A Day in Dakar

Dakar is a big, sprawling, unwieldy city, smack on Africa's most western point. Next stop: the Caribbean or Mexico.

The first thing you can't miss from the plane window is this colossal statue called the "African Renaissance." At 160-feet in length and perched on a 330-foot hill, it's gotta be the most butt ugly civic monument--ever. If you're guessing that this looks like something out of Stalinist Soviet Union, you're not far off. This thing was built by the North Koreans. Unveiled just a year ago to great fanfare with dozens of African leaders, the North Koreans, and America's own Jesse Jackson "this renaissance statue is a powerful idea from a powerful mind" in attendance, it seems the Senegalese people don't like it either: Muslims are offended, most people thought the money could be better used to improve the electric grid, tackle sewage problems, etc. Riot police had to be called out to control the angry crowds.

This public works boondoggle cost over $27 million--just what a country with a failed electricity grid needs. It kind of looks like the guy is throwing the baby and the woman into the ocean.

The president of Senegal has also said he owns the "intellectual property rights" of the statue and wants to collect a portion of the admittance from those who pay to climb up into the head of the male figure.

Today I go to the Embassy of Mauritania to apply for a transit visa. This process takes quite a bit of time. The guy behind the desk moves at about the speed of an old Dell computer with a 28.8 modem in a hot room. He examines every page of my passport and can't find my entry stamp into Senegal. "You have too many stamps," he says. The two-page form involves lengthy questions that delve into my parentage. And then there's a box where I have to list every country I've been to in the last ten years. This is hilarious! I look up at the consular officer, and he nods yes, I must fill this out. OK! I feel like one of those Ripley Believe it or Not freaks who can inscribe the entire Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin. I did leave out the really long names, like Trinidad and Tobago and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

I spend the afternoon out at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Ile de Gorée. The island is interesting, with some period architecture that's fixed up and some that is still in ruins, but in all it's more of a tourist excursion straight into the ranks of the crafts touts. Touts generally leave me alone, but just about everybody off the boat has somebody latched on to them around the island, which is very wearying. Gorée is supposed to be symbolic of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but very few slaves were shipped out of here; it was more of an administrative center.

More interesting is a mass demonstration today in Dakar against the government. It seems the president wants to change the re-election laws to his favor (and his son's favor), so he can be re-elected for a third term. I see all sorts of smoke plumes rising over Dakar from burnt out cars or buildings or whatever. Riot police are out with tear gas. When I come back to Dakar from Gorée, the demonstration is finished, but it takes some doing for my taxi to find a way around streets that aren't barricaded with all sorts of rocks and chunks of concrete.

The approach to the Ile de Gorée

More Ile de Gorée

And more...

A Day in Entebbe

Entebbe bursts with brilliant vegetation and flowers. It's clean and non-fumey--everything that Kampala is not. And to you Internet strangers who may be reading this, unless you have a bus to catch or visas to obtain, come here when you stagger off that plane.

Anyway, so once again, it's "so you're in Africa where are the animals?" Not far from my hostel is the Uganda Wildlife Education center, an animal refuge that rescues animals either injured or recovered from poachers. You always learn so much in these places. For example, a lion copulates 2000 times before producing a lion cub that survives one year. The lions here look pretty knackered, so I move on down to the white rhinos. I watch two of them fight it out over a patch of grass one wants to feed on exclusively. The info board says their horns are made of densely matted hair. Just imagine, these horns are prized by poachers, who in turn sell them to the Chinese so they can copulate 2000 times. A forest walk takes me to an area so dense with creepy crawlers, I can go no farther. Suddenly all hell breaks loose, but it's just the monkeys screaming. A gray parrot looks down at me and says, "Hello. How are you?" This place is great.

Next stop Dakar.

$20 a night gets me this villa to sleep in.

The guy on the right won the grass feeding wars. The one of the left sulked off.

Creepy crawlers are everywhere.

Monkeys have it hard.

Exotic bird life is everywhere.

Hanging out on Lake Victoria

The World's Newest Country

I stagger from the bus, and surprisingly there are no transportation touts anywhere. I find a guy with a cart that's been modified from a motorcycle. I don't know where the heck I am, and I might need an ally to help me find somewhere to sleep in case everything is full. I tell him I want to go to the Episcopal Church because they also operate a guest house. I'm in luck, and this is a great place to stay (thank you Jorge:-), and about half the price of all the other accommodations, which run well over $100 for a pre-fab. I settle in, and the power in the neighborhood goes out and stays out for days. And it's so hot and humid, I must go into the bathroom with a flashlight every few hours to wet down.

