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Date: June 1, 2004
The African sun seems to bake people into strong,
wise characters. (Frequently, it cracks them, but that is another
email.) Observe:
* * *
I met a man walking 167 kilometers to Nairobi. With
furtive glances to his sides and back he pulled a fistful of rubies
out of a tattered plastic grocery bag. The rocks were heavier than
glass and appeared purple like tanzanite, but he assured me they
were rubies. Even if it was tanzanite, based on the earrings that
my friend, Dan, bought, this fellow was holding $50,000 dollars
of uncut gems in his hands.
* * *
I met a guide for Kilimanjaro who summited the mountain
75 times. I described Wisconsin in winter as snowy as the top of
Kilimanjaro. He asked, “What do you eat in the winter?”
I said, “We have to grow enough food to last
all winter.”
“Is this possible?”
* * *
I’m camped along a river with a few pairs of
hippos and crocs. There are some strange gurgling noises coming
from the river but the owner suspects the animals have been poached
by the locals. “I swear! if I catch anyone poaching on my
land I’ll tie a rock around their neck and feed them to the
crocodiles.” He’s described by the locals as “the
old ‘muzungo’” even though he is a second generation
Tanzanian. He told me about: fighting as a mercenary in the Congo
and Rhodesia and “having several extra holes to prove it”;
being bitten by a viper three times; crashing his motorcycle at
160kph; living in the bush, eating nothing but what he could hunt
or gather; finding his friend in bed with his wife; and, one day,
while he went to fix the loo, the wind blew every page of his handwritten
manuscript about all these adventures into the river.
* * *
At a dusty restaurant specializing in selling soda
to the truck drivers, I talked with a man who works in the USA embassy
in Dar es Salaam. He was driving a truck the day the embassy was
bombed in 1998 but his brother, who also worked in the embassy,
was killed by the blast.
* * *
Richard, a wiry black man with a belly button like
a fat worm burrowing into his belly, followed me up a mountain on
a single-speed bicycle. We climbed over a thousand meters. Everyday
Richard bicycles 35 kilometers down the mountain to work in the
bean fields for 2,000 shillings per day (1123 shillings to one dollar),
then he spends 5 hours riding back up the mountain to his home.
The bus costs 3,000 shillings. The road becomes a web of dirt trails
and for the last kilometer he slings his bike over his shoulder
(I know because I did the same to visit his family) and trudges
straight up a slippery trail.
* * *
I met one guy who is harvesting hardwood from the
bush. He speaks very fluent English and knows politics because he
has lived under three systems: the English regime, the socialist
Tanzania and now the free-market. He knows the President of Zimbabwe,
Mugabe, from when he was "freedom fighter" for Rhodesia
(Zimbabwe) hiding in Tanzania. From the press' perspective, Mugabe,
"a racist dictator", has been killing or driving the white
farmers off their land and causing the whole country, one of the
most fertile regions in Africa, to plunge into a depression because
they can't produce enough food to feed themselves. However, according
to my friend, the problem started years ago when England in the
guise of the East African Company began killing the blacks and stealing
their resources and land. After a civil war and independence, an
agreement in England in 1985 guaranteed that in ten years England
would buy back the unused farmland from the whites and give it back
to the blacks. This never happened, and in 1998 Mugabe began giving
the unused land back to the blacks without compensation for the
whites. The whites fought back and ceased production. Thus many
people have been killed and production has dropped and people are
starving.
* * *
I shared a coconut with some kids. (I'm not very
good with a machete; it bounced off the nut and gravity carried
it back down onto my thumb. I've seen a few farmers with missing
fingers.) The kids were very polite. They didn't quarrel over the
pieces and pushed the kids with empty hands to the front of the
group. It is just the opposite feeling of tipping Richard 5,000
shillings (50 coconuts, 2.5 days wages) for guiding me around town
for a couple days, presumably as a favor, and then having him beg
for more telling me I have everything and he has nothing but his
speech was simply a scam.
