African Continent

New Words In Lusaka

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa your car “hoots” not honks. Hoot, I tell them, is what an owl does! Rod says Geese “honk” and cars “hoot!” We laugh. In New Zealand Fi says “Rattle Your Dags” means to get you upset-dags referring to the hard little poop balls that stick to the sheep’s wool on his rear end and then “rattle” when he runs. “Tarmac” refers to a blacktop highway and “sunnies” are sunglasses. “Bakkies” are pick-ups. “Robots” are street lights. “Nappies” are diapers. I love learning the distinctions between these new words and phrases and the way the U.S. uses English; helps get a “feel” for the other English language cultures.

Shopping in Lusaka
Spent half a day at an Arizona-Shopping-Mall on the edge of Lusaka. For the first time we get a sense of the extremes in Africa-rich and poor; none of the villagers we have seen so far have any access to these goods in the city…even if they had the money they don�t have any way to get there.

The campers all got their consumer shit and loaded plastic sacks full of drinks and goodies onto the truck. Rod calls it “baby food.” Email here is very expensive-costs me $5 just to check it with no time for replies. There are armed guards all over the mall. On the way out we see a sign reading “Civil Society For Poverty Reduction Youth Project-Coffins Sold Here.” Rod says coffins are one of the biggest up and coming businesses in Africa because of all the deaths due to AIDS.

The day is another long day on the road. I join Janine in the front seat for awhile. She groans about having to get back into the rat race in London when she gets back. She talks about the rudeness and abruptness of everyone and how it will feel after being in Africa…we agree that it must just be a big-city attitude. Popular music is her passion. As with most of the rest she will be looking for work when she returns.

To Lusaka Zambia

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Tues May 21-22, 2002 Long Drive to Lusaka the capitol of Zambia
Up at 5 am again and on the truck by 6:30. Take the whole day just to drive to Lusaka-about 12 hours or 800 km on the “bloody truck” as Janine put it in her diary.

Stopped off in a village in the early afternoon; watched two women under a tree lather up a naked little boy-child about 3 years old with soap and water from a plastic bucket but we are too respectful to take a picture. Whenever the truck stops raggedy kids materialize instantly…seemingly out of nowhere. Waiting for…hoping for a handout. I throw out two little bags of chips…The two biggest ones got them, I tell Rod! He answers with a cynical grin…African Democracy!

Then a black African adult about the age of 40 walked past the truck and yells at us bitterly, “What are you doing here! You are from free countries! You look like prisoners sitting up there! And don’t give the kids anything! You just teach them to be beggars!” I don’t blame him one bit for his bitterness…I want to know about his bitterness…otherwise how am I to know how to act-particularly in regard to my government’s foreign policies.

We see signs for Zambian beer called Mosi…I see a sign “Anti Corruption Commission!” Rod says “yes and there is an anti corruption commission on the anti corruption commission! Another sign…Knowledge is Power Bar and Restaurant…I can go with that!

African Presidential Excess
On the way into Lusaka all the traffic was stopped by uniformed policewomen and then we finally saw the reason for it; the president in an entourage of about a dozen vehicles…including an ambulance! Someone suggested he was probably on his way to the airport. Later in the South African Cape Times we read “Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa was clearly hoping to impress First World lenders when he ordered his ministers and officials to board a 69 seater bus bound for the airport. He was en route to South Africa to attend the World Economic Forum summit. Apparently the presidential motorcade to see the President off at the airport has become rather a drain on resources so in the interests of cost-saving, the Zambian leader has said it will become standard practice for ministers and party officials to bus it to the airport whenever they want to wave him goodbye.”

This is nothing compared to Zimbabwe’s president however. The U.S. is threatening to recall three commercial airliners sold to the country two years ago for nonpayment. It has been reported that Robert Mugabe will commandeer a plane at a moment�s notice so that his wife can go on shopping sprees in Paris-even having the seats removed so there would be space for all the packages. In the future, with international pressure, I hope this phase of Africa’s development is going to go the way of Uganda’s Idi Amin which is OUT!

On the way into town saw a huge billboard that said  “Do not allow people to become perpetually dependent! Do not give alms to beggars!” I think to myself this town is fighting a losing battle. Another signs read “Polite Notice-No Bus Stops.”

I keep losing track of the date…Bob has to remind me to take our Larium for prevention of Malaria on Sundays.