In the morning I go on a walkabout of Juba. It's Sunday, and the markets are closed, but I like it this way. Juba is considered one of the fastest growing "cities" in the world--thanks to the influx of workers and NGOs. Five years ago, there was probably not much infrastructure because of the war and a century of neglect from the northern government, but things are now booming. The city is sprawled out with all the usual ministries, housing, a university, a few hospitals, and a stadium. The main roads are paved, but everything else is rutted dirt--or mud. In the corners here and there are squatters in abysmal shanties and refugees in the more structured edifices. People are exceptionally friendly and helpful. No one bothers me as I walk from one end of town to the other. Near the Bedouin restaurant and the goat market, I notice a woman in a pair of high heels, and I'm thinking "how the hell does she walk through the dirt and the mud with those on?" and then it strikes me she's a hooker. However, the real hub of activity today is at the churches--especially the episcopal church--where the singing and hallelujahs go on for twelve hours straight.

Over the days I am in Juba, the most interesting part is the other people at my guest house. Singular is Daniel, a Sudanese guy who always wears a full suit despite the humidity. He has lived for ten years in Denver, Colorado. Recently, he has been involved with the building of four schools in South Sudan. He finally told me the morning I left that he was one of the famous "Lost Boys of the Sudan." And in case you don't know the story, during the war with the North, thousands of orphaned boys--from toddlers to teenagers--banded together and walked a 1000 miles into Ethiopia, seeking refuge. And when they had to flee that country, they walked back into the Sudan and then into Kenya, where they languished until their story became known. Shortly before 9/11, Daniel was sent to Denver. He described this to me as like "the heavens opening up and an unimaginable miracle" was bestowed on him. Now he's finished a degree and is applying for a masters program--and building schools.

I decide to fly back to Uganda since I've seen what I wanted to see, and I hate backtracking. The airport is more chaotic than any bus station. People politely help you where you need to go, and all goes well until the immigration desk. They demand 90 Sudanese pounds ($45) for a "registration." I know what this is. If you enter the Sudan--and until July 9, this is still the Sudan--you have 72 hours to register with the police and pay this fee. I go into my best stupid, middle-age woman persona: "I don't understand; what am I registering for?" "I'm leaving, not coming." "This is so confusing." "What do you guys do with this money?" "Why didn't anyone tell me this at Nimule?" "If I left by bus do the border people charge this" "Tell me again where this money goes?" "Well, what are people supposed to do who spent the last of their money?" I keep this up until I catch the guys smiling at my patheticness. Then, I knew I had them. They stamped me out free of charge.

The plane to Entebbe takes off over the White Nile, and although I can't see through the clouds, we follow the river as it become the Albert Nile, the Victoria Nile, and we land along the shores of its source: Lake Victoria.

Quién es más macho?

The goat market

If you're really bored, you can spend an evening with Dr. Hilder Man.

The White Nile. This boat was sunk during the war.

Most back streets are walled compounds belonging to the gazillions of NGOs here.

Entry to my guest house, it's safe and friendly.

The birth of a nation

Every new country needs its anthem

The Road to Juba

"I need a bodyguard," I announce at the hotel reception desk. It's after midnight, and I want someone to walk with me the few blocks through one of Kampala's dodgier neighborhoods to the departure location of the bus to Juba. My guy works well since there's the usual assortment of annoying bus yard riffraff who try to be overly "helpful." I sit at the bus line's restaurant, which is full of activity in the middle of the night, with Ugandans, Kenyans, and Sudanese coming and going and mostly sleeping--kinda since the disco next door is pounding out non-stop African electronica.

I'm on Kampala Coach--supposedly one of the nicer buses that makes the 14-hour trek north to Juba. Right on the ticket, their mision [sic] statement declares: "to exceed customer expectations all the time and every time," and if that doesn't convince you, there's a vision statement too: "to improve unparallel [sic] service and to be the truely [sic] East African Company of choice and beyond."

At 2am, the bus arrives and it clearly is not the top of the fleet. Most seats seem to be broken, and there's nowhere for people's bags except the aisle. It's OK though; my seat is more comfortable and with more leg room than the flight(s) over. My fellow passengers are all polite, quiet, and look out for each other. I make friends with Martha, a Kenyan woman who is returning to Juba, after a three-month leave to attend her father's funeral, to resume work as a pharmacist. There are many Kenyans working in Juba because there are no jobs in Kenya.

For the first six hours to Gulu, the ride is smooth, although windy since the window seals are hanging down in strips on my side. The driver is safe and cautious.

Periodically, we stop for pee breaks, which range from regular "facilities," where you roll up your pant legs, take a deep breath, and don't look down with your glasses or keep a passport of anything important in a pocket, to just stopping by the side of the road. I dehydrate myself and avoid the situation.

