eating after he pulled down the tree)

Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda

2007-10-02T10:35:00.000-04:00

I spent the last two weeks of August in Zanzibar and Rwanda. I will begin with Rwanda. I had been interested in Rwanda’s terrible recent history – the 1994 genocide – for some time, but also intrigued by what I had heard about its present. Friends who had visited described it as clean, safe and beautiful, with nice roads, steady economic growth and good governance. One friend here in Kenya who travels there frequently on UN missions told me, “you will find it hard to believe that what happened there, in 1994, happened.” Nicholas Kristof, in a July NY Times editorial, described it as “the little nation that could” and its President, Paul Kagame, as “honest, intelligent and capable.”
Also, Rwanda has the mountain gorillas, spread over reserves established in the Virunga volcanoes, located in three countries: Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. But, Rwanda is the place to see them I had been told – where Dian Fossey conducted her research, in the Parc National Des Volcans. This would be my first destination after arriving in Kigali on Friday morning, 24 August. I had a friend’s driver, Sabiti, pick me up at the Kigali airport. Sabiti, like most Rwandans I discovered, spoke only French and Kinyarwanda, and little English. But we managed as he drove me to pick up my gorilla trekking permit at the tourism office; make some hotel bookings for later in the week; grab lunch and head to the bus terminal to take a 2-hour drive to the town of Ruhengeri, just outside the Parc National Des Volcans.

The bus, or actually an oversized mini-van, cost only $2. It was a memorable ride – the roads are fantastic, best I’ve seen outside South Africa; and the countryside is beautiful, being the land of 1000 hills, there truly is not a flat piece of land anywhere. But, what really made the trip worth the money was the woman seated next to me who threw-up, either in a bag or outside the window, for the entire second-half of the drive up and down the twisting mountain roads; the man seated behind me who belted out French pop songs in an off-key voice the entire way; and the crowd which awaited, as we pulled into the stop at Ruhengeri, to board the bus back to Kigali, and aggressively pushed on before I could get off, leaving me trapped in the back until I shouted out the window to the driver for help.

We made it to Ruhengeri shortly before sunset and I then found a taxi to take me another 15 km to a small guesthouse located in Kinigi, right outside the Parc National Des Volcans headquarters. It was a beautiful evening as the sun set behind the shadowy, bluish-grey outline of the Virungas, into Congo and beyond. I ate an early dinner and went to bed, very excited for my first day of gorilla trekking the next morning.

I had to be at the Parc headquarters at 7 a.m. on 25 August to be assigned a gorilla group and start the trek to find them. Currently, there are 7 habituated gorilla groups that can be visited by tourists in Rwanda. The groups vary in size and characteristics, and are scattered throughout different parts of the Parc. 8 tourists per day can visit each gorilla group and each trekking permit costs a very pricey $500 – part of which (I was told) goes to the local communities and the rest goes to pay the guides and trekkers and help with conservation – and as a personal experience, I found this amount more than worth it. Besides Dian Fossey’s book, “Gorillas in the Mist,” another book I have enjoyed reading about the Rwanda mountain gorillas is “In the Kingdom of Gorillas” by Bill Weber and Amy Vedder, a husband and wife team who also helped begin this gorilla tourism project in Rwanda.

I was assigned to the Kwitonda group, a group of 16 gorillas which originated on the Congo side of the mountains before migrating over to Rwanda. The Kwitonda group is led by a dominant silverback male and also included two blackback males, a few adult females and lots of juveniles, including twins. We had two guides who first briefed us on the gorilla group (names, ages, personalities, distinguishing nose patterns of each, etc.) and on the rules and procedures (only one hour with the gorillas once we find them, no flash photography, do not touch them, etc.). We then piled back into our cars and drove 30 minutes to a northern part of the Parc where we would begin the trek to locate the Kwitonda group.

Professional Rwandan trekkers follow each gorilla group every day, from the time they awake in the morning until they nest at night, partly to protect the gorillas against poachers, but for tourists, the trekkers help guide us along on our hike so we can meet up with the gorillas. Some days the trek to the gorillas can be difficult (as it was on my second day), but on this day, we hiked only a short 45 minutes through dense forest before we received a call from the trekkers to tell us that the gorillas had stopped to enjoy their mid-morning breakfast and that we were very close to them. We then stopped, left our backpacks and everything but our cameras behind, and walked another 10 minutes until we arrived to a small clearing in the trees where the 16 gorillas of Kwitonda had stopped to eat, rest and play.

“That must be a man dressed in a gorilla costume,” I thought, “That cannot be a real gorilla!!!” My heart beat fast. There he was, the silverback of Kwitonda, only 10 feet from me, as I broke into the clearing. He sat there by himself, pulling down tree limbs and gnawing away at branches and roots. Huge. Bare chest just like King Kong. He did not seem to mind us and, despite his size and the fact I knew that he could easily tear me into pieces, there was something so peaceful about him. I sat down on the ground and watched.

Only a few feet away from the silverback, one of the adult females groomed and played with an energetic baby boy gorilla. They rolled around on the grass just a few yards from me. The young gorilla then noticed me, sitting now mere feet from him, holding my camera up. “Oh, he’s coming towards me,” I whispered to the guide standing behind me. “Stay still,” he said. I did, and the curious gorilla moved ever closer. “He’s going to take my camera,” I said to the guide, who then reached over me and took my camera, just in time, as the young gorilla extended his hairy, human-like arm towards me and grabbed hold of my jacket. The guide then pulled me back – not out of any concern for my safety, but to keep the humans as separate as possible from the gorillas. I CANNOT believe this, I thought, and, boy, did I want to pick the little guy up and hold him.

The silverback then got up to move to a slightly different location, crossing in front of me so close I could have reached out and touched him. In low branches right over my head, a few of the juveniles swung around, coming down the tree trunks towards us to take a closer look. I wondered who was observing whom here. While most of the adults paid no attention to us, the young were ever curious, trying to come as close as they could. We moved around in the bushes, to get better views of the blackback males, to follow the silverback around, to get closer to the females. And for an hour, we just sat, took pictures (hundreds) and watched. I could have watched for hours. Their eyes are transfixing. They are gentle, playful, caring, funny. I cannot even begin to describe fully to you what it is like to see and be so close to these beautiful animals. I had not intended to go for a second day of trekking, but after this amazing experience visiting the Kwitonda group, I headed back to the Parc headquarters to scramble around for another permit to go back and visit a different group while in Rwanda.

(Pictured – all taken just feet from the gorillas, no zooming necessary!: The silverback of Kwitonda; the young baby boy gorilla right before he reached out to try to grab my camera, but got my jacket instead; the young baby boy gorilla behind me; one of the juveniles playing in the path in front of me.)

Another visit to Bap

2007-09-15T02:39:00.000-04:00

My blog is out of order a little sequentially, so let me explain where I am now. After the trip to South Africa with my family in late May and early June, I spent until mid-August mostly working on Millennium Cities work, and only taking weekend trips, all of which I described in the few blogs before the "South Africa with Family" ones. My weekend trips also included another visit back to Cape Town for a long weekend at the first of August, just to see the children, especially one of the one's I adore greatly, Sinazo (pictured here). A full Millennium Cities schedule took me up to mid-August, when I then had two weeks of holiday, to Tanzania and Rwanda, which I'll tell you about shortly. As of today, I'm back working at full steam for some upcoming MCI events, actually sitting here in Kisumu right now, about to take a trip out to Homa Bay for the afternoon and to attend the birthday party for a director, an American women, at Dominion Farms. It will be only weekend trips until end of October, when I travel to Ethiopia. Hope that helps - my ordering of the blogs, I realize, has been a bit confusing!

Scenes from Khayelitsha

2007-09-15T02:27:00.000-04:00

Car parts

Houses D17 and D16

Isaacs Shoe Repair

Woman bbq'ing a sheep, skull on log

South Africa with Family – Cape Town

2007-09-15T02:20:00.000-04:00

We arrived in Cape Town from our Garden Route drive on Saturday (this was 2nd June), to spend 6 days there. I enjoyed showing them what is one of my favorite places, and most especially to introduce them to the children at Baphumelele.

Unfortunately, the weather this time of year in Cape Town is not very friendly and we had only one day – Sunday – with plenty of sunshine, bright blue skies and a crisp breeze blowing in from the ocean – weather that typifies the city to me. The rest of our visit, it was cold and rainy. But, we took advantage of that sunny Sunday by touring the city from atop the double decker bus, seeing Table Mountain and having lunch on the beach in Camps Bay. I think my family was taken aback by how beautiful so much of the city is, proclaiming they could easily take a beach front home in Camps Bay, Clifton or Greenpoint – at prices, believe it or not, that currently rival those in the Hamptons!

On Monday then, after a Cape Malay lunch at Biesmiellah in the Bo Kaap section of the city centre, we drove out for a drive through some of the townships, ending up in Khayelitsha and the children’s home where I previously volunteered, Baphumelele. I had not been back there since I left in January and seeing everyone brought back a flood of emotions. I believe this visit was hard for my family as well – seeing all of these orphaned or abandoned children, being overwhelmed by the smells of their nappies, illnesses and medicines, driving through Khayelitsha on a grim rainy day, with its tin shacks for homes and containers for stores, its open fires and piles of trash, you see, smell, feel the utter despair and life’s unfairness. My mother cried after the visit to Bap, something not easy.

It is difficult, after a day spent in Khayelitsha, to then head back out to tour some Cape Town’s more beautiful locations, worlds away from the townships. But we did, spending Tuesday out in the wine country of Franschhoek and Stellenbosch, Wednesday back shopping and relaxing in Cape Town, and Thursday on a tour to the Cape of Good Hope, Simon’s Town to see penguins and one more winery at Constantia. Then, everyone headed back to the US, and I, back to Kenya.

(Pictured: My mother, sister & I at Table’s Mountain with Devil’s Peak behind; Family at Haut Bay; My father with Jessica and Shakes; Matt & Jesse in front of Fairview winery, also known for its goat cheeses)

South Africa with Family – the Garden Route

2007-09-06T06:16:00.000-04:00

I am just back from a two week trip to Zanzibar and Rwanda, and some exciting things are happening on the Millennium Cities front, all of which I look forward to sharing with you soon…but first, I want to finish up the family trip in South Africa.

After the Shamwari Game Reserve, we went back to Port Elizabeth, rented a car to drive the “Garden Route” along the Indian Ocean coast towards Cape Town. The Garden Route has a perfectly mild temperature, year round rainfall and lush vegetation – hence, its name. We spent 3 days and 2 nights driving, but really should have taken a few extra days to allow more time for hiking, kloofing, bungee jumping or kayaking along the riverways, lagoons, coastal shores and national parks that line the Route. Although, I think my parents were all too happy to forgo those activities.

But the Garden Route is breathtakingly beautiful, and every dozen kilometers you hit another picturesque little town with an Afrikaans or Khoi-San name that none of us could pronounce. We stopped on the first day for lunch in Jeffrey’s Bay, known for its surfing and the international Billabong Surfing Competition held each July. From there it was on past Storm’s River to spend our first night at the Fish Eagle Lodge in Knysna. Knysna, considered by some the most beautiful town in South Africa, is situated between a peaceful lagoon and lush forests. It is flanked by the Knysna Heads, two very striking sandstone cliffs that form a channel through which the sea pours into the lagoon. Oysters were the food of choice in Knysna.

The next morning we detoured off the Garden Route for a day, turned north, to spend the night at the La Plume Guest House in Oudtshoorn, located in the expansive landscape of the Klein Karoo. Oudsthoorn is all about ostriches – there are 400 farms in the area and everyone eats, wears and, yes for some, even rides the large birds. La Plume Guest House is an ostrich farm as well and that night for dinner we had, what else, but ostrich steak. And for breakfast, yep, ostrich eggs scrambled – one egg is enough for the entire guest house. The next morning we arose, and although we did not do anything touristy like ride ostriches, we did do something touristy like go pet caged leopards at a nearby wilderness park (or zoo). We then drove the pass through the Outeniqua Mountains to George, Wilderness and on along the coast until we hit Cape Town in the early evening.

(Pictured: Break along the garden route, while watching out for baboons; Family at the Knysna Heads; Doing what we do best on vacation - lounging in the sun at the La Plume Guesthouse; Ostriches in Oudtshoorn, looking remarkably like my sister).

South Africa with Family - Shamwari Game Reserve

2007-08-13T11:22:00.000-04:00

After arriving in Port Elizabeth, we immediately headed an hours drive away, to the Shamwari Game Reserve, a private reserve, where we would spend the next two days/three nights. It was the usual, stressful couple of days, viewing elephants, giraffe, lions, cheetahs and leopards up close, having good meals, and enjoying drinks together as the sun set over beautiful South African landscape. We saw 4 of the Big 5 - rhino, elephant, leopard and lion - but did not see the buffalo. I think my family would agree, that seeing such animals, up close, and wild is truly an awesome experience! Then, after the few days there, we headed back to Port Elizabeth, to rent a car and drive the Garden Route....

Well, having some blogger troubles, posting pictures, so bear with me. But pictured: dad with elephants; baby and mother leopard (yes, sideways); family in front of safari vehicle; jesse and amy with giraffe.

Tomorrow I am heading for a few weeks of travels, to Tanzania and Rwanda. Will try to post while away, but if not, I'll be back after August 30th. Hope you are well!

South Africa with Family – Johannesburg

2007-08-11T09:20:00.000-04:00

Last weekend I was back in Cape Town, to visit for a few days with the children out at Baphumelele and another volunteer friend of mine, Jayney, who was also in Cape Town from New York City. But, I had been back before, at the end of May / early June, during a two week trip to South Africa with my entire family.

We started in Johannesburg. I remember, upon first arriving in Johannesburg last October, finding amazement that I was actually in Africa – everything seemed so new and different to me. Now, after 5 months in Kenya (at that time), I felt that I had landed in Europe or the US! What I thought seemed underdeveloped before, now, compared to Kenya and other Sub-Saharan African countries, seemed modern, efficient and very “first world.” Where I thought I had observed poverty before, now I realize you have to search more for it – actually drive into Soweto or Khayelitsha – whereas, in Kenya, you are hit with poverty on every street corner, you cannot escape it, it hits your daily life much more directly. True, South Africa has some overwhelming problems – the HIV/AIDs and orphan crisis, vast townships, uncontrolled immigration, crime and, I think, still a very segregated anti-Apartheid society – but, maybe because of its developed economy, maybe because it did not have the same type of colonial history as other parts of Africa, maybe because tribalism does not seem as much a factor, maybe it has better resources, maybe because its first anti-Apartheid ruler was Nelson Mandela, maybe because corruption does not seem as rampant – I’m not sure – but it gives me more reason to be hopeful that in due time its government and peoples will sort out these problems. Plus, I just love South Africa, and am fascinated by its history and peoples all the same.

We spent two full days in Johannesburg, which was plenty of time. Johannesburg has some good shopping and restaurants, and there are some must-see sights, but basically it is a large business-oriented city without much for tourists – or at least not as much as the rest of South Africa, in my opinion. Most of the places we visited I had seen before when there last October, but it was fun to share the experience with my family. We toured Soweto, the excellent Apartheid Museum, Mandela’s house, and the Hector Pieterson Memorial. And, we had lunch at Wandi’s, a shabeen in Soweto, and dinner at Moyo’s, a South African-themed restaurant, both where I had eaten before.

But, we also spent more time driving around the downtown and suburban areas of Johannesburg – just viewing the life there, whether it was roaming on the street of the Newtown district or locked-up behind walled compounds in the Rosebank suburb. We had a car with a driver/guide for both days, which is about the only way a tourist can safely get around Johannesburg, I think. Crime such as car-jackings are still a large problem. And, best of all, we had some other great meals at different restaurants, such as Linger Longer in the Sandton suburb, where we had a dinner that could have rivaled most in NYC! But, after two days in Johannesburg, we were ready to catch a flight to the coastal town of Port Elizabeth.

(Pictured: Eating! In line to get food at Wandi’s shabeen; Jesse, Amy and Matt (dressed alike it seems) with painted faces at Moyo’s)

Weekend Trips Part III – Wedding in Kisumu

2007-08-01T08:04:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I bumped into the Mayor of Kisumu, Her Worship Prisca Auma Misachi, in the halls of the Kisumu Town Hall. As she often does to me, she pulled me aside rather dramatically, “Ashley, come into my office so I can whisper something into your ear,” she said to me. The Mayor is a large woman who towers over me in an intimidating fashion, and I always do what she tells me, usually scurrying after her. I expected that I had done something wrong – breached some protocol as is often typical. Instead, what she wanted was to invite me to her son’s wedding – she insisted I come actually – to be held the following weekend on Saturday 14 July. Of course, I thought, this should be fun, even though I do not know her son, or even his name.

So I spent that weekend in Kisumu, spending Friday night with some friends there, having dinner at an outdoor Indian restaurant that makes the best chicken tikka – grilled right on the side of the street. Then Saturday, after buying a wedding gift at the local grocery store (a nice glass pitcher with 4 glasses), I headed for the gardens at Tom Mboya Labor College promptly at noon, the time stated on the wedding invitation. I had been warned not to arrive then – remember, this is Africa everyone said to me – but of course, I did, thinking it better to be early than to show up late to the Mayor’s son’s wedding. Of course, everyone had been correct as the wedding did not begin until close to 2:00. Besides me, many local people from the community had also arrived early and were seated (some lying) under trees lining the edge of the open garden space where the ceremony would take place. They were not given seats. I guess they are not “official” invites, I thought.

I was surprised by how nice the arrangements were. Three large tents were set up for the guests, draped with burgundy and gold flowers and ribbons. The Mayor’s sister immediately ushered me to one of two head tables, where most of the Mayor’s other children and their friends sat. I felt a little ridiculous about that, especially since I only just learned the name of the bride and groom. I sat there and watched everyone arrive – men in their best suits, usually a little too large for them, and women in beautiful, colorful dresses and head scarves, which were also large – towering – but very regal. I wish I could dress like that without being laughed at, I thought….and why do I look especially white today…I think I’m losing pigmentation while here, but how is that possible? So I sat for two hours, watching, musing, and when possible, introducing myself to everyone who crossed my path, trying to explain who-in-the-world I was.

The choir began singing a little before 2:00 and ushered in several priests and bishops. The Mayor’s first born daughter, who now lives in Arusha, Tanzania, made all of the outfits for the bridesmaids and groomsmen, who proceeded down the aisle, just as in any wedding in the U.S., and the ceremony began. For the most part, there was nothing unusual about the ceremony other than it was the longest I had attended, at 3 hours, had more religious men than usual, with 5 priests / bishops, and was frequently punctuated by odd taped sounds of waves and birds.

It was after the official ceremony, then, when some of the fun began. A Nairobi-based rap artist called “Preacher” rapped a few songs as the wedding party walked back down the aisle. He had a small fan club which hollered from the sidelines. This must be a friend of the groom, I thought.

A traditional Luo (the tribe in Western Kenya) spiritual woman, dressed in all white, walked around with a hand broom, chanting and blessing us all as she waved the broom in our faces. Or, at least I hoped we were being blessed, she chanted in Luo so I could not understand, but am counting on it to bring good luck my way!

And the crowds appeared from everywhere, hundreds from the community, to eat. Uh oh, I thought, I’m starved and there is no way I’ll make it through that buffet line with this number of people. I walked to the back of the line, which then extended for yards, but was quickly spotted by the Mayor’s sister again, and ushered to the front – one more thing that made me slightly uncomfortable. I did bring a gift though, I thought. There was a huge amount of food – grilled goat, all kinds of stews, chicken cooked every which way, fried Tilapia, fried Nile Perch fish heads, ugali (maize meal), potatoes cooked 100 different ways, spinach, chilis, plantains, beans, bread and so much more. I piled my plate high and walked back to the table. A band was playing but no one seemed to pay much attention for all the eating. At this point, it was almost dark and it seemed a storm was about to roll in. The Mayor and other local politicians made the rounds to greet everyone, some of the wedding party gave a few speeches, and the bride and groom cut the cake.

Just before the storm arrived and, with it, the usual Kisumu electricity black-out, the bride and groom were presented with a goat. It looked alive to me, from where I sat, with a cute, furry, baby goat head. I walked up to get a closer look and take a picture. But its body looks a little odd, I thought, as I approached…oh, it has been skinned! And covered in little slices of carrots and peppers. I jumped back as it moved in the wind, the green leaves hanging from its mouth flapped about. Unsure still, is it alive or dead, I asked the men around me, who laughed? Dead. Body skinned and fried. Head left intact. Traditional Luo wedding gift. My pitcher and glasses seeming not too special now, I thought.

The bride and groom then cut the goat and brought pieces to the head tables to feed their family members. Time to go, I thought, as the bride headed my way with some fried baby goat bits. She eyed me and I could tell, was still not certain who-in-the-world I was. Uh, no thanks, I stammered, I am so full, ahhh, and not really family either, but am honored all the same! I then excused myself, said good-bye and thanks to the Mayor, and headed back to the hotel before the storm hit, having thoroughly enjoyed myself at this wedding in Kisumu.

(Pictured: the bride and groom; me and the mayor; Luo spiritual woman blessing my table; the goat gift)

Weekend Trips Part II – Nakuru

2007-07-27T07:49:00.000-04:00

On another weekend recently, I left on Friday morning from Kisumu to meet up with my friend Alia and her sister, who was visiting from China, in Lake Nakuru National Park. For about 10 US dollars, I boarded the Easy Coach bus at 9:00 am and arrived in Nakuru at 1:00, after a beautiful drive through Kenya’s tea country (but the road, not so beautiful), just a little bit before Alia, who drove her own car from Nairobi. We spent all weekend in the park, staying at a very small, nice lodge called Sarova Lion Hill.

In the middle of the 180 sq km park sits Lake Nakuru, a soda lake, completely covered by pink flamingoes, like a big cake layered in pink icing. On the shores graze dozens of white rhinos and hundreds of buffaloes. The road around the park is jammed with baboons, warthogs, gazelles and waterbucks. We were even lucky to see some lions while out and about. We spent the weekend driving around the park, eating, reading and sleeping – very relaxing, and unlike other parks in Kenya such as the Masai Maara, not very crowded.

Sunday midday, I boarded the Easy Coach bus in Nakuru town to head back to Kisumu while my friends drove the opposite direction back to Nairobi. I had one of those favorite Kenyan moments on the way back. I managed to procure the single seat in the front, right by the stairs leading up on the bus, next to the driver. Typical of Kenyan bus rides, we stopped willy-nilly along the way, for people to go behind bushes to the “restroom,” to let people on and off at random places, and to buy goods from roadside markets. You can’t read on the bus because the road is too bumpy, so I just sat back, enjoying the scenery and listening to my Ipod.

Then, at one stop not too far from Kisumu, so that the passengers could buy produce I, literally, found myself in the middle of a vegetable fight. What has always fascinated me in Kenya is the lack of diversification among products sold at the little roadside shacks, and what leads customers to choose one vendor over the other. You’ll see a dozen ladies sitting on the side of the road, all selling the exact same thing – in front of them sit neat little pyramids of potatoes, stacks of carrots, and piles of cabbage. We stopped and three women from the back of the bus walked to the front, and stood beside me. All the women on the side of the road – about 6 of them – immediately ran to the bus and climbed the stairs, so they were right at my feet. There was no room for 9 women in the small staircase and aisle in the front of the bus, causing them to invade a little too much of my personal space.

The passengers gave some money and took some produce from a couple of the women sellers. But, apparently this upset the others, who did not receive anything. Before I knew it, shouting back and forth began, and those unlucky sellers started to throw their potatoes, carrots and cabbages into the bus. Of course, most of this landed on my lap. The three female passengers grabbed the vegetables, mostly from my lap, and threw them back, also shouting, loudly. Back and forth this went – vegetables, as well as some money, lots of words and a bit of light slapping – all over, around and at me. I kid you not, I was covered in produce…and the women.

What fascinated me the most was that the rest of the bus and the driver just sat there, like all was perfectly normal. After a few minutes of this, I looked over at the driver and yelled, please, can you do something! He then jumped up, pushed the veggie vendors back – with a bit too much force it seemed – slammed the door shut, and we took off. I, still covered in food, which was also all over the aisle around me, turned to look back at the rest of the passengers, hoping to find one person to make eye contact with and to smile, one person who would acknowledge with me how ridiculously funny the scene was. But, I couldn’t, they all just sat and continued to stare solemnly out the window. I turned back around, brushed myself off a little more, put my Ipod speakers back in my ears, looked out the window, and silently laughed to myself, loving the fact that I am in Kenya right now.

(Pictured: flamingoes on Lake Nakuru; 2 buffaloes relaxing in front of the Lake...we were really that close, sitting in Alia's car.)

Weekend Trips Part I – Longonot

2007-07-26T10:55:00.000-04:00

Even when busy over the last two months with MCI work, I have still had some great weekend trips away, in Kenya. This is truly an amazing and beautiful country, with so much diverse landscape – coasts, desert, mountains, valleys, lakes, volcanoes.

One such weekend a few weeks ago, several friends and I drove an hour and half outside Nairobi, into the Rift Valley, to Longonot National Park. Mt Longonot is a dormant volcano rising 1000 meters above the Rift Valley floor. We hiked about an hour before we reached the rim of the volcano, then spent another four hours hiking around the entire rim, which included a steep (steeper than we expected!) climb to the very peak where we stopped to have a picnic lunch. Along the way, we saw very few other hikers. The views from atop Mt Longonot are stunning, you can see for miles and miles across the Rift Valley and toward Lake Naivasha – and it is quiet and peaceful, makes you feel like you are the only person on the planet! A nice respite from Nairobi and a little too much work!

(Picture: At base of Longonot with friends Salla (Finland), Christophe (France) and Sophie (Finland); Looking into the crater and then beyond, to the Rift Valley)

Investing in Kisumu, and Kenya?