Every time the truck stops Damian from Australia gets out and runs up like a little kid to ask James “Are we there yet” Damian and Melissa sit behind me and I get to talk to them a lot. I like them. Once Damian made a cynical remark and Melissa apologetically said “Isn’t he terrible?” I said, oh no, that is just black humor! It helps us get through life!

Yellow Chicken Camp

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May 20, 2002
Then to Yellow Chicken Campsite and dinner in the dark. The charming camp, in the middle of a huge 40 year-old German farm, is run by a Brit and his wife who was 8 months pregnant. There is a law now that Whites cannot own land but this farmer’s land was grandfathered in because he had owned it for so long.

Soap and towel even…and so clean…and smells so good with candles burning everywhere…and hot water even…this is the nicest camp yet! The girls all have a shower the night we arrive so I decide to wait until morning. On my way I see how two black African guys have to bucket the water up out of the well…then into a barrel a few feet away…then pull it bucket by bucket up into an elevated water reservoir. Then a fire is built in an outside fire burner to heat the water. I stubbornly return to my tent without a shower.

Lessons from an African Bush Camp Operator
Janine and Sarah stayed up and listened to the camp operator who has lived in several countries in Africa over a period of 15 years talk about things he has seen and experienced. He said most people are Christian but most only convert because they are given a bag of maize or a pair of shoes and still continue their own spiritual traditions including witchcraft.

He also said that if a woman gets pregnant outside of wedlock that she has to marry the father of the child. So sometimes if a man sees a woman he wants he rapes her until she is pregnant and then she has to marry him. I don’t know which countries he was talking about here. About AIDS, the locals don�t understand the disease and don’t believe that condoms are of any use-hence the proliferation of the disease.

The operator was particularly adamant about stopping the food and other aid that people get…he believes it keeps them from becoming self sufficient…teaches them to always have a hand out…that it would be terrible in the beginning to withdraw the aid but in the long run it would be better for the people.

In fact an article appeared in the South African Cape Times a few weeks after this in which it was reported that dozens of nongovernmental organizations rejected the final declaration of the United Nations World Food Summit in Rome saying it was “more of the same failed medicine” and would not end hunger.

Distribution of resources is almost impossible due to bad roads, insufficient trucks and buses, a poor public transportation system.This results in 90% of the villages and towns living in isolation having no access to the market and no access to money. One hundred and fifty poorly developed countries are leaning on 25 developed ones. If one figures in the cost of transporting, servicing, warehousing and preserving food, then the cost of a single meal for a refugee in some camp is higher than the price of a dinner in the most expensive restaurant in Paris, one critic has said.

The answer, many are thinking, is a multidimensional approach to the develop-ment of healthy societies: develop regions especially through education; encourage local societies participation in public life including ability to dialogue; observe fundamental human rights; begin democratization and develop interdependence. This will not be easy. It will require new politicians who care about development-not warlords who sew contention in order to retain their own political power long enough so they can drain the country of money and resources.

The camp operator said that he feels sorry for African-Americans who come to Africa looking for their roots…they leave devastated when they discover they have absolutely nothing in common except color…and being black means nothing here because practically everyone is black…so no one is going to greet the black Americans with open arms-particularly well-fed affluent ones and the Africans assume the blacks who come here must be rich or they couldn’t get here in the first place…and we travelers without a doubt are all immeasurably rich compared to the locals.

In the morning as we were leaving I asked the camp operator what the best thing was about living in Africa…the beauty and wide open free space, he said waving his arm out toward the sun rising over ripe wheat..and being able to live the way you want to with no 9-5 job!

Zambia Border

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2002
Rod warns us the roads in Zambia are even worse “shit” than in Malawi-which we found hard to believe but he was right. Most of these roads we are on are not paved. They repair the potholes by digging them out and throwing them by the side of the road, Rod says wryly.

Reached the Zambian border just before 6pm. Aussies and U.S. pay $25 for a visa to enter the country; Kiwis and Canadians got away with nothing…Brits threw a royal fit when they found out they had to pay $60! Rod said it had something to do with the fact that Britain pulled millions of dollars out of the country when they gave Zambia it’s independence….
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History
In the 18th Century the Portuguese followed the Swahili-Arab slavers into the interior of the country. In 1890 the country became a protectorate of the British South African Company and was named North Rhodesia (the name coming from Cecil Rhodes). Malawi on the southern border was called South Rhodesia. North Rhodesia came under British control in 1924 but won its independence in 1963 when it became Zambia.