From Gulu to the border and all the way to Juba, the dust kicks up, and aside from putting a bandanna over my mouth and nose to prevent dust sickness, there's nothing you can do about it, and it's just easier to accept that you're going to turn the same coppery red color of the soil.

Ugandan and Sudanese border formalities are straightforward and not too chaotic, and there's time to walk around Nimule, the border town.

It's another 3-4 hours to Juba, and this is by far the more interesting part of the trip. For the most part, nothing looks like it's changed from the time General Gordon was the governor of Sudan, or when Samuel Baker staged his Nile expeditions from Gondokoro in the 19th century. People still live in the traditional, circular huts with the thatched roofs. The only hints of the modern age are the hand pumps at the wells and perhaps some concrete work. That's about it. There are lots of exotic birds and butterflies, and I saw an unusual brown-colored baboon walking about. As far as you can see, it's nature in the raw, untouched, and how it's always been.

The road to Juba is hard-packed dirt, but this will soon change, as they're out there grading and improving, and then there will be even more overturned car/truck/bus carcasses on the roadside. Since this road to Uganda is one of South Sudan's major lifelines, I wonder how different some of this will look in five years

By 4:30pm, we cross over the White Nile and enter Juba, the capital of the soon-to-be newest country: South Sudan.

Typical village on way to Juba from Nimule

Africa 2.0

Hello from Kampala, Uganda! Let's see, where did I leave off...

Last summer it was Africa, and well, here's some more. Sadly, this won't be a grand, sweeping, trans-continental journey, but rather some random travels here and there, and this blog is as good a place to post whatever is in my head. And it's Africa, which means guaranteed color.

Starting with the street below my room (count 'em: 107 steps up or down), teeming and steaming masses of humanity swarm around bales and bundles of stuff, plastic jerry cans, recycled clothes, piles of mattresses, tires, mounds of old bus seats. Squads of motorcycles whiz by trucks spewing ungodly fumes (see post below for last year's description of the toxic shroud of pollution that hangs over Kampala). And this is before I reach the main street. One cannot walk in a straight line in this city. One dodges, twists, balances, teeters, ducks, and scoots to get from point A to B. It's a great way to get over a 10-hour jet lag. Um, sure.

Book titles piled over the sidewalks are an endless source of fascination. There are hundreds of books about financial and personal success: Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Secrets of Wealth, When Times get Tough, the Tough Get Going, Who Moved My Cheese. Makes me wonder who made this executive decision to unload publishers remainders in Uganda. Do they think the poor wretch selling this on the sidewalk might read this stuff? And my favorite lurid headline of the day: "I Carried Brenda's Body to the Septic Tank" !!

So here's the plan for the next few weeks. Tonight I take the bus to Juba, Southern Sudan (no worries, Juba is fine), and I am told that once you cross the border, there are wonderful sights to see. Then it's back to Uganda, then over to Dakar, Senegal.

A fun travel vignette to share: Upon staggering off the plane in Milan to connect to Cairo and to Entebbe, Uganda, I was told that because of the Eritrean ash cloud, all flights past Cairo were cancelled. I went into the office of Egypt Air's station manager for more information (and to use his Internet connection), and he asked me to compose in proper English the "bad news" sheet to be given the passengers as they arrived for the flight. I typed this with gusto and later watched the sheets being handed out. People did not react well. Better to be stuck in Cairo than Milan. I went anyway, and surprise, surprise, the flight was reinstated, and here I am, excited and happy for a new adventure!

This is my permit for Southern Sudan. They misspelled my name and my hair isn't black, but that's ok.

Cape Town!

Travelers who are reading this well know what it's like to re-enter "civilization." I call it re-entry, like a space shuttle plummeting back to earth.

Early morning Maputo, I scurry onto the bus and start to cram my pack in the overhead rack. A man tells me calmly that I don't have to do this. I look around and there are only eight people sitting on a 53-pax bus. And this bus is so clean I feel ashamed because the shirt I'm wearing is the dirtiest thing on it. I must hide my utterly filthy tote bag under the seat.

The last border to cross is between Mozambique and South Africa. Illegal immigration into South Africa is a major issue, and here I walk through a no-man's land of razor wire, klieg lights, and barriers that resemble Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin during the Cold War. It's awesome and there are no money changers to block my way.

Once in South Africa, the road now feels like silk under the bus, and at a food stop, instead of a swarm of vendors pounding on the windows, there are fast food outlets and a mini-mart. No dust; no belching black smoke.

