Author: Jessie Beck

SEO and content strategist with a passion for travel, bikes, and food.

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The Nomadic Life Travel

How to Celebrate Christmas After A Long Journey Abroad

If you’re like me and haven’t celebrated Christmas with your family, or in your own nation for several years, or are bravely returning home after a RTW trip in the height of Christmas cheer and creature comforts, here’s how to celebrate Christmas after a long journey away:

1. Hug your family

They’re probably letting you crash on their couch/spare bedroom, so thank them for it with the biggest bear hug you’ve got.

By Joseph B

2. Gobble down as many cookies, glasses of egg nog, and other home-cooked delights as possible without puking

I know you’re probably excited to have cheese and proper junk food in your diet again, but don’t push it.

Cake

3. Take a long hot shower

Hot water… real water pressures… and showers with the best shower heads, that actually make sense… ahhhhh

Shower Head by Steven Depolo

4. Use this captive audience to your advantage

You’ve been gone for awhile, use this opportunity to share your stories and photos from abroad because who knows how long this holiday cheer will last before they begin grumble under their breath for “would she shut up about Tokyo already…”

Storytelling, Concord Library

5. Turn your brain to mush with a movie marathon

One of the coolest discoveries I’ve made since being home? Our neighborhood movie theater now has plush recliners and sells beer and wine. And there’s no better time to indulge in these creature comforts than Christmas movie season when literally dozens of brand-new, never before seen, movies are coming out! I was just beginning to get a little tired of re-watching Weeds on my laptop…

By Jen Dubin

6. Start a snowball fight

(If you have snow, that is.) My idea of what’s socially appropriate in America might be a little off at present, but when it comes to playing in the snow, who cares? I haven’t touched snow in three years, jerks, let me throw a snowball or two!

Snowball fight in Times Square by Dan Nguyen

7. Act like a kid again

Especially if you haven’t celebrated Christmas at home for the past year, two, or more, feel free to act like a kid again. There’s probably oodles of Christmasy things you missed out on last year while sipping mojitos on a beach, so no need to hold back being excited about them this year!

By Barely

8. Turn your souvenirs into Christmas gifts

In America, I hate shopping, but in Tokyo, it was a blast. I’m also notorious for never bringing back souvenirs for friends and family, so timing my return to America right before Christmas motivated me, for once, to stock up on a few exotic goodies and wrap them up in holiday paper. I get the feeling that there’ll be a lot of “oooo, thank you Jessie… but um… what is it??” this year.

By TimTom.Ch

9. Sleep in

No work, no busses to catch, and no dorm-mates rustling around in plastic bags at 4 in the morning (seriously guys, please stop organizing your backpacks with plastic bags!) I, for one, am sleeping late!

By Kaibara87

10. Catch up with old friends

While I absolutely love all the friends I have made in the past two and a half years abroad, my friends from home are no less important (especially those of you who have been following this blog ;D). I’m looking forward to catching up with you all, and please, let me know if I say something absolutely inappropriate or commit some terrible social faux-pas!

Peace Corps Friends

Happy Holidays, guys! Wherever you may be!

 

(Only two photos were my own in this post: #2 & #10, credits for the rest can be found by clicking on them)

Categories
Africa In Photos La Reunion The Nomadic Life

Photo Gallery: Quirky Street Art in La Reunion

Jace Graffiti La Reunion

“You can always tell the kind of personality a place has by the way they treat graffiti,” – My little brother.

If that’s the case, then I’d call La Reunion quirky, cartoonish, and welcome to the burst of color graffiti adds to its streets. Most of the graffiti I took photos of ended up being by an artist named Jace (I’m sort of in love with his yellow-man character and the different situations he winds up in), but not all of it. Anyways, I ended up with so many photos of graffiti from La Reunion — and there’s a surprising amount for such a small chunk of land — that I decided to devote a whole post to it.

Enjoy!

In Saint-Pierre; By Jace

Jace Graffiti La ReunionIn Saint-Pierre; Unknown artist

Peuf Graffiti La ReunionIn Saint-Pierre; Unknown artist

Stencil Street Art La Reunion

In Saint-Pierre; Unknown artist

Old Man Graffiti La Reunion

In Saint-Pierre; Unknown artist

Spraypaint Hand La Reunion

In Cilaos; By Jace

Jace Street Art La Reunion

What has been your favorite travel destination for street art?

Categories
The Nomadic Life Travel

Oh Hello, America. Long Time No See…

By Tom Check

Last Tuesday, I was stepping off a flight from Tokyo and being welcomed back into America by the oh-so-cheery Dallas airport.

I’m kidding. Dallas was a weird first sample of America after two and a half years abroad. It was just a little too AMERICA for me to handle after a 12-hour flight in which I intelligently took Benadryl to help me sleep, and then watched 10-hours worth of movies instead of sleeping. I wasn’t in the mood to understand everyone’s conversations, and was a bit of a zombie as I wandered around the airport ogling junk food options and trying to make sense of the fact that I am once again considered a small person (5’3″, if you were wondering…). A man sat down a seat away from me at one point and, as Americans sometimes do, said something about how terrible the weather was at no one in particular, but loud enough for me to understand I was meant to respond. I didn’t respond, I just lapsed into thought about how odd this habit was.

Since last Tuesday, I’d say I’ve become a bit more socially apt than that (being well rested helps), but bits and pieces of life back in America continue to distract and boggle me. Reverse culture shock, I suppose. (Although I don’t really feel shocked, just boggled. Should we perhaps change the term to reverse culture bogglement? Reverse culture confusion?) Anyways, here are a few of the things about America that have stood out:

We really, really love our troops

This is mostly thanks to a bunch of overhead announcements at the Dallas airport. On one hand, it seemed normal to me that, once again on American soil, I’d start to be bombarded with “support our troops” propaganda and that super cheery demeanor airport staff gets around military personnel (mention Peace Corps, however, and you get none of that excited and gushy “we so appreciate what you’re doing for our country!” Whomp, whomp, whomp). On the other hand, it was one of those things that felt distinctly American. We really f*ing love our military, but I didn’t see so much of that abroad.

Christmas and consumerism

Some of the travelers I met in the past couple of months shook their heads a bit when I said I’d be returning home at Christmas.

“All of that consumerism is going to be shocking!” They’d say.

Those who didn’t, were probably fearing their own Christmastime return.