* * *
Soon after I met a Swede doing malaria research who
gave me a pep talk, "Don't worry, the road soon gets better."
* * *
And that night, I met a teacher and he invited me
to give a lecture at his class that. I lectured under a reed pavilion
on geography related to my trip. Because there is a shortage of
teachers, money and schools, he has taken it upon himself to build
this shelter and educate the kids for 2,000 shillings each per month.
Even at this price many parents can’t or won’t send
their kids to school. Also, it took him one and half years to save
the money to buy his bride from her father, 200,000 shillings, and
they didn’t have enough money left for a proper wedding ceremony
or honeymoon.
* * *
Some young men transporting fish in drippy reed baskets
zoomed past and motioned me to join their bicycle train. Africans
are good bicyclists, yet few understand drafting. Once I joined
their group they poured fuel onto their fires and the three of them
switched the lead traveling 32-41 KPH depending on the tilt of the
hill. One man had legs like a pro racer and eyes like a tiger. Villages
wooed as we whirred past faster than the taxis trolling for customers.
I held on for 11 kilometers, until my lungs burned and my knees
were weak... well, weaker. They soon slowed and delivered their
fish to the next village, and when I passed a hundred people cheered
as if it were the Tour de Tanzania.
* * *
I spent two days in a hammock reading a book or sleeping
or watching people comb the white sand beaches and splash in the
turquoise waters. Abu, the manager, the brother of the owner, of
the bar/restaurant/hotel/campsite comes over and we exchange the
usual Swahili pleasantries. He says he knows General Norman Schwartzkopf,
made infamous by the first Iraq war, very well. Every August Schwartzkopf
comes to Tanzania for a big game hunt and Abu organizes everything.
(I saw photos.) Abu also had Bill Gates as a customer one day. As
I understand the story, Gates anchored his yacht offshore one day,
his party drank every cold drink they make, he wrote a check for
5,000 dollars (which explains why beer costs three times the going
rate), sailed back to Mombassa, bought and island along the way,
and flew home in his private jet. Abu married a young Australian
and I asked him what marriage is like. “I know I’m not
as old as you -- you’re thirty-three and I’m twenty-four
-- but I know one thing: we’ll make great things together.
* * *
And while I’m composing this one of the most
interesting people I have met approaches to exchange stories; he
is a Maasai warrior named Simanga. Twice I have looked for Simanga
and his presence is so peaceful that I have walked past him as if
he were a palm tree until I hear him chuckling, “I am here,
brother.” He has come to Zanzibar to make and sell jewelry
for the tourists. When he earns enough he will go back to his tribe
and buy a herd of cattle to exchange for a bride (about 15-20 cows
at 100,000 shillings a piece). He will probably marry a Maasai woman
but he says, “I don’t choose the color or the tribe,
that is the wish of God.”
* * *
As for more mundane matters:
Zanzibar is nice. It is an island formerly ruled
by the sheikh of Oman, famous for shipping the most slaves (a prehistoric
industry in Africa) and spices, and populated by Arab and African
Muslims. It reminds me of Istanbul but the people aren’t as
fastidiously clean or as hospitable, still friendly enough especially
if you have money. Things cost a bit more here but you get value
for your money: plumbing and electricity, a hook in the shower,
breakfast with real coffee, a mosquito net with no holes.
Africa, generally speaking should be easy: it’s
not too hot, or windy, the traffic is calm in the rural areas, the
main roads are smooth, the people are friendly and the food is bland
but edible and the water is not too dirty or briny; however put
them all together and Africa seems more difficult then even India.
Getting money out of the machines is my biggest problem. My cards
usually don’t work. And there are no more ATMs for 2500 kilometers.
Even if I can get money I don’t think I can get enough to
last. I came to Zanzibar without enough to return to the mainland,
thinking, “If I can’t get money, I’ll email my
mom for a cash advance.” But for three days the internet wasn’t
working. I’m spinning my wheels.
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