Climbs & Walks

Conversations In Tiger Leaping Gorge

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Wednesday Dec 11
In Old Town Lijiang, Bob joined us for breakfast at our hotel at 9am; met Li at her hotel at 10:30 for minibus trip up the gorge. Bus had no shocks so was a very bumpy miserable ride; Bob uncomfortable on narrow road overlooking the gorge. Drove all the way to Walnut Grove, which is the beginning of the Gorge and had lunch there before the trip back…everyone else but the driver and I got out and walked a couple stretches. Caught the driver rummaging through our stuff couple times while waiting for the walkers. Later Bob said that Li had warned him not to leave money in the bus while they walked.

Talked to a young French walker on his way through to Walnut Grove…he had been working for six months in a L’Oreal factory near Shanghai in order to learn Chinese. I asked him about a working visa…said he thought he was on tourist visa…his supervisors obviously paying off the immigration officials to allow him with his engineering background to work in the factory. His Chinese was great though!

On the way back, Li told us a few things about the minority people…that for the Naxi the Snow mountain is God…that when couples divorce the woman is no longer desirable by other men but that if her husband dies she is desireable. Marriages are popular in the winter.

For the Yi people, the sun is God so they live on the top of the mountains near the Sun God…but they are lazy and when they get money they drink alcohol. There are 30,000 Naxi people in Lijiang.

She went on to say that the government is poor but the leaders get all the money from tourism. The sons of the leaders get to go to school in your country, she said. Almost all the businesses in Old Lijiang are run by the Han Chinese she said…the Naxi are able only to rent out a room or two in their homes. The Naxi also drive the taxis.

Thursday Dec 12
Sakura was trying to heat up the restaurant with a charcoal burner but it produced so much smoke we had breakfast across the canal while listening to Blues Music in the Delta Cafe.

Later, Jana and I went to Sakura’s Bar and…partnerless…watched “American Sweethearts.” A group of very loud Chinese tourists came upstairs where we were watching the movie…we had to turn up the TV to earsplitting volume in order to hear. Seems to be a trait…talking in movies, concerts…any public entertainment venues…

Friday Dec 13-14
Bob took a bus to Kunming and then flew to Chiang Mai Thailand.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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China’s greatest river, known by Westerners as the Yangtse, is called Jinsha Jiang by the Chinese. It’s origin is in Tibet and runs through Tiger Leaping Gorge near Lijiang, east to Chongqing, on through the Three Gorges and Wuhan and then dumps into the South China sea at Shanghai.

At the small town of Shigu the river takes a turn at what is called the “First Bend” and runs from south to north. It is on this stretch of the river that Tiger Leaping Gorge surges through one of the deepest gorges in the world…the entire gorge measuring 16 km and 3900 meters or about 11,700 feet, from the water to the snowcapped mountains of Haba on one side and Jade Dragon Snow Mountain on the other.

The entire gorge can be hiked in two days over narrow trails high above the water with modest guesthouses along the way for overnight stays.

We agree that it is difficult to compare Tiger Leaping with the Grand Canyon…the snow capped mountains on each side of Tiger very deep and beautiful….but the sheer granite walls dropping to the water of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon much more dramatic.

We are happy to report that we survived the incredibly dangerous road trip, the way the coyboy driver was driving, along the curvy narrow one-lane road full of rocks that had fallen from the cliffs alongside the River all the way to the end of the Leaping Tiger Gorge that finally ended at the small town of Qiaotou. During a ten minute break there, Jana bought a bowl of delicious vegetables and rice and paid Y2 for the bowl so she could take it on the bus with her. Then the bus turned east toward Lijaing through a beautiful yellow-leafed forest that reminded us of home in the fall.

Zhondian to Baishuitai

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Friday Dec 6 2002
There were no street lights so we walked the equivalent of several blocks to the Zhongdian bus station in the dark to catch the 7:50am bus for Baishuitai. While waiting for the bus, we ate a steamed bun with chili and garlic purchased from a girl at her little stand.

I sat with the luggage while Jana finally figured out which bus was ours. We boarded the local “delivery and distribution” vehicle; aisles and roof full of sacks of unknown contents…but no chickens.

Many colorful ethnic minority folks, some of them the big-hatted Yi, got onto the bus as it climbed higher and higher across the mountain passes above 3200 meter Zhuandian. As families got on the bus everyone already on would greet them and smile.