It has been a little shocking, but Tokyo helped lessen this blow a little. At least in Japan, where Christians account for a minuscule part of the population, Christmas is a blatantly consumerist holiday. It seemed to be nothing more than a nice excuse to buy a small gift for a friend, and I kind of liked the simplicity of this notion. In America, however, there’s so much pressure to buy for everyone you know, and wrap it in pretty boxes and paper that will quickly go into the garbage. Furthermore, with all the options of things to buy in America, and so many options of each specific item (color, price, best deal, sales, etc.) I find this attempt to acquire gifts a bit daunting and time consuming. Perhaps, this is a good time to implement my friend Chacha, of The Rich Life’s December challenge: The Gift of Giving No. I’m not sure my 3-year-old niece would appreciate this though.

We create and sell some pretty useless crap

Today, I saw a commercial for a cut in half birdhouse you can suction cup to your windows so you can watch what birds do inside birdhouses. Enough said.

Washing machines are fantastic

And why are they fantastic? They shrink your jeans back to a fitted size, you can have your clothes washed while you sleep, and do I really have to explain the simple joy of pulling a towel straight out of the dryer? Yeah, washing machines are fantastic.

So many choices!

Like I already expressed, the seemingly endless array of choices can be a bit overwhelming — but in the case of food, it’s also very exciting. Menus take me about 10-15 minutes of processing, and grocery stores are a whole afternoon’s worth of entertainment. I’m really trying hard not to every delicious thing at once, especially after going a little crazy with the 7-layer dip and pigs in a blanket at a recent Christmas party…

Americans love friendly banter

I was still in Tokyo when this one hit me. I made a joke to one of the stewardesses using grammatically complicated English and slang — and not only did she understand, she laughed. I had two epiphanies getting on that plane: I could stop speaking like an ESL teacher with strangers, and Americans really do love to make friendly small talk with just about everyone and anyone. The conversation with my waitresses aren’t just “one coke and a pizza, please,” but also an opportunity to announce that so far, today’s been a good day, and by the way, how are you? Americans really are friendly — and I’m glad that my experiences this week have been living up to this awesome stereotype.

Now, please excuse me. I have an afternoon excursion at the supermarket planned…

Categories
Africa Ethiopia In Photos The Nomadic Life

Photo Gallery: Looking Back on One Month in Ethiopia

The month that Liz and I spent in Ethiopia marked a lot of strong positives and negatives. I was yelled at threateningly (twice), and Liz was told that all Americans should go to hell. Boarding a bus first thing in the morning turned out to be an experience akin to the running of the bulls. The habit of having local and faranji (foreigner) prices for everything (food, hotels, transportation, literally… everything) drove us crazy. But then we would meet a kind shopkeeper or group of playful kids, or find ourselves overlooking a dramatically beautiful landscape, and those negative experiences seemed instantly to be countered. Unfortunately, it sometimes took all of our patience and will power to get through the most unpleasant moments and remember the kindness and beauty other people and areas of the country had shown us. Actually, wherever we are in the world, it’s all too easy to let the rudest and meanest representatives of a new place be the loudest speakers in our minds. But because of how strongly I felt this in Ethiopia, I always hesitate when people ask, “so, wasn’t Ethiopia amaaazing?” or “Everyone was really nice there, right?” The answer is yes and no. I’ll probably elaborate further in coming posts, because, at the very least, Ethiopia has given me a lot of stories to tell.

Despite the ups and downs, one thing Ethiopia was consistent in was being beautiful (with, perhaps, the exception of Addis Ababa) and full of visually stunning scenes. Personally, I was also a big fan of the food, but maybe I’m less bothered than most by eating the same thing three times a day. So, in the end, while I may hesitate to sum up the overall amazingness of Ethiopia or general nice-ness level of its people, I won’t hesitate to say I don’t regret going there and I’d enthusiastically encourage others to go there and explore.

But anyways, the purpose of this post is to dazzle you with some of my favorite photos of the trip, so let’s get to it.

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{1} Men and women in a church in Bahir Dar
{2} Street scene from above in Harar
{3} Woman preparing coffee for a coffee ceremony in the Simien Mountains
{4} Waiting for the clouds to part at the top of a peak in Simien Mountains
{5} Traditional breakfast food, “ful medames” made of beans and tomatoe and served with bread
{6} Young girl by our campsite in the Simien Mountains

Categories
The Nomadic Life Travel

Why I’m Thankful for Travel

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Being Thanksgiving and all, the blogosphere is filled with recently posted, thoughtful pieces about thankfulness and the like. Among travel blogs, I’ve come across a few introspective posts on what travel makes us thankful for, and all the eye-opening bits and personal transformation that come with being an intrepid, nomadic soul. I enjoy them, and there’s quite a few things I could think of myself (my American passport, to start with), but what about the reverse? Maybe I’m hitting on some of the same sentiments, but I wanted to talk today about why I’m thankful for travel and the opportunity to explore.

For the friendships

Travel encourages us, even forces us, to make new friends. When you are a stranger in an unfamiliar place, you can’t just hide in the comfort of your own home, relying on TV and old friends for company. You have to be brave and talk to someone you’ve never met before. Sometimes, when I’m on the road alone for awhile, it’s loneliness and the realization that I haven’t opened my mouth to say more than “one coffee, please,” that gets me out of my own head and striking up conversations with whoever will let me. I’ve met so many amazing and inspiring people this way.

I’m thankful that travel has taught this shy kid to be a bit more bold and see the whole world as a potential source of friendship, not just the sorts of people that look similar to you. Also, I’m thankful for all the like-minded people that I’ve accumulated as friends over the past few years, because believe me, I’ve found some good ones ;D

For what it teaches us about ourselves

In the semi-unstructured realm of travel, we have a lot of time to think introspectively and reflect on what we are experiencing, how we react to unfamiliar situations, and what that says about ourselves. It also puts us in new situations that bring out this really base self of everyone’s personality. I really believe that how you handle a stressful situation (like missing a bus or being ripped off) can reveal a lot about yourself, and that these situations are a way to practice bettering ourselves. Ditto for how we act around new people. In travel, as opposed to at home, we experience these sorts of things often, and get to learn something new about ourselves every day.

There’s also the concept of learning by contrast. I don’t think I fully understood what being an American meant until I studied abroad in Senegal and Malta. By learning what it meant to be Senegalese/Maltese/British/French/Spanish/etc. I was also learning about my own national identity and how we fit into the world. For this, I am thankful for travel.