2007-07-14T11:55:00.000-04:00

Since Egypt, a lot of my time has been spent preparing the Investment Guide to Kisumu, as well as coordinating other investment work by KPMG and UNIDO, all in an attempt to finalize reports for launch at a large Business Roundtable with the Government of Kenya, held by the Economist Conferences (related to the magazine) and co-sponsored by Millennium Cities Initiative, to be held 17-18 July. Our goal was to have President Kibaki launch the Guide – which is the first for a Millennium City, and we also think the first real investor’s guide to an African city. Then, we will use it to promote Kisumu and lead a trip of foreign investors to Kisumu immediately after the Roundtable and in October…well, as you’ll see below, things don’t always go as planned...

I worked in Kisumu with a consultant, an expert in putting together African country investment guides from Canada, during most of the month of June. Together, we worked to pull together investor stories and quotes, information on promising sectors for investment and reports on infrastructure and other challenges to investment in Kisumu, and Kenya. For promises, we are highlighting agro-processing, aquaculture, rice, cotton, peanut butter / peanut oil, ethanol, regional tourism and water transport.

During this time, my relationship with many individuals in the Kisumu private sector became strong – they have been an incredibly supportive group, a group of thriving business people who are very welcome to the idea of competition. I have toured their factories and farms – fish processing or confectionary or ethanol factories, bakeries and hotels, rice and sugar mills. They have invited me to their homes for dinner and sat with me dozen of times in the hotel, telling me stories – mostly horror stories of trying to do business here, of corruption from all levels of government, of overwhelming infrastructure problems, of constant truck hijackings, you name it – over tea or Tuskers. Many of them have become friends and enriched my time here greatly.

A few stories in particular stand out: One of my investor friends is a local Kisumu man who took over thousands of hectares of rice farms from the Government a few years ago. He took me on a tour of the farm and mill. Prior to his taking it over and reviving the rice-growing scheme, the Government had mismanaged the farm to death, pushing hundreds upon hundreds of farmers and their dependents to the brink of starvation. This investor has now become so popular in the area as a result of his work with the farmers, that he has decided to run for Member of Parliament. As we drove through the fields, I felt like I was with a rock star. Farmers and their families saw his car and came from everywhere. Our truck soon became surrounded by hundreds of rice farmers, all shouting and cheering at this businessman. We stopped and he gave an impromptu speech – the people cheered and clapped. Then he had me get out of the car and he introduced me and the work I have been doing, and I gave a speech which he had to translate into Luo. It was one of those moments that made me thrilled for politics.

As did one Saturday morning in Kisumu. I have become friends with the family of one of the leading opposition candidates, Raila Odinga, who is trying to unseat the President Kibaki in this year’s elections. Odinga is the leading contender to be the party candidate for the ODM-Kenya party, officially to oppose Kibaki. One Saturday morning in Kisumu, as I sat and had breakfast at the Imperial Hotel, the entire room cleared out except for me and our consultants. Every opposition candidate came into the room to have breakfast before attending a large state funeral for Ramogi Oneko the last remaining Kenyan freedom fighter (part of the Kapenguria Six, including Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya’s founding president) who were arrested and spent 7 years in prison during the Mau Mau rebellion for trying to overthrow the colonial government). Our friends introduced us to the politicians, while huge crowds formed outside the hotel to cheer them on – it was like having breakfast with Obama, Hillary and McCain.

And throughout this, I have become a strong believer in the ability of the private sector to invest in Africa, make good returns on their investments and do a lot more to improve the lives of hundreds of people than can development aid or the government. One of my favorite companies is Dominion Farms, started by a very successful American businessman from Oklahoma named Calvin Burgess who has the Dominion Group of Companies in the US. Near the “end” of his career, he decided to turn his attention to Africa. He’s a businessman so always thinks about his return, but also believes he can make a difference, and he is. I have spent time with various people at Dominion and I am a true believer. They have turned a swamp into a state-of-the-art rice farm, employing 600 people directly, with top rate equipment and processes which have not been seen in Kenya. THEY are teaching agriculture students about best practices. They use the rice bran to feed the tilapia and catfish that they are growing on their aquaculture farms –and are looking at how they can use the bran for baby food. They have set up communal farms and are in the process of building a community youth camp. They have built roads and provided electricity and housing. They have employed women in small economic enterprises to make honey or paper. They have gone through a great deal with the Government of Kenya and have invested a lot of money. But, will they make money? Yes, I believe so. Will they change lives? Yes, they already have.

So then, at the culmination of our work for the Investment Guide I held a two-day workshop with government and the private sector in Kisumu. The first day included closed sessions, with the private sector in the morning and the Government of Kenya in the afternoon. We had given them a draft of the Guide and wanted to hear their honest feedback on doing business in Kisumu, and Kenya. On the second day, which was a combined session of Government, business and civil society, I had hoped for 50 people to attend – but instead 80 showed up, including 3 newspapers and 4 radio stations! I gave the opening and closing speeches and served as sort of the master of ceremonies, and, most fun, was quoted in the Kenyan papers and on the radio. You can use the link to this story in Kenya’s main paper, the Daily Nation: http://allafrica.com/stories/200706251549.html

From the time of the workshop in mid-June, we worked and worked to help organize the Kisumu portion of the Kenya Business Roundtable in Nairobi with the Economist, finalize the Investment Guide and prepare for the first foreign investor mission to Kisumu. Then…last Friday, we learned that a mere 10 days beforehand, the Government of Kenya decided to pull the plug, on the Economist Business Roundtable, which would have been next week. Jeff Sachs and the American Ambassador here both tried to intervene, to no avail. (Technically, they say they have merely postponed until September, but with looming elections, we’ll see…) The Government was unhappy with an article on Kenya published in the June 6th issue of the Economist magazine. Understandably, it was an offensive article to the Government, calling the current leaders “hippos” and the State a “fragile and rotten thing.”

However, wouldn’t you like to think that, if the Government disagreed, it would have used this Roundtable – with Kibaki and all the Ministers in attendance – as a forum to explain why the article is incorrect and what they are doing good for Kenya? Wouldn’t you hope that, if the Government was serious about improving the business environment and encouraging investment, it would not have cancelled the plans of approximately 200 major corporate executives, who had signed-up to spend 2 working days in Nairobi to discuss doing business in Kenya? I would. Jeffrey Sachs is now in Kenya and will hopefully meet with the President to insure the Roundtable goes forward in September. Otherwise I'm afraid it is not a good sign for the Government's willingness to improve the investment conditions in Kenya.

(Pictured: (1) Kisumu Chamber of Commerce office, desperately needing a new one; (2) an old ship sitting abandoned and surrounded by water hyacinth at the almost desolate Kisumu port, which badly needs to be revitalized as an important means to transport goods to and from Uganda and Tanzania; (3) a successful business in Kisumu, 44% Canadian owned, that produces alcohol from sugarcane molasses)

Don't Worry

2007-07-11T06:47:00.000-04:00

Family and friends, I'm still here in Nairobi, enjoying myself and working. Sorry to be behind on postings but will be back with a few later this week and next week. Things have been hectic in the Millennium Cities world the past few months, but are beginning to calm down, and my travels are going to pick back up again soon also. So, since some of you have been inquiring, I wanted to let you know I'll have some more postings up soon.

Ashley

My Own Palace Walk

2007-06-25T10:24:00.000-04:00

Right before I arrived to Cairo, I started reading Naguib Mahfouz’ book, Palace Walk, the first of a trilogy about a Cairo family, for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1988. What I most looked forward to doing in Cairo, was simply to wander the streets of the old Islamic quarter, where the Al Jawad family of Mahfouz’ books, live and work. I would spend 2 days by myself doing this. I wanted to walk every inch of the Islamic area, through each gate of the old city, then to the Coptic quarter, the Citadel, Al Azhar park and the City of the Dead. And that I did. Through my housemate and another friend at work in Nairobi, I had two friends living in Cairo who would meet me for dinner at night on Sunday and Monday (April 29 & 30th). But during the day, they worked (Friday and Saturday, but not Sunday, is the weekend there), which gave me the time during the day to explore exactly as I wanted.

I started on Sunday, by having the taxi let me out at the large mosque of Al-Azhar, where I put on a full robe and head scarf and walked inside to sit and gaze at the tiles of the courtyard and towers of the minarets. I was led up to the top of one minaret – the first of probably a half dozen over two days – by a man from the mosque who wanted a little baksheesh, or tip, afterwards – the first of probably two dozen tips I gave. From Al-Azhar mosque, I started to roam the streets. I noticed so many men sitting out at cafés and drinking tea while smoking the sheesha pipe, at any hour of the day, something not enjoyed by the women. I was fascinated by the young men walking through the streets with large boards on their shoulders, on which they carried loaves of pita, or trays held high over their heads, on which they carried glasses of tea – a delivery service that amazed me for the fact that more glasses did not drop and break in the crowded, tight quarters of Islamic Cairo. I discovered that almost each shop or café had a clay jug hanging on its outside front wall, with cups nearby, which the Egyptians would use to stop and drink water. As it has been for centuries, it is custom in Cairo to offer water to the public for free. This made me think of Kenya and how most do not have access to clean water – in Kisumu, less than 40% of the 500,000 people have access to safe, piped water!

I sat in the grassy area of the Midan el-Hussein, right in front of the Mosque of Hussein, which I could not go in as a woman. From there I wandered down the main street in the market area, Khan el-Khalili, past the perfume and spice bazaars, and then turned onto the street that is known as Palace Walk, in reference to Mahfouz’ book of the same name. I walked all the way to the northern gates of old city, and back again, through the southern gates to the Citadel, where the Mosque of Mohammed Ali, looms over Cairo. For two days I did this, from 8:30 to 5, stopping only to have a quick lunch of hummus, tahini and bread, or to go inside a few museums: the overwhelming large and packed Egyptian museum, which is most famous for its King Tut exhibit; the small and well-done Coptic Museum; and my favorite – the Gayer Anderson house, a small, quaint Islamic-styled house owned by a British major from the 1930s-40s that is packed with interesting artifacts.

I think I found myself inside every large mosque in Cairo. On the final day, I walked to the Al-Azhar park, recently built by the Aga Khan foundation. I sat for several hours in an outdoor restaurant at the top of this beautiful park, which gazes out across Cairo with a perfect view of the Citadel and Mohammed Ali mosque in the distance. There, I finished Mahfouz’ Palace Walk, as well as my own, and picked out my favorite passage from the book, the thoughts of the matriarch of the Al Jawad family, living as a virtual prisoner in her home, with only the view of Cairo from her rooftop to comfort her:

“She was awed by the minarets which shot up, making a profound impression on her. Some were near enough for her to see their lamps and crescent distinctly, like those of Qala’un and Barquq. Others appeared to her as complete wholes, lacking details, like the minarets of Al-Husayn, Al-Ghuri and Al-Azhar. Still other minarets were at the far horizon and seemed phantoms, like those of the Citadel and Rifa’i mosques. She turned her face towards them with devotion, fascination, thanksgiving and hope…It was a view that had grown on her over a quarter of a century. She never tired of it. The view had been a companion for her in her solitude and a friend in her loneliness…”

(Pictured: Looking out from a woman's balcony (where woman could see out, but no one could see in) at Gayer Anderson house; restaurant in the Al-Azhar park; view of the Citadel and Mohammed Ali mosque from Al-Azhar park)

Next up, Exploring Cairo

2007-06-11T10:22:00.000-04:00

I have found myself lagging a little behind on my blog. In real time, just yesterday I arrived back in Nairobi after spending two wonderful weeks in South Africa with my entire family – mother, father, sister, brother and sister-in-law. Prior to that, May was, and June now will be, a very busy month for me and the Millennium Cities Initiative, working primarily on the foreign investment prong of our work, but also preparing to start the health and education needs assessments. I will tell you all about the trip to South Africa and the current status of the MCI work soon.

But for now, because I cannot help but go chronologically, I am going to back up to April 27 and Cairo. Several weeks after the Lake Turkana trip, I found myself facing a national holiday in Kenya, Labor Day, which fell this year on Tuesday, May 1. Of course, I could not just stay in Nairobi, so I flew to Cairo on Friday, April 27, for a long 4-day weekend there. I had been to Cairo briefly when in college, on a weekend trip while working on an archaeological dig in Israel. I remember at that time finding Cairo dirty, smoggy, chaotic and dangerous. This time, arriving from Nairobi, I found it developed – with good roads, wireless internet access everywhere, plenty of modern stores and restaurants, even Starbucks; much less poor – even in the heart of the old Islamic section of Cairo, the people seemed to enjoy a standard of living well above millions here in Kenya, one sign being plenty of KFCs and McDonalds, restaurants most cannot afford in Kenya; and much safer – I felt very at ease walking around even into the early evening.

I stayed in a little hotel called Hotel Longchamps on the small, tree-lined residential island of Zamalek, situated in the middle of the Nile in the heart of Cairo. It reminded me of some neighborhoods in Paris, and after my arrival that afternoon, I enjoyed walking along the streets, looking at the old buildings that now house many of the embassies and sitting for coffee in an outdoor café. My hotel room had a balcony looking across the Nile into the heart of Islamic Cairo. So that evening, I sat on the balcony as the sun set, staring at the hundreds of minarets that line Cairo’s skyline while the muezzin prayer calls filled the air. I found it exotic and enchanting and could not wait to start exploring.

The next morning I started out early with a driver/guide named Ibrahim, to do what everyone does first on a visit Cairo – see the pyramids. We first drove south along the banks of the Nile to North Saqqara, where the pyramid age began in the 27th Century B.C., when the royal architect Imhotep enlarged a mastaba tomb to create the first step pyramid for King Zoser. I loved the drive to North Saqqara, seeing the fertile grounds along the Nile contrasted with the vast desert, as well as the life conducted along the river, from fruit sellers to carpet makers.

I did not, however, particularly enjoy touring the pyramids. Ibrahim turned out to be more of a driver than a guide, so I was left by myself at each sight to explore on my own. This would have been fine if I had just been left alone to wander around and read my guide book. But, from the moment I stepped out of the car at each place, I was harassed and followed by scores of men with donkeys and camels, all claiming to be “official guides” wanting to show me “special, off-limits” tombs. In a moment of weakness at the funerary complex of King Zoser, I agreed to get on a horse and ride out through the desert to view the Mastaba of Ti, a V Dynasty Tomb of some royal hairdresser named Ti. The entire ride out and back involved an argument over how far I would go and how much I would pay – if it had been up to my “guide,” we would have gone to Saudi Arabia and I would have paid enough to put his three children through school.

After arriving at the Mastaba of Ti, a few other “guards” and “guides” swarmed from out of nowhere and cajoled me inside the tomb and, for some Egyptian pounds to each of them, into taking pictures of the friezes and reliefs. They would all look anxiously outside the tomb, whisper and tell me to hurry. They did a wonderful job of making me feel as if I was just like Howard Carter upon his discovery of the tomb of King Tut - it was all a marvelous racket I would have found humorous had I not been so annoyed.

After North Saqqara, we traveled back along the Nile, north to see the three great pyramids of Giza – Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus. As the sole surviving member of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, they are stunning. Even with the skyline of Cairo and too many tour buses littering the background of these three pyramids, you cannot help gaze in awe at their sheer size and mass. I spent a few hours at Giza, shooing away more guides, walking around the base of each one, climbing partially up the largest one, that of Cheops, and then making my way over to view the Sphinx.

When I was finally done, I made my way past the stage for the daily sound and light show and to the nearest KFC, where Ibrahim pulled around to pick me up, midway through a spicy chicken sandwich that I enjoyed like I have never enjoyed fast food before. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a carpet school where I did not have to buy any carpets, but of course did, and at a perfume maker, where I did not have to buy any perfume, but of course did. It was a full and exhausting day, the first of three that I would spend exploring Cairo.

(Picture: On a horse, of course, in front of the step pyramid of King Zoser; in the Mastaba of Ti; in front of the pyramids of Giza…surprisingly no one stole my camera on this day!)

Down the Trans-African Highway

2007-05-23T09:44:00.000-04:00

“There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine,” a line from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, aptly described my thoughts the next few days after leaving Lake Turkana. After two nights at the Lake, we set out northeast across the vast Chalbi desert, first making our way to North Horr where we stopped to stretch and buy cold drinks as the entire village watched. Just when I thought it could not get any hotter, dustier or more isolated…we arrived at North Horr, near the Ethiopian border. The northeast of Kenya is an area where drought conditions have persisted since 1996 and the people looked gaunt, and somewhat hostile, staring at us but rarely smiling.

The largest group in northeast Kenya consist of the Boran tribe, pastoral people whose existence began near the Bale Mountains in southern Ethiopia before they migrated south to northern Kenya. Another group in the northeast, the Gabbra, are also from Ethiopia and have become largely assimilated with the Boran. The Boran and Gabbra have adopted Somali styles in dress and culture, but they do not necessarily practice Islam, as many have been converted to Christianity by the missions in the area. We were told by our drivers not to attempt to take any pictures, as they would throw rocks at the car. And at one point during the drive across the desert, we saw a group of Gabbra men with a herd of camels coming towards our car from the distant horizon. Our drivers, visibly worried, pulled out their machetes from under the seats as we passed the group of men. Again, all stares, no smiles or friendly gestures. Living in such harsh conditions, though, I could not blame them.

By late afternoon, we arrived in Kalacha where we would stay the night at a campsite run by a local Christian mission – the only one there. Kalacha, home mostly to Gabbra people, is considered the “neatest” village in Africa - I guess because its sandy and dusty streets have been defined by meticulously placed rows of white stones. At this point in our trip, we were back to pitching tents, which we all did crowded underneath the only shade tree in the campsite. Afterwards, we immediately headed for the pool set up on top of an irrigation tank, with its water pumped in by a windmill. Yes, this is definitely where I will get cholera, I thought, but its way too damn hot to worry about that now. We soon had other things to worry about…

While we were sitting in the irrigation tank, we heard a lot of noise across the neat little road, then saw smoke and the missionary women, with scarves and skirts flying, all running across the road with buckets of water. A young Gabbra child had tipped over a burning pot in his mother’s kitchen and the hut was on fire. Immediately, we all hopped out of the tank and started grabbing buckets – pans – tins, whatever we had in the camp and, along with the missionaries, ran across the street to put out the fire. We grabbed shovels and helped throw dirt on the fire. We continued running back and forth with water buckets, working side by side with the Gabbra and the missionaries for an hour. In the end, though, the small hut that contained the kitchen burned to the ground, but we were able to save most of the separate hut where the family slept. They lost most of their valuable foodstuffs, so the next morning our group all gave the family money to buy more. In this area of the world, a few bags of maize can mean the difference between life and death.

The next morning after leaving Kalacha we joined up with the Trans-African Highway. This is a road that theoretically should run from Cairo to Cape Town, but does not. Although broken into patches, altogether it still forms the longest road in Africa. The section we hit after leaving Kalacha, which runs from the Ethiopian border down to Nairobi, is thought to be the emptiest and most dangerous part of the road because of Somali refugees in the area, the inter-tribal fighting and the armed bandits that have been known to attack tourists. Paul Theroux in his book Dark Star Safari traveled down this road and described it as “waterless desert and rutted roads and quarrelsome tribes, and a border dispute among the gun-toting Boran, and worst of all the troops of roaming heavily armed Somalis known as ‘shifta.’ Just dropping the word shifta into a proposed itinerary was enough to make traveling Africans go in the opposite direction.”

We encountered no problems, however, and that night stayed in Marsabit – an oasis –hilly town with a mist-covered, forested mountain in the backdrop. Marsabit has an eclectic mix of cultures: Gabbra herdsmen with their goats and cattle, Boran women with Somali-styled printed shawls and wraps, and Rendille boys with skins and ochre-colored braided hair. We drove through the Marsabit forest in the late afternoon and after dinner, sat around a campfire. I was overjoyed that it was cool enough for a campfire and looked forward to a good nights sleep. Not this night though. Our time around the campfire was soon interrupted by a roaming pack of hyenas that had decided to join our camp, sending us to our tents. That alone was enough to keep me up all night, but we had the added pleasure of having pitched our tents under a canopy of trees that served as the home to a group of baboons. All night long the baboons swung from branch to branch above us and fought with each other, howling and wailing as they attacked. Nicole and I sat awake all night, wondering when one of them would land on top of our tent by accident, or decide to attack us on purpose.

Glad to leave the next morning, we continued down the Trans-African Highway, finally hit tarmac road again and spent the next two nights at the Samburu National Park, close to Mt. Kenya. After 8 days, and other than a lot of dust and heat, we made it back to Nairobi – surprisingly, we had very little car trouble, did not encounter any armed bandits, did not have any rocks hurled at us, did not get bit by any scorpions and all made it back with a trip full of a experiences and laughs.

(Pictured: Boran children in North Horr; Fire in Kalacha; Gabbra men walking across the Chalbi desert)

The People Who Eat Fish

2007-05-15T08:18:00.001-04:00

We stayed for two days on the shores of Lake Turkana, in the middle of what-seemed-like nowhere, isolated and hot. After a night spent with stampeding donkeys, crawling scorpions and furious winds, our group awoke early the next morning, took cold showers – the first of many during the day – and drove 8 km around the bend of the Lake to the town of Loiyangalani, meaning “place of trees.” And, indeed, there are a few palm and acacia trees scattered around Loiyangalani where, naturally, mud or straw or tin huts clustered. But not many, as mostly the landscape is barren and stoney and littered with livestock carcasses. We needed to buy more water, and the one small store in town had barely enough for our group of 13 – and none cold. There were no newspapers. The beer had run out, as had the cold soda. We still did not have proper roads, or cell coverage. And, with temperatures near 40 C, we were dying.

Loiyangalani came into existence as a town in the 1960s, with the establishment of an Italian mission to the Elmolo people who live there. Today, the mission still plays a strong role and has established a few schools, stores, a health clinic, and of course a church. The Elmolo people, known as the “people who eat fish,” are fishing and hunting people that live along the southeastern shores of Lake Turkana. Kenyans also claim that the Elmolo tribe is the smallest – in terms of numbers –in the world. Today, there are approximately 600 Elmolo people existing. Their language is almost extinct, as the last fluently speaking person died in 1998, and so they mostly speak the language of the Samburu people.

We visited with them on the shore of the Lake. We walked up to a highpoint of the village, trailed by every child there, to observe its smallness – only a few dozen straw huts comprise it all. We bought beaded necklaces from the women and watched men carry in Nile Perch from the Lake. How the Elmolo people survive is beyond my comprehension. As is the idea that in this day and age, a place like New York City, with its wealthy financiers and glamorous fashionistas, can exist on the same planet as a place like Loiyangalani with its Elmolo people.

That afternoon, after a lunch back at the camp and another cold shower, we headed to a partially deserted lodge in town. The owner does not take guests anymore, but keeps the pool open for people like us who will pay a few hundred shillings to sit in cold water during the heat of the day. Although I feared cholera, I and everyone else did just that – sat in a cold swimming pool, looking out over Loiyangalani towards the Lake, until the sun went down.

(Pictured: looking down to the Elmolo village in Loiyangalani, you can see the Italian mission-built school buildings and church in the distant background; Elmolo children; Elmolo fisherman with Nile Perch.)

Lake Turkana

2007-05-11T02:58:00.000-04:00

I considered beginning this posting with “A Turkey Visits Turkana,” but thought that would lead to way too much eye-rolling…although that is exactly the way I felt my first few days on the trip to Lake Turkana, in remote northern Kenya. We left on Good Friday - me, my friends Sandra (from Peru) and Isis (from Germany). There were 13 of us in total and we piled into 2 large Land Cruisers, along with 2 driver-guides and a cook. As usual when traveling throughout Africa, I met such interesting people – joining us were a family from England, a woman taking time off from Credit Suisse in Zurich, a Kenyan couple working in wildlife preservation, a Swiss man teaching in Nairobi, a medical student, and a Canadian teaching in Uganda (Nicole, who became my tentmate on the trip).

It takes two long days to drive to the shores of Lake Turkana, near the village of Loiyangalani, on the southeastern shore of the Lake. That would be two days provided you have an army-tank-of-a-car, equipped with several spare tires, all the fuel you would need in case you were to get lost, and every drop of water you would need in case you ran out of fuel. I had been fascinated with Lake Turkana since reading and seeing The Constant Gardener, and hearing stories of its remoteness and the endurance it takes one to reach its shores. For once, it’s just like in the movies – as isolated, barren and majestic as it seemed when Ralph Fiennes visited there.

After leaving Nairobi, we headed north through the Rift Valley and stopped for a picnic lunch in a field of zebras. I could not help but notice all of our vegetables, bread, eggs, etc., for the 8 day trip, piled into dirty crates and placed underneath the Land Cruisers, exposed to all the dust that would be accumulated along the way. Well, this is certainly a different order of trip than the one I last took with my family, I thought, but an adventure! We then drove a few more hours, stopping briefly at touristy Thomson’s Falls, then to fill up some plastic jugs with more fuel (to be placed next to the vegetables, bread, eggs, etc.) in the small town of Rimuruti. Rimuruti is where the tarmac road ended – we did not see real road again for 7 days, until just before arriving back in Nairobi one week later.

After a few more, very bumpy, hours we arrrived at our first campsite, in the town of Maralal. I had been warned that this trip would involve true camping, but I still pictured tents with real furniture or, at the very least, a group of men who would actually pitch the tents. Not this time. Upon unloading, our driver tossed down to Nicole and me our tent. Puzzled, we looked at each other, dumped the contents onto the ground and wondered aloud what we should do with all of the metal spikes? Eventually, although last among the group, we erected our tent…however, upon observation by Peter and Regina (the Kenyan couple who, sorry for them, chose to set their tent up right next to ours), it was quickly taken down and put back up (by Peter and Regina), as they were afraid of being awoken in the middle of the night if our tent blew away.

Actually though, what kept us all awake that first night – until daybreak – was the singing and chanting we heard nearby from the Good Friday celebrations of the Samburu tribe. Like the Maasai, the Samburu wear brilliantly colored blankets and beads, although they seem to wear even brighter colors and more beads. Many of the Samburu have become Catholic, and throughout the night we heard the ecstatic conviction with which they practice their religion mixed with, what seemed to be, elements of their own tribal language and customs.