I imagine that most of the people in these countries, especially in the rural areas, never even knew they were being colonized! The British taxed Zambia to the bone but spent most of the money on South Rhodesia, a drain that plagued the country until well into the 1990�s. After independence President Kaunda combined Marxism and traditional African values to rule the country for 27 years.

But bloated civil service, mismanagement and corruption bankrupted the country and Kaunda was forced to give up the presidency to a man by the name of Chiluba. There was a failed coup attempt in 1997 and finally one of Chiluba�s men was elected in flawed elections in 2001 but at least it was the end of the rubber stamp one-party system. Nine African states were invited to the inaugural ceremony but none attended in protest of the elections. (I’m getting all this from the Lonely Planet book) 80% of Zambia’s 9 million people live below the UN poverty line of $1.00 a day.

On The Road In Malawi

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May 20, 2002
Up 5 am and out 6:30. Most of the day is spent traveling to Zambia. A bridge is out on the road south so we have to double back to Mezuza and take another route. Stopped off at Mezuza again for a couple of hours in a frustrating attempt to get e-mail.

Back on the Road
I turn around to say something to Bob two seats behind me and see Rod lying in the aisle asleep-recurring Malaria he thinks. He stays there for two days and then gets up but he is a rag. His head hurts and he is weak. Bob starts reading about Malaria. There are many kinds with symptoms all the way from feeling like you have the flu to feeling a piercing cold that makes you tremble and shake. During these times you want a heavy thing to mash you down and keep you still…you wish you could die.

Rod warns us to use mosquito repellant but Bob has his doubts about it’s effectiveness. In the tent at night we use a towel to kill off any mosquitos we find before we go to sleep but invariably during the night they mysteriously materialize-buzzing in your ear…keeping you awake until you finally get up and thrash around with your towel again.

The Malaria carrying mosquitos were especially bad around wet marshy areas like Dar es Salaam and Lake Malawi. Sunday is our day to take our Larium but it makes us have vivid dreams at night. One night I dreamt that some people had cut my chest open and was slicing up my heart and eating it!

To pass the time on the long haul today I read Edward Said’s memoirs “Out Of Place.” As I read I gaze out of the truck from time to time wondering…what to wonder…what to think…Edward was born a Christian in Palestine, had ancestors from Lebanon, grew up in Cairo but isolated from the muslim community, went to English schools which he hated, was educated in the United States and now teaches at Columbia University in New York and has become a spokesman for middle east affairs. “Out of Place” is a good title; I have felt that way myself.

Las Vegas Bottle Store…pass one woman chopping wood out behind a mud hut and two men sitting in front…”makes me mad!” Melissa from New Zealand says…children literally scream out their greetings…villages are perfectly neat no litter or pieces of paper or the proverbial third world plastic. As in Moroccan casbahs you would think absolutely no one lived there at all because they use and reuse everything over and over until there is nothing left to become garbage.

Cleaning The Lenses
I am feeling comfortable and at home in Africa. The lives and cultures of the people in these countries at least seem to have integrity…congruity. The way they live makes sense in relation to their history, geography economics and culture-not to be compared to any other place. Rather than judge, a friend says she tries to engage “others” with a “reverent curiosity” to describe how she travels. We are intentional-we borrow her idea and make it our own-we call it “reverent inquiry.” We want to respect the dignity of those we are coming to visit.

I want to be transparent in sharing my struggle with my own ethnocentric/class biases I have learned from living in my culture…insofar as I can become aware of them. Where are you from, he says…America, I say…which America, he says? And there it is again. I could cover it all over with political correctness but I want to explore-I want to peel the layers off the lenses-I want to write with integrity. Traveling is a seriously important business. Rod says 90% of Americans don’t have a passport which means that many Americans have never, in a substantive way, experienced any other valid way to live in the world. Isolated. Insulated. For how long? We cannot be a “superpower” and not be inter-dependent with the rest of the world; the world is going to force us to look and listen to it. It has begun with 9/11. And we thought the Cold War was bad!

I made the mistake of remarking to Rod that we liked the fact that our drivers were Africans and none of the other trucks had African drivers. He reminded me that he was African, which he is, and that even some of the British and Australian drivers have been at it for 15-20 years and know Africa well. There I did it again-I used the term African when I really meant black African. Assumptions can work both ways however. I have a friend whose husband happens to be black and when he visited Africa he had to explain that he and his brother were Americans born and raised in New York.