For what it teaches us about others

wpid-storageemulated0photoeditorPeace-Corps-Education-Class2.jpg.jpgRoaming the world exposes us to endless personalities, cultures, and outlooks on life. When face to face with our differences, I think we are more likely to break down stereotypes and understand that finer differences exist underneath any one label (i.e. Asian, Christian, lawyer, etc.). The humanity of the ‘other’ is impossible to escape, and so long as we travel with an open and inquisitive mind, we are likely to learn much more about others than we ever could have at home. Sometimes, even the context itself suddenly sheds light on something we may not have understood before. Sometimes, we also discover there’s a lot to learn from these other perspectives — maybe I didn’t have all the answers after all…

For the skills we pick up along the way

How else would I have figured out how to wash a pair jeans by hand, speak Malagasy, or drive a motorbike if not through travel? I guess I had all the resources to do so at home, just not the initiative. In this regard, I am thankful that travel doesn’t just create the opportunities to develop new skills, but pushes us to do so as well.

For the patience and good humor it gives us

Travel isn’t always sunny beaches and good food — it can be stressful, challenging, and downright upleasant at times. There’s nothing like a 36 hour bus ride on a hard metal bench to teach a girl how to meditate and be patient (and also, how to hold “it” in when you really have to pee) or vendors in a Moroccan market place asking you every 5 seconds “where are you from?” for you to practice fending off irritation by making jokes (“I’m from Japan, obviously…”). Anyone who has traveled for a long time (hopefully) has gained the ability to be patient and laugh off the small things. How could you survive it if you haven’t?

For the adventure

If you haven’t figured it out already, I love a good story, and even better, a good adventure. Travel, and even just applying that sense of wonder and discovery to your everday life back home, is my favorite way to have new adventures. I’m thankful for all the big and small adventures, everything from trying a new dish to trekking across the Simien Mountains, that travel has allowed me to embark on.

For showing us what’s really important in life

wpid-storageextSdCardDCIM100D3000DSC_00942.jpg.jpgAnd finally, perhaps a combination of everything I’ve just mentioned, I am most thankful for travel because it has taught me what’s most important in life. Maybe this doesn’t apply to everyone, but I don’t think careers and success are more important than friendship and happiness. They hold weight, for sure, but after living and traveling abroad for quite some time, I’m a little nervous to return to our materialistic, progress-obsessed nation (this fear has mostly come out of reading Cosmo magazines on my Kindle…). For all the running around and 60 hour work weeks we do, I don’t believe we’re really becoming a happier and more satisfied, just creating more cravings and demands. After experiencing life at a much more basic level, maybe it’s better to strive to have enough in the ways of material posessions and to be comfortable than all these unnecessary excesses. Maybe, everything we do in life should be towards making it a better, more pleasant place for others, and enjoying every day, rather than working our butts off so that “some day” we’ll be well off.

So that’s my list, but how about you? Why are you thankful for travel?

Categories
Adventure Travel Africa Travel Uganda

What it’s Like Gorilla Trekking in Uganda

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In the jungle

Standing in the mess of twisted vines and jungle overgrowth in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, our little group of explorers — myself, my friend, a middle-aged Swedish couple, our guide, scouts, and trackers — stood in silence as we stared at a family of silverback gorillas in front of us. They stared back, equally curious. A loud, humming sound broke the silence, and one of the Swedes turned to our guide and asked, “what was that?” in a voice that suggested wonder and excitement.

Our guide, the only woman working as a guide in the park, smiled and began to giggle like the schoolgirl she must have been years ago. “Hehehe – they are farting,” she said and we all began to smile and laugh softly. Even the scouts and trackers, who never spoke enough for me to know just how much English they knew, began to chuckle. The sound happened again, and we all looked knowingly at each other and continued our immature, muted giggles.

Gorilla-Trekking-Guide.jpg

“They ate a really big breakfast,” our guide said, continuing the joke.

And for an hour, they continued to lounge in the jungle, farting, pooping, growling at each other, and sometimes lumbering over into another part of the forest. At one point, one of the females, seemingly annoyed at her audience, charged at us and one of the trackers raised his machete and barked back at her. She backed down.

“You always have to show that you aren’t afraid. They’re just trying to scare you, but if you try to run, they may pick you up. They’re really strong and can break your bones or kill you really easily. They don’t always mean to, they’re just so strong.” Our guide had cautioned us.

After one hour, we had to leave before we over stayed our welcome and really began to piss off the gorillas.

Since trekking in Uganda in September, I’ve gotten a lot of questions from other travelers about the experience and I thought I would include them here in case you were wondering the same thing:

Was it worth the money?

Honestly, I try not to think about it. I was a lot of money for what it was, but the proceeds from the $500 per person permits go back into protecting the gorillas and their environment, and improving the standards of living in nearby communities (related goals, really). Also, even though the trek was brief, it was incredibly well run and you could tell a lot of work and money goes in to protecting the park. Trackers, guides, and scouts are well-trained, and the guides all speak excellent English.

wpid-storageemulated0photoeditorG-Bug-in-Bwindi.jpg.jpg

Is there any way to do it cheaper?

All in all, we paid $900 each for the permit, private transportation to/from Kampala, hotels, water, and all our meals, through Cheap Uganda Safaris. While we don’t regret the splurge (our driver/guide, Alex, who runs his own company, Freelyn Adventures when not freelancing for others, was awesome and it was nice to break up our budget backpacking with a bit of uncomplicated luxury) we could have done it cheaper. We could have linked up with other travelers since tour prices drop as the number of people increases, or taken the independent route, buying the permits ourselves, making it to Kabale by bus and hiring a driver from there, getting all of our own food, and camping in our tent. Also, a lot of tour companies buy permits in advance and so towards the end of the tourist season, around November, some will have discounts on their tours and will sell the permits off for about $350. The trade-off here is that it’s rainy season, and the trail is muddy and slippery.

Bwindi Forest

Do you always get to see the gorillas?

It’s pretty much guaranteed. We asked this question to our guide who said yes, she’s always been able to find the gorillas. The park tracks each family’s movements and at the beginning of the day, trackers set out well before the guides and hikers to locate the families based on where they were last seen. Guides and trackers communicate with walkie talkies for updates on their whereabouts. When we asked our guide what was the longest it ever took to locacte them, she said “about 10 hours.”

“We had to call the office on our walkie-talkies and have them bring us dinner and more water,” she said, remembering the experience.

For us, we found them in about 2 hours, stayed for an hour, and were the first group out of the park.

Gorilla Tracker

So, it was pretty amazing then?