Maralal, the first of many frontier towns we would drive through, spreads out around a depression in the hills of the Mathews Range, with dusty streets crowded by Samburu people. After Maralal, we climbed into forest, dropped down across a plateau, through plains, then across a scorching valley on our way to Lake Turkana. We encountered constantly changing landscape and I could not stop repeating: we seemed to have reached the end of the earth! We passed through Death Valley – in an area of constant cattle rustling between Maasai, Samburu and Turkana tribes – where these tribes run with stolen cattle and often meet their demise because of the high temperature, lack of water and rough terrain encountered there.

Occasionally, we would pass a thatched hut or, out on the road behind a tree would appear, a herdsman, woman or child. But for hours we drove along without seeing another sign of life. We drove by a few missionary trucks, oddly packed with a priest, a nun and the Samburu. And we would be overtaken by a few lorries – the few that brought goods to northern Kenya each week –overflowing with men on a ride somewhere, probably just anywhere. We stopped to stretch our legs in one-street livestock towns such as Baragoi and South Horr, where everything in town seemed to stop as people stared at us. We continued this way all day long and stopped to have lunch near a dry sandy riverbed. It was so hot and dusty and, for some reason given my position in the open-sided Land Cruiser, I received more dust on my face and body than anyone else. I was filthy and it became quite the joke among everyone!

Eventually, coming over a rocky barren hill after miles of featureless plains of black lava, we saw the jade waters of Lake Turkana, stretching 250 km from Ethiopian border into Kenya – the biggest desert lake in the world. It is beautiful and expansive and empty. No boats. No lakeshore homes. Too many crocodiles so you cannot swim safely.

The loneliness expressed itself to me in the form of a single Turkana woman who, as we stood outside our Land Cruisers to take pictures, walked over the hill, out of nowhere, with her herd of goats. Where did you come from, I thought? And, how do you live here, in the middle of nowhere? Until very recently, the Turkana people had very little contact with the outside world. They are known as an extremely individualistic, bellicose group of people whose daily struggle for survival in the hot, dry area of northern Kenya is legendary. She stood back and just stared at us and I approached her and motioned with my camera, asking if I could take her picture. She nodded ok, and I gave her a bottle of water.

We drove down to the shore past small bunches of round, mushroom-top huts of the Turkana people. Then, we arrived at a grouping of 8 huts on the shore – these look nice I thought, and asked, what village is this? Its ours, the driver said, this is where we will stay for the next two nights! At least we did not have to pitch a tent, I thought, as I dropped my bag into the thatched hut and went to the shore with everyone else to watch the sunset, while a Turkana family brought in our fish for dinner that night…

And, what a night it was. I have never been to a hotter place – without air-conditioning or much water – or seen more crawling things, like scorpions and giant white spiders. Inside the hut was unbearable so in the middle of the night, Nicole and I awoke to move our wooden cots outside. The wind was so strong – and hot, as if someone had a hair dryer aimed at us – that I could not keep a sheet over me and every time I sat up my pillow blew away. Nicole slept with her baseball cap on to keep her hair out of her face. Then, in the middle of the night, we heard the pounding hooves and eeyoring of donkeys. Nicole and I both shot straight up – pillows and sheets flying away – as a herd of donkeys and a few Turkana men went stampeding by only a feet from us. I’m going to die by donkeys, I thought. We sat there in silent awe for a few minutes after they disappeared into the darkness, then looked over at each other and simply started laughing. It was a great feeling, to be there on the shores of Lake Turkana, in the middle of nowhere, laughing so hard we started to cry!

(Pictured: Turkana woman; Nicole and me in front of our hut on the shore of Lake Turkana (if you enlarge this picture, you will see how much dirt I have on my face and clothes); young Turkana boy with our fish for dinner)

Lamu

2007-04-26T09:56:00.000-04:00

After visiting the game parks, my father, aunt, uncle, cousin and I flew to Lamu island, one of several islands that form the Lamu archipelago off the northern coast of Kenya, near the Somalia border. It is actually so close – about 100 km away – that the people of Lamu can hear U.S. fighter planes on missions in and around Somalia and, I am told, it makes for an easy place to buy a cheap AK-47 once smuggled over the border from Somalia into Kenya. But none of this deterred us from exploring this quiet Swahili island where the only car, that of the police commissioner, currently sits without tires atop cinder blocks.

Our small propeller plane landed on Manda island on March 28th, where we were met by Omar, a Muslim Kenyan living in Lamu town. Omar piled our luggage onto an old wooden cart and pushed it a half kilometer down a dirt path to the water, where we boarded a boat that drove us along the calm channel between the islands and the Kenyan coast. Except for passing an occasional dhow, an old wooden Swahili boat with a single lateen sail, we saw almost no other boat traffic out on the water. And, except for a few parts of the island where a couple of resorts have sprung up, there is hardly any development on Lamu. Riding in the boat, we noticed only sand dunes popping up from the island’s interior, mangrove trees lining its channels and a few small villages, where the people work as dhow-makers and weavers, dotting its shoreline.

We arrived at our “hotel” at low tide and waded onto shore while the hotel staff carried our luggage back on top their heads. We walked across woven mat pathways to our open thatched bandas, entirely woven by the people in Kipungani, the nearby village. The weather was scorching hot and our bandas did not have air conditioning, so we spent a lot the time during our three days on Lamu in the water, whether showering, swimming, sailing on the hotel’s dhow, sea kayaking, snorkeling and, one of the highlights of the trip, swimming – yes, really swimming – so close I could have reached out and touched them – with bottle-nosed dolphins!

One of the mornings, though, we boarded the boat again and went back around the island to explore Lamu town, with Omar as our guide. Lamu is known as an old Arab trading town - a trading post was established there by the Omanis after vanquishing the Portuguese in the late 17th century. With the export of ivory and slavery, Lamu became a wealthy place until the British abolished slavery in 1873 and made Lamu part of the British Protectorate. Wandering around the old, narrow alleyways of Lamu town can be captivating and charming, full of young men riding donkeys, carved wooden doorways, traditional houses, mosques and markets. But, it can also seem rather disgusting and sad, smelling from sewage that runs down gulleys lining the streets, and the donkeys, and with many people sitting about idly or lying down sick on door stoops.

We toured a Swahili-style home where the women of this decoratively-painted house would spend all day inside, cooking on the second floor, only leaving to talk across the rooftops to their female neighbors. After drinking fruit milkshakes (for which Lamu is famous) out near the Lamu harbor, while watching the donkeys and people go by, we boarded the boat back for the hotel where, each night they cooked the most incredible seafood dinners which we ate outdoors under the southern hemisphere stars. Lamu has its pluses and minuses, but one thing is certain, it is an easy place to relax and lazily wile away the days!

(Pictured: Lamu town; donkey traffic jam in Lamu)

The Maasai

2007-04-21T04:49:00.000-04:00

During our four days in Amboseli National Park and the Masai Mara (March 24 28) young Maasai warriors accompanied us on walks, drives and at the camps – although they still keep their traditional customs, many of the young men now work at lodges on or near Maasai reserves. The Maasai are probably the most well-known of Kenya’s 70 tribes thanks to the bright red-checked blankets that the men wear around their shoulders and large number of beaded necklaces that the women wear around their necks. They are also distinctive for their tall, slender bodies, long-lobed ears and missing bottom front teeth - removed at a young age so that they can still receive milk and water should they go unconscious. Young male Maasai warriors wear their hair long, braided and dyed an ochre-color. There is no more striking figure in Kenya, I think, than to look across the savannah and see a tall Maasai standing out in vibrant red against a blue sky, herding hundreds of cattle along.

The Maasai are known for their pride and fierceness, and diet of blood and curdled milk. They are nomadic pastoralists who migrated from present-day Sudan in the early 17th century. By 1800 they had become a dominant group in Kenya, controlling a lot of land in the Rift Valley and plains near the Tanzanian border. European hunting safaris in the early 1900s made the Mara world famous. By the early 1960s, not surprisingly, the European hunters had almost wiped-out the lion population and the British colonialists had gazetted the Maasai land to create the Mara National Reserve for hunting and tourism. Initial efforts to resettle the Maasai met with slow success because the majority still practice nomadic pastoralism and have a disdain for agriculture and land ownership. To this day, the Maasai still consider their cattle, numbering in the millions, very sacred, to be used for bartering and dowries, but not for meat. However, more recently, wildlife reserves run by Maasai Group Ranches have been created adjacent to the Mara and other national parks and have begun to provide the Maasai with their owed share of land and tourism revenue.

Jackson, our guide in Amboseli, and Robert, in the Mara, sat and shared stories with us. They talked to us about the three stages of a Maasai man’s life – boyhood, warrior and elder. Men become warriors at some point between ages 14 and 18 years when they first go through a circumcision ceremony, then live alone outside their village with other warriors for 8 years or so, before returning to the village as elders. Warriors are meant to hunt and protect the cattle herds and land and, to this day, it is taken very seriously. In addition, many Maasai still practice polygamy and female circumcision – of course, practices much derided and fought against, despite their tradition within the Maasai, because of their abuse of women.

Jackson took us to a village nearby Amboseli, a somewhat touristy excursion that involved us shaking every elder’s hand and touching every child’s head; almost suffocating in a windowless, hot, small mud hut as an elder explained a husband’s custom of placing his spear outside one of his wife’s hut to let everyone know he was with her; watching men make fire and women make curdled milk; and observing a dance among the warriors that involved jumping as high as possible as a show of strength. But the fact remains, the village was an example of where and how most Maasai currently live – they did not just carpool in from Nairobi, put on their costumes and dance around for tourists – but they actually live in small mud huts, cook over a fire, drink curdled milk and blood and wear the clothing and ornamentation they have been wearing for centuries. Despite their ventures into tourism and the cell phones that dangle from their waste belts next to their knives, they still keep to their traditional beliefs and customs. Men, such as Jackson and Robert, still return to their small villages during their days off and share all the money they earn with their clan. They express happiness and no desire to leave or change. In many ways, the Maasai really are people to be in awe of!

Lunch!

2007-04-05T10:03:00.000-04:00

Lions eating topi in Masai Mara, above. Below, us, also having lunch in Masai Mara a bit later (I ate a cheese and tomato sandwich that day). Seated left to right is our guide, Gordon; Tim, who is working in Sudan right now, and along with his mother and father, were with us on safari in both Amboseli and Masai Mara; two Maasai men; Tim's mother Trisha; my Aunt Amy; my cousin Susie; Tim's father Brian; my father; my Uncle Larry.

Teeming with Life

2007-04-05T09:43:00.000-04:00

I received a great present on March 23rd, the day after my birthday – all wrapped in new, mosquito-repellant safari clothes and tied with straps from binoculars, cameras and wide-brimmed hats – my father, Aunt Amy, Uncle Larry and a cousin, Susie, arrived after a long 41-hour journey from Missouri. After 5 months away from home, seeing them was a true gift that meant a lot to me! We spent Friday, March 23rd, sightseeing around Nairobi, and then set off on Saturday for a week spent divided between Amboseli National Park, Masai Mara National Park and Lamu Island.

Amboseli and Masai Mara are the African parks of my imagination – of Hemingway and Dineson stories – with beautiful landscapes and endless skies and full of animals and birds as far as the eyes could see. Rarely did we see humans other than Maasai men and women, dressed in colorful robes and jewelry, herding their goats and cattle across the open savannah. The romanticism of all this was enhanced by flying in small planes to each destination and landing on dirt “paved” airstrips, driving across fields in open air vehicles, having cocktails while the sun set and the Southern Cross appeared, and dining under an open tent with our guides who entertained us with stories of life growing up in Kenya. We spent our days driving around the parks and then sitting quietly to stare out at African eagles and other birds of prey sitting atop lone acacia trees, warthogs running through tall grass, and herds of buffaloes, giraffes, elephants, ostriches, wildebeests, topi and gazelles all sharing the same open space. Always, there was such a display of life!

Both Amboseli and Masai Mara border Tanzania – Amboseli to the south of Nairobi and the Mara to the north. Amboseli is a small park, at only 392 sq Km, compared to the huge Masai Mara which measures 1510 sq Km. Amboseli lies at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro and it is a spectacular sight to see herds of giraffes and elephants walk by with the snow-capped mountain in the background. Water run-off from the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro feeds several swamps and lakes in Amboseli, and these are full of flamingoes, pelicans, hippoes and so much other wildlife. At Amboseli we saw juvenile lions, were charged by elephants and observed a pack of hyenas fighting over territory.

Masai Mara is an extension of the Serengeti Plains in Tanzania and is backed by the marvelous Siria Escarpment. Possibly one of the most spectacular things I have seen in my life was during one day in the Masai Mara. We were driving along when our guide spotted a few lions under a group of bushes. As we approached from one side, we saw it was not just a few, but 9 lions – 2 mothers with their juveniles and young cubs. As we moved even closer and circled around the bush, we saw that this group had just – only moments earlier – killed two large topi, dragged the topi from the open grass back to the bush, and were now having lunch. We sat forever, only a few feet away and watched the mother lions guard the area while the cubs, literally, ripped the topi apart to eat. You could smell the blood that the young cubs had all over their faces and the insides of the topi intestines that had been pulled out from their bodies. This was no zoo, but real – wild – life!

(Pictured: Fighting hyenas; A lone male elephant passes by Mt. Kilimanjaro).

***

I hope everyone has a good Easter holiday. Here in Kenya, both Good Friday and Easter Monday are national holidays and I am taking advantage of that to go on a camping trip up in Northern Kenya, around Lake Turkana and the Chalbi Desert. Will be back in touch in a week or so. Enjoy!

White Nile, Shoebills and Chimps

2007-04-02T07:43:00.000-04:00

I sat patiently for an hour at the café in front of the Speke Hotel beginning at 6:00 a.m. on Saturday morning a few weeks ago, waiting for Nile River Explorers to pick me up and transport me to Jinga, Uganda, to begin my rafting trip up the White Nile. A personal goal of mine while in Africa is to learn to relax and let things happen as they may. I have been trying to contain my obsessive-compulsive need to confirm everything a dozen times, to insist on promptness, and to fret when things do not go as I plan. I already had phoned the rafting company once, upon my arrival in Kampala on Friday, to confirm.

So, there I sat guzzling coffee, watching women with straw brooms sweep the street, keeping one eye on the frightening Marabou storks hovering in the trees overhead, and pacing out to the curb every few minutes to take pictures while searching nervously down Nile Avenue for my ride to Jinga. One hour later and I burst, picked up my phone and called. AHA! I knew it! They forgot me and were now halfway to Jinga! I was almost happy with the confirmation that my compulsive behavior indeed is justified. But, I quickly jumped in a cab at the company’s insistence and on their dime (and thus, for once, did not even bother to negotiate the fare) and told the driver to get me quickly to Jinga, the town located 80 Km east of Kampala on the shores of Lake Victoria and right at the source of the Nile River. We drove fast and determinedly, stopping once so the driver could go to the bathroom right beside his car door and slowing down once so I could snap a picture of the Owen Falls Dam, at the start of the White Nile, which supplies Uganda with the bulk of its electricity. I arrived in Jinga an hour and half later, just in time for the launching of four 7-person rafts, into the Nile.

In my raft were a couple from San Diego taking 6 months off to travel throughout Africa, a researcher for the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, two women from an AIDs charity in Canada and a woman spending time in Uganda on a traveling fellowship. As we pushed off the shore, nearly 25 young, scantily clad, children waved us good-bye. Many of the little girls had infants strapped onto their backs. It was a strange scene and, with my life jacket and helmet on, in the big orange raft full of travelers and development workers, I felt a bit ridiculous – a feeling I have a lot as I balance being a tourist in such a poverty-stricken environment.

We spent from 10:00 a.m to 5:00 p.m. making our way 30 Km up the White Nile towards Khartoum, Sudan where it joins up with the Blue Nile and proceeds to Egypt. We encountered 14 major rapids along the way, including four Grade 5 rapids with apt names such as “The Bad Place” and “The Dead Dutchman.” We flipped over several times, but always felt safe since a safety boat and a dozen men in kayaks remained constantly near our rafts. During the trip, I was as intrigued by the life along the shoreline of the Nile and as I was scared by its rapids. We floated by a large baptism taking place in the Nile, by wooden “ferries” transporting men and their bicycles across, and hundreds of women and children washing their clothes in the water. We also passed long stretches without any sign of life other than the moving water.

Our day ended with a bbq along the shore and the purchase of a DVD of the experience, since I did not take my camera. The next day, Sunday, I rounded out my first trip to Uganda with a visit to the Uganda Wildlife Centre so I could see for myself the strange Shoebill Stork (pictured here), with its plastic Cheshire Cat-like grin, and to the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary, where I sat for an hour and watched around 40 orphan chimps move freely about the small island eating, playing and grooming (pictured here). I'm still having a wonderful time here in Africa, and enjoying every minute of my experience, I thought, but watching these chimps really made me homesick, and miss my brother, sister and sister-in-law...for some reason!

Kampala, Uganda

2007-03-21T07:42:00.000-04:00

A few weekends ago I flew to the other side of Lake Victoria, to the Ugandan side, and landed at the airport in Entebbe, a small town about 40 km from Kampala, Uganda’s capital. On approach, I saw less water hyacinth and murky brown water than I do from the Kisumu shores, and much more water activity. My small Kenyan Airways flight shared a crowded tarmac with elephant-sized white planes marked on their fuselage with the black letters of the UN. Men and women wearing camouflage and light blue berets filled the airport, waiting to board the planes for Sudan. I looked at them with wonderment and awe for what they do (and where they were headed), but moved on past, grabbed my luggage and headed for the car to Kampala where I would spend the weekend exploring the city and rafting on the White Nile.

We drove the one, straight, well-paved rode from Entebbe to Kampala slowly. There is always only one road to get anywhere, no short-cuts or bypasses, causing lots of traffic jams. But, I never mind the drive because it gives me the opportunity to observe carefully the roadside activity. All over Kampala, in fact, I found the infrastructure much better than in Kenya and everything appeared cleaner, more modern and better built. Much of Kampala suffered during the Idi Amin dictatorship in the 1970s, followed by the Ugandan loss in war with Tanzania in 1979 and the subsequent tribal wars that took place before Yoweri Museveni, the current President, came to power in 1986. Uganda prospered (relatively speaking) in the 1990s and Museveni rebuilt much that had been destroyed.

We kept the windows down as we drove along and it was hot, very tropical, with thick air. Uganda is very green and lush, a sense exaggerated even more by all of the green bananas sold along the road. I have never seen more bananas and would ask everyone whether, or how, these roadside sellers possibly sold all of their bananas. They do though, everyone would tell me. Looking up from the green bananas along the road into the distance, I could see the seven green hills on which Kampala is built – making it a really beautiful city. I stayed on Nakasero hill in the city centre at the Speke Hotel, one of the oldest in Kampala.

This is the place of “jua kali” my taxi driver told me as we inched towards Kampala. “Jua kali” means hot sun in Kiswahili and represents the thousands of men and women who work in the informal sector of Kenya and Uganda. All day long, under the hot East African sun, these men and women work in their small workshops along the road. You can hear the clinking of hammers and the whirring of saws as they bang out wooden and iron furniture, pots, auto parts and other handicrafts. Their work is harsh, and done under unsafe and unregulated conditions. However, it is an important part of the economy. In Kenya, the informal sector accounts for over 90% of all businesses and, I’m told, contributes about 15% of Kenya’s GDP. In Kisumu, this informal sector comprises over 50% of the working population and the workers involved in it make about $40-50 per month.

After I checked into my hotel and spent an hour trying to find an ATM that accepted a MasterCard (none did), I quickly ate a Chinese lunch at a restaurant called Fang Fang and set out with yet another driver to tour Kampala. I told him I wanted to see everything, and we did, winding our way around all seven hills. We saw a variety of religious buildings: the National Mosque in Lower Kampala, started by Idi Amin and completed with funding from Colonel Gadaffi; the Namirembe Anglican Cathedral where I made the driver wait while I watched women guests parade into a wedding in many pastel colored ball gowns; and the Baha’i Temple, the only one on the African continent (the one in North American is outside Chicago), set on beautiful grounds high above Kampala. I took a somewhat touristy, but interesting, tour of the Kasubi Tombs, the burial place for several Ugandan kings, including the father of the current King Mutebi II, whose role is only ceremonial these days. The large thatched pyramidal-shaped tomb is surrounded by small thatched buildings where descendants of the wives of Muteesa I – he had 84! – live and take care of the tombs. Winding our way around, we continued through the campus of Makere University with its stark white and blue-shuttered buildings; past Mulaga Hospital, the biggest in Uganda; and down Gayaza Road which runs right through the slums of Kampala. And, everywhere I noticed the largest, ugliest, meanest looking vulture-like bird I had ever seen – flocks of them sitting on tops of tree – the maribu stork, which migrates to Kampala to breed 4 months out of the year.

After spending a full day driving around Kampala, I had Indian food – the best I’ve had so far in East Africa – at an open air restaurant called Khana Khazana in Kololo hills, a nice residential area where all the expats live. Then, Saturday morning I awoke early to head for my rafting trip on the White Nile…

(Pictured: Maribu storks in a tree outside my hotel; me outside the entrance to the Kasubi Tombs; banana sellers along road)

What I Do Here On A (Somewhat) Daily Basis

2007-03-20T10:21:00.000-04:00

Someone recently asked me about what I do in Nairobi and Kisumu on a more daily basis, when I’m not out traveling. I have told you a bit about the Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI) and, in a general way, about our work in trying to increase foreign investment opportunities into Kisumu that will be sustainable, improve the lives of the people and help Kisumu achieve the Millennium Development Goals. To that end, and since MCI has just begun, a lot of my time has been spent gathering information, working with the city government to build its capacity to promote investments, meeting local business people to educate them about MCI and to understand better the business environment and coordinating with various partners, such as several UN agencies, to organize various parts of MCI. I sort of serve as the ambassador on the ground here, trying to coordinate all the players, keep things moving forward and make sure communication happens.

So here, from my calendar over the past week and a half, are some of the things I did, both for work and pleasure, in Nairobi and Kisumu:

Wednesday: Met with consultants and trainers for a very large, global packaging, automotive and power tool technology company from India to discuss their running a training program for mid-skilled workers in Kisumu. In the evening, went to the sports diver class at the Nairobi Dive Club where, every Wednesday, they also serve dinner and the best Bloody Mary’s outside of NYC.

Thursday: Met with a senior executive from Unilever, now working for the Business Alliance Against Chronic Hunger (BAACH), and a woman from the World Economic Forum to discuss ways that MCI and BAACH can partner, such as by working together to bring agro-processing and packaging investments into Kisumu. We also discussed the potential for a major fashion company which has contacted BAACH to make handbags and shoes out of the Nile Perch and also support programs for women in the fishing industry in Kisumu.

Friday: Attended an MDG Centre staff meeting in the morning where I heard about all of the work being done at the Millennium Villages, and updated everyone on MCI. Afterwards, I met with the senior editor for Africa from the Economist Intelligence Unit (part of the Economist Magazine) to discuss the business roundtable to be co-hosted between the Economist and MCI in July. That night, listened to a Ghanian drum band at the French Cultural Institute in Nairobi and had a fantastic Ethiopian dinner at a restaurant called Habeesha.

Monday: First thing that morning, I attended my weekly Kiswahili lesson with two friends from MDG Centre. Midday, I met with the Kenyan Investment Authority to discuss working with the Kisumu municipal council on investment promotion. That night, I had dinner at a good Indian restaurant in Nairobi, called Open House, with a Columbia University professor and some of his graduate students, working with the Kenyan government on rural electrification (the percentage of people living outside Kenyan cities who have electricity lies in the single digits!).

Tuesday: That morning, I flew to Kisumu and headed straight for a meeting with a local business woman and members of the city council office to discuss a project in which the city would hand over management of 5 Kisumu parks to local businesses who then would rehabilitate them. That afternoon I met with the Kisumu Chamber of Commerce to talk to them about MCI and find out about local businesses among their membership. I had dinner that night at my hotel, the Imperial Hotel, with a former Columbia graduate student, working around Kisumu for a few months, to test various low-cost and energy efficient lighting sources for people.

Wednesday: I had breakfast with a woman to discuss contacts in the construction industry in Kisumu. At 10:30 I began a 2 hour drive out to the Mumias sugar factory (the largest in Kenya, producing over 60% of the sugar here). I toured the factory and learned a lot about how Mumias uses the bagasse from sugar cane to generate electricity and about the potential for ethanol production from the molasses. I had dinner with the head of tax at Mumias and his wife, that evening at the Mumias Club, before making it back to Kisumu around midnight.

Thursday: I had an early morning golf lesson! Then went back to the municipal council office to discuss the development of an investment promotion office there. I had lunch that day in the home of the family that owns the Imperial Hotel (as well as a fish factory and a bakery in Kisumu). That afternoon I met with the Kisumu branch of the Kenya Association of Manufacturers, mainly to discuss their work lobbying the national government on infrastructure issues around Kisumu – the cost of goods is very high here primarily because of all the infrastructure problems. I flew back to Nairobi that evening.

Friday: That morning I attended an early breakfast meeting at the Jacaranda Hotel in Nairobi, with yet another Columbia University professor, to discuss finding a business in Kisumu that has the capability to partner with a major electronics company on the manufacture of fuel-efficient and smokeless cookstoves for use by women. I spent most of the rest of the day catching up on correspondence at the MDG Centre in Nairobi. That evening I flew to Mombasa with two friends from the Nairobi Dive Club to do some diving there over the weekend.

Pictures of My Guards

2007-03-13T11:11:00.000-04:00

For some reason, or many reasons, the pictures did not post with my last blog, "My Guards." Top is Sylvester; Bottom pic is Joseph. As always, double click to enlarge these photos.