I ask Rod if the local people can tell that James and George, who are Kenyans, are not from this area. Yes, he says, because of their size and they are very dark. And people here don’t speak Swahili so they have to use the common language-English. Rod says that Malawians and Zambians are more friendly than people in the north and south of Africa because they are not around western tourists enough to become inflamed with desire for the material things we have that they don’t have. In the north and south the feeling is that “You’ve gotten yours, now it’s my turn to get mine-no matter how.”

Time, Walking, Women

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Time, Walking, Women, Waiting, Matatus and Plastic
In Africa these things work together in a synchronous whole says Ryszard Kapuściński in “Shadow Of The Sun.” Rattle-trap matatus-minibuses that serve as public transportation-all seats and the space in between and the space full from floor to ceiling whiz by. What time does the bus leave for it’s destination? The answer is when it fills up. Time for on most of this continent only has meaning in relation to events. If you ask when does the bus leave it makes no sense. The bus will leave when it is full so one must wait…quietly with unseeing eyes…when people are waiting…for this is what they must do before something can happen…they do not react to anything around.

But people are happy to wait for the bus because for eons before this Africa walked-indeed they still walk in the rural areas which is most of African countries and they carry whatever has to be transported on their shoulders or heads. Entire cities and everything in them were carried into the interiors on the heads of the people in the 18th century when there were no roads-only paths.

On this ancient system of paths people walked silently and single file and they still do today even if they are traveling on one of today�s wide roads. And it is the women who do the transporting…they may have to walk several miles every day in one direction for wood and often in another direction for water.

Modern technology has made their lives easier because instead of heavy earthen urns for water they now have red, green and blue plastic buckets. A woman will squat down and place the bucket on her head. Then straightening up she will carefully balance herself. Stepping with an elegant, smooth even gait she walks silently and resolutely down a forest path leading to…a place we will never see. When we pass in the truck she may turn her body slightly and wave. I am immensely impressed. They learn early how to do this…we see a girl about 7 years old walking down a path with a huge heavy bucket of water held up on her head by her tiny neck. When the woman has collected the wood for a fire and the water then she can begin cooking the one meal of the day…

The women carry water, chop wood and work the fields; the armies of men for the most part are unemployed. But they could help the women carry water and wood and work in the fields, we say to each other! But this is Africa and it won’t happen!

The younger men trek from the rural areas to the city in search of work but they find neither jobs nor a roof. They should do something…But what? What should they do with their unutilized energy? With their hidden potential? What is their place in the world? They squat idly on all the larger streets and squares of cities we have been in. In less stable countries, with the promise of shoes or a meal they are recruited by local chieftains when they need to recruit armies, organize coups or foment a civil war.

Malawi Village Walk

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Sun May 19th 2002 Village Walk
Africa does not really exist. Africa is a geographical name for a continent. Africa is made up of countries but people, especially in rural areas, don�t especially identify with the country they are in-most of which have artificial borders created during colonialism.

People do identify with their social groups. Each social group has its own language, distinct culture and system of beliefs and customs including all it�s taboos. The family is large and time spent communally together is highly valued-in fact it is how they survive. Families who have ancestors in common are called clans. At the head of the clan stands the chief who is chosen by a council of elders. Several clans together is what the western world calls a tribe and at it�s head stands the king. A �tribe� can number in the millions-bigger than many western countries. There is no such thing as Africa.

One morning the son of the Chief of the Tonga group (the use of the word tribe is not pc) from a nearby village takes us on a walk to his village for 100 Kwatcha each (about 25 cents). On the way down a dirt path we are taken to his house first. It is very small-about four rooms and we have to duck to go through the doors. The rooms are incredibly bare.

The Chief�s son whose name I didn�t write down, encouraged us to take pictures and showed us two large frames hanging on the walls with collaged pictures of tourists who had visited the village in the past. All he asked of us was to send him copies of the pictures we took of the villagers so he could hand them out. Then he showed us a typed letter hanging on the wall from a Canadian woman that had been sent several years ago. He gently took it down so we could read it…

Then we went into his bedroom that had one single bed with mosquito netting and absolutely nothing else. We didn�t ask where his wife slept; he introduced us to his children who were playing near the house but we were all scared to ask him about a wife because we were afraid there wasn�t one! I suspect there was a wife (or maybe more) but that she/they didn�t have enough status to be introduced to us. However we did meet his mother. There was a second little building with two rooms. Both were for cooking; wood was stacked near the walls and ashes from fires were still hot on the dirt floor.