I’d be kind of an asshole if I said no, right? Just kidding. It was amazing, but far too short an amount of time. Also, I think seeing the gorillas (sitting around, farting, eating, looking at me with a strangely human face) made it easier to relate to them and grasp the commonalities humans have with other primates. So, in a way it made them less of this incredible, mysterious animal that exists somewhere-out-there in the world and more of a familiar face. Maybe I’m being vague, but it wasn’t like seeing lemurs and thinking about how cute and amusing they are, but being in the presence of an animal that you know is watching and observing you as much as you are it was a totally different nature viewing experience. They’re intelligent and complex, and you feel that.

Gorilla.jpg

Categories
Africa Ethiopia Travel

Drinking Coffee with Tomoca, Addis Ababa’s Oldest Roasters

Tomoca Coffee

My inspiration to travel to Ethiopia came while drinking a cup of coffee that tasted like cardboard. I wanted good coffee, and I felt that Ethiopia would have that. After all, my experiences in America had taught me that Ethiopian Arabica roasts were medium-bodied, fruity, and exactly the thing to cure my coffee doldrums. As with many other places that are famous for their coffee though, Ethiopia tends to send the best of their beans abroad as a cash crop, and it turned out that getting a delicious Ethiopian roast in Ethiopia was trickier than I had expected — which is why my friend and I decided to head to To.mo.ca (an abbreviation for Torrefazione Moderna Café). Although firmly on the tourist circuit, this coffee shop run by Addis Ababa’s oldest coffee roasting company has still preserved much of its original ambiance, and is still largely frequented by nearby businessmen and other locals looking for a quick pick me up. Since their founding in 1953, they have since expanded to two other locations in Addis Ababa, but we wanted to check out the original on the Piazza’s Cathedral Street, where we felt the personality of it’s original years would be most in tact.

So, with a hand-drawn map on the back of an old receipt, we left our hotel in search of the famed coffee shop, but couldn’t seem to find it. We continued for blocks past where we thought the shop would be, into slightly sketchy territory, but eventually gave up and settled on one of the stylish, modern cafes abundant in Addis Ababa. Disappointed, we vowed to try again the next day.

Turns out, the place is so unassuming from the outside, that we had walked right past it on our first try! Marked only by a small, simple brown sign, To.mo.ca is easy to miss if you’ve never been there before. Fortunately, we walked slower on our second attempt, and this time spotted the small hole in the wall, just past the intersection with Churchill Avenue and went inside.

Once we entered, we were surrounded by the sweet aroma of freshly brewed coffee and the loud clamor of tiny glass and ceramic mugs against saucers, the tell-tale hiss of an espresso machine, and lively conversation. The place was full with customers — mostly men — standing around tall tables chatting with friends or pouring over the newspaper on small stools while sipping on To.mo.ca’s espresso-shot sized cups of buna (black coffee), makiato (coffee with milk), or capucinnos. All their coffee is slow roasted using a traditional Ethiopian process but in modern Italian-made roasters to bring out a fuller flavor and aroma from their Ethiopian Arabica beans. Even before tasting their coffee, I could smell the result of the time and care they had put into getting a quality roast out of a quality bean and felt myself bubbling with excitement as we approached the counter.

Tomoca1

For a bigger cup, we told the cashier “double” before paying and being handed a small plastic chip, which we then took to a back counter where the coffee was dished out. Three employees stood behind the back counter, taking chips and brewing coffee out of their large espresso machines, while customers grabbed their cup (no Starbucks take away cups here!) as the orders came up. Another woman bustled around taking a shaker full of sugar away from those with slightly empty cups, and placing them in front of customers who had just received their orders — since, of course, you can’t drink a cup of coffee as an Ethiopian without three teaspoons of sugar (we were just glad no one was trying to put the sugar in the coffee for us.)

And how was the coffee? Everything I expected of an Ethiopian coffee roaster with 60 years to perfect their craft. The small cup of buna tasted rich and strong and left us feeling revived and ready to dive in to the chaos of Addis Ababa’s downtown area, or perhaps, inspired by the Balzac quote hanging from the ceiling (“When you drink a cup of coffee, ideas come marching like an army”) write a short story. We even debated taking a bag of one of their several roasts on the road so we could enjoy the aromatic flavors of To.mo.ca even after we had long left Ethiopia’s capitol behind. But in the end, we decided against it. Sitting in the bustling atmosphere of To.mo.ca’s original coffee shop was part of the reason that made that one cup so enjoyable, and even if we could take the taste home with us, we would never be able to fully recreate the experience of sipping downright delicious coffee with the locals at To.mo.ca in Addis Ababa.

Tomoca2

Categories
Adventure Travel Africa The Nomadic Life Uganda

At The Source of the Blue Nile in Jinja, Uganda

Blue nile

I will forever remember Uganda as being a thousand shades of green. We arrived in Jinja, Uganda at the end of a long rainy season, and at the beginning of a tropical downpour, that had been making me nervous as I tried to balance myself and heavy backpack on the back of my motorcycle taxi (called a boda boda).

“Where are you from?” My driver asked

“America,” I said dryly.

“Oh! Amereeca! Will you marry me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to marry anyone I have known for only two minutes. Now please watch the road.”

“You’re scared?”

“Just watch the road.”

Obviously, I was more concerned with getting to our hostel, Adrift, before it began to dump buckets of water from the sky, than a boda boda driver’s romantic, or more likely, self-serving, intentions.

We got there, but just barely, and spent the rest of the evening drinking beer and trying to make out a brown, muddy Nile that stood against a backdrop of white haze. The next morning, however, the rain and mist had lifted, and we were greeted with a wide, lolling river, made lazy by a pair of nearby dams.

Why visit Jinja?

Ugandan Fishermen

Jinja, Uganda is a popular stop over for adventurous tourists looking to bungee jump or white water raft down the Nile (mostly out of our hostel, Adrift, which sits a few kilometers outside of town but has a lively bar that overlooks the Nile) and the less adventurous ones who would prefer to bob up and down on a small canoe bird-watching or booze-cruising on a sunset boat ride that putters past papyrus reeds and fishermen — exactly the sort of scene you might expect to see on the Nile if you ignore the anomaly of your boat.