My Guards

2007-03-12T11:29:00.000-04:00

That’s Sylvester (top pic), our day guard. He arrives at 6:00 a.m. and leaves at 6:00 p.m. All day long he sits outside the little green guard box behind our big iron gate, in front of our big house. I suppose he protects my brand new washing machine and Cristina’s brand new oven, because we don’t have much else in that house. We’ve been worried about him feeling bored. We asked him if he wanted the newspaper, something to read. No, that’s ok, he said. Then, we asked him if he wanted to make a little extra money by doing yard work for us. Of course, he did. But he did not want to wear the blue apron that Cristina bought to protect his uniform, even though the men at the Nakumatt grocery store told Cristina a man would wear it – it’s blue after all. So, there’s Sylvester, cutting our grass with a machete. Small patches at a time, he whacks away at the grass. Most grass in Kenya is cut in this manner, we are not the only ones without a lawn mower. But, we think he cut it way too short this first time, as we can see the dirt. ****

I took that picture of Sylvester a few Saturdays ago, right after I locked myself out of my house at 9:00 a.m. I had gone out to pay Sylvester for two weeks of yard work. Cristina had already left to go hiking in the Ngong Hills just outside of Nairobi. (I couldn’t go hiking as I had a baby shower to attend that afternoon- something I never expected to do in Nairobi!) Sylvester could not reach his security company on the phone. I told him to push the panic button he wears around his neck, I was in a hurry. Cristina and I also have our own panic buttons, but we don’t wear them.

So Sylvester pushed the panic button. This will be interesting, I thought. Amazingly, the reaction time was quick; five minutes and up to the front gate rushed a truck with 4 more guards and a car with 2 diplomatic police carrying AK-47s. Ok, good, certainly these men will find a way to get me into my house, I assumed. Incorrectly. 45 minutes later, they had walked around and around the house, staring at the dozens of locks, tugging on all the bars covering the windows and doors but, nope, no way to get in this house, they told me. That should make my security-obsessed housemate, Cristina, happy, I thought, but I need in the house…shower, baby gift, money, cell phone. Try not to cry yet, I told myself. And don’t be bitchy, I also told myself, it’s not their fault after all.

Can you call a locksmith then, I asked the 7 men standing in my driveway? They all looked around at each other with shrugged shoulders, puzzled by my request. There has got to be someone in Nairobi who can get into this house, right, I pleaded, now about to cry? Ok, they finally decided to place a few calls and after another 15 minutes, found someone. Thank you! How long? 20 minutes.

One hour later, with 5 more phone calls placed and plenty of pacing done, I walked up to the truck where all 7 of them were sitting, piled into the front and in the back bed, each reading the Daily Nation newspaper. You all might as well go if you don’t have a solution to this, I told them, why are you just sitting here? Whoops, I meant not to be bitchy. They tried to track the locksmith down again. He’s almost here, they told me, again.

12:00 struck. One hour to the baby shower. I walked around to the front window of my house. Through the window I could see my keys lying on the dining room table. Look, I said to Sylvester, my keys are so close, but so far. As I stood there staring longingly at them, Sylvester did the sensible thing and tried the window. Miraculously, it slid open. I wonder if Cristina knew that window was unlocked, I thought? My keys teased me from 10 feet away, with nothing between us but iron bars. Again, Sylvester proved sensible and chopped a very long tree branch down, tied wire to it, and after a few attempts, managed to hook my keys and carefully pull them out the house! All the other security guards and police clapped and slapped Sylvester on the back. I felt really proud of him and also glad that I had provided him some morning entertainment. He then went back to cutting the grass. ****

And, that’s Joseph (bottom pic), our night guard. He arrives at 6:00 p.m. and leaves at 6:00 a.m. His job is worse, but he has company. That’s Uli with him. Uli arrives at 6:30 p.m. and leaves at 5:30 a.m. All night long Joseph and Uli sit outside the little green guard box behind our big iron gate, in front of our big house. Poor Joseph though, has to get up – and I mean wake up – every hour and walk to the side of our house a few hundred meters away to push a button notifying the security company that he is awake. The button is on my side of the house, so I usually get up every hour as well, as I hear Joseph and Uli stomping through the grass below my window. Then the entire neighborhood gets to wake up at 5:30 every morning to a dog concert. Every dog wakes and howls, bidding Uli good-bye. Until later that day. ****

Cristina and I will watch Sylvester and Joseph from the windows, usually sitting in the chair we bought them, in front of the little green guard box, staring out at our big iron gate. It makes us uncomfortable, them simply sitting there. They don’t eat all shift long. We don’t understand why they don’t bring some food. If I had that job I’d eat all day long, I say, out of boredom. We offer them coffee and fruit and biscuits. Cristina has to be one of the kindest people I’ve met in Nairobi. She is very sweet to the guards and to Ruth, our housekeeper. She recently bought Ruth a beautiful piece of fabric from Mozambique. Ruth turned it into a beautiful long skirt.

Cristina worries about Ruth, though. She thinks Ruth is engaged in “inappropriate relations” with Sylvester. This is a common occurrence between the house help and guards in Nairobi, we are told, and Cristina picked up on it immediately. Without delay, she talked to Ruth about it. If you must, ok, but just not in our house, she told her, instead use the servant’s quarters. (As nice as he is, still, Sylvester should not come in our house.) Cristina is Italian, up-front and blunt; these things do not bother her. I, a prudish American, blush every time Cristina talks about it; I’m so glad I was not present for her talk with Ruth. Ruth is 30 and seems naïve. Be careful Ruth, Cristina continues, warning, you know, these guards are just bored, they have nothing else to do, so don’t anything from them. I don’t want you to get hurt.

Cristina has become a little obsessed with this, though, and will call Sylvester during the day and ask him to pass the phone to Ruth while counting the footsteps it takes him to reach her. You wouldn’t believe it, she exclaimed to me one day last week, he basically just handed the phone to her! Another conversation with Ruth then occurred; also, this time, with Sylvester. I wouldn’t do that, Sylvester told her, he’s a Christian. Yeah, Cristina said to him, and you are also a man. I blush again. She warned them both that one would be fired if she finds out anything happens in the house. I hope they get the message, because I like both Ruth and Sylvester. ****

Uh-oh… As I write this, upstairs in my bedroom sitting on the one piece of furniture I have in my bedroom, a bed, Cristina and one of her Italian friends come into the house. I hear commotion. Her friend has accidentally pushed our panic button in the kitchen, thinking it’s a light switch. Here come the guards…

Fishing on Lake Victoria

2007-03-07T01:15:00.000-05:00

The French Cultural Institute here in Nairobi is housed in a very modern building and plays host to a number of very good cultural events. Over the past two months, I have been there twice to hear Kenyan musicians play – Eric Wainaina and Susanna Owiyo, two popular Kenyan pop fusion musicians (Susanna is from Kisumu and sings a song called “Kisumu 100”). Also a few weeks ago I saw the documentary “Darwin’s Nightmare” there. I recommend this film which was filmed on shores of Lake Victoria, on the Tanzanian side, in a town called Mwanza. It concerns the fishing industry on Lake Victoria and, specifically, the fishing for Nile Perch. The film argues that the introduction of the Nile Perch (or “mbuta”) into the Lake in the 1950s has destroyed the natural ecosystem there and led to the exploitation of fishermen and women by mostly European fish processing companies and distributors.

As part of the Millennium Cities work, we are examining the fishing industry on Lake Victoria, the possibility for its growth and, importantly, how future investments in the industry can be sustainable, improve lives and help Kisumu achieve the Millennium Development Goals. There are about 54,000 fishermen in the Lake. Nile Perch accounts for 2/3 of their catch, the remaining being tilapia and smaller fish such as the butterfish. Currently, fish from Lake Victoria earns about $590 million annually, $340 million generated at the source and another $250 million from export of the Nile Perch to European Markets. Europeans love the Nile Perch but, I have been told, it has been hard to market it in the U.S. because of the perception that anything deriving from the Nile would not be clean. Kenyans also do not care much for Nile Perch, but prefer instead tilapia. The Kenyan portion of Lake Victoria is only about 6% but the waters should be open to all properly licensed fishermen from any of the East African countries that border the Lake (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda). However, in reality, Kenyan fishermen who cross into another country’s territory find themselves face to face with armed pirates or, supposedly, even corrupt fishing authorities who steal, extort and, at worst, kill.

Pirates are just one of the many problems facing the fishing industry. Starting with the Lake itself, arguably, there is no potential to increase the size of the catch of fish in it. Possibly even the number will decline, as the Lake faces environmental and man-made problems, some for decades. Some environmentalists have gone so far as to predict the disappearance of the Lake in 100 years. Drought and the Kiira damn in Uganda have decreased water levels. The Nile Perch, a predator, has said to have killed over 200 species of other fish and contributed to decreased oxygen levels in the Lake. The Lake is polluted from sewage and other run-off pouring down from encircling hills, as well as other manmade activities. I have seen dozens of men eke out a living by washing cars on the shores of the Lake in Kisumu, an illegal activity to which everyone has turned a blind eye. No one swims or boats in the Lake anymore. I have been to the Kisumu Yacht Club for dinner and observed only one wooden yacht in the yard that does not look like it could float. Finally, there has not been much control over the number of fishermen and the methods of fishing used on the Lake. We are examining the potential for fish farming, but the costs of production are quite high and land and irrigation problems are many.

There is the water hyacinth. Flying into Kisumu, I always request a window seat so I can examine the state of the water hyacinth – the thick, lily-pad shaped, waxy dark green leaves, with pretty lavender flowers, that float freely on the surface of the Lake – one of the world’s most noxious weeds. It comes and goes. At its height in 1998, the water hyacinth covered 77 square miles of the Lake. With aggressive removal efforts, by 2005, the Lake was almost clear. But due to high rains in late 2006, agricultural run-off and sediment fed a fresh outbreak of the hyacinth. It reappeared and as a result, today, most of the Kisumu bay is covered in the green hyacinth. Flying into Kisumu, I often think I am seeing land, but it is the thick massive mat of the hyacinth. Due to this, fishermen cannot launch boats or bring fish to the shore; sunlight cannot penetrate to feed plants; dying plants cause fish and animals to starve; and water flow is impeded and irrigation pipes are clogged. We are looking at uses for the hyacinth (e.g., fertilizer, paper) and ways to rid the Lake of it.

There are the many problems beset by the fishermen and women on the shores. I spent one early morning at a fishing village called Dunga, just on the outskirts of Kisumu. The men, most whom cannot swim, spend 12 hours a day out on the Lake in simple wooden boats powered by splintered oars and tattered sails. I was there at 7:00 a.m. to watch them row furiously into shore with their catch. There is nothing modern about this process: no fancy hi-tech vessels or equipment, only those that have been used for decades; no docks, only landing beaches on the shoreline; no refrigeration facilities, either on board or on shore; and no sophisticated marketing organization to help them store, bargain and control the price of their catch. The middlemen await fishermen on shore and offer to pay deflated prices that the fishermen must accept since they have no alternatives except to see their fish rot.

The local impoverished men and women often cannot afford to buy the fish, even the Nile Perch and tilapia deemed too small for the factories. Mostly, they are left scrounging for meat off of left-over fish skeletons sold back to the fishing community by the factories. Prostitution is rampant along the shores, women sell themselves for fish; HIV/AIDs is unbelievably high among the fishermen and women; orphans are many. After the men pulled on shore in Dunga and sold the few large fish that were big enough for the distributors. The women, probably 50 in all, rushed the shore to try to bargain for small, sardine-like fish – we would call it bait – paying nickels and dimes so that they can have this food to feed their families or to resell in Dunga.

Then, later that day after visiting the fishing village, I toured a fish factory which mostly sells fish fillets to European and other international markets. After donning white coats, boats and hard hats and managing to suppress my gag instinct throughout the tour, I realized the potential for much expansion of product offerings in the fish industry in Kisumu: bladders can be used for beer flavoring and surgical sutures; fish oil can be used for drugs because of high omega 3 fatty acids; fish scales can be used in collagen; fish skins can be used for purses and shoes; and prepared meals and canned fish could be processed. So, there seems that there is a lot more investment that could be made in the fish industry – whether in fish farming, hyacinth removal, fish processing – but a lot more work that needs to be done to make sure that the investments also improve the lives of the local men, women and children living in Dunga, and other fishing villages in and around Kisumu!

(Pictured: Fishing boats on Lake Victoria; Fisherman holding up a Nile Perch; Young boy buys small fish for a few shillings, crowds of women behind him behind left-over fish as well. Click to enlarge photos)

Negotiating Mombasa

2007-02-21T07:54:00.000-05:00

Another very nice aspect of Nairobi is that within a few hours drive or a short, rather inexpensive, flight, you can escape to some very interesting places. A few weekends ago, a group of us – some Italians, a French, a German and a couple of Finns – drove a few hours northwest of Nairobi to Lake Naivasha, home to Kenya’s flower industry. We hiked in Hell’s Gate National Park, saw hippos on Lake Naivasha and flamingoes on Crater Lake, and spent the evening at a campsite called, appropriately, Fisherman’s Camp (although they called the accommodations “cottages”, pouring pots of boiling water on myself for a shower confirmed for me otherwise!). This past weekend I flew to Mombasa on the coast, Kenya’s second largest city and the largest port in East Africa. This time, opting for the other variety of accommodation, I stayed at the Mombasa Serena about 30 km north of Mombasa, a beautiful resort owned by the Aga Khan located right on the Indian Ocean.

On Saturday morning, I explored the old town of Mombasa. Most of the people of Mombasa are Swahili, whose cultural origin stemmed from the intermix of Arabs and Africans. Mombasa was a key town along the Arab trading route, then passed into Portuguese hands throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, then to the sultans of Oman, before coming under British control in the 1870s, at the same time that Britain formally ended the East African slave trade. Most Swahilis are Muslim and, as a result, Mombasa’s mosque-filled streets bustle with woman in full black robes, head scarves and veils and men in long, white tunics and square, embroidered caps.

With my Lonely Planet guide book, I had meticulously outlined the route I wanted to explore and looked forward to leisurely wandering the streets of Mombasa while taking photographs. But, I knew what would happen as soon as my car (loudly marked with the hotel logo) pulled up in front of Fort Jesus – a large fort, on the edge of the old town, built by the Portuguese in 1593 – I just thought I could be insistent enough to thwart it. No less than a dozen “tour guides” attacked, barely allowing me to open the car door. I took a deep breath and told myself to be strong in my resolve to “go it alone.”

In Nairobi, negotiation is a constant part of my daily life – taxis, furniture, fruit, even the stuffed animal I recently purchased for a baby shower – the only fixed prices are the highest ones the sellers can extract from me. There is a Kiswahili word for people like me – “mzungu” – or white person. The term, I believe though, describes more than skin color, but the ridiculous things some of us do (such as donning a matching running outfit and jogging up and down a busy Nairobi road, of which I’m guilty), and also the ease with which we can be charged 4x the rate of local Kenyans. I do not fault them for trying, but the negotiation battle that takes place everyday for everything becomes tiresome.

I tried to ignore the guides, but they were as relentless as I was weak. I ended up with Abdul for 1200 shillings (down from 2500 at the start). “But look here,” I said, while unsuccessfully trying to put the Lonely Planet up to his face, “this is the route I want to follow.” “Akuna matata, I will show you a good tour,” he said over and over, while leading me away from Fort Jesus and old town, to one of Mombasa’s busiest commercial streets, Digo Street. I had to jog to keep up as we darted around people, hopping on and off the sidewalks. At one point, I actually got nudged in the back by a matatu (minibus) trying to get by me on the street! “Where are we going? This is not part of the route I want to take!” I shouted angrily at Abdul. “Akuna matata” he kept saying – making me just as angry at the Lion King movie as him – while moving along pointing out the obvious, shoe stores, t-shirt sellers, jewelry shops, on this crowded street, trying to get me to go inside. “I’m stopping, Adul, not shopping, and going into old town!” At which point, I did, and turned around and walked away.

But Abdul wised-up, wanting his 1200 shillings, and led me back into the old town (but still refused to look at my Lonely Planet). We immediately hit the markets – spice shops, fruit stands, silk sellers, Swahili carvings. I allowed Abdul to bring me into the first spice shop where I bought some overpriced hot curry powder. I then had to explain to Abdul, “I do not want to shop and spend money, so will not go into another store.” “Akuna matata, you can just look.” “No, that is not possible because they will follow me around the store and beg me to buy. I just want to walk and take pictures.” He ignored me and kept trying one store after another - uncle’s, friend’s, sister’s husband’s – but I continued to refuse to enter another store. I’m sure at this point he was beginning to weigh the cost/benefits of that 1200!

Finally, we wandered. We passed through narrow alleyways that open into enclosed courtyards ringed by Portuguese homes with layers of intricately carved wooden balconies; went up to glaring white mosques, where I could see, through the open windows, many young boys being taught a Saturday religious lesson; and took pictures of many ornately carved, Lamu-style, wooden doors. Abdul told me I would not have been safe, and could not have taken all my pictures, without him. Maybe that was true, but as a tour guide – pointing out to me “pussy cats smelling spices” and “houses ka-PUT” – I found him a bit useless. However, did I really have a choice???

Living in Nairobi and Owning a Washing Machine

2007-02-12T10:41:00.000-05:00

I find living in Nairobi to be great – fun – fascinating - and also peculiar. I am laughing a lot (in a positive way) over the cultural differences, and mishaps that occur as a result, and am bemused by the lifestyle that those of us here working for development groups, or the UN, or some other aid agency, live.

Kenya has two official languages, English and Kiswahili, but many people speak Kiswahili more fluently. I constantly bump up against communication difficulties, usually because I’m too wordy, unclear and fast-speaking. It often leads to amusing and confusing interactions. For instance, if I get in the car and tell the driver, “I need to go downtown to the Treasury, but first stop off at the Village Market so I can use the ATM. Then I will need you to wait for me at the Treasury during my meeting, which might last 1 hour, but maybe more, so can you please wait and then bring me back and drop me off in the Westlands area?” I get a blank stare, 10 seconds of silence and then “So you want to go to Westlands now?”

My multi-phrased questions also do not work. Again I ask the driver, “Will you wait for me here in the parking garage or out on the street?” To which he responds “Yes.” Or, I ask, “You have arrived 30 minutes early, do you want to leave and come back or wait?” To which he answers, “You’re welcome.”

You are right in thinking that most of this is my problem, and I am just as confusing in the U.S., but here, the number of times a day I have conversations such as these, and the utter confusion it always breeds, is much exaggerated. What is more, because the Kenyan people are so nice and polite, I believe, they answer you as if they understand, instead of telling you they do not…I begin KiSwahili lessons this Thursday.

And, I am abysmal with pronouncing names. There are many Onyangos and Anyangos. Lots of Mwamburis, Wambuis, Wangaris and Mtambuis. A few weeks ago, a funny thing happened when arranging a meeting with a professor who wrote a report on Kisumu. I’ll say his name is George Otieno. After I left several unreturned messages with Mr. Otieno, I received a phone call from a George Atieno, in the Ministry of Planning, calling to request a meeting with me. I thought it was Otieno, from Kisumu, since I did not know Atieno, from Nairobi, and because I could not hear the difference in pronunciation of these two common surnames.

We arranged to meet in Nairobi and the day before I called to confirm. “You’ll be in Nairobi and not Kisumu tomorrow?” I asked, “Because a colleague is meeting with you in Kisumu today, so I want to make sure you, in fact, will be in Nairobi tomorrow.” 10 seconds of silence. “Yes” he answered, even though he surely wondered what I meant. The next day, I and the Columbia grad students marched into George Atieno’s office at the Ministry of Planning in Nairobi, prepared to talk about George Otieno’s Kisumu report. After introductions, I start, “we read your investment report and would like to discuss it with you.” Silence and a blank stare ensues. “What report?” he says. We laugh, thinking he is teasing, so I push the report his way, “this one,” I respond. “That is not me,” he says, none too cheerfully. More silence and I look down at the business card he handed me and, indeed, discover he is not Otieno. The silence continued for what seemed like hours as I sat there and thought, “well, then, who are you and now how do I get us all out of your office???” But it turned out that Mr. Atieno was someone I needed to meet in the national government after all.

The housing situation for those of us living and working temporarily in Nairobi is a bit insane, and everyone is obsessed by it – discussing locations, size of gardens, number of bedrooms and the best place to buy furniture. Most live in oversized homes that rent rather cheaply, but come completely empty, with nothing but walls and floors. Last Tuesday I moved into my house with a friend working at the United Nations Environmental Program, Cristina, a fun half-Italian / half-English woman. Our house is ridiculously large for two people who have only a few suitcases – it has 2 floors, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a large kitchen, sitting room and dining room, plus a 2 room-2 bathroom “servant’s quarters” in the back. We have had to purchase beds, tables, a refrigerator, oven, and even a washing machine – my very first one, something I never thought I’d buy in Kenya!

Understandably, everyone here is also consumed by their personal security. At the main gate to the 5-house compound where we live, we have a 24-hour guard –Samuel or Joel – and a guard dog. At the gate to our house, we also have a 24-hour guard – Sylvester or Joseph – and a guard dog. But the guard situation is more amusing than protective. Their main role is to push an alarm if we come under attack, and then run for their lives. They are required to push a button every hour to assure the security company that they are awake, still allowing them plenty of time to sleep during the remaining 59 minutes. Several times already I have pulled up to our gate and had to honk the car horn many times to wake the guard (and the dog) to come open the gate for us! But, you can’t NOT have a guard - as everyone does - so do we. We also have an alarm system, with panic buttons in every room that alert the diplomatic police when pushed; a safe haven upstairs where we are to hide while waiting for the police; and more bars, locks and padlocks than Fort Knox leaving me unable to imagine anyone getting in. It is a very strange way to live, and one to which I find a little hard to adjust!

(Pictured: The street kiosks right outside the gates to my house, where I can buy fresh fruits and vegetables, flowers, eggs, cell phone cards, you name it; My house, off Peponi Rd, Nairobi)

Kisumu, Kenya

2007-02-01T06:55:00.000-05:00

I want to tell you a little more about Kenya’s Millennium City, Kisumu (pictured, looking out of Imperial Hotel across to Lake Victoria). I spent a week there shortly after I arrived in Kenya and will head back again for a day trip this Friday, February 2nd, along with members of the Ministry for Planning and National Development here in Nairobi, to attend Millennium City planning meetings with the Kisumu Municipal Council.

Kisumu is the 3rd largest city in Kenya, with a population estimated to be around 500,000. It lies on Lake Victoria, the 2nd largest fresh water lake in the world and the source of the Nile, and shares this lake with Uganda and Tanzania. It developed as a railway and port hub in 1901 and its economy thrived due the opportunities provided by the Lake and the fertile agricultural hinterland surroungind it, land that produces (or did) an abundance of cotton, rice and sugar. But, Kisumu’s economy collapsed along with the national decline in the 1980s and 1990s and, as a result, industries closed, sugar production collapsed, cotton could not compete with imports and the railways and roads deteriorated. Today, Kisumu is one of the poorest cities in Kenya.

There is so much potential in Kisumu, but many problems that must be overcome, here are some statistics, which I find staggering:

--48% of the people in Kisumu live below the poverty line (compared to 29% nationally.

--It has the highest incidence of food poverty, with 53.4% of the population below the food poverty line (compared to 8.4% in Nairobi).

--The official unemployment rate is 30%, but 52% of the working population is engaged in informal sector activities (e.g., transport, petty sales, repairs) and make a monthly wage of around $40-50.

--60% of the population live in slums, with high densities, in only temporary or semi-permanent structures, and with a shortage of basic services like electricity, water and sanitation.

--Only 40% of the Kisumu population have access to piped water.

--Sanitation is also a huge problem, as only 20% of the waste in Kisumu is collected and the city has only 10% sewerage coverage.

--And, as you would probably expect, there is a high incidence of HIV/AIDs (at 15%), malaria and water-borne diseases in Kisumu. The Municipal Council itself loses on average 38-40 persons per year to HIV/AIDs.

There is a lot of work beginning in Kisumu, on these and many other problems faced by this city and its people, including work by the Millennium Cities Initiative. And, I really believe, a lot of potential. Tomorrow, we will all meet to form the task force in Kisumu that will help us with infrastructure and investment assessments, as we prepare to bring investors to the city later this year.

Back to Baphumelele for a Moment

2007-01-26T02:12:00.000-05:00

I have a request from you. Since leaving Cape Town, I have been in touch with Baphumelele and have learned that the vendor which supplies all of Bap’s fruit and vegetables has cut off its donation because of funding problems. The amount of veggies and fruit supplied, as I explained in some of my past postings, was not that great in the first place, but at least it was something. We have figured out that supplying the 80 children of Bap with GOOD fruits and vegetables, on a daily basis, for the year would cost $7,500. I told them I would help raise this money. I already have $500 in. Whatever you can contribute would be fantastic – everything counts! Even if you aren’t a fan of fruits & vegetables (my fast food loving friends), these kids desperately need them!

Here’s how you can donate to Bap, in South Africa, and get a US tax deduction. US donations can be routed to Bap through the South African Development Fund in Boston. They do not take out any money for themselves, other than a small processing fee for credit cards. The money will go straight to Bap. To make a donation to Bap, do the following:

--Go to www.sadevelopmentfund.org. Click on “Donate Now.”

--Using a credit card, click on “Network for Good” and again on “Donate Now.” There will be a 4.75% processing fee, but your full amount is still tax deductible.

--In the designation field, put “For Baphumelele – Fruits & Vegetables Fund”

--In the dedication field, put “On behalf of Ashley Hufft – Baphumelele volunteer” (I feel odd about that, but its necessary so I can try to track what is coming in from my friends and family).

--All else is self-explanatory, but if not, let me know.

I appreciate your support on this a lot. Its for a rather simple thing, I know, and I realize that next year they will be in the same boat, but I think the childrens’ nutritional needs are critical (obviously) and this is one of the best things I can do for them at the moment, is relatively inexpensive from a fundraising point of view, and concrete. Again, thank you!

The Road to Kisumu

2007-01-23T07:55:00.001-05:00

I boarded the Easy Coach bus, for a fare of 800 shillings (about $11.50), on Wednesday, January 10, for the trip west to Kisumu, the 3rd largest city in Kenya (behind Nairobi and Mombasa). Even though we had not heard positive reports about the bus ride, I, along with two of the Columbia grad students, Elizabeth (who is a Kenyan national) and Patricia, decided to take the bus in order to see the countryside and, also, to check out first-hand a part of Kenya’s infrastructure. Naturally, an important aspect of any potential investment decision into Kisumu will be the ease and efficiency with which goods and people can be transported to and from there. The road leading from the port town of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean, northwest to Nairobi, and onward to Kisumu on the shores of Lake Victoria, is Kenya’s main artery. We wanted to see it for ourselves.