While we were standing looking around we asked the Chief�s son some questions. How is your work divided among your family members…women do the easy work, he said patronizingly, �because it is simple� and men do the hard work. I looked at him to see if he was kidding. Then I asked him to give me an example of hard work and he answered that men build the house and work in the fields. He was not telling the truth about work in the fields though because in all the time we have been in these African countries we have seen only women working in the fields and we have seen a lot of men sitting. About this time the village brickmaker joins us-an obviously important man in the village. He explains that houses used to be made of mud and sticks but now they are made of cement floors, mud-baked brick walls covered over with mud and thatched roofs.

We move down the trail and are introduced to some extended family members while we take more pictures. As we walk the mile and a half past the homes to the center of the village children in tattered clothing come running out and grab ahold of our hands…as soon as Janine takes her hand away they latch onto it as soon as she puts it down again. Soon we have about 12 children walking-talking-laughing with us. We visit the elementary school-walls open to the outside, dirt floor and nothing else. A white volunteer from England is the teacher and has 90 students in one room.

I say to one of the older children that they must have to be very quiet during school. He said oh, yes, very quiet. I asked what happens if a student is not quiet. He says, oh, he is just asked to become quiet again. I gathered that this request carried a lot of power. From what I understood him to say, school is held in three shifts during the day so all the students have a chance to attend. Parents have to pay school fees so sometimes, he says, tourists will offer to help a family with the fees for the children.

The littlest, about 2, says he has to pee-pee. I repeat this to the Chief’s son and his reply was that “they all know where they are coming from” in other words he knows how to get home so he can pee.

Then we visit the hospital which amounts to a sort of two-room outpatient clinic. There are half a dozen beds in one very unsanitary room. He shows us a second room with a very crude delivery table that the nurses use, he says, to deliver babies. He says there is no doctor and if patients are very sick they are sent to another hospital in a nearby town. We were confused, however, because on the way back down the trail a man of about 30 in an acrylic athletic suit was in the yard looking after his young twins (this was a Sunday) and he introduced himself as the village doctor. Bob shook his hand, introduced himself and asked him some questions…the doctor had gone to medical school in Malawi and the weekdays were very very busy for him, he said. These two understand each other.

We walked past a tiny little grocery with a few items and buy some pop for the kids to share. The chief�s son directs the sharing much to our relief and the kids-anywhere from two to ten years old-are all very cooperative-which they probably wouldn’t have been if it had just been us handing it out. We pass a few tables with some vegetables like potatoes, yams, tomatoes, cassavas for sale. I buy a package of local tea and some biscuits (cookies).

Then we head back down the two-mile trail through corn and cassava fields to the camp. At the gate of the camp, children want to sell us bracelets made of telephone wire. We tell them they are going to screw up the phone lines but they just laugh knowing they have been caught at their trick. Older boys are selling carvings and other crafts items. One tells me he is licensed to do massage and only charges $7 an hour. I don�t think I will have a massage…

On the way back the chief’s son points out the nice big Chief’s house nearby…well, nice and big for Malawi anyway. His father is Chief of the whole Tonga tribe that covers quite a large area with two thousand people, he said. I ask him what are most of the Chief’s duties. He answers that the Chief is a “very very busy man because he has to help people when they have problems”-a one man judicial system-unless a crime has been committed in which case the police are alerted.

Dinner & Dancing On A Mat in Malawi

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That night Rod has arranged for us to have dinner at the home of a local family. We each take a bowl and spoon from the truck and are led down a series of paths in the pitch black night air to a little mud hut. Various families and clans have their own paths which cross one another and we would have become hopelessly lost among the thorns and branches of this jungle-like neighborhood without our leader who we stuck to like glue.

Dinner of delicious chicken, rice, cooked cabbage and beans was served to us on straw mats on the ground in front of the hut. We had wanted to taste Cassava root, the staple of the people, but it wasn’t served that night. After dinner we were told that the children of the village would �sing� for us. What followed is almost impossible to describe. There were probably 40-50 small children aged 3 to about 8 (or it seemed like it was that many.) A few were as old as 12 or 14. They clapped and moved their little bodies in a very fast rhythm to their loud energy-charged chanting in their Tonga dialect. Spontaneously two would jump out in front of the group and really go at it-moving their hips, butts and legs.