Ugandan fisherman Nile

Off the river, Jinja is a large, bustling town. Downtown’s main street is dotted with several cute cafes (like, Source of the Nile) that serve up freshly brewed coffee — a great break from the instant coffee we kept getting throughout Kenya — and dozens of souvenir shops basically selling the same thing. Being Uganda’s second largest metropolis (after Kampala) I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by this bit of cosmopolitanism. I was rather surprised by how many foreigners and tourists were roaming the streets, many of whom seemed to be unusually pretty girls in their early 20s, sporting flowing long skirts. Volunteers in the name of God, maybe? I’ll never know.

source of the nile cafe

Final thoughts

Ugandan school children


In the end, I found the place overly touristy but beautiful. I was happy to move on, but encountered several foreigners who now call it home. Mostly, I feel like I’ve walked away from Jinja being able to say “no big deal, I’ve been to the Nile.” Not a bad place to spend a few days, right?


Categories
Africa Kenya Travel Uganda

How (Not) to Cross the Border Overland from Kenya to Uganda

Truckstop at the Uganda / Kenya border of Malaba

When we hopped off the bus in Malaba, the bustling, ramshackle border town between Kenya and Uganda, we were immediately bombarded by motorcycle taxis trying to ferry us across the border.

“No, we’ll walk,” we said, finding it ridiculous to pay someone to drive us a distance we could cover in less than ten minutes.

So we hiked our bags on our back and headed to the office on the Kenyan side, when we saw the recliner chair from the best recliners we knew we had found the office. The office was easy enough to find, and the process was simple too. Since we had arrived in a mini bus, and not with one of the large international buses that ferry people between Kampala, Nairobi, and Kigali, we had also arrived with a crowd of locals going to market (and who therefore didn’t need to have their passports checked) and were the only ones in line. It took us all of ten minutes, and we were stamped and sent on to the Ugandan side.

A Peace Corps friend in Malaba had told us that the Ugandan office wasn’t that simple to find. We would have to veer left off the road a bit — so we tried to do that. A group of men shouted at us and told us we were going the wrong way. They pointed us towards a sidewalk where dozens of other pedestrians were walking in to Uganda, so we followed them, still looking for someone who could stamp our passports and give us a visa. Instead, we found two soldiers lazily sitting by an entrance looking thing, with their AKs sitting in their laps.

“Passports, please!” They demanded.

We handed them over.

“What’s in your bag?” One of them asked Liz.
“Where’s your WHO card?” The other asked me.

We responded accordingly, but it quickly seemed apparent that they were more interested in flirting with us than making sure we were legally crossing international borders. We smiled (because you should never upset a man with a gun) and moved on, now fully in the throngs of an African market filled with colorful fabrics. We stopped to look, because our Peace Corps friend had also mentioned it was a great place to find fabric we could later turn into clothes.

A few meters down the road, we found our bus to Jinja, and turned to each other to say “well, that was easy.”

It wasn’t until later that night we discovered that we were now illegal in Uganda — in the confusion of the border crossing and market, we had never managed to get a Ugandan visa (which all American citizens need in order to enter) or stamp… This was quickly becoming a hassle, I could catch myself thinking, how easy it was in Asia with the Vietnam visa on arrival program.

What You Need To Know

Before attempting to cross the border ourselves, the internet had made it seem as though it would be semi difficult to cross overland between Kenya and Uganda. I totally disagree.

The main towns to cross through are Malaba and Busia. For those coming from Kenya, you can cross into Uganda and return to Kenya with a single-entry visa (don’t waste the money on a multiple-entry visa — Kenya has special agreements with Uganda and Tanzania that allow you to travel between the three with only a single-entry visa) but you still need to buy a separate visa to Uganda. Visas for Uganda and Kenya cost $50 USD each. You can pay with local currency, but make sure you have exact just in case the border agents don’t have change (as happened to us). That said, visas are available on arrival.

Large bus companies such as Easy Coach cross the border, and make it easy for passengers to go through the process. Just hop off and follow what everyone else is doing, then meet the bus on the other side. They’re good about waiting and making sure everyone is back on board before leaving, just in case that sort of thing makes you nervous. If you are traveling with local buses, however, make sure you get both stamps! It’s very easy to find a bus in either direction from the border, and you generally don’t have to wait long. If you are going with a local bus, I’d suggest traveling by day. This is best if you are going only a short distance.

Also somewhat annoying, the bus from Malaba – Jinja is the same price as the bus from Malaba – Kampala, but worth it if you don’t want to back track.

All in all, crossing the border overland between Kenya and Uganda is easy, and you don’t need to have anything special (like passport size photos, as the official website claims) besides money for the fee in order to get a visa on either side. Plan to spend about an hour crossing, just in case you get caught behind a large group, and definitely don’t have any worries about crossing this border!

Our Return to Kenya

Ten days later, we groggily stepped off the Kampala – Nairobi direct and into the Ugandan passport control office.

“Where are your visas?” The offcial asked.
“We tried to get them! There were men with guns… they looked official… we don’t know what happened!” We groveled.

Our official consulted with someone else, and eventually decided that they would give us the visa, stamp us in, and stamp us out, all at the same time.

“Perfect!” We said, and happily forked over the $50 visa fee. We both breathed a sigh of relief that they were so understanding, and that we didn’t even have to offer a bribe, before ambling on to meet back with our bus and try to catch a few hours of sleep on the bumpy bus ride east.

Categories
Kenya Travel

Apparently, Hell Has Zebras: A Visit to Hell’s Gate National Park

Hell's gate

“Welcome to hell!” a Kenyan man standing by a row of rental bikes shouted, obviously amused at his joke. “Would you like to buy a map?”

Liz and I had just turned off the main road from our camp ground by Lake Naivasha, headed to the Elsa entrance of Hell’s Gate National Park on rickety bikes that were already beginning to make our bums sore. We decided to take him up on his offer and Liz handed over a dollar for a sorry excuse of a map, a badly drawn, photocopied sketch of the area, that would end up being little use to us when we really did get lost — a second joke on the map-seller’s part — before struggling up a dirt road on a slight incline to the entrance of Hell’s Gate, to the entrance of hell, you might say.

Safari by bike

Hell's Gate Wildlife

We shattered some preconceptions that day: apparently, Hell has zebras. And giraffes, warthogs, gazelle, baboons, and buffalo.

It was beautiful, and probably not the image you’d conjure up if I had just told you “we just visited Hell”. But it also wasn’t the image you’d get if I were to say I had been on safari in Kenya.

To start with, Hell’s Gate doesn’t have any predators, a small dissappointment since they’re a main safari attraction, but at the same time great because it allows for another unique feature of the park to exist.

You can bike and walk — unguided — through the park, instead of traveling by car.