Well, improvement should be made, to say the least. The “highway” is merely a two-lane road, with not a single painted line that I noticed, the last portion of which turns into dirt. There are so many potholes that caused the bus to bounce around like a jumping jack and me not to be able to read a single magazine article the whole way there. A drive that, according to the distance, should only take 3 hours, took 7. Our bus driver randomly pulled over on the side of the road at least a dozen times. We did not always know why. A few times it was so he could talk to another Easy Coach driver passing on the way back to Nairobi. Once it was so men could hop on and sell their vegetables, carrots and cabbages. The other times, well, there were a few police pullovers, a few bathroom breaks, but hard to know exactly why each time.

But, at least, on this particular journey the road was passable. In times of heavy rain, like they have been having, unusually so, here in Kenya, parts of this main thoroughfare flood, so traffic must be diverted to other roads, adding even more time to the journey. Also, we had a relatively safe driver. He swerved a lot to avoid the ruts in the road, but maintained a sane speed. A Harvard Kennedy School student took the bus to Kisumu a few days later (she is doing an urban planning study there) and described a death-defying, high speed, roller-coaster of a ride that made even the Kenyans on the bus scream out at the driver!

The scenery made the trip worth it. We passed through the southern portion of the Rift Valley – that great continental fault system that extends 6000 km from Jordan to Mozambique and is considered to be the birthplace of civilization. The valley is spectacular, boarded by rugged escarpments and dormant volcanoes, and dotted with lakes, such as Lake Naivasha and Lake Nakuru. Closer to the road, we watched people who lined it the entire way, whether selling oranges, potatoes and carrots, or walking home from school in neat school uniforms, or lounging under thorn apple trees that seemed illuminated by the midday sun. We also passed many fields for sugar cane, rice and tea, able to grow in the very fertile Rift Valley soil.

We made it to Kisumu at 8:00 p.m. that night and headed straight for the hotel, the Imperial Hotel, where I stayed until the following Tuesday. Most consider the Imperial to be the nicest hotel in Kisumu (with a special MDG rate, my deluxe room cost $50 / night) and its restaurant, the Florence, to be the best (my dinner of avocado and tomato salad, chicken Kiev, a Tusker beer and coffee that night cost $11). It has an old-time, Art Deco, slightly past its prime feel to it, but with great atmosphere and staff. Both the dining room and the Shalimar Lounge on the top (5th) floor buzz with nonprofit, government and UN workers. The Center for Disease Control has a large campus in Kisumu and I met a group of CDC workers from Atlanta staying at the Imperial for 2 months while studying malaria. It will be where I stay when in Kisumu, and by the end of my week there I was on first-name basis with most the staff. I quickly experienced other infrastructure problems that first night in Kisumu: the electricity went out several times during dinner and the toilets do not flush well because of a poor water and sewage system. But, its a nice place nonetheless.

Oh, right, the following Tuesday, I decided to fly back to Nairobi.

(Pictured: Looking out back window of bus, at the main "highway" leading to Kisumu; Men who boarded the bus to sell carrots and cabbages.)

Millennium Development Goals – Sauri, Kenya

2007-01-20T04:26:00.000-05:00

I started my work as, what we are now calling, the Millennium Cities Representative for Kenya, on Monday, January 8th. Lucky for me, a group of 4 graduate students from Columbia University’s School of International Public Policy and Affairs (SIPA) arrived about the same time. They are here as part of a workshop at SIPA, conducting research on potential investment opportunities in Kisumu, Kenya, the designated “Millennium City” here, and will present the results of their research to us in April. We have been going to meetings and traveling together since then and they will leave on January 20th.

***
But first, let me give a very brief bit of background of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) work in Africa – but to read a good account, I recommend Jeffrey Sach’s book, The End of Poverty, or look at The Earth Institute’s website (www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu). The Millennium Development Goals were adopted in 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit and encompass the world’s goals for significantly reducing extreme poverty (people living with an income of under a dollar a day – that’s a billion people today!) by 2015. There are 8 goals – eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDs, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and develop a global partnership for development.

So how are these goals going to be met? Well, Jeffrey Sachs was asked by, then UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan to become his special advisor on the goals and come up with practical solutions for meeting them. The UN Millennium Project was thus formed, in partnership with Columbia’s Earth Institute, to demonstrate in 12 villages (of approximately 5,000 households each) throughout sub-Saharan Africa that, with a little assistance (its hard to expect people that have less than nothing to do anything with that nothing - aid of some form is necessary), and the right tools (you can’t just hand someone fertilizer who has never used it and expect them to know how), achievement of the goals can happen. One of the 12 research villages is in Sauri, Kenya, in the Siaya District, just a 45 minute drive from Kisumu (the Millennium City). There are now also 66 other funded Millennium Villages throughout Africa. I had the opportunity to spend time in Sauri this past Monday, January 15.

Here’s an over-simplified example of what happened, and is happening, in Sauri. It cost $110 per person in Sauri in 2005, all of in-kind contributions, to start the Millennium Village Project there. That funding comes from a mixture of the Millennium Project, the government, and other donors. It reflects the yearly cost to supply each household in the village with high-yield seeds and fertilizer, to provide malaria bed nets to everyone, to operate a health clinic, to provide midday school lunches, to improve the water supply and the roads. Doesn’t sound like much, huh? There is a 5-year plan for each village with the idea being that each year households will produce more food and move away from subsistence to savings. As their incomes increase, the $110 in aid decreases. Once people can save, they can afford to buy their own fertilizer. In addition, the village provides surplus to the school for lunches, they learn to run the health clinic, to repair the roads if the government will not, to drill and maintain their own boreholes for water, and generally, to organize themselves and control their resources. The MDG team works with them to teach them necessary skills, such as how to use their resources efficiently, how to sell their crops at market, and how to take care of their healthcare needs.

Before, the people of Sauri used almost no fertilizer and an acre of maize yielded only approximately 4 bags at harvest. People of Sauri were starving, and dying from malaria and HIV/AIDs. From 2005 to 2006, the output of a maize harvest more than doubled. People learned to start to store their grain and to market and sell it. With the provision of lunches from surplus food production, school attendance increased from 25% to 100%. Malaria rates dropped significantly with the bed nets and the health clinic services. In general, there has been a rise in the standard of living. No one is starving.

The next step is to replicate this model in every village throughout Africa (as simultaneously as possible) and to start to improve the cities. As life gets better in the rural areas, we expect people to move away from agriculture and head for other work opportunities in the cities. Today, those opportunities and the chance of having a decent life in most African cities, with good infrastructure to support them, do not exist. Thus, in January 2006, Jeff Sachs designated 8 Millennium Cities, one being Kisumu, where we will work to increase investment opportunities there through a combination of needs assessments, policy advising, investor roundtables and development strategies.

***

So, back to what I’ve been doing…I spent most of my first day on Monday (January 8th) simply trying to meet people at the MDG Centre here in Nairobi. The MDG Centre is located in the ICRAF facilities (for International Center for Research in Agroforestry) right next door to the UN, part of a large, very green campus with Indonesian-styled buildings that have open central atriums. I had lunch with Margaret the first day, a woman heading up our public sector policy work, at the lunch facility there, an outdoor area with grills where cooks prepare all sorts of traditional Kenyan or Indian / Malaysian dishes.

On Tuesday, with the Columbia students, we began making the rounds in Nairobi, meeting with the Chair of the Urban Planning Dept. of the University of Nairobi, with an official in the Ministry of Local Planning, with an economist and with someone in the Dutch embassy. Driving all over Nairobi that day gave me a great introduction to it, and I find it fascinating, busy, surprisingly very green with lots of hills, woods and flowers, and very colorful.

Then, on Wednesday, I boarded a bus for the trip to Kisumu…

(Pictured: Men in the community resource center at Sauri; People waiting to be seen outside the health clinic in Sauri. Double-click to enlarge)

Settling-in Nairobi, Kenya

2007-01-13T11:37:00.000-05:00

I was very nervous, but also excited, as my plane touched down at the Jomo Kenyatta Airport – so named after the first president of Kenya after it achieved independence from the British in 1963 – in Nairobi on Friday, January 5th. As we landed, I saw no modern skyscrapers as in Johannesburg, or mountains and sea as in Cape Town, but open country. Upon my ride from the airport, I immediately felt I had landed in a developing country, but one that seemed beautiful, exotic and chaotic all at once. Giraffes wandered in a field just off the airport highway, the same one that leads to Mombasa on the coast, a two-lane road without painted lines and in bad need of repair. Cars were backed up for miles on this Friday afternoon, which gave hundreds of young men the opportunity to approach my car window and hawk peanuts, belts, even neon road signs (should I have been in need of one). Men on dilapidated bikes weaved in and out of the traffic, which itself formed a snake-like line. Women sold goods in informal shops set up along the roadway. With my windows down, even with all the exhaust, the air seemed fresh and I could smell the smell of wood burning fires – a distinct smell to me that I first identified in Tanzania last summer, and identify with Africa.

After winding our way through the streets of downtown Nairobi, I made it to the guest house where I will stay through February (pictured here), a modern house owned by a very interesting, and somewhat eccentric, couple named Simon and Karen (both of British descent). The house is located in the northwest part of Nairobi, in a very nice, green and quiet neighborhood called Rosslyn, near the United Nations compound and the MDG (for Millennium Development Goals) Centre where I will work this year, and just across the street from a large housing division for American embassy workers. Simon, who was born in Kenya but attended boarding schools and university in England, is an architect and built the home. It has lovely gardens and verandas, 3 dogs, 1 cat, 4 geese, 1 guard, 1 gardener and 2 wonderful domestic workers named Joyce and Wambui, who wash and iron my clothes to perfection. I am the only guest staying there and after I arrived and began finally – after 2 ½ months – to unpack, they asked me to join them for dinner. I felt disoriented that evening: I had been dropped off in, what felt like, the middle of nowhere; I had no idea how to get around and buy my own supper should I have wanted to do so; I had lost the “First World” comforts of Cape Town; and I then sat down for a dinner of sheperd’s pie with two complete strangers, as a guest in their house.

On Saturday, I think Karen felt a bit sorry for me after I went out with a driver to explore Nairobi and arrived back after only a few hours, still a bit disoriented and confused about life in Nairobi. So she immediately invited a few people over for drinks and to meet me. Christophe, a French guy working at UNHabitat, and Christina, an Italian working at the UN Environmental Program, came over and then, also probably feeling sorry for me, invited me to join them for dinner. We had dinner at a very good Asian “fusion” restaurant with other UN and NGO people from all over the world living in Nairobi. That evening – getting out for dinner, meeting very interesting people, and having interesting and, for me, different conversations – made me excited for the coming year.

I also had my first brush with the Kenyan police as, on the way to dinner, Christina, driving a borrowed car, was pulled over randomly by a policeman carrying a very large semi-automatic rifle. He shined a flashlight on me, sitting in the back seat without a seat belt – when there was not one to put on –and started to intimate that some sort of fine would be due to him because of this. Christina handed him her UN identification and he immediately let us go. I am told that if she had been driving her car, with the red license plates of a UN official, we would not have been pulled over in the first place.

The next morning, on Sunday, I went for a run in the neighborhood. Unlike in Cape Town, I now see mostly black Africans when out and about, including, while out for my run, several Masai, the men with large holes in their ear lobes, wearing colorful red and purple robes and carrying clubs. Even though it is summer, the weather is very mild in Nairobi because of the altitude, so running was pleasant. That afternoon, Karen and Simon invited Christophe and Christina back over for lunch, along with two other friends of theirs, a British expat couple, the husband of which, like Simon, is a long-time Kenyan architect. We sat on a veranda, talked, drank wine and nibbled on bread, cheese, paté, fresh vegetables and fruits for hours that afternoon. And we discussed everything – from Kenyan politics (lucky for me to witness, this is now a presidential election year here in Kenya, so there will be plenty to discuss) and government corruption, to Somalia and America’s role, to Kenyan safari parks and Mt. Kenya, to Kenyan literature and development work.

The next morning, Monday, January 8th, after I sat down for the daily breakfast with Simon and Karen – set out each morning by Joyce or Wambui on an outdoor veranda (situated on the left side of house, in the picture): freshly sliced fruit, granola, toast, and an assortment of jams, teas, coffee and newspapers – my driver took me to the MDG Centre, just next door to the U.N. I felt very thrilled to be working in Nairobi for the year!

Good-bye to Cape Town, for Now. On to Kenya.

2007-01-04T11:49:00.000-05:00

I have finished my work at Baphumelele, for now, but it, and the children there, will not leave my heart, my thoughts, and my prayers. Tomorrow, Friday, January 5th, I leave for Nairobi and will begin work as the Millennium Cities Representative for Kenya, something for which I am very excited. I have spent since New Years thinking about my last month+ here in Cape Town, and at Baphumelele, and nothing but scattered words come to mind (and, I'm too lazy to write complete sentences right now)…

Mountains against bright blue sky, or blanketed with clouds, in Cape Town. Beautiful sunsets, in Khayelitsha.

Electricity wires. Fires. Trapped. Free.

Tiny hands. Helping hands. Painted hands. Pick-pockets.

Sitting on the beaches of Clifton. Climbing the paths of Table Mountain, and Lions Head. Paragliding, or trying to, if the winds would cooperate. Diving, or trying to, if the sharks would appear.

Nelson Mandela. Rosie Mashale.

Lots of Nescafe. Freshly Ground. Lots of wine. Bottles.

District Six. Batting for a six.

Cool Runnings. Running around University of Cape Town.

Bunk beds. Bed bugs. Flower beds at Kirstenbosch. Beads.

Mice. Cockroaches. Seals. Penguins.

Homesick. Childrens’ Home. Finding home. Holidays.

Adoption. Jayney.

Volunteers. Lynn. Hannah. Marta. Jen. Nicole. Michelle. Duncan. Heather. Katie.

Children. Patience. Jessica. Okuhle. Luthando. Sunshine. Whitey. Ashemale. Shakes. Nenana. Sinazo. So many others…

(Pictured: me, looking a bit haggard and in the same brown outfit I wore every shift, and Sinazo)

--Will be back with a posting as soon as possible from Kenya!

Bathing at a New Hour, for a New Year

2007-01-03T14:54:00.000-05:00

My last shift at Baphumelele ended on New Year’s Eve. Just before that, at the suggestion of some of the volunteers, the care workers began to bathe the children in the “evening”…well, almost. The idea was, instead of waking all of the children up at 4:00 a.m. to bathe them each day, why not do it in the evening, just before bedtime, so the children do not go to sleep dirty and also so they, and of course the care workers, can sleep later each morning? Well, as with most things at Baphumelele, changes were implemented, but in a bit of a funny, haphazard, does not completely make sense, sort of way.

It was a tradition among the Aviva volunteers that, at least once during your volunteer period, you would arise and help at the 4:00 a.m. bath time. I prepared do this on my last shift. However, during this last shift, the care workers implemented the new bathing policy and began to bathe all forty children at 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon. So, they took our advice to bathe at the end of the day, but we meant after dinner, not in the middle of the afternoon! Because, what happened was that the children, bathed and dressed in clean clothes or pajamas, would then run outside and/or spill dinner all over themselves, going to bed dirty nonetheless. To make it even crazier, the care workers were still getting up and bathing them again in the morning!

But the bathing process, no matter what time, is something to behold in-and-of-itself! The care workers bring the older toddlers – most are now out of nappies – to the toilet room. About 20 of the children wait in a line there. Not sure why everyone must be in the room at once. With the door shut. The room is steaming hot. Luckily then, the children have their clothes off. Not lucky for those of us helping. I try to open the door once and let some air into the room. “Shut the door” the care workers shout! Like the teethbrushing event each day, you must fight to keep the other curiously frantic children out of the room.

Two care workers and two volunteers are in the room also. I stand by the door and keep getting hit in the back with it as the laundry lady decides to put up the clean clothes at the exact same time. 20 children. Now 5 adults. Steaming hot toilet room.

There is a process. Marta is in charge of medicated cream (applied all over some of their bodies before the bath) and Vaseline (applied all over each of their bodies after the bath). A child steps into the bath tub, others wait in line behind. Hilda bathes them. Marta towels them off. New towel is used for each child. Marta applies the Vaseline and passes the, now very slippery, child to me. I hand them underwear – believe me, these kids know the difference between girls’ and boys’ underpants. I struggle to find appropriate ones for them to wear, and can not always. I sometimes try to pass boys’ underpants off for girls’, or vica versa, but they will have none of that. For the younger ones, I put on their nappies. Because of all the Vaseline, they slide all over the place. I then pass them to Koleke. Koleke puts on the rest of their bedtime outfit. She hands them back to me. I take a big, horse-hair like brush and brush their hair. I kiss their foreheads – can’t resist – and they leave the room. Marta and I then wash our hands with anti-bacterial cream so we do not spread any of one child’s skin infections to another. We wonder about what is being passed to us? Then the process begins again.

Despite the craziness of it all, the foreignness of the process to me, I felt a lot of tenderness and love in that steaming toilet room.

Happy New Years to everyone.

(Pictured: Koleke and children in line for bath; application of medicated cream before the bath; Luthando in the bath tub)

A Merry Christmas at Baphumelele

2007-01-01T05:30:00.000-05:00

I worked the Christmas shift at Baphumelele and it ranks as one of the most memorable ones I’ve spent. Actually, in some ways, it seemed that Christmas arrived at Baphumelele about the same time as I did. Since early December, one organization or group of people after another – even tour groups out on various “township tours” – stopped by to donate food, clothes and toys for the children. One humorous moment happened on the Sunday before Christmas. As I headed out the gates of the toddler house with the children to walk down to church that Sunday (held in the dining room, below our volunteer apartment), a van of people from Taiwan pulled up. “CHINA! CHINA!” all the kids screamed. I cannot get them to say my name but here they were screaming out the name of an Asian country (albeit the wrong one)! This group, a youth organization from Taiwan, delivered individual “goodie bags” for all the children.
Christmas activities began in earnest on Christmas Eve night. The Xhosa people do celebrate the Christian holidays, and they attend church every Sunday, but they also follow some of their own Xhosa traditions (such as formal circumcision ceremonies when Xhosa boys turn 18 years old). However, they do not go overboard at Christmas – you won’t see houses decorated with lights, or many Christmas trees, and not a lot of gifts are bought – they simply cannot afford to go overboard. The volunteers, however, spent a lot of time with the children a few weeks before Christmas making Christmas decorations which we hung up, along with some lights and tinsel, in the toddler house and the church (a/k/a dining room) before Christmas Eve.

All of the children, even the very youngest ones who had been bathed and put in their little pajamas, gathered down in the church at sunset on Christmas Eve night. Rosie, dressed as “Mother Christmas” with a fur shawl around her shoulders and what looked like an Easter hat on her head, told a Christmas story to the children. She spoke in Xhosa, so I could not begin to tell you what the story entailed, but she told the story with such great enthusiasm and animation that, despite its length of over 30 minutes, it kept the children entertained. After she finished with her story we, the volunteers, handed out candles to all of the children to use on a candle light walk back down Dabula Street to the toddler house. Most of the toddlers immediately tried to eat their candles, and what should have been a slow walk while singing carols turned into a mad dash down the street. As soon as everyone finally made their way to the toddler house, we did sing a few Christmas carols – well, everyone only new the words to two of them – Silent Night and We Wish You A Merry Christmas, each of which we probably sang 5 times. Then, we put the toddlers to bed and made popcorn covered in melted chocolate for the care workers who spent the Christmas Eve night in the toddler house.

At 4:45 a.m. on Christmas morning, the 4 of us volunteers, plus Jayney (the woman from New York who is trying to adopt) arose and started cooking breakfast for everyone at Baphumelele – 150 people in total – that’s 250 scrambled eggs, 200 buttered rolls, 6 watermelons, 12 cantaloupes, 6 pineapples, 4 vats of orange juice and 2 industrial-sized jars of ketchup! Our healthy breakfast competed with the candy from the small stockings filled with treats that all the children received that morning. After breakfast, each child at Baphumelele received a new clothing outfit and pair of shoes. Everyone was so excited and watching them all put these new clothes on melted my heart!

After everyone was dressed, we headed back to the dining room – now the church – for a Christmas service and the handing out of gifts by Rosie. Each child received a wrapped gift from their wish list, all donated items – there were toy trucks, stuffed bears, games, radios and baby dolls galore! Once all the gifts had been unwrapped, a DJ played music and we all danced. I’ve decided I really like dancing with one kid on the left hip, one kid on the right hip, one hanging on my left leg, one on the right leg and a few jumping on my back! We topped the day off with a huge braii (bbq) of bbq’d chicken, ribs, potato salad and, of course, rice, prepared by the long-term volunteers, the Germans, and ate out on the lawn of the crèche playground. By the end of the day, exhausted and full, all of the children went to sleep immediately, some before we made it back to the toddler house. What a day…Christmas!

(Pictured: Me serving breakfast; Jessica, Asemahle and Lukahlo in their new clothes; Rosie handing a gift to Nenana)

At the Beach

2006-12-22T11:01:00.000-05:00

Just had to make this posting for the pictures!

Last Tuesday, I and the other 3 volunteers on my shift, plus Jayne (the woman from NYC I mentioned in my last blog posting, who is trying to adopt) took some of the young ones to Muizenberg Beach. Muizenberg lies on the False Bay side of the Cape Peninsula, about a 30 minute drive from Baphumelele, and is known for its colorful beach cabanas (which you can see in the background of the first picture). We hired a driver, packed lunches, tried to find shoes that fit for them to wear, and piled 12 children into a mini van for an afternoon at the beach. As far as we know, this is the first time any of them had seen the beach or the ocean - other than trips to the hospital on occasion, they rarely see outside the small street where Baphumelele sits. We made quite the scene when we arrived - all eyes on the beach watched as 12 beautiful black children waddled down to the waterline. We had people coming up to us from all directions asking if they could help us, wanting to hold the childrens' hands as they approached the water and to play with them. The children were hilarious - so afraid, puzzled, and in awe of the water at the same time.

But, we had quite a scare within 10 minutes of our arrival there. One of the little boys with us, Vuyani, collapsed and suffered a seizure as soon as his feet hit the cold ocean water. We yelled for and found a doctor on the beach and the doctor, Marta and Vuyani rushed off to the local hospital. He spent the night at the Red Cross Hospital in Cape Town for observation and testing - unbeknowst to us, he had had a seizure a few months ago as well - and is now fine and back at Bap. We were all very afraid though - petrified - as we did not know exactly what had happened to him.

Other than the incident with Vuyani, the beach outing was a huge success, the children had a great time, and I learned how to put diapers back on sandy children (something that was more humorous than skillful!)

Wanting to Bring Them Home

2006-12-21T12:55:00.000-05:00

If I could, I would pack a few of the children at Baphumelele into my luggage and take them back with me to the U.S.! I have really fallen in love with some of these children. There are three little girls in particular that have stolen my heart…

One of the little girls came to Baphumelele almost a year ago, badly abused. She had burns on her face and most of her body. She also suffers from full-scale AIDs. Although almost 4 years old, she barely speaks and is very tiny for her age. But, from what I’m told, she has made incredible progress in the past 9 months while at Bap. – after she arrived, they did not think she would live very much longer. At first, understandably, she would not let anyone near her, pushed everyone away, and never smiled. She now reaches out for you to pick her up when she sees you coming towards her, smiles at you with the sweetest, small smile, blows kisses at you from across the room, and leans over to kiss the other children on the cheek – especially some of the other little boys. She has the most amazingly quiet and calm nature about her and has very expressive, old eyes. There is something about her spirit that you notice right away – everyone does, she instantly becomes a “favorite” of the volunteers here.

Another one of the little girls’ mother died and then she was abandoned by the rest of her family. She has huge, beautiful, shy eyes and does not immediately warm up to people, but when she does get to know you, she’ll never stop smiling. I took to her instantly – when I first met her she was wearing shoes way too big for her, a faux fur coat with faux leopard trim around the sleeves and carrying around a big purse. She is a very slow and particular eater, one of the only children who does not like to pour food all over herself while eating. She seems healthy to me – other than an occasional skin infection, which most of the children suffer from on and off – and very smart. She helps me set up the little plastic chairs around their lunch tables, sits with me and colors or reads for more than a few minutes, and really tries to talk to me, although, frustratingly, mostly in Xhosa.

The third little girl is quite the character – she makes me laugh every time I see her. She smiles constantly and is always on the move, wobbling across the room. She is almost three but does not make any sounds, other than the occasional whimper or cry. They believe her silence is as a result of trauma she endured when she fell into a coma and almost died a year ago (for reasons I do not know, but am told she has fetal alcohol syndrome), and she attends speech therapy. And, she loves to eat. I’ve never seen a child move across the room as fast as she does when food is brought out!

I would seriously consider adopting any or all of them if it was easier to do for a U.S. citizen, but currently it is not, from what I understand. There is a couple from North Carolina that came to Cape Town a few years ago to volunteer at Bap. They fell in love with a 9-year old girl living here and decided to adopt her. From what everyone tells me, South Africa has almost completely blocked any adoptions by U.S. citizens because the U.S. has not signed a Hague Treaty on international child trafficking. The only feasible way around this (if you are not a movie or pop star), and what the North Carolina couple did, is to move to South Africa for a few years, establish temporary residency, foster the child, and then adopt. The couple’s adoption of the little 9-year old girl went through this past November – she is now 11 years old – and they will move back to North Carolina this coming summer.

This past week a 42-year old woman from New York City joined us out at Bap. In the past year and half, she has been an Aviva volunteer at Bap. for three different 6-week stints. This time, she is here for only two weeks to visit Nana, a 3-year old boy at Bap., that she desperately wants to adopt. She previously has met with members of Parliament, social workers and lawyers here and they have all basically told her the same thing: South Africa will not allow U.S. adoptions right now and her best bet would be to move here. She is still trying, however, and has heard that in 2007 the U.S. plans to sign the Hague Treaty, which could change the adoption landscape here. She also wonders to herself whether adopting Nana is the right thing to do – and so goes the other argument about taking him out of his environment and away from his culture, especially by a white person. I understand those arguments, but when I sat out at an outdoor Christmas concert at Kirstenbosch Gardens last Friday night, as the sun set behind Table Mountain which encircles the Gardens, I could not help but think about the children at Bap. and wish so much that they each had their own family, whether from South Africa or the U.S, black or white, that could take them to such a concert as well.