I stay in a guest house in Pretoria, and for the first time in months, I cannot find a flaw in the bathroom such as: water flooding the floor from the toilet/shower/sink; no hot water; no cold water--only scalding; no water pressure; no water; no light bulbs. I marvel at the plumbing here. I take a walk on broad sidewalks where I can hold my head up without fear of breaking a leg by falling in a huge hole or tripping over a random piece of rebar or concrete sticking up. However, I still can't quite command a entire line of cars to come to a screeching stop when I step off the curb like in California; but crossing the street here is slightly better than cars/motorcycles/bicycles accelerating into me as I run across the street like a hunted gazelle, which has been typical of the entire continent.

Fortress America in Pretoria. Next door is the Indian embassy built of brick with an open veranda.

And then there's the food: I can find things that aren't soaked and cooked in a gallon of cooking oil. If cornflakes were a wonder yesterday, today I'm eating muesli with yogurt, honey, and fruit.

After 2 1/2 months of African travel, you can imagine what it's like to eat a breakfast like this. And there are four kinds of sugar in the cup.

Suddenly this all saddens me because it represents the end of the journey, and this is a depressing thought. Immediately I start to think of the next trip and a new itinerary to return to this fantastic continent with its kind and gracious people.This trip has barely scratched the surface. I see a world map with so many more pieces of the puzzle that need fitting in.

The World Cup is still everywhere in South Africa.

In Cape Town I spend the first two nights at a wonderful and utterly charming guesthouse (La Rose) around the corner from this street in Bo Kaap, the Malay/Muslim district. It's fantastic.

And then for the final splurge, two nights across town in this bed with a bottle of wine. This is not Africa; this is another planet.

It's over :-(

From Tete to Maputo

I walk to the middle of a monumental suspension bridge to take a look at Tete. The Zambezi River, of course, is the setting for one of Dr. Livingstone's most famous expeditions. He was convinced that bringing commerce up the river into the interior would also bring Christianity to the Africans, thereby ending slavery and superstition. In the books, historians call him a failure on many accounts. I dunno, but maybe these academics should put on some dirty clothes, leave the file cards at home, and come stand on this bridge. The commerce is sure going on: trucks are lined up for miles on end waiting to cross the river with goods for Zambia and Malawi (and I would say Zimbabwe except it all goes to Mugabe there). And go up the road to Malawi and check out the Christianity effect there; it's huge. It just all didn't happen in Livingstone's lifetime, that's all.

Surreptitious photo of Tete taken from suspension bridge over the Zambezi.
An even more surreptitious picture of the bridge. Shhh, police aren't looking.

As for superstition, that's still a whole other layer of culture. On BBC Radio this evening, I hear of a Tanzanian sting operation that arrested a Kenyan for smuggling an albino into the country to sell to the witch doctors for body parts. Albino murders are a big problem the Tanzanian government has been somewhat successful in stopping. And back in Rwanda, I read reports in the newspapers about young children found dead in Uganda with their tongues missing--attributed to the witch doctors.

So here in Tete I consider my options. I can either take a bus to Johannesburg through Zimbabwe and Botswana for 24+ hours, retracing a route I've already mostly done in the 1990s, or take the bus to Maputo, Mozambique's capital, which takes up to three days done in stages with early morning departures at between 3-6am. And the chapa drivers tell me, while smirking and shaking their heads: "road is very bad." I'm not that much of a masochist and decide to just get the hell out of here and fly to Maputo.

In Maputo I try one backpackers hostel for a bed but it's full (why is it half the backpackers in these places lie around looking like they're on Quaaludes?), but across the street is the Hotel-Escola Andalucia with decent rooms, a reading lamp next to the bed, a full length mirror (horrors! major renovation needed once home), and corn flakes (!) at breakfast. The staff actually makes up my room--another first I haven't seen in over two months.

The school is on the corner of Patrice Lumumba and Salvador Allende, and nearby streets in the city are named Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Minh, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin. Oh, and there's Kim il-Sung! And even a Robert Mugabe, destroyer of Zimbabwe, plaza. I'm looking for Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, or perhaps a Pol Pot to complete the pantheon. Along with the AK47 on the national flag, you would imagine a public relations challenge, but I think eventually the names will have a sort of retro hipness, and the newer generation will have no idea who any of these people are. Meanwhile, commerce is thriving on these streets.

Mozambique, so far in my very superficial visit, is worthy of a far longer stay and a road trip up the coast to Mozambique Island to do it justice. The blending of African, Swahili, and Portuguese culture here is fascinating and unlike anything I've seen on this trip. In Maputo, the food is good and the music a huge improvement. Leafy trees, outdoor cafes, and a great gelato place make me hate to leave.

The 100-year-old train station in Maputo