I loved that part. Even if the bike seats had our butts acheing for two days after, it was worth it to stand in the middle of a grassy plain, just a few feet away from the wildlife (if you had managed to walk quietly enough not to startle them), and pretend like we were the only humans around for miles. Going unguided also gave us the feeling of discovering something new and setting out on a true, rugged, adventure. Our discoveries were our own. This was what I had imagined safaris were like, before a long ago trip to South Africa taught me that Safari in Africa was synonymous with looking at far away wildlife with binoculars from a Land Rover.

Scrambling through the canyon

Hell's Gate Canyon

We did, however, have to hire a guide to wander through the serpintine, sand-colored, Hell’s Gate canyon and recent filming site for Tomb Raider II.

As we trodded along, ocassionaly stopping to admire the naturally hot water trickeling from the rocks, my thoughts bounced between wondering what the filming crews had done about the graffiti on the wall, and why exactly inspired the first explorers to visit this place, Fischer and Thompson, to call it “Hell’s Gate”. Did they take the hot water and active volcanoe as signs that a firey underworld sat just beneath the surface? Who knows, but it was fun to think about.

Climbing Fischer’s Tower

Fishers Tower

About one kilometer from the park entrance stands a tall, slender, pyramid-shaped pile of rocks called Fischer’s Tower. Besides being able to bike among the wildlife, this tower was our other main motivation for visiting the park: you could rock climb. Before heading off into the park, we had just noticed a small mention of rock climbing in a guide book (“in Hell’s Gate you can bike, hike, rock climb, and …”) which is pretty typical really. I’ve found that as a nomadic climber, the normal range of guide books won’t do much more than mention the possibility of rock climbing, and to really track down a good climbing spot requires more word-of-mouth and internet research.

Upon arrival, we learned that this tower was mostly trad climbing — which we didn’t have gear for — but had a solid 5.7, 5.8, and 5.9 sport climb routes that we were able to hop on to and get our fix (thanks to the Kenyan rock climbing guide who spends his days posted up at the bottom of the tower, renting out equipment for tourists who want to go vertical, who took pity on our rope-less situation). The tall rock walls surrounding the valley also offered a variety of more challenging climbs, but again, not bolted. Our new friend told us that he had been working in the valley for over 6 years and knew all the routes. For anyone who wants more beta, showing up at the tower and interrogating him might not be a bad way to do so.

Some practical boring stuff…

Kenyan Town

  • We camped at Fisherman’s camp, about 5km from the Elsa entrance to the park. Camping in our own tent was 500 KSH per person, per night (so unfair, shouldn’t we get a discount for squishing?!).

  • Entrance to the park for non-East African residents was $25 USD, and a 100 KSH fee for each bike. Our bikes were 500 KSH to rent from our hotel, but if you rent a bike at the park entrance, you don’t have to pay the bike fee.

  • Busses from the town Naivasha to Fishermans camp were about 80 KSH
  • Two good cafes in town (Acacia and one next to the butcher) serve cheap local options.

  • Multiple people said it was best for us to set out early and aim to be at the park around 7, so we could have the roads to ourselves before cars came through and kicked up dust (and it’s better photography lighting anyway), and after getting there not-so-early, I’d agree.

Categories
Africa Kenya The Nomadic Life Travel

Landing Without A Plan in Kenya

Zebra

Stepping off the airplane into Nairobi’s international airport felt surreal. Normally, I think of airports as these familiar, unchanging structures — which is ironic since they are buildings built for the purpose of transience and travel — that I can confidently navigate worldwide, no matter if I’ve never been there before or I have been there a dozen times. However, because of construction and the recent fire at Nairobi’s airport, it seemed more like I was strolling through an outdoor expo than an airport. They had erected large white tents to act as an arrivals terminal. The bathrooms were port-o-potties. Customs agents sat behind a folding table in folding chairs, then sent us outside to walk to another tent where our bags waited, lined up next to a paper sign with our flight number, rather than rotating on a large carousal. The airport felt temporary and transient, which I suppose matches its purpose better than colossal airports like Charles du Galle and Dulles.

But the airport may have been misleading. However small it felt, we were without a doubt back on a more beaten path, set to wander around a country with an abundance of travelers and a healthy tourist industry — an excellent situation for us, since we had done little research about our first stop on our round-the-world trip and would need other travelers and resources made for travelers to help us along the way.

Finding Things to Do in Nairobi

Kenyan Coffee

At first glance, we found Nairobi fancy and developed, and since we were coming from somewhere less developed, we had no qualms about spending a day or two pretending to be fancy as well. I was excited enough just seeing asparagus and red peppers on a cafe menu (sad, I know). So, after looking at 101 Things to Do in Nairobi, we decided to forget about the normal touristy stuff, and instead watch a cheesy movie on a big screen at Junction Cinema, drink our first I.P.A. beer in two years at Brew Bistro and Lounge, and have a bagel and coffee at a Nairobi coffee chain, Java. While others at our cozy hostel — Upper Hill Campsite — set out on day trips to Nairobi Giraffe Farm or to shop in local markets, we shyly slunk away to the mall, telling our new friends that we had “errands to run” when actually we were oggling new clothes and going to the cinema like a pair of bored teenagers.

Getting Out of Nairobi

Flamingos in Lake Naivasha

For some reason, I suddenly remembered photos of a flamingo filled lake in Kenya, and decided that’s what I’d want to see here (having already done a safari, and reserving a trek to see gorillas in Uganda as our one big splurge). A quick Google search told me Lake Nakuru, on the road to Uganda (perfect!) was the place I was thinking off. Chats with other hostelers, however, told us that camping alongside the hippos of Lake Naivasha would be more worth our time. Not only does Lake Naivasha have flamingos, but it’s close to the entrance of Hell’s Gate Park, which allows visitors to bike and walk through game filled valleys, rather than drive. We both loved the idea of being outside with the animals (no predators though — phew!), and the possibility of rock climbing as mentioned in an old and battered Lonely Planet, so we immediately made plans to hop a matatu (bus) to the lake the next day. We’d end up staying at Fisherman’s Camp, a classically backpacker spot and one of the cheapest in the area, but would later discover a few quieter budget options elsewhere by the lake.

Maybe Next Time?

Of course, attractions like going on safari in Maasi Mara, hiking Mount Kenya, and lounging on the beaches near Mombasa were all tempting as well, but would have taken us out of the way from getting to Uganda. We heard nothing but positive reviews from people recently returning from then. Naturally, we didn’t want to actually say no to visiting them so in the spirit of travelers who want to see it all, we kept (and keep) telling ourselves “next time… Maybe after Uganda?” We’re traveling without much of any plans right now, so who knows?