Getting Dirty

2006-12-14T07:28:00.000-05:00

Here’s more about a typical day volunteering at Baphumelele and, although I’m going to tell you a little more about the nitty, gritty of Bap, I want to emphasize at the outset that the life for the children at Bap is 100x better than the alternative for them, and Bap does provide them with a lot of good attention and care…

After another great three days off in Cape Town, this time touring the wine country outside the city and Robben Island, where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison, my third shift at Baphumelele began this past Monday, January 12. And it was hectic one. Two of the volunteers from my previous shift completed their stint at Bap and so headed home over the weekend, leaving only Marta (the Canadian) and me for a few days until we could be joined by two new volunteers later in the week.

We were picked up in Cape Town at 9:30 Monday morning to be driven out to Khayelitsha. In tow, we had our groceries for 3 ½ days (we buy the same thing each shift – lettuce and veggies which can go on our egg sandwiches for breakfast, our ham sandwiches for lunch (turkey does not seem to be something they eat/sell here), and our frozen cheese pizzas for dinner); our linens (which always includes two fitted sheets, for extra protection against bed bugs); and our clothes (which are easy to pack, since I wear the same pair of pants and the same three t-shirts each shift). After we arrived at Bap, we quickly unloaded our groceries, sprayed our mattresses for bed bugs (I have not had any problems yet…but others supposedly have), and headed down to the America House to meet the children as they awoke from their naps.

There are two shifts of care workers in the America House, a day and an evening shift. The day shift during the week will work the full weekend then rotate into the night shift the following week; then, the night shift during the week will have the weekend off. There is a huge personality difference between the two shifts, and this week the day shift on duty, led by a woman named “Princess,” was the much more difficult one. This group of care workers yells a lot at, and sometimes hits or pinches, the children, for which we report them; they bark orders at us all day long, most of which are in Xhosa, so we cannot understand them; and they generally work against us. For instance, they once randomly started giving the children bread and peanut butter during our morning teethbrushing.

After all forty children arose from their morning naps, we prepared and handed out snacks – cheese and apples we brought with us. Although not obligated, if we did not bring them, the snacks they would receive each morning and afternoon would be the same thing, an almost-stale chunk of bread with peanut butter or jam. As we walked out from the kitchen with the food, the children immediately raced towards us, clawing at our legs, with hands outstretched, crying and yelling over and over, “and me, and me, and me!” This happens each time we bring out food for them. “Hlala phantsi nceda” we said to them, asking them to “sit down please.” The care workers just sat there – seemingly relishing the madness and not offering to calm them for us – and one particularly obstinate one, Hilda, danced around us with her arms outstretched also chanting “and me, and me,” begging for our snack. At the same time, a young autistic boy from one of the Cluster Homes, who is usually left to roam around Bap. unsupervised, flew through the room, squawking like a bird and grabbing at all of their food. By the time we managed to hand out all the snacks, we had 40 wailing children.

After snacks, we decided to get out a water table for their playtime. Most of the toys around Bap. are in bits & pieces – scraps of books, incomplete puzzles, broken crayons, parts of dolls, wheel-less toy cars, etc. A previous volunteer had purchased this water table and some water toys. Although we and the children were soaked to the bones, we were having a good time splashing around with them in the water until a few of the care workers became angry, for reasons we did not understand, and ordered a new, very nice, care worker to bring all of the children inside to the “toilet.”

The “toilet” is a cement-floored diaper-changing, bathing and dressing room. It consists of a changing table, a toilet with a broken seat (and never any toilet paper), a bathtub, and cubbies for all the clothes. The care workers are never that discerning with the clothes they put on the children, short of putting a boy in a dress – on this day, one boy wore a little girl’s frilly pink shirt, a few of the girls had on some boy pants, one girl had on the same dress she wore all last week, one boy wore a sweater (its summer) and one girl had on another girl’s lacey white, long crèche graduation dress. But they could not be cuter!

As the new care worker tried to bring them all inside to the toilet, with our assistance, the other care workers again just sat there and watched. All 40 of the children were thrown into the rather small toilet room and, when I went in to try to help, there were kids screaming, kids in the tub, kids drinking the toilet water, kids without clothes on, kids who had messed themselves, and only one care worker trying to deal with all of them! “I’m going to quit” she said to me. We tried to help her, but are not supposed to be doing anything with the toilet, so moved on to helping prepare the lunch.

On this day, lunch consisted of rice and a fish stew. The smell of the “fish,” mostly fish innards, was noxious and we sifted through it with our hands to pick out bones. For lunch, we set up small plastic tables and chairs for them to eat outside the America House. We pulled up a chair alongside some of the smaller children to help them eat and I sat and fed three of them at once. Even the ones we assisted spilled rice and fish stew all over themselves, the tables and floor. And the ones we did not help came up to us and grabbed at our hair, jumped on our backs, and crawled onto our laps, with their little fish stew hands, begging for our attention as well. So when it was all over, I looked as if I had taken a bath in fish stew.

At 3:00 p.m., after our break, we once again handed out snacks for the children. This time we had sugar cookies and, as always, chaos ensued. Hilda “helped” us out a bit more by grabbing an old tennis racquet and swinging it around at all the children to get them to quiet and sit down. A little later, it was equally crazy when we pulled out balloons. All the older children from Clemens House appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and grabbed away the balloons, popping many of them in doing so. You can only imagine the noise of crying children, laughing teenagers, yelling care workers, and popping balloons! The Clemens House children come down to the America House whenever they please, and many of the teenage girls come to play and feed the young ones as if “playing house.” We have no control over them either! Then, while I held one little girl, I noticed a strong stench becoming worse and worse. I looked down to see that my pant leg, where she had been sitting, was now covered in mustard-colored poop. I had to beg a care worker to drop what she was then doing to take this little girl back to the “toilet” and clean her up.

We started preparing the dinner at 5:00 – more rice, with chicken stew. All of the children have very bloated little stomachs, which we think results from all of the rice and bread they eat. At dinner, the care workers wanted them to sit on the floor inside. With barely any room, we literally stepped over, sometimes on, the children as we handed out their bowls and tried to make room to sit on the floor in order to feed them. By the time dinner was over, there was no floor to be seen, only rice and stew. Then, it was might favorite time of the day again…teethbrushing!!! I’ll let the pictures here speak for themselves!

All in all though, despite how dirty I was at the end, it was a great day at Bap. As we arrived at 7:00 a.m. the next morning to begin it all over again, the nighttime shift, before they left for the day, had a drum out. As one kept a beat, the others danced in a circle around the room with the children, singing and chanting at the top of their lungs. We grabbed some children as well and joined in. It has been a great experience so far!

(Pictured: Marta trying to peel them off the window in the medical room so we can brush teeth; me brushing Patience's teeth; Patience drinking water, or should I say pouring it on herself; Vuyani quickly grabbing the "spit bucket" and drinking it before we could take it away!).

More about Baphumelele

2006-12-09T11:56:00.000-05:00

“Baphumelele” in Xhosa means “progress,” which is what Rosalie Mashale hoped it would bring to the community of Khayelitsha. In 1989, Rosie, who had just moved from the Eastern Cape of South Africa to Khayelitsha, witnessed unsupervised young children rummaging through garbage searching for food while their parents worked. Rosie decided to take the children into her home during the day and by the end of the first week, had 36 children there. Thus, began her crèche, Baphumelele, a day care for infants and toddlers. The crèche part of Baphumelele now has about 230 children aged 3 ½ to 6 years, about 20 of which live at the Baphumelele Children’s Home, where I currently volunteer. Last week Baphumelele launched a great new website (www.baphumelele.org.za); the pictures of the children you see on it are ones with whom I am currently working.

Baphumelele has grown from that original crèche in Rosie’s home to encompass a full block in Khayelitsha. It includes the Children’s Home which houses children in two buildings, the “America House” with approximately 40 children from infants to toddlers and the “Clemens House” with another approximately 40 children from aged 6 to 19 years. The children who arrive here are orphaned, abandoned and/or abused. The Children’s Home is the only orphanage in Khayelitsha for children over the age of 8 years, and the children live under very cramped conditions. In the America House, two rooms have cribs lined-up along each wall and, in a third room there, the older toddlers sleep on foam mattresses, body next to body. In Clemens House, the boys sleep in bunk beds jammed into small rooms on the first floor and the girls sleep on the second floor. Each house employs two shifts of full-time care workers, a day shift and evening shift that rotates, who care for the children 24 hours a day.

Just recently, Elton John’s AIDs Foundation donated money for Rosie to build “cluster houses” on the block. There are 4 cluster houses of which one has already been occupied by a family of 5 children and a full-time careworker. The idea with the cluster houses, small single family homes, is to try to keep families together in a real home-like environment. For instance, they eat their meals at the cluster home rather than go to the dining room located in another building, under the volunteer suite, on the block.

Also, Baphumelele has several community-based projects, a theme very important to the vision of Rosie and to the Xhosa culture. It recently added a wood workshop, where men from the community are employed to make wonderful wooden beach chairs - really, these are some I would put out at any Hamptons home! Rosie also operates a kitchen for community members and a second hand shop, all on one block in Dabula Street, Khayelitsha. And, she is in the process of a building an HIV/AIDs Respite Center across the street from the dining room/volunteer house where she will take in adults suffering from HIV/AIDs who have been ostracized by their own family. So, Rosie has definitely made A LOT of progress in Khayelitsha over the past decade, but I'm sure I don't have to tell you how much more must be done.

Again, see the new website for more information on all of this!

Pictured: Billboard of Rosie at one corner of Dabula Street in Khayelitsha were Baphumelele is located; looking down Dabula Street, the 2nd floor of the pink building is where I and the other volunteers reside; my view of Khayelitsha from the door of the volunteer apartment.

Lessons Learned

2006-12-08T07:34:00.000-05:00

Last weekend (December 2-3), the neighborhood where I live in Cape Town, Observatory, held its annual Obs Festival, a two day festival of outdoor music, food and shops (pictures here taken at Obs Fest). I walked down to it on Saturday night, the day I arrived back from my first shift at Baphumelele, with Duncan, the Scottish guy who does not put solid foods into his body, and Marta, the 19-year old Canadian from my shift at Bap. Like many aspects of Cape Town, at Obs Fest, I felt that I could have been in some funky and multi-racial neighborhood in San Francisco, New York or New Orleans. Bands played on each street corner. Street vendors served sausages, corn on the cob and Castle Lager. Stands sold beaded jewelry and t-shirts with Nelson Mandela’s face outlined in silhouette. Young people with dreadlocks, afros or blonde hair (must be the Dutch origin) milled about. And I had a great time, until…

I walked a half block off of Lower Main Road, where the festival was being held, to use my cell phone. As I stood there dialing, a man ran by and swiped it from my hand. In an instant, he disappeared. Although angry and frustrated, since I just purchased the phone right before I left, I decided that it could have been worse and I would just by a new, cheap cell phone here – something I should have done in the first place. Undeterred, I decided to stay around and listen to a few more bands. A few hours later, about to go home, I reached down to my purse, hanging with the strap across my shoulder in front of my body, unzipped it and pulled out my camera to take another picture. As I did that, I felt a hand reach around me and deftly pulled out my wallet. I quickly turned around to the man behind me – certain he took it – and confronted him. I frisked him, made him pull out his pockets, yelled at him (and, of course, he yelled back), but did not find my wallet.

Fortunately, I had emptied my wallet of all but some cash, my ATM card and NY driver’s license. Unfortunately, I too confidently thought I could monitor my purse well enough and did not take everyone’s advice just to put money in my pocket and carry nothing else. And I was not the only one hit that night: Marta had her camera and wallet taken at a bar, Duncan was pick-pocketed, but caught the guy in the act, and another volunteer had his wallet taken as well. The thieves made out well at Obs Fest!

Sunday was a cold, rainy day in Cape Town, which I spent buying a new cell phone, finding an open money exchanger, etc. Monday, though, was a beautiful day. It is summer here and, while warm, there is always a nice breeze blowing off the Atlantic, making the weather very pleasant. I rode a double-decker bus around Cape Town and visited the South African Museum and the District Six Museum with another Aviva volunteer, Michelle, a 20-year old from Vermont who will soon start working on a nature conservation project outside of Cape Town. After attending the art college in Savannah, Georgia for a year, Michelle decided to move to NYC and work like mad as a nanny during the day and at Magnolia Bakery at night to save money in order to travel the world doing volunteer projects for the next year and a half. After volunteering in South Africa, she will head to India, Nepal, Thailand and so forth. One of her more interesting volunteer stints will be in Nepal where, for a month, she will live with Buddhist monks, teach them English for 4 hours a day and, in return, they will teach her meditation practices.

The District Six Museum in Cape Town is a great, small museum adjacent to the now barren fields of District Six, an area just off the central part of Cape Town. District Six was a vibrant, cohesive, mostly Coloured, community before the 1950s, when the apartheid policies of the Nationalist government kicked-in to high gear. In 1950, the government passed the Group Areas Act, giving them authority to designate later, in 1966, that District Six would be a “white area.” Over the next few years, the government forcibly removed more than 6o,000 people from the homes where they had lived for more than five generations. The homes were bulldozed and the people were scattered along the sandy Cape Flats area southeast of Cape Town. Many of the townships formed at this time, Khayelitsha being one of them. Today, District Six is a wasteland full of overgrown weeds and rubbish. The whites who were supposed to move in refused to do so. The government which is supposed to be giving restitution by building homes and moving people back has taking over 10 years to do so. Like the crime here, District Six serves as a reminder of an ugly blight of a really beautiful city.

Working with the Children at Baphumelele

2006-12-02T05:06:00.000-05:00

Amily, Apiwe, Asanda, Asermahle, Awesipho, Baphiwe, Elvis, Kimi, Kwanele, Leema, Lubabalo, Lukholo, Luthando, Mandoza, Moses, Mesuli, Naledi, Nana, Nenana, Neliswa, Numyama, Nxonxo, Okuhle, Jessica, Patience, Pholile, Phisa, Sange, Shakes, Sinazo, Sinyoyolo, Sipho, Thina, Viwe, Vuyani, Zandile, Zolela…

These are the children that I am working with at the Baphumelele Children’s Home in Khayelitsha, a township of about 1.2 million people located a few kilometers outside of Cape Town. Most of the children are of Xhosa origin, as are the care workers there, as is Nelson Mandela. They speak Xhosa, a language using clicks like the Damara in Namibia. Some of these children are orphans; some have been abandoned or removed from their home due to abuse. Some of these children are HIV positive; some already have AIDs. Most of them have a host of other illnesses, such as one boy with cerebral palsy. All of them need more attention than any of the volunteers and full-time care workers can give them, and it is heartbreaking. I have already fallen in love with them – I would take Nenana (pictured by herself) and Patience (pictured crawling) back to the U.S. with me in a second.

I worked this week at Baphumelele from Wednesday through Saturday morning (November 29 to December 2). It was quite an overwhelming few days, and since I’m still learning a lot about Baphumelele and these children, I’ll start with what is easy to describe for this entry: what the short-term (being 6 weeks to 3 months) volunteers, of which I am one, do at Baphumelele.

My primary role is to assist the full-time care workers with the younger children, about 40 in total, who seem to range in age from 9 months to 4 years old. (We do not know most of their actual birthdays.) All of these children stay in what is called the America House. I am joined on my 3 ½ day shift each week by three other volunteers: a very cool 59-year old retired teacher from Illinois; a 19 year old student from Toronto who is very mature for her age; and a woman in her mid-twenties from the UK. While on shift we live in a loft apartment four doors down from the America House, located above the main kitchen / dining room for the older children at Baphumelele.

We begin each day at 7:00 a.m. at the America House. The full-time care workers have already been up with the children since 4:00 a.m., when they start to bathe them and give them their first bottle for the day or, for the older ones, their breakfast of porridge. We arrive and begin to prepare the bottles for the rest of the day, carefully making sure each child has the correct number of bottles and correct amount of formula and water. We also brush all of their teeth – a real challenge – they love the toothpaste and most just clamp down on the brush, with all their tiny might, and suck all of the toothpaste off. They love it so much that they’ll try to reach for and drink the spit bucket and some of the more wily ones often succeed when we have our hands full with the others!

During all of this time, we try to play or hold as many of them as possible. We simply try to give each of the 40 children at least a few minutes of one-on-one time, at least one brief chance to be picked-up and hugged, each time we are around them – it’s a tragedy that is all we can give them. At 8:30 a.m., all of the crèche (pre-school) aged children walk across the street to the crèche where they will stay until 3:00 p.m. This leaves about 20 toddlers back at the America House for the full day. The volunteers then go back to the apartment to shower, eat breakfast and have a break until 10:00 a.m.

At 10:00 a.m. we go back to the America House and feed the toddlers a snack and play with them until 11:30. For instance, on Thursday we brought out a big water table a previous volunteer had purchased for them and let them all play with water toys. At 11:30 we wash all of their hands (a big deal for them, like the tooth brushing activity) and then head to the main kitchen to grab their lunch to bring back to feed them at the America House. The meals they serve here seem to be the same thing day after day, meal after meal: rice with a chicken or fish stew on top made of a watery tomato base, with tiny slices of potato and carrots mixed in. We sit and help them eat their lunch and then clean the dishes until 1:00 p.m., when we once again go back to our volunteer apartment to have our own lunch and break until 2:30.

Because Khayelitsha is not safe, we can not walk around anywhere, not even around the block in broad daylight. So when we are not on duty, we are confined to our apartment. For that reason also, we have to bring all of our food and water for the three days we work. The volunteer apartment, which has the feeling of a wooden clubhouse one would build in their backyard in the U.S., has a fairly rudimentary kitchen with a refrigerator, microwave, a toaster oven and a few burners. We mostly “cook” toast, cereal and eggs for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and salads with frozen pizzas or pasta for dinner. I have done more “cooking” here than I did the past 5 years in NYC!

At 2:30, we go back to America House and help the care workers wake the children from their naps. We then feed them another snack and once again play with them and the crèche children who return at 3:00 p.m. At 4:30, we do another hand washing and then go grab the dinner meals – more rice and stew. This time we prepare and feed all 40 children. Afterwards, we brush their teeth again, wash the dishes from dinner and prepare the syringes for the vitamins and medicine to be dispensed the next day. Thankfully, we do not change any diapers or do any cleaning, other than the dishes. Wisely, we do not give out medicine. And, we do not put them to sleep. They try to reserve the more intimate, motherly, activities like changing diapers and putting them to bed for the permanent care workers there. Then, around 6:30 p.m. each day, we finish and, again, lock ourselves in our apartment for the evening. And, that is typical day at Baphumelele for the volunteers. It does not take a lot of brains, and would not be they type of work I could do beyond this month, but these children sure do pull your heart strings!

Cape Town - The Real World

2006-11-28T14:20:00.000-05:00

Minus the cameras and an even ratio of boys to girls, on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, I landed in what feels like an MTV Real World house. At the moment, I am living with 10 other orphanage volunteers in a house owned by our sponsoring organization, Aviva, in a Cape Town neighborhood called Observatory.

Actually, its a very nice old house, complete with daily maid service, 4 newly renovated bathrooms, a large braii (bbq grill) on the back patio, a wrap-around security wall, electric fence and cans of pepper spray hanging by the front door to take with us when we leave or to grab if anyone knocks on the door. (In fact, two Aviva volunteers were mugged right outside the house just the other week.) And, the other volunteers are all very nice and fun. There is only one guy amongst our group, from Scotland, whom I have not seen put any solid food into his body since Friday - he's a rugby player and really does enjoy his pints of beer! The women volunteers have come mainly from Holland (the Dutch government will pay them for their volunteer work), but also from the UK and Canada. The average age of the other volunteers is 23 but, fortunately, there is one woman from the UK who is my age and another from Illinois who is 59 years old. And despite being unsafe, as is the whole of Cape Town, I like the neighborhood of Observatory a lot. It has an artsy, bohemian feel with many funky restaurants, bars and shops and reminds me of New Orleans, with two story homes that have 2nd floor wrought-iron balconies.

So the problem? 10 people. 3 bedrooms. Bunk beds. In addition, Aviva has some volunteers who work at other sights outside Cape Town, but who come into Cape Town on the weekends and use the house as a backpacker-type lodge. As one of the 20-somethings rolled into the bedroom the other night at 5:00 a.m., giggling the whole time she tried to climb onto the bunk bed right above me, I realized why I gave up roommates many years ago!

The 10 of us will work and live out at the orphanage in shifts of 3 1/2 days on and 3 1/2 days off. When we work, we will live out at the orphanage. When off, we will live back at the house in Observatory. My shift starts tomorrow, Wednesday.

Before our first shifts begin, we spent this past weekend sight seeing and enjoying some Cape Town sporting events. We climbed up Table Mountain, rode bikes down the Cape Peninsula to the southern most tip of Africa at the Cape of Good Hope, visited African penguins at a penguin colony near Simons Town and, on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, watched South Africa beat India in a cricket match at Newlands Stadium. (Pictured here, South Africa at bat; flags flying after South Africa scores a 6; me eating a double frankfurter (that is the way they came, I swear, two foot long hot dogs per bun!)). The cricket match lasted 8 hours and I did not understand the rules until midway through, but I loved it and am really enjoying Cape Town. As I said in my blog about all the good of Cape Town, I find this to be one of the most beautiful cities with no shortage of entertaining activities. However, now having had another 4 leisurely days here, I'm ready to begin what I came to Cape Town to do, learn more about the orphan and HIV/AIDs crisis here in South Africa while helping out at the Baphumelele orphanage.

The Dunes and Germans of the Namib Desert

2006-11-23T04:35:00.000-05:00

After my friend Christy departed on Sunday, I decided to spend my last few days in Namibia seeing the dunes of the Namib desert, which are supposed to be some of the largest and most beautiful sand dunes in the world, in what is considered the oldest desert in the world at over 80 million years old. Since we had returned our rental car, I arranged for my lodge located in the Namib-Naukluft National Park, aptly named the Namib Naukluft Lodge, to transport me there and back.

Accompanying me on the 3 hour drive southwest of Windhoek to the Namib desert, through the narrow passes of the Naukluft mountain range, were an older German couple who did not speak a lick of English. Although we hardly spoke a single word to each other on the drive there – well, they kept trying to speak to me, to which I nodded and smiled, while thinking to myself, ‘nope, still don’t know any more German than I did 10 minutes ago’ – they kept insisting I get in every picture they took at stops along the way. (Pictured below, the husband, our guide and me. I figured I should take at least one picture of them in return.) They were a very cute couple. The whole way there she kept her eyes glued to the map, following what seemed like every Km of progress, while he took pictures of the same landscape out the jeep window. At one point I noticed that if I took a picture, then he would quickly whip his camera around towards my side of the jeep and take a picture of the same thing. This became a source of amusement for me as we drove to the lodge – fortunately, my digital camera allows me to erase all the random photos I took!
We arrived at the lodge just before sunset and dinner on Monday, November 20th. Also at the lodge, and with whom I would spend the next day and a half eating, walking on sand dunes and watching the sun set, were another 3 German couples, also with very limited English speaking skills. That was it at the Lodge, just me and 4 German couples, a fact which made me chuckle quite a bit throughout my time there.

At sunset after our arrival on Monday night, I took my glass of wine and walked a bit of ways from the lodge to a small water hole. From all directions, dozens, really maybe hundreds, of guinea fowl and desert ground squirrels scurried towards me as I approached. They apparently thought I was the lodge manager who feeds them during the late afternoon each day, but on this day had not yet done so. Stunned and overwhelmed by the onslaught, I stayed put a little too long, resulting in one squirrel taking a bite out of my left big toe! Although freaked out, a bit of antibiotic lotion, an apology and assurance by the lodge manager that I did not have rabies (something I feared, despite having been vaccinated) made it nothing more than a source of great amusement to me and my new German friends.

We had goulash made with kudo meat for our Monday night dinner, plus, among other things, “Kansas City fritters.” I had them repeat the name of this menu item to me many times to be sure, for I could not figure out what was “Kansas City” about them. I had I anxiously hoped for something with BBQ sauce rather than the simple chive/egg pancake they served me!

On Tuesday, we arose at 4:15 a.m. to drive to the Sossusvlei area of the Namib-Naukluft Park, in order to make it to the dunes in time for sunrise. The giant dunes are truly beautiful, made red by iron, and with lines that flow like musical notes. We climbed to the top of two of the largest dunes, Dune 45 (pictured above) and Big Mama, and had a big breakfast in the desert. By midday in the Namib desert, not surprisingly, it is quite hot. Unfortunately, we experienced a very hot and, to me, amusing delay on our trip back to the lodge as a result of a flat tire. As during everything else these past few days, as I piled out of the jeep along with the Germans, all of whom were very concerned that we would die of heat stroke yet could not stop taking pictures of the flat tire, I just laughed, wondering where in the world was I???

I came back to Windhoek on Wednesday afternoon, for one more night in Namibia before going to Cape Town on Thursday, Thanksgiving. On Friday, I will meet up with some other volunteers to start work at Baphumelele, the orphanage in the Khayelitsha township there. As an aside, a few people have emailed me about my pictures. As you can imagine, I have taken hundreds of them during the past month. I believe (or fear) I am limited by the number and size of photos I can post on blogspot, so have tried to keep my picture posting here limited and small. However, if you want to see the pictures that I am putting together separately in a Kodak gallery, just email me. Have a great Thanksgiving!

Swakopmund, Seals, Sand and Shiloh

2006-11-22T06:07:00.000-05:00

After breakfast at Cape Cross Lodge on Thursday, November 16th, we set out south down Namibia’s Skeleton Coast to the coastal town of Swakopmund, making a brief stop to see the Cape Cross Seal Reserve. I found the Namibian coast striking due to the contrast between the rippling dunes of the desert on one side of the 2-lane coastal road and the crashing waves of the South Atlantic Ocean on the other side. “Skeleton Coast” was named as such after the ships and sailors that met their demise here because of the mixture of fog and strong Atlantic currents.