When they all had a turn we were each invited by one child to come dance with him/her in front of everyone which absolutely delighted the children and greatly entertained the rest of us! The group was so charged and the chanting was so loud that when you danced with them you got a tremendous hit of emotional and physical energy. They were alive to this moment in which they were able to express themselves, affirm their presence in this world. They were visible, needed and important-this was their creation.

Then they all sang their National Anthem both in English and in dialect. Then we (Brits, Aussies, Kiwis and the two Americans) were asked to sing them a song in return. We had a hell of a time with our heads together trying to come up with a song that we all knew but we finally did it-Row Row Your Boat-in rounds even! Must have sounded pitiful to those Tongan ears! I will never forget those beautiful alive children as long as I live.

Then the older boys brought out some little paintings to sell for a couple dollars each. African culture is a culture of exchange. You give me something and I give you something. My dignity depends on it. But things of a very different order can be exchanged. Something non material can be exchanged for something of material value and vica versa. If an African bestows his presence and attention, imparts information (warning you about thieves, for example) which ensures your safety this generous man now awaits reciprocity and he will be very surprised if you turn on your heel and walk away. There is a cultural dissimilarity of expectations here that we did not understand in Egypt-not that it would have made it any easier. The question then was how do I refuse the exchange in the first place when the Other is insisting? We are still working on this.

Back at the gate to the camp a group of young boys and men had begun to drum. Several hours later we fell asleep…still listening to the sound of the Drums Still Drumming…a meditation on sound…during all these hours there was not a break in the rhythm…

Cross Dressing At Kande Camp

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Sat 18th 2002 Town of Mzuza
We get off the bus and go to the market in Mzuza to buy clothes for the Cross Dressing Party at Kande Camp-we have drawn names of the opposite sex and have to dress them-we have a $3 limit. Walking back to the truck I take a picture of a street sign “No Stop!”

Malawi Lake Kande Camp Two Nights
We drive into camp past the Kumuka truck that is roasting a split pig with it’s head still on above a charcoal fire…OH SICK…the girls on the truck wail. By now we are pretty dusty and scruffy and everyone wants a shower before heading to the bar for a Fanta or beer. This bar owner is a bald guy in his 50’s with a huge round gold earring in one ear-I ask him for a Pimm’s Cup. He looks at me like I am nuts and says he ha”)

I drew Rod’s name for the Cross Dressing Party so I bought him a bra and hot pink half slip and funky shower cap-we make him take off his shorts before he puts on the half slip-he loves it! Someone bought Bob a pink and white dress that looks like one his 80 year old mother would wear. Lorelle is hillarius in a diaper with a pacifier in her mouth. Rod buys Janine a snappy little outfit with a black and white zebra “Hooters” cap. Adrian gets to wear a bright pink billowy taffeta dress that looks like a Balenciaga designer model.

This clothing must be sent here by aid groups in western countries because we never see African women wearing these things which are really inappropriate for this culture. The party is in the bar and riders from the other trucks get a kick out of us-they will have their turn the next night.

Chitimba Beach Camp

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When we pull into the camp compound there are three trucks aready there-drifters.com, ontheaway.com, and Africa.overland.com written in huge letters across the sides.The camp bars in Africa are open-air like they usually are in tropical countries. The camps are more like resorts without all the expensive amenities and they don’t really have a “bar” feel.

The bartender, from the UK, was an overlander driver for two years, has owned the bar four years-and has had recurring Malaria countless times. In anticipation of the worst, Bob asks him many questions about Malaria.

Half a dozen burly middle aged men are already at the bar when I go up to ask for a plug-in to recharge the computer and the camera. I ask if they are independent travelers-no-they say they are building the road. I say oh, you are responsible for our horrendous ride into the Camp! They laugh. They are here for the girls on the trucks, the bartender says later.

One British guy born in Burma is married to a Tanzanian and another from the UK is scared of AIDS after having hundreds of prostitutes, he says, so he hooked up with a woman from Ghana about a year ago-his wife of 31 years at home. I ask if there are many expats in the area. There are several doctors and some Peace Corps volunteers; they say they have been told by the volunteers that most of them will go to work for the CIA when they are finished with their two years which surprises the heck out of me.

Each truck gives the bar a list of clients and we just put everything “on the tab” and pay before we take off in the morning as we do at all the camps.