Categories
Africa In Photos Madagascar The Nomadic Life Travel

Photo-Frenzied in Morondava’s Avenue de Baobabs

Seven

I went to Madagascar’s most iconic and photographed site, and I didn’t bring my camera.

Just kidding. Though I did think about it for the purpose of writing a piece on how photography distracts from being present and the importance of absorbing and interacting with a place rather than documenting it. Maybe I should have done just that, but I selfishly wanted my postcard snapshot of the Avenue de Baobabs at sunset too. They’re just so damn photogenic.

I wasn’t alone in this. Car after car full of tourists rolled in, parking at the entrance closest to the road back to Morondava town or pausing for a few seconds to drop off groups returning from the Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park, so they could lazily walk the several yards of baobab-lined path back to their private four-by-fours just in time to get dinner. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a large concentration of tourists in Madagascar in my whole two years of living here (although Isalo came close).

As we made our way down the sandy path, a group of small children ran up to us with chameleons on sticks. They knew from experience that basically every visitor would have a camera and demanded we take photos then give them small change. “Madame, photo! Madame, photo!”

It made me a little uncomfortable but one of my friends was impressed they had figured out they could make money off of this. They would have made a cute photo, but I was more interested in chatting with them. I asked one of the little girls her name in Malagasy. When I couldn’t pronounce it quite right she got pouty and stomped her feet “NO! Boon-BOO-na!” I laughed. I love it when kids step out of their robotic “oh, madame-o, please give me something” and let their personality escape.

I snuck a photo of her from behind, and she snapped her head around, obviously in recognition of the shutter’s ‘cliiick’ and was back to berating me with ‘madame, photo!’ I feigned ignorance. I told another group of boys near her I didn’t want to take their photo because they were dirty. They were amused. I was serious.

Four

In the end, my seven friends and I all joined the photo-snapping frenzy, but I could tell that all of us still felt somewhat separate from the tourists passing through. We were observing them and their habits the same way they were observing the trees and cooing over cute little African children holding chameleons on a stick. Even with our cameras, we were putting our Madagascar-acquired habits to good use by simply standing in the middle of the road, chatting and staring, moving slowly and not worrying about time.

After we put away our cameras and piled into our taxis to head back to town for pizza, the cool night breeze forcing me to put on a sweater, I felt reminded of why I love travel — for these moments of absolute beauty and tranquility. For being separated from ‘the rest of the world’ but in such a way that isn’t anxious, but peaceful. I felt absolutely content to be where I was in that moment, but at the same time excited for the adventures to come once I’m off this island (which is soon…)

Oh yeah, and those photos:

Avenue de Baobabs

Baobab

two Canoe Morondava

Rasta Bar

Photos: (1) Entrance to the Avenue of Baobabs (2) Bobona and her chameleon (3)  The kids in front of the baobabs (4) Baobab from the bottom of the trunk (5)  A woman on the road to the Avenue de Baobabs (6) A traditional canoe called a ‘lakana’ on Morondava’s beach (7) Musicians in the ‘Rasta Bar’ in Morondava

Categories
Africa Madagascar Peace Corps The Nomadic Life

Veloma Madagascar — I’m an RPCV Now!

COSYesterday was my first full day as an RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer).

Except, I’m not returned. My friend Liz, who I’ll be travelling with for the next few months, joked that it meant “Recovering Peace Corps Volunteer”. That seems more suiting, since neither of us will return until Christmas. But whatever it means, it’s a pretty significant event. I’m done! We’re done! On Friday, my group of five COS-ers had our official I.D.s punched and voided, our Country Director shook our hands and said “thanks for your service” and we popped open a bottle of cheap champagne from the duty free store to pass around on our walk from the office to lunch. (Note: When a PCV finishes their service, it’s called “COS-ing”. COS stands for “close of service”. Because of medical processing, only a 5-7 volunteers can be COS-ed at a time. Those volunteers are called COS-ers.)

Working up to that moment, the week was filled with lasts. Last goodbyes, last time at my favorite restaurant in Tana, last day as a Peace Corps volunteer. And finally today, I have my last day on this island. My friends that I’m leaving behind keep asking me how I’m feeling. To answer that, I’m feeling a little nostalgic, but mostly excited for new adventures. And honestly, it’s hard to feel really upset about leaving a place when at the same time you’re cursing it under your breath. Last night, our taxi driver asked for a “kiss kiss” goodbye and it pissed me off. We got stopped at a police checkpoint and hassled for our I.D.s. Several homemade bombs have been going off throughout Antananarivo (but fortunately, whoever’s making them isn’t particularly good at it, so there have been no deaths or damages). This week, I’ve generally been irritated and stressed. I’m ready to move on.

I’m sadder about not being a Peace Corps volunteer anymore. All in one day, I lost my home, my job, and a significant part of my identity. I love being a Peace Corps volunteer and I love the family us Madagascar volunteers have built out of being in it together. Also, Madagascar loves us. On a really basic level, PCVs are known for being “those white people who speak Malagasy”, and Malagasy appreciate it. Telling someone that I’m Peace Corps almost always gets a good reaction (when they know what it is, obviously), and I’ll miss this aspect of instant awesome-ness when I tell people my job.

Fortunately it seems like the RPCV community is just as much of a big family as Peace Corps, and just because I’m losing one identity, doesn’t mean I’m not gaining another. Like I said, I’m less sad than excited for new adventures. I’m excited to fly to Kenya with Liz in less than 24 hours (I’m not excited about the 2am departure time). I’m excited for new food, new music, new scenery, and new discoveries. We’ve both put seeing a movie in a real cinema, not on a laptop, as our number one thing we want to do in Nairobi (silly, I know, but i haven’t seen one in 3 years). I’m also excited to finally be making my way home with a RTW (around-the-world) trip!! So guys, save the ‘welcome home’ for Christmas-time… I want to take my time getting home.