The Cape Cross Seal Reserve also was striking for the number of seals – averaging between 80,000 to 250,000 – as well as the smell. Those who know my gag reaction will be correct in assuming that it was going strong there; we could only stand it for about 10 minutes. Part of the strong stench is due to the dead seals left on shore, both young pups that have been crushed by the thousands of other seals and also older seals that have starved to death. We heard from several people that Namibia currently faces a “seal problem.” There are approximately 2 million seals around the coast, causing many to die by starvation, entanglement in fishing nets or being shot by fishermen. At the same time, those seals lucky enough to eat have decimated the local fish population. The government has set about killing some of the seals but, according to one local tour guide with whom I spoke, not in a sensible way. According to this man, the government could handle the seal population in a way that also benefits the people of Namibia. Seal meat, he said, could be an excellent food source. And, instead of shipping all the seal skins to Canada (as the government currently does) it could re-open all of the abandoned tanneries in Namibia (abandoned as a result of the diminishing cattle industry) and employ people to make leather goods. I’m not sure of the merit to any of this, but it is just the type of creative and multi-faceted solution to a problem that I hope to be able to help discover for Kisumu, Kenya, one of the Millennium Cities where I’ll be working beginning January.

After Cape Cross, we spent Thursday and Friday nights in the little picturesque coastal town of Swakopmund. The guidebooks do not over-exaggerate the beauty and uniqueness of this town and, as we said throughout our tour of Namibia, we found it hard to believe that we were in Africa. Swakopmund felt like a blend of old world Germany, with pastel-colored colonial buildings and beer gardens, and modern Santa Monica, with palm trees, boardwalks and contemporary, beachfront homes. We stayed at a little hotel, the Hansa Hotel, that also felt very European - it was easier to find a German newspaper there than a Namibian one! Although we did have bratwurst for lunch one day, we enjoyed great seafood for all of our other meals in Swakopmund, including crayfish, king clip and Walvis Bay oysters.

We spent Friday on the sea and in the sand dunes around Swakopmund. That morning, we went down the coast another 30 Km to Walvis Bay and took a boat ride to see oyster farms, dolphins, pelicans and more seals. The seals are so friendly around Walvis Bay, as a result of being fed from the tour boats, they would jump right up onto the stern of our boat as we cruised along (pictured above). Later that afternoon, we went out with a guide on 4-wheel motor bikes along the coastal sand dunes (pictured above). Although both Christy and I got stuck several times, going up and down the face of the gigantic sand dunes on these bikes was incredibly fun. Finally, on the way back into Swakopmund, of course, I could not help but do a drive-by of the little community called Long Beach, between Walvis Bay and Swakopmund, where Angelina and Brad holed-up and had Shiloh earlier this year. I find their choice of the Swakopmund area of Namibia fascinating because it is so un-African – its Malibu, but more quiet and isolated. Although I do think they helped bring some name recognition to this country back in the U.S., it seems to me that it still really needs to grow as a U.S. tourist destination - in 2 weeks, I have yet to come across another person from the U.S. here!

On Saturday, November 18th, we left Swakopmund and drove back to Windhoek. Christy left on Sunday and, since I had a few more days before I start my volunteer work in Cape Town, I decided to head back out of Windhoek and see the famous red sand dunes in southern Namibia.

Damaraland to the Coast – My Kind of Camping

2006-11-18T02:04:00.000-05:00

After 2 days at Etosha National Park, on Tuesday, November 14th, we packed up our little green pea of a car and headed west through Damaraland, making our way towards the Namibian coast on the Atlantic Ocean. Again, we saw no people around and barely any cars passed, but we did have to slow down now and again for donkeys, goats and baboons crossing the road. We planned our fuel stops wisely because to run out of gas would involve us walking for 100 Km to the nearest town. We have also found good snacks for the car rides – Simba chips (our favorite, chutney flavored) and biltong, dried meat (like beef jerky) that comes in every variety imaginable (our favorite, chili beef).

Damaraland, a huge and sparsely populated (by now, hopefully you’re getting the picture) area in the north central to western part of Namibia, is named after the Damara tribe. The Damara are thought to be one of the oldest inhabitants of Namibia, after the Bushmen (the San), and are particularly known for their “clicking” tongue. Our guide on Tuesday and Wednesday there, Actung, is Damara and he taught us the sounds and symbols for the four types of clicks they use – l, ll, !, +/- – as well as how they speak these clicks before and after some words, but not others. We could not stop listening to him talk; it is truly a fascinating language.

Damaraland is still considered desert, but the landscape changed dramatically pretty shortly after we began heading west. Some of Namibia’s mountain ranges, the Spitzkoppe and Brandberg, rise dramatically out of gravely plains in Damaraland. We spent Tuesday night at the Mowani Mountain Camp – one of the most unique places I’ve ever stayed. There are 12 “tents,” each scattered about and nestled in between huge red granite boulders (pictured, looking into our tent). The dining and reception areas are out-of-doors under mushroom-shaped thatched huts. We looked out from the balcony of our tent across miles of golden plains, interrupted by huge boulders or mountain peaks, and covered by spotless bright blue sky. Sunset is a big activity at Mowani and we, along with the other 8 guests staying there that Tuesday night, walked up to the top of a boulder where they had bean bag chairs for us, and served cocktails and appetizers, as we watched the sun set. (Pictured above, me at sunset.)

We did not find the activities at Damaraland to be the most thrilling of what we had experienced thus far in Namibia, but going there is worth the trip to see the landscape and stay at Mowani Mountain Camp. With Actung, our guide, we hiked around Twyfelfontein, a sight with over 2,500 rock engravings, mostly of game species, thought to be 5,000 years old; the Organ Pipes, a series of dolerite columns which made for fun black & white photographs; and Burnt Mountain, a section of a mountain range formed by dolerite rocks that cooled some 130 million years ago after volcanic activity in the area. Before we left on Wednesday morning, Actung took us out to track desert elephants. The desert elephants are unique because of their extra long legs that allow them to cover a much greater range each day and their ability to drink water only every 3-4 days.

After lunch at Mowani on Wednesday, November 15th, we drove another 3 hours out of Damaraland to reach the Skeleton Coast. About halfway through the drive, we left the plains and mountain ranges of Damaraland and hit white sand desert. The landscape along Skeleton Coast is bleak, eerie, isolating and desolate. As our road ran smack into the Atlantic, we encountered fog and cold, gusty winds. Without any people, cars, or buildings around, we felt that we had hit the edge of the earth. That feeling was reinforced at our lodge that night, the Cape Cross Lodge, a slight distance north of the Cape Cross Seal Reserve and located right on the Atlantic Ocean. Think of the movie The Shining and you’ll understand how we felt there. There were only 8 guests staying in the lodge that night, there was nothing and no one else around us (other than 100,000 seals at the seal reserve), and it remained foggy and cold throughout our stay. We made it there in time for dinner and the next morning, after breakfast, we could not leave fast enough to drive down the coast to the little, picturesque town of Swakopmund.

Cats: "Their Eyes Are Merciless"

2006-11-16T17:20:00.000-05:00

“Even National Geographic does not have it this good,” said our very cute Italian guide, Mateo, as we tracked a leopard through Etosha National Park. Mateo left Italy 3 years ago to follow his dream of being a wild game guide and park ranger in Namibia and, in those 3 years, had yet to spot a leopard in Etosha. “I must call my mother,” he exclaimed, “I can now go back to Italy!!!” I think a good guide makes all the difference in these game parks and Mateo was great due to his knowledge and complete enthusiasm for the animals (plus being adorable and having an Italian accent did not hurt).

We left Windhoek and headed north on Saturday, November 11, to spend that night at the Okonjima guest farm, home of the Africat Foundation, and then Sunday and Monday at the Epacha Lodge on the Epacha game reserve, just outside of Etosha National Park. Over 60% of Nambia is semi-desert and the landscape we encountered driving north of Windhoek is a desert mountain plauteau that goes on forever, in all directions. Namibia is also a land of huge cattle farms – first the Germans, then the South Africans, “took” or, some say, “were given,” land from the black Namibian tribes and pushed most of the people into the far north of Namibia. We have come to understand that is why we have not seen many people, let alone black Namibians. If we are not passing through inhospitable desert, then we have encountered nothing but very, very large farms owned by white people. There are only about 100,000 whites living in Namibia (mostly German or Afrikaner) and I bet they own most all of the land. I can’t believe that more of an uprising about this has not yet occurred.

The Hanssen family owns the Okonjima guest farm and also founded the Africat Foundation, a leopard and cheetah rehabilitation program located on their farm. The leopards and cheetahs have been rescued from cattle farms throughout Namibia and brought to Africat for care and eventual reintroduction into the wild. Okonjima is no longer a working cattle farm but a huge wild game reserve that also has giraffes, zebras, ostrich, wild dogs, warthogs, and all varieties of large and small antelope – eland, kudu, oryx, hartebeest, gemsbok, springbuk and impala – a hunter’s dream! Although the leopards and cheetahs have tracking devices on them, as Africat monitors them throughout the reserve, they are completely in the wild. We were able to drive around and watch them chase giraffes, jump in trees to try to grab falcons, drink from watering holes, and generally just roam about – there is no attempt to tame their behavior, they are allowed to roam and kill on this game reserve as they please. It was, however, a bit contrived when we went out for morning coffee at the Lion Lapa and there, waiting for us (or, rather hopefully, their morning feeding of donkey meat), were 3 beautiful lions! Since this is Africa, not to forget, there were no cages or protection about us –it was just us, our coffee and muffins, and three lions!

Both the Okonjima and Epacha accommodations were beautiful thatched chalets and the views, looking out for miles across the game reserves, were magnificent. All the game lodges in Namibia seem to follow the same routine: early continental breakfast before leaving for a 7:00 a.m. game drive; back just before lunch and resting; tea and cake at 4:00 followed by a late afternoon game drive; back just before cocktails at sunset; then ending the day with a multi-course game dinner. The food here has also been excellent – we’ve had oryx, kudu, eland and ostrich. All very good, even the ostrich, although I would not rush to order it again.

After the Okonjima/Africat reserve, we spent two days at Epacha and Etosha. Etosha is one of Africa’s great national parks (24,000 sq Km) with, for instance, over 18,000 zebra, 8,000 giraffes, and 3,000 elephants. Its central feature is the Etosha Pan, a huge depression (5,000 sq Km), mostly of salt. At Etosha, with Mateo, we spent a lot of time hanging out at watering holes (which I have also done a lot of in NYC, but with different water and animals). The animal behavior at the watering holes is fascinating: the shy eland, the largest of the antelope, approaches slowly and cautiously, almost painful to watch; the carefree wart hog scurries down, throwing all caution to the wind; the giraffe takes its time, bobbing its neck up and down and right to left, looking around before it will take the chance to spreads its legs so it can drop low enough to drink (for once its down, there is no way it will make it back up quickly); and then comes the leopard, prancing confidently to the water, a mere baby female that could not hurt even the wart hog, yet, all life stopped, retreated or waited. The sprinbuk – dozens of them – stood still with all eyes glued on this leopard as it approached, drank for 10 minutes and then left (pictured above). I guess its nice to be the boss!

Also at a watering hole, we watched two male giraffes fight over territory. They did this by swinging their necks into each other, over and over again. We sat for 30 minutes and watched them do this until one giraffe, tired and irritated, gave up and went away. We also viewed a herd of elephants approach during the afternoon – a time best to visit when lions and leopards sleep – drink, bathe, and play in the water. Mateo pulled the car from the watering hole to play with them as the crossed the road. He taunted them, revving the engine, pretending to impede their cross. He provoked the reaction he wanted, for their ears flared out straight – a sign of playful, yet not serious aggression -- and they started for our truck (pictured, one heading for us). Mateo pulled away, realizing, in the end that we were playing a game in the wild we could not win.

Namibia – Where is Everyone?

2006-11-16T08:43:00.000-05:00

I arrived in Windhoek, Namibia on Friday, November 10th. One of my best childhood friends, Christy, arrived from Kansas City, Missouri, later that afternoon. Her luggage then arrived on Monday after a few desperate days spent on the phone trying to get a response from South African Airways as to its status, which even included a call to Air Namibia to ask them to walk the 10 meters across the Windhoek airport and beg Tuyamo, the South African Airways baggage handler PLEASE to pick up her phone. (At one point, clearly tired of us, she even picked it up and hung up again!) Miraculously, it made its way to us, at that point located 450 km north of Windhoek at the Etosha National Park.

We rented a brand new, very inconspicuous, lime green Nissan at the Windhoek Airport to drive ourselves throughout the northern and western part of Namibia for 10 days. Of course, this made me (and my family back home) slightly nervous – two U.S. women tourists driving alone, in Africa, on the “wrong” side of the road, with a manual transmission (located on the “wrong” side as well) – but I’ve never had better driving conditions, the roads are nicely tarred, directions are well-marked and, what is most remarkable to us, there are no other people out on the road. Namibia is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world with only 1.9 million people living in over 800,000 sq. Km (twice the size of California). This immediately became obvious to us as we set out from the airport located 42 Km outside Windhoek – on the way we did not pass a single car on the road!

Since we only had Friday evening in Windhoek, we arrived to our hotel, Roof of Africa, and asked them to hire a driver for us to show us around for a few hours. Windhoek does not immediately feel like any other African city I’ve seen. Again, there are hardly any people or cars about and it’s very orderly, clean and quiet. Joining our driver, Abner (and not sure why) was a cook at our hotel, Tussi. After an hour of sightseeing around Windhoek – with not much to see other than some German colonial architecture – Abner and Tussie wanted to show us where they lived, in the township of Windhoek, called Katutura. Katutura is a township just like all others I have described, but driving through on a Friday evening, with Abner and Tussie, gave a different perspective. Everyone was outside. Kids rolled tires down the streets. Groups stood outside a few churches and sang. Men sat in lawn chairs and drank. Women cooked in black kettles over outdoor fires in front of their homes. Abner and Tussie talked about living there and owning their homes with pride.

But things became a little strange when we pulled up to Tussie’s house, number 29. “Get out and come see” she told Christy and me. As we were still getting out of the car, we watched her open up the door to her house and immediately slam it, laughing. Already uncomfortable, “what is it?” we asked but could not imagine, “that’s ok, we’ll just go back to the car.” “No, come in,” she said. So we entered. It was pitch black – no windows – and miniscule – not bigger than a walk-in closet. We entered into half the house that contained a make-shift kitchen. A curtain divided the second half, the bedroom, holding a small bed and all the household belongings piled on top of it. As soon as we entered, Tussie pulled back the curtain into this bedroom and there standing in a small, plastic bucket, completely naked, was her 16 year old niece, having a “bath.” Behind the 16-year old girl was her 18-year old sister, whose left eye was swollen shut and did not look well. Stunned, we turned quickly on our heels to leave but Tussie insisted, “no, take our pictures, take our pictures,” she insisted. Christy and I just both stood there for what seemed like eternity and looked at each other, confused by what was happening. “No, really, we will leave,” we said. We walked out and they followed, including the bathing niece who now had wrapped a towel around herself. Outside they again asked for us to take their pictures, and we did (pictured above).

Before we knew it, we next found ourselves at Abner’s sister’s house, to take pictures of his family. Then we went to the home of one of Tussie’s sister’s, to take pictures of Tussie and her sister’s newborn baby. By this time we realized we were becoming the main Katutura photographer, it was getting dark and, with no end to Tussie’s enthusiasm for picture-taking in sight, we asked for them to take us back to the hotel. I still do not entirely understand our interactions with Tussie and Abner – in part I feel they were just excited to show us around and take advantage of our camera, but in part they were putting on a show for us which made me feel as if we were exploiting the situation by just being in their homes, and in Katutura, with our cameras.

Later that night, we ate dinner in Windhoek at Joe’s Beer Haus, a raucous German restaurant. Namibia was a German colony in the early 1900s until after WWI when the League of Nations gave the mandate for governing Namibia to Britain (which then handed it over to South Africa, which controlled Namibia until its independence in 1990). The German influence can still be seen everywhere and we have encountered many German tourists, more than any other group – again, not something I expected for Namibia!

Cape Town – The Bad

2006-11-10T05:13:00.000-05:00

You knew it had to be coming…

In my mind, the poverty and crime in Cape Town puts up a good fight to completely overshadow all that is beautiful about it. We spent half of Tuesday and all day on Wednesday in the car as Yusef drove us around one township after another – townships with names like Lavendar Hills, Mitchell Plains, Pelican Park and, the grand daddy of them all, Khayelitsha. Linda kept saying to just wait, that what we saw in Johannesburg and Gaborone and in the Linda township we visited in Livingstone, Zambia pales in comparison to those of Cape Town. She was right.

First, there is the sheer number and size of them. We drove for hours around these. Stopping at a newly built observatory point in Khayelitsha – which is where the orphanage where I will work in December is located – we could see that the township sprawls for miles in all directions (pictured, looking out over Khayelitsha towards False Bay). Of course, part of this is a legacy of apartheid, but today, part also is due to uncontrolled immigration into South Africa. We were told that 55,000 illegal immigrants cross South Africa’s borders each month looking for jobs that are not there. They all end up in the townships. Linda said that every time she comes back to Cape Town this or that township has grown in size or a new one has sprung up – one would like to think that the problem is in reverse at this point, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Second, there is the quality of them. Soweto, outside Johannesburg, is massive, but driving around it, you will see more solid homes, more government built homes, a wider variety of structures, some quite nice – Winnie Mandela and Desmond Tutu live in Soweto. Some people in Cape Town – especially many coloured people – complain that the African National Congress has tended to take care of its own, the large black population located around Johannesburg, before turning to Cape Town and its majority coloured population.

Of course, Soweto has its share of tin shacks, but not to the same extent as in Cape Town. Miles and miles of shacks are piled together, with electricity wires flowing in all directions that will cause fires to destroy entire sections in a matter of minutes. Many of these began as squatter camps. In South Africa, you only need to “squat” onto someone’s property for three weeks and then you are legally allowed to stay there. So, people set up their homes one right on top of the other, and no one will or can do anything about it. Roads end and you can look back into the bowels of some of these camps and see nothing but dirt alleys that twist and turn into what must be hell.

And then, there are the children. Those on the streets we met, to say nothing of those in the orphanages we visited, seemed more sickly, their hair patchy, eyes tended to be somewhat crossed, or blank, their faces expressionless, their skin blotchy. By sheer coincidence, Leigh-Ann and Greg had contacted the orphanage where I will work, called Baphumelele, and we all went to it so they could do a site assessment and consider donating money there. Many of the children there did not look well at all. I will have plenty of time to write more about Baphumelele in December, but suffice it to say that I think spending six weeks working there is going to be difficult.

One of Linda’s friends, Father Gugs, an Anglican priest who has started a primary school, an AIDs orphanage and a myriad other programs in Khayelitsha, took us around the township on Wednesday afternoon. We walked back into the heart of one of these squatter camps where Father Gugs set up a preschool for some of the children there. The area had no running water until recently when a Scandanavian volunteer working with Father Gugs spent about $3000, dug a ditch, and ran a water pipe through this section of the township up to the little “school” building. Now most everyone around the area reaches through the tattered school fence to turn on the tap in order to get their daily supply of water. As was the norm in each school or orphanage we visited, the teacher had the children stand and sing us a song. They did that at Father Gug's little preschool as well – and each one of us, even Greg, had to turn and look away to hide our tears as these children sang us the song, “If you are happy and you know it clap your hands.”

Finally, there is the crime. I know we have crime in the United States, but it doesn’t seem to claim the same number of victims - here, almost everyone - or have the same level of desperation. Sooner or later, everyone seems to get hit by one crime or another and you here story after story about it. There is not a house without bars on the doors and windows. They will rob people at church – three masked men with rifles robbed Linda’s friend, Debbie, and others at a church council meeting a few months back. We met a Dutch Reform minister who says people frequently steal the cars of his church members during Sunday services. They even rob schools and orphanages! Several months ago, a couple of armed men went into the nursery at Baphumelele and demanded the keys to the new van that had just been donated to it. In the middle of the day on Tuesday, someone mugged a man right in front of the security guards outside my hotel. For as beautiful as Cape Town is, it would be very hard to live under these conditions - truly, like living in prison, surrounded by some of the most awful living conditions people should never have to endure.

Cape Town – The Good

2006-11-09T11:55:00.000-05:00

After Zimbabwe, Cape Town seems like paradise. I had always heard that Cape Town is a beautiful city and, indeed, that is true. We flew into Cape Town from Zambia on Monday, November 6th, just as the sun set behind the mountain chain that runs down the cape peninsula, turning everything multi shades of pink, red and orange. After checking into our hotel, Linda and I walked to the Waterfront (something like South Street Seaport in NYC, but on steroids) and had sushi – I really thought I had eaten my last sushi for the next 14 months back in New York just before I left! Since I will spend most of the next 2 months here, I was ecstatic to see all sorts of shops, restaurants and cultural activities at the Waterfront. I think Cape Town will spoil me before I head to Kenya in January!
Cape Town reminds me in part of San Francisco, in part of Auckland and in part of San Diego. Table Mountain (pictured), a 1073 meter mountain smack-dab in the center of the city, forms an imposing backdrop along with the Atlantic and Indian Oceans that make up Cape Town’s coastline. The city is vibrantly colorful, especially the pastel painted facades of the buildings in the Bo-Kaap area (pictured above), a district near the center of the city that has a strong Cape Malay Muslim influence. On Tuesday, our driver, Yusef, himself a Cape Malay Muslim – and someone who is going to get to know me quite well as he drives me around on weekends in December – drove us throughout the city, and we had lunch in Bo-Kaap at a Cape Malay / Indian restaurant called Biesmiellah.

Part of what also makes Cape Town a fascinating city to me is its “coloured” population. As I have just learned, South Africans use the term “coloured” to refer to a mixed race people with strong Cape Malay or Indian heritage. Unlike in the U.S., coloured does not mean black. Over half of Cape Town is coloured. About one-third of Cape Town is black. The coloured people’s history and relationship with black Africans is complex, partly because during apartheid, although by no means treated well by whites, they were treated slightly better than the blacks. As a result, there has been resentment by blacks towards them. Yet, since they were still extremely oppressed, many collaborated with blacks to resist apartheid policies. Like blacks, coloureds could not vote, they had to carry passes, and they were forcefully removed from their homes and dumped in townships. But today, not all coloureds support the ruling African National Congress, as many feel it does not always support the coloured person's best interests.

We had a great home-cooked meal at the home of a coloured friend of Linda’s, Debbie, on Tuesday night. Debbie also will become a good friend of mine in December as I seek out the company of familiar faces – and I also hope she can teach me a lot more about the coloured population’s past and present here in Cape Town, for I’m very fascinated by it and by how different the race relations have been and are here compared with the United States.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Linda, Leigh-Ann, Greg and I also visited townships and more programs which I will describe in my next blog entry. On this stint, we did not get to do a lot of other wonderful Cape Town activities, like visit the wine country, go whale watching, dive with sharks, or see a cricket match…but I’ll get around to all of those when I’m here in December!

****
Just a personal note, since my blog lags a bit behind where I actually am in my travels. I have been in Cape Town all week. Linda left today, Thursday, and I parted ways with Leigh-Ann and Greg as well. It has been fantastic to travel with them these past two weeks and they, especially Linda, have taught me a lot. I will get to see Leigh-Ann and Greg again in January when they are back in Kenya, and Linda in late May back in Johannesburg.

So homesickness immediately set in as soon as they left. I walked again down to the Waterfront for a greasy fish & chips lunch by the water, then took a long jog along the coast. Fortunately, tomorrow I will fly to Namibia to meet up with one of my good childhood friends, Christy. I’ll be in Nambia until Thanksgiving, then its back to Cape Town where I will begin work at an orphanage here on the day after that. I have no idea what my internet situation will be while in Namibia, so if you log into my blog and do not find a new posting, check again in a day or so…I love keeping everyone up-to-date with this so rest assured that I’m frantically running around Namibia looking for a connection in order to get back in touch with you. I hope you are well.

Victoria Falls: No water but plenty of animals

2006-11-08T17:37:00.000-05:00

Other than the border crossings each morning and early evening, I had a great weekend in Victoria Falls relaxing - made all the easier when forced to go to sleep early after the electricity goes out in the hotel as result of the thunderstorms and you are told not to leave the hotel under any circumstance - and visiting several of the game parks. It was really nice to take a break from visiting school and orphanage programs and seeing the poverty and AIDs problems up close. By the time we left Botswana last Friday, I was feeling very weary.

Hippos and zebras are an entirely different story, however. On Saturday, Linda and I went on a boat safari along the Zambezi river. Hippos were everywhere. Unlike the happy hippo characters of my imagination, these can supposedly rip a boat, needless to say also a person, in half rather easily. We also went on a land safari and I could not click my camera shutter fast enough to take pictures of all the zebras, giraffes, elephants, rhinos, wart hogs, impalas, water buffalos and babboons we saw. Poaching has been a huge problem in the parks so every now and again a man also would pop out from behind a tree with a rifle. Always rather disconcerting, so Linda leaned up to the driver each time and asked, just to make sure, whether the man was there to shoot poachers, animals or us.

However, this time of year, the Falls on the Zambia side are dry. After we arrived in Zambia/Zimbabwe, that was the first thing everyone said to us - too bad, the Falls are dry. We thought they must be joking. But, of course, we arrive and there is no falling water in one of the world's great wonders. But it was still beautiful and the Zimbabwe side of the Falls does have water if you are willing to get yourself over there to seem them...

After a few days at Victoria Falls, it was then time to head back to South Africa, to Cape Town.

Zambia? Zimbabwe? They both start with a Z.

2006-11-07T16:21:00.000-05:00

That, and that they share a border along Victoria Falls, seems to end the similarities. Hopefully though, you can understand my confusion when I learned that from Nov. 3rd to 6th, not only would I stay in a different hotel from Linda, but in an entirely different country.

After Botswana, on Friday, November 3rd, Linda and I headed up to see Victoria Falls and wildlife for the weekend. (Pictured, crossing the Zambezi River from Botswana into Namibia - so my parents can see I’m alive.) When Linda sent me her itinerary for the trip a few months ago, I decided to veer off at this point and have my travel agent book me into a different hotel in order to save money. No big deal it seemed, both right at Victoria Falls, mine just 6 Km down the road from Linda’s. Well, after it was too late (i.e., I could not cancel without charge), I discovered my hotel is located in Zimbabwe; Linda’s, in Zambia. Two separate countries. One under international sanction, led by a guy named Robert Mugabe who doesn’t like white people much these days (or, at least those that own land and refuse to leave, even after being told they would be killed if they did not). But no one could properly advise me on how big of a problem this would be. So, I decided to forge ahead with the plans, steadfast in my efforts to be cost-conscious. In addition, enough people had given me some comfort that I would be able to make it to Linda’s hotel each day without being shot at the border. Indeed, that was true, I could get back and forth and I made it through the ordeal perfectly fine - however, it was not easy or cheap or fun.

Everyone, even the border guards, looked at me incredulously when I explained that I had accidentally booked in Zimbabwe, “You are staying in ZIMBABWE?!? Ohhhhh…” and they laughed, nervously. Unbelievably, there are not a lot of accommodation options at Vic Falls. On the Zambia-side, where almost EVERYONE but me seemed to stay, there is the Zambezi Sun, Linda’s hotel, a large, clean, Disney-esque lodge suited for tour groups and business retreats from South Africa; and an even more upscale lodge called Royal Livingstone. On the Zimbabwe-side, there is my hotel, the Mercure Rainbow, a more pleasant-sounding name than reality reflected; the old, colonial Victoria Falls hotel; a few more expensive than mine; and, on both sides, some cheap backpackers' lodges.

Linda’s hotel was 100x nicer, so we launched our activities from there each day. That meant I had to get to and fro. The border opens each day a 6:00 a.m. – I could not cross over it and get to the Zambezi Sun early enough! My hotel was empty, dark, without working phones in the rooms, and, off and on, electricity. My hotel’s idea of a safety deposit box was to take my passport, wallet, etc., throw them all into a trash bag, wrap the bag several times around with duct tape and put the taped bag into a drawer behind the front desk. After observing this procedure, I carried everything of value with me, or left them with Linda.

Each morning, I first had to find someone willing to drive the full 6 Km to Linda’s hotel, as most drivers stop at the border. I had to pay that driver $20 US to take me across, plus a $10 vehicle fee, which I never understood. Each direction, there are two checkpoints. After waiting in a long line of trucks also trying to cross, we would hit the first checkpoint each morning around 7:00 a.m. The driver would take my passport, tell me to stay in the car with the doors locked and disappear into a building. I have no idea what he did at the first stop, but I sat there, ignoring the dozen hagglers who surrounded my car and tapped on the windows, while baboons jumped around the parking area (pictured, a large baboon that had fallen into an oil well, approaching my car as I waited). The driver would come back out to the car and we would drive another ½ Km down the road to the second checkpoint. Here I would get out and have to pay a fee for entering: $10 for a day trip to Zambia; later that day, $30 for going back into Zimbabwe. This always took longer than necessary - either the border guards could not find something to complete the paperwork, such as the date stamp (and would seem stunned by having to find what they were looking for, as if I was the first person to ever cross their border), could not make change, or, simply, sat there and ignored me. I had to repeat this process each evening as I headed back before dark – 6 times over the course of our weekend at Victoria Falls.

On Monday morning, finally leaving Zimbabwe for the last time, the Zambian-side guard asked me, “when do you leave Victoria Falls?” I told him, “later that afternoon.” He asked, “How are you leaving?” “Flying out of Livingstone (Zambia),” I replied. “Did you spend the night in Zambia?” “No, I stayed in Zimbabwe.” “Well, you owe us $100 for using Zambia only for transit purposes. A new fee we are imposing on Americans, because America charges Zambians this fee,” he told me.

I became slightly angry for at this point all my cost-savings had been lost in crossing back and forth over the borders. I explained to him that I had used Zambia for all my activities and meals, and that even choosing to fly out of Zambia put money into the Zambia economy. The border guard was not buying it. Instead, he took my passport and tossed it at me, “if you don’t like it, find another border to cross!”

I looked around for my driver, who had moved to the opposite side of the room. Realizing that my main objective was to simply get back to South Africa, I said, “ok, just tell me what I owe you so I can leave.” “No,” he said, “you are annoyed, huh? So you can just leave from another border.” Well, obviously, that was not going to happen. I did what came most natural, started to cry, and I gingerly handed him $100 with a meek, "please." He growled, stamped my passport, and I was on my way. What is it they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions?

Botswana, Part II – Expats

2006-11-06T17:46:00.000-05:00

Although we only stayed in Botswana two days, I loved what I saw and experienced there during that short time. And, so do many others it seems, many of them expatriates, whom I met while in Gaborone, who came there for a year or so and stayed. All expressed the same sentiments to me – they arrived intending to work for only a short period and, not only fell in love with the country and its people, but saw the great need for help and could not leave. You could tell, from talking with them, what difficult decisions it had been for them and how homesick they were – for England, Sweden, the United States, for their families back home – but they simply could not leave. Several of the teachers who listened to Linda’s speech that morning at the Maru-a-Pula school all remarked that they understood her descriptions of sacrifice, for it was what each of them felt that they were doing by staying and working in Botswana, so far from home.

I found Botswana a wonderful place and understand wanting to stay and help the people there. First off, the local beer is called “St. Louis Lager.” What could be a better for a beer-loving girl from Missouri, than that? I was told that there is a large Botswana population in St. Louis...Jesse, my sister-in-law from St. Louis, will need to look into that further for me.

Second, and more seriously, the people are amazing, gracious, polite, warm, and non-contentious. Botswana has an interesting past and, I want to believe, a hopeful future. The British were a light-handed colonial power in Botswana, and the transition to its independence in 1966 was peaceful. Around that same time, diamonds were discovered and the prosperity was shared with the people. Money was spent on healthcare, roads, and other infrastructure. Botswana went from being one of the 25 worst-off countries in the world to a "middle-income" country, now one that has to fight for donor aid and NGO attention because it is considered to be doing comparatively well. On the flip side, it is considered the least corrupt country in Africa, so at least donors know with some confidence that their money will be well spent.

But the AIDs pandemic hit Botswana extremely hard. Most of the population is crowded into the southeastern section of the country, near Gaborone and the diamond mines, and as a result of this density, combined with all of the prostitutes who work the routes of the diamond truck drivers in the area, the HIV virus spread rapidly. Today, 37% of people between the ages of 15-50 have HIV/AIDs - a staggering number. However, and here is the hopeful part, the government has started to work hard to fight this - it gives out free anti-retrovirals to every person whose white blood cell drops below 200 (don't quote me, but it might be the only African country that does this) and has launched a large "stigma free" campaign (even, a bit ridiculously, crowning a Miss HIV Stigma Free...not joking). President Mogae has been tested, people are talking about it openly, clinics have been opened up in remote areas of the country, training of healthcare workers is taking place. Despite the frightening statistics, most of the people I met in Botswana found reason to be hopeful that their country and people were moving in the right direction.

Finally, there is the Botswana environment - the Okavango Delta, the Kalahari, the Chobe National Park, etc. Unfortunately, I did not have time to explore the Botswana parks on this trip (but hopefully will next summer with my family). When I asked people there what they love to do in their spare time, their answer was always the same - that they pack up their 4x4s and drive out to a park for the weekend and sleep, literally, with the lions. It is definitely another reason they find living there an unparalled experience.

On our second night in Botswana, we went out to dinner at a steak house in Gaborone called "Bull & Bush" - great steaks, really, that would rival many I've had in the U.S. We were joined, along with Andy, by the cricket coach/chemistry teacher at at MAP (one job more interesting to me than the other...), a woman who is the head of the Harvard AIDs Project in Botswana, and the Chairman of MAP and his wife (both also avid explorers of the Botswana game parks and authors of several books on Botswana). Dinner conversation was lively and informative, and at the end, turned towards the topic of why they all are in Africa and what it means to them. Andy left us with a quote that evening, one he said someone had recited to him when he left MAP to go back to the U.S. after his first stint teaching there, it is from "Little Gidding" and I thought it pretty well summed-up what the expats had expressed to me:

"...And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning,
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all..."

Botswana, Part I – The Maru-a-Pula school

2006-11-06T03:46:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday, November 1, we flew to Gaborone, Botswana. For those dying to know what I did with my 3 huge suitcases, I stored them at a hotel near the Johannesburg airport. It seemed like a secure option, although the storage room must have had 1,000 bags piled into it – hopefully all bags with owners who know their bags are there! Linda’s bag did not make it on our flight to Botswana. Everyone in Botswana told us that this is normal, the airline will simply decide, rather willy-nilly, to send the bags on another flight. “It will probably arrive on the next flight at 7:00 p.m., or maybe a flight tomorrow morning,” the airline representative said to us in the Gaborone airport, absolutely nonplussed about it. We looked around at the half dozen clocks hanging high on the airport walls and laughed, not a single one told the correct, or even the same, time. But, as all had assured us, her luggage arrived on Thursday.

As a brief aside about my last day (Tuesday) spent in Johannesburg. We visited one last orphanage there. This one has done some great work (e.g., placed 450 orphans into adoption, all of whom had been abandoned in the worst possible way, literally, discarded in gutters and latrines) and creative fund raising (e.g., when told by the South African government that they would not be eligible to receive subsidies for baby formula, but pig farmers would, they bought two pigs…and you have never seen pigs so big!). However, it could only best be described as, well, cult-like. The “matriarch” of the family has adopted all of the children who could not be placed (most of the HIV+ ones). She is up to 20 adopted children. Her daughter and our guide around the property, a woman who looked like a grown-up Elizabeth Smart, wore a long skirt and head scarf because, she explained to us, she does not want to attract any men. In her discussion of the orphanage, she blurred the lines between family and program in a way that unsettled all of us. After this fascinating and strange orphanage, we did more touring around Soweto, visiting Mandela’s house where he lived just before being sentenced to prison, seeing Bishop Tutu’s residence, and eating lunch at a shabeen, Wandie’s, there. (Wandie, who has been running this shabeen/restaurant since the apartheid period, greeted Linda immediately upon our arrival.)
But, back to Botswana: we stayed in the capital city, Gaborone, which is also the largest city in the country, yet is small, with a population of only approx. 250,000. We spent two nights at the residence of the headmaster of the Maru-a-Pula School, Andy Taylor – a large, very modern ranch house on the campus of the school. Andy used to teach at Horace Mann in NYC and has been the headmaster at Maru-a-Pula for the past 2 years. The Maru-a-Pula school (www.map.ac.bw) is the Oxford of Botswana. It has 558 students (including the president’s grandchildren), 60 whom board there, and over 50% from Botswana. Although excellent academically and very multi-racial, what impresses me the most is its orphan scholarship program and its community service aspect.

Andy organized a cocktail reception at his home our first evening there and invited teachers, alumni and students to meet with us. Everyone was delightful and impressive. I met a young alum, Joshua, who went to school at Amherst College in the U.S. and is now back in Botswana doing AIDs training throughout the country. Another alum, and one of the first MAP students, Lucy, is now a human rights lawyer in Gaborone. Lucy was the first black student to attend the University of Cape Town, and the only one that first year she attended. I met four brilliant students, all current boarding students, all orphans. One, Keneilwe, an articulate girl who has lost both her mother and a foster mother to AIDs, just received a full scholarship to study at a Malaysian university. Maybe she will be the first female president of Botswana?

The rains started in earnest in Botswana as soon as we arrived, or so everyone told us, and a visitor who brings rain brings good luck. We slept through loud thunderstorms and awoke early the next morning so that Linda could address all the students at their 7:30 a.m. assembly, a fact Andy sprung on her the evening before. She gave a brilliant speech, all about the necessity of sacrifice in order to succeed. We then spent all morning touring the school (and hearing the marimba-playing band, pictured here) and meeting students, many of whom led our tour. We also visited the boarding houses which, very unfortunately, currently have empty rooms – rooms that could be filled with orphans on scholarship. It costs about $10,000 a year to sponsor an orphan student at MAP (all who must pass entry exams as well) and Andy is passionately trying to raise the money. What I would like to do when back in the US, my goal will be to pool together 9 people who will join me in sponsoring a Botswana orphan to attend MAP throughout their secondary education.

I saw the impact of MAP in Botswana. After our tour of the school, we visited orphans and vulnerable children (pictured here) and women with AIDs in villages around Gaborone. Brenda, the director of the community service program at MAP, and several other MAP teachers, went with us. Each MAP student spends a class period each day in service back to his or her community. This is incredibly empowering for students who grew up in the villages they now serve. We visited a grandmother who is HIV+ and now raising her grandchildren after their mothers - her daughters - died of AIDs. Inexplicably, the government cut off their food subsidies. Brenda and the other MAP teachers with us decided, on the spot, that MAP students would start delivering food to her – possibly saving one or more of their lives. We also visited a small “home” where several orphans live, somewhat supervised by a nun named Sister Angela. One girl told me that all she wants is someone to help her with her math – can you imagine that is all you want under those circumstances??? I hated math as a 13-year old, about the age of this girl. Again, Brenda decided at the moment to send MAP students to tutor them.

What I saw that afternoon were simple, small-scale solutions that could be made by MAP and its students. But, they save lives – both by virtue of the service activities themselves and by what these services teach the MAP students involved. In the future, these students will hopefully make long-term, wide-scale, social changes in Botswana. I was sold on the school.

Two schools and lots of uniforms

2006-10-31T18:07:00.000-05:00

On Monday, October 30th, we spent all day at two primary schools - Kid Mapunya and Patrick Mashego – where Linda’s organization, Project People Foundation, donated school uniforms. A child must have a uniform to attend public school in South Africa, so you can imagine the hundreds of thousands that do not attend because they cannot afford the uniforms. The uniform we handed out at Patrick Mashego costs R120 each (approx $16). (Pictured, the winter track suit style of uniform. I was really drawn to the little boy on the left. He looked like a little old man.)

PPF works with women at Basadi Pele, a training center for women, teaching them how to sew, do domestic work, provide catering, and child care services. The women sew the uniforms that are then donated to the children. At the Mashego school, we were there to attend the uniform unveiling and presenting ceremony. The women from Basadi Pele attended the ceremony with us and we had lunch with them back at Basadi Pele afterwards.

Both schools we visited are only a few years old and, at first blush, look better than schools I have seen in Louisiana, L.A. and NYC. But, with a second look, you see a nice new exterior but not a single book in the library of the Mapunya school (I kid you not, the children sat in a library lined with shelves and there was not a single - not one - book); nice uniforms, but their shoes are tattered beyond belief; calmness and discipline, but then the principal points out child after child who has either just lost his mother to AIDs or is being raised in a "child-headed household" (i.e., by his 9-year old sister who no longer attends school because she has become the primary care giver for her 4 younger siblings. The schools and government know these exist, try to track them, but can't / don't do anything about them.); nice school, but then the children leave each afternoon to go back to their tin shacks. Despite all this, the uniform ceremony was uplifting. The choir sang, actually would hardly stop singing, with beautiful, strong voices and you could tell how much they liked entertaining us. After the children put on their uniforms, you could see the extreme pride in their faces.

But its not all gloom and doom here. So far we've managed to laugh a lot - I'm lucky to be hanging around three people who each have a great sense of humor. We ate at a place called Moyo's last night, in an area called Melrose that they like to compare to Soho (its actually more like the midtown area around Piedmont Park in Atlanta) and, ridiculously enough, allowed our wait staff to paint our faces like some sort of Zulu princesses/warriors. Tomorrow Linda and I head to Botswana and Zambia and Leigh-Ann and Greg go on to Cape Town, where we will all meet up again on Monday.

When you are in Johannesburg on a Sunday and with a minister,

2006-10-30T17:15:00.000-05:00

You are not sleeping in. One of the women working at Nkosi’s Haven invited Linda, Leigh-Ann, Greg and me to her church in the township of Soweto. The Riverside Church in NY played an important role during apartheid, sending payments to the African National Congress. Later, it, and Linda, twice hosted Nelson Mandela – once right after he was released from prison in 1990 and then on his last visit to the U.S. a few years ago. It has been wonderful to trail her around, as she knows many people and seems to be very well-loved.

Soweto, like all of Johannesburg, is sprawling. It really just goes on as far as the eye can see. We passed Winnie Mandela’s house there, on the way to the church. What seemed amazing to me is that many blacks still choose to live in Soweto, even as they become more "affluent." Driving around, you will see everything from tin shacks, not fit for dogs, piled on top of each other, to relatively nice, albeit modest, homes, to a few homes of the obviously more wealthy - all in Soweto. It seems that the first upgrade people make as they move up the income ladder is to surround their home with a wall and a Fort Knox-like gate, then they renovate or build a new home on the same property. But they don’t move. (Like everything I'm finding here, the reasons are complex. I'm sure this also is a result of market forces and property title issues.)

Our driver got lost on the way there so we were 45 minutes late (which, in my opinion, turned out not so bad a result, since the service lasted from 9 – 12:00). We were treated like honored guests and had seats at the front of the church reserved for us (which was uncomfortable, walking in late and then leaving midway through to find a bathroom, but at least we were with Linda). The service took me a little aback. It was very evangelical – I could have been sitting in the United States. The preacher started his sermon talking about people’s "confusion," these days. What are people confused about? Homosexuality and gay marriage. I could not believe what I was hearing, sitting there in Soweto - where most live in extreme poverty - and the lesson that day is about the sins of homosexuality!?!? But, for those 3 hours, looking around at the several hundred in that church who hung on every word of that preacher, they seemed happy in the moment and alleviated from what might be their situation in life - the church seemed to be giving them that at least...

Noah Refilwe and Nkosi's Haven - the children and the saints that care for them

2006-10-29T17:03:00.000-05:00

I spent all day on Saturday, October 28, with Linda as we visited two homes for orphans and vulnerable children around Johannesburg, Noah Refilwe and Nkosi's Haven. We have been joined in South Africa by a husband and wife from Cedar Foundation, Leigh-Ann and Greg, who are here conducting site assessments for their foundation. We also have met up with a team from Infinite Family (www.infinitefamily.org), a nonprofit that works with local South African communities to connect American adults to orphans and vulnerable children through video conferencing, email and a secure internet connection.

Noah Refilwe is not what I would have expected for my first visit to a home for children here and am told it is rather unusual. Started by a women named Jean Stewart in 1991, it is located on 18 hectares of donated land (well, they pay R100 a year for a lease, equivalent to about $14) on the outskirts of Jo'berg. Its a quiet, fairly beautiful piece of property with farm animals, a working bee farm, a small peanut butter factory and brick making facilities, all income-producing activities that allow the home to move toward greater self-sufficiency. Since it was a Saturday, all of the approximately 40 children who live there - with names such as Blessing, Precious, and Comfort - were roaming about, kicking a soccer ball, feeding goats, cleaning their cottages and doing other chores. I was surprised by the calmness of the place and the relatively few adults around for that many children. During the week, Noah Refilwe also operates a creche (a day care) for 39 infants - including several, according to the director of NR, who have been raped because the local witch doctor has told community people that raping an infant would cure AIDs.

After spending all morning at Noah Refilwe, we headed back into Jo'berg to visit Nkosi's Haven (www.nkosishaven.co.za). Nkosi's Haven was started by Gail Johnson in 1999 in honor of her foster son, Nkosi, who died of AIDs in 2001. Gail was a volunteer at a local hospital when she met Nkosi's mom, a woman dying of AIDs who had been kicked out of her village. Upon meeting Gail, the mom asked her to look after Nkosi, who was then having to roam about the streets, after she died. Gail made good on her promise and, at Nkosi's urging, she started a home for mothers dying of AIDs, their children and the orphans they leave behind. Gail told me that for every man infected with HIV in South Africa, there are 3-3.5 women infected. A statistic that some here, unfortunately, use to blame women for spreading HIV/AIDs. The contrast between Noah Refilwe and Nkosi's Haven, and the effect it had on me, was pretty stark. Whereas Noah R was somewhat bucolic and calm, Nkosi's H seemed crowded, rundown, underfunded and a more urban and chaotic. Also, since I met the mothers, all dying, I was hit much more squarely with the HIV/AIDs reality here.

We had lunch at Nkosi's Haven and spent the entire afternoon with Gail, a tall woman with dyed red hair, a lot of make-up, a heart of gold, a will of steel and a huge personality (she reminded me of an Eddy/Patsy combination from AbFab). Nkosi received a lot of international media attention in the last few years of his life, and so did Gail, and not all positive. After the media appeared, so did Nkosi's extended family from his mother's village. (Yes, the same family that abandoned her and Nkosi.) Unbelievably to me, many thought, and many still do think, that Nkosi belonged back with his family and that a white woman had no place adopting him.

At both Noah Refilwe and Nkosi's Haven, we observed the computer labs set up by Infinite Family and heard from the IF team about the impact that the American "net" family relationships are having here. I met an amazing 17-year old at Nkosi's Haven named Manini, an orphan who has lived there for 6 years. Manini sat down with Linda and me and talked about her dreams of becoming a filmmaker, her desire to go to university and how much she loved her "net family", who are Andrea and Maurice DuBois (the current CBS news anchor in NYC). She said she feels a real connection with them and loves to be able to communicate with adults. At 7:00 p.m. that evening, Manini promptly sat down for her videoconference with Andrea and Maurice - it was phenomenal.

Although tired and realistic, Gail still offered us a picture of hope. She is building a "Nkosi's Village" on a large piece of property more outside of center Jo'berg to take care of 100 new mothers and she related success stories, like that of Manini and others, with more to come for the younger ones at Nkosi's Haven. Yet, all of this left me feeling pretty helpless...at the moment, the only thing I can do is reach out to you - if you want to know more about some of these organizations and how you can help or get involved, look at their websites or email me separately and I'll let you know. Nothing is too small here. Linda told me the last time she visited Nkosi's Haven, her mother sent a suitcase of imodium for the moms there!

Pictures (I'm sure there is a way to caption these): Linda and me at Noah Refilwe; Linda with child at Nkosi's Haven; Manini and me

Arrival: Johannesburg, South Africa. Welcome to Africa.

2006-10-28T17:57:00.000-04:00

After a farewell tour that, according to my sister, lasted longer than Cher’s, I finally had my 3 large bags (one excess + one overweight = $150 extra…14 months everyone!) packed and checked on to my South African Airways flight to Johannnesburg. All the hard good-byes were said, sometimes more than once…my mom was still ringing me as the plane doors shut insisting, “let’s talk one more time before you actually take-off!” I have never been away from family and friends this long, so even the toppling little Cingular jack who said “good-bye” when I shut down my US cell phone made me teary. But, I was so excited that my journey to Africa had begun that the 17-hour flight, with a pit stop in Dakar, Senegal for fuel, passed by in no time.

I have traveled over to South Africa with a dynamic woman named Linda Tarry-Chard, a minister at The Riverside Church in New York. Linda created the South African Black Doll Project in 1995-96 and first shipped 15,000 black-skinned dolls, which were banned during the apartheid era, into the townships of South Africa. From there, Linda moved into commerce, helping fund and create organizations to train women to make the black dolls themselves, and she’s been going nonstop ever since. She is the founder and president of the Project People Foundation (http://www.projectpeoplefoundation.org/ (which site is being updated)) of which I have recently become a board member. PPF’s mission is to provide economic empowerment, education, leadership development for and humanitarian assistance to women and youth in local South African communities. While in South Africa, we will meet with various women, children, partners and friends of PPF.

While waiting in the boarding area at JFK airport, I received my first lesson on Africa and realized that I am still full of naiveté that will have to be left back in the US. As I talked to Linda about storing my bags in the Johannesburg airport, two spiky-haired South African women turned around and said, “Sorry to eavesdrop, but we just could not sit here and listen to you discuss storing your bags without saying, ‘please don’t.’ You will not see those bags again, or, best case, they will be completely ransacked.”

I doubted them: “Really? But this storage service is listed on the Johannesburg airport website? I called (twice actually) and spoke with a very nice man named Mack who seemed helpful and professional. Plus, my bags will be locked.”

“None of that matters. We promise you,” they said emphatically, “you’ll lose them.”

Two months of meticulous planning has started to unravel and I’ll need to do something I have never been very good at doing…going with the flow of things!

After checking into the Intercontinental Hotel in Sandton, which is connected to a large luxury mall that seems to dominate the social life of this affluent Jo'berg suburb, and while waiting for 4 men to figure out how to work my room safe, I went for a much-needed beer from the mini bar. With no beer opener to be found, so I called the front desk. A few minutes later, a 5th man appeared. I showed him the beer and explained that I needed it opened. He laughed, "use your teeth," he said. "Ah, my teeth are too pretty for that," I said. So, he grabbed my beer, put it in his mouth and, using his own teeth, proceeded to open it for me. Voilá. Welcome to Africa!

I'm still in New York...

2006-09-29T09:20:00.000-04:00

I leave for Johannesburg, South Africa on October 26th, so this posting is merely blog practice for me. My leave of absence from Alston & Bird begins tomorrow -- after 8 years there, it seems strange to not be going back on Monday, although I couldn't be more excited for what lies ahead.

But first, I head to Springfield, Missouri, where I grew up, to spend a little time with friends and family and get my fill of some good midwestern meals, such as the breakfast platters served at Aunt Martha's Pancake House (again, practice, posting of random picture, a real breakfast, yes, but nothing to do with Africa). Then, its back to New York to continue saying good-bye and figure out how to fit my entire apartment into a 5x8x8 storage unit, and a years' worth of clothes and shoes into two suitcases.

Also, I'm trying to read as many of the books people recommended I read before arriving in South Africa: Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane; The Mind of South Africa and Tomorrow is Another Country by Allister Sparks; Race Against Time by Stephen Lewis; and any of the books in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith.

Since this blog is not supposed to be about me, Missouri, or my shoes, I'll be back again when I've wrapped up everything in New York and I've landed in Africa...hopefully with my luggage, and all the new electronic equipment I'm lugging with me, entact...

Thanks to my friend Kate for the Aunt Martha's pic!