Photo: A mix of friends during the second COS week in August while celebrating at Le B’ in Tana

Categories
Africa Madagascar Peace Corps The Nomadic Life

Success! 22,000 Books Finally Arrive in Madagascar

BFA Mada

After months of frantically e-mailing, running around Tana, and bugging the group of Peace Corps volunteers involved in the Books for Africa project (which I’m sure people are sick and tired of hearing me talk about) I finally found myself standing in a Tana school yard, with the tangible result of all of our efforts being swung full force into a tree. To explain better, a group of Malagasy construction workers were unloading the 40-foot, 4 ton shipping container that had transported 660 boxes of 22,000 books and 4 laptops from Savannah, Georgia to Antananarivo, Madagascar from a truck, and placing it in a Tana school yard to be eventually turned into a guard house com teacher lounge. They weren’t terribly graceful about it, and managed to nick off several tree branches in the process.

image

I didn’t care about the tree though, obviously. I was just marveling at the hugeness of the container and the overwhelming amount of books currently stacked in a classroom and waiting to be shipped off to their new homes. (Earlier in the day, the school had stopped class so students could unload the books from the container into the classroom while I was sitting in painfully slow Tana traffic on the other side of town. I just had to love Madagascar a little for being able to drop a whole school’s studies to force the kids to do manual labor. Don’t feel too bad, they got juice and cookies as a reward.) Mostly, I was filled with relief that the container had made it, and that seeing it in person meant undeniable, verified proof that we had actually succeeded with the most difficult part of our project: getting the books across an ocean and past Malagasy customs. Even though I knew the work wasn’t quite done yet — we still had to sort and distribute the boxes among 18 PCVs — seeing that container swinging into a tree in a Tana schoolyard meant the worst of it was over.

Not everyone in the project thought it would ever be completed, and understandably so: we’ve had a lot of bumps and hurdles. Almost a year and a half ago now, we had our first stall in the project when trying to raise the $19,000 USD we needed to purchase the books, pay for shipping, and get them distributed around Madagascar. Then, very sadly, the PCV who originally started the project, Lynn Brown, was separated from the Peace Corps for medical reasons and had to pass her leadership along to another volunteer, Brittany Bemis, who led us through the ordering process. Even though Lynn was no longer a PCV, she still remained involved in the project and project fundraising. She showed some serious dedication and yes, her site got 1,000 books just like the rest of us! Brittany, however, didn’t have regular enough access to internet or the ability to come to Tana frequently (which would prove essential as we got to the stage of the project where we needed documentation for the container and permission to import) so she passed it along to me.

Our next set of hurdles came with navigating Madagascar’s importation system. It’s hard for me to bite my tongue and keep my criticisms under wraps, but they didn’t make things easy. Madagascar isn’t helping themselves either by complicating the process of importing goods or requiring high taxes (we didn’t pay any for the books or computers because they were a donation). To make matters worse, most of the offices involved didn’t have e-mail and were still functioning in an arcane, print-it-out-and-deliever-the-document sort of system — which meant on several occasions I had to waste a solid 4-5 hours just to pass a document from one office to another, get a stamp from a ministry across town (because, naturally, nothing is official in Madagascar without a stamp…), or just ask a question about the process. For the most part, this wasn’t difficult, but obnoxious, and filled with a lot of little, really avoidable mistakes (like how we lost a full month because a Malagasy website incorrectly translated a website error to ‘missing document’ instead of ‘incorrect document’). I don’t even want to begin to count the hours wasted sitting on taxi-brousses and inner-city busses by yours truly. I listened to many ‘This American Life’ podcasts during this period.

BFA1

The Peace Corps office and the Ministry of Education were beyond helpful with trying to get past these problems and misunderstandings. I don’t know how this would have gotten done without them, and now it has. Which means, it’s time for the fun part: riding in to site with a bus piled high with boxes of shiny, new books, opening them up, and putting them on the shelves for our community to read. While all of our sites are incredibly thankful for the donations, and probably just as excited as I am to flip through those books, I have to say I’m sad to see it all coming together right at the end of my service. Like most of the volunteers in the project, I won’t get to se how my site ends up using the resources, and will never benefit from them as a resource with my own teaching. But then again, “it’s probably more sustainable to have this immense amount of English material in town than to always expect a PCV to be there to teach English,” as one PCV commented. I hope so, because it’s been one heck of a project, and despite it all, one heck of a success!

BFA James

Categories
Africa Madagascar Peace Corps The Nomadic Life

Breaking Up with Madagascar

Broken Hearts by Darwin Bell

I need to get out of Madagascar. And I will leave, to East Africa, in 40-some days. Don’t take this to mean I dislike Madagascar — I’m lucky to have been placed here for my service in Peace Corps and there some truly wonderful things about the island, but two years is enough. I like to use the analogy of an arranged marriage to explain being a PCV here. I, along with most PCVs, came to Madagascar knowing little about it but willing to make the commitment based on the little we did. After we got here, we spent much of our first few months figuring out what this place was all about and in the process uncovered wonderful and awful aspects of Madagascar’s character. Yet despite all of the awful (smelly piles of trash, annoying men, general lapses in logic) we found ourselves forcing to focus on the parts we loved in order to make the ‘marriage’ work (beautiful landscapes, cheap fresh vegetables, laidback attitudes). Some people here, well, they’re really just ‘staying married for the kids’ (as in, they aren’t happy in Madagascar but for whatever reason are too committed to quit now). It’s definitely like an arranged marriage – you don’t know much getting in and have to focus on what you love, not what you hate, to make it work.

On the other hand, I believe a healthy relationship makes you the best possible version of yourself. I would say this extends to a person’s relationship with a place, not just people, as well. This is why I need to leave — Madagascar does not allow me to be the best possible version of myself. Yes, I like the relaxed sort of lawlessness of it all, of living here, but overall I don’t like the characteristics it tends to draw out of me. Over time, it’s made me angrier. I’m constantly on guard, ready for someone to pickpocket or harass me. The lack of general creative energy at first was disappointing, but now it feels stifling. I remember being blown away when I went to Thailand briefly last year, because there was so much presence of fashion, art, and architecture that had been carefully thought out, designed, and constructed. It was inspiring. (To be fair, there are some very creative people here making beautiful things, but it doesn’t seem to be as embedded in the general Malagasy mentality or history as, say, Thai mentality).

I understand that Madagascar has been through some unfortunate circumstances (political instability, it’s one of the world’s poorest countries, locust plague) so I feel somewhat unfair to speak badly of it, but I think my run here is over. We just weren’t made for each other. We had some fun, but didn’t fall in love. In a way, I almost feel like I’m breaking up with it. Sorry Mada, you have some fantastic qualities, and I’m sure you’ll find someone who loves you for who you are, but I just don’t think we’re right for each other. We can still be friends though, right?

Oh, and just to let you all know… I will officially be an RPCV (returned Peace Corps volunteer) September 6th, and fly off the island for Kenya – Uganda – Ethiopia on September 9th. I’m looking forward to this next adventure!

Photo: Flowers in Golden Gate Park by Darwin Bell