One man and his family got on in the middle of a very small village…he sat in front of me and turned around from time to time to look at me. I nearly jumped out of my skin when he suddenly turned and yelled “hello” right at me! I laughed and he laughed. He opened a small round tin of yellow powder and sniffed it up his nose…what do you think it is I whispered to Jana…dunno…might be some kind of stimulant she said under her breath. He was fascinated with my face and kept looking at my writing. Two Chinese women so far have told me I look Chinese but I don’t know if that is why he was looking at me. Jana and I showed him pictures of our families. It was so cold on the bus you could see whirls of everyone’s breath condensing into the air.

The family got off the bus in a desolate place with the woman carrying the heavy sleeping blankets on her back and disappeared into the mountains….to visit relatives or going home we wondered?

Going over another pass we looked down to see some small buildings and some sheep roaming deep in a canyon. It reminded me of one of my father�s summer sheep camps in Oregon with a cook’s wagon and the sheep dogs hanging around the campfire…warm and comforting…deep within a small solitary place with the mountains looming all around.

A colorfully dressed Yi minority woman with a huge rhomboid head piece got on the bus with her husband two small children. A man and his little boy with shaved head and tuft of hair in front got on…I wanted to stick his dirt encrusted feet and body into a nice warm bathtub. The father sang/chanted a wonderful ethnic song the entire time he was on the bus….completely unselfconscious…seemingly oblivious of everyone around him…lost in reverie.

Jana remembered that it was almost Pearl Harbor Day. The bombs fell on the Philippines on December 8, the same day as they fell on December 7 in Hawaii on the other side of the dateline. We talked about the War that seemed so close to us now on this side of the world. Jana described what she knew about the war in the Philippines…the country where she spent two years in the peace corps after college. The topography of the countryside in and near Baishuitai where the local Naxi cultural people live reminded her of the sub cultural group-the Kankanai-in the mountains where she taught English.

When we got off the bus in Sanba, at the foot of the Baishuitai Plateau, a Chinese tourist from Taiwan that had been sitting on the bus in front of Jana paid Y10 or $1 of our entrance fee into the limestone terraces because the clerk had no change. “No, No,” I yelled as he disappeared up the hill on his day trip from Zhongdian to see the stone terraces.

Saturday Dec 7
We hiked up the hill and behind the Stone Terraces. The gorgeous pools of blue/white water is full of calcium phosphate and forms crystals as it runs over the edge of the beautiful stone �terraces� that are resplendent in the sunlight. The area is considered very sacred by the Naxi (pronounced Nashi) people who live in the town. Jana was blessed by incense as an old man showed her how to throw rice into a hole in one of the terraces as an offering-the privilege for doing so, 1 yuan.

We had lunch with Audrey, a young Naxi woman. Then Jana walked with her to another village and down a ravine to a waterfall. On the way back, the two of them walking together seemed to catch the imagination of a farmer they were following who was switching his cows up the deep ravine to the village. The farmer turned and wanted to know what time it was in America. Jana thought it was about 4am there since it was about 4pm where she was in China. Then the farmer and Audry talked…she gestured to Jana that China and America were just opposite each other. Jana was touched by the old man’s interest in the idea of the time difference and the fact that they were on opposite sides of the world with light on one side and dark on the other.

The electricity was out that night in the village so Audry cooked us a small dinner of vegetables rice and meat with charcoal and we ate by candlelight in her little one room cafe that also served as her home/bedroom. We admired her entrepreneurial spirit and desire to be independent but I suspect that it has also caused her grief because as we were leaving the next morning I asked her how she got the scars on her nose and face. She answered “fighting” as she raked her fingernails through the air.

We stayed the night a few feet up the street in a little unheated guesthouse that we never did find out the name of but was owned by Audry’s sister-in- law. We were in the middle of three rooms and became concerned about the knotholes and spaces between the slats that counted for walls when the other two rooms eventually became occupied by several young Chinese men later in the evening. In the middle of the night I chose not to walk up the hill at the back of the guesthouse to a smelly outhouse with squat toilet but instead used a small red pail with a lid provided for such use in the room.

We were told the bus to Lijiang would leave in the dark at 7:30am (all of China is one time zone) but at 9am we were still sitting by the stove in a cafe where the bus was to pick up it’s local travelers to Lijiang. The cowboy driver-complete with cowboy hat-leaned on the horn to let us know we should get on the bus…then he turned off the motor and we sat for another half hour before taking off with no breakfast.

On the way we visited with a small well-dressed young woman from Beijing whose English name was Echo who had gotten on the bus just outside Baishuitai. Later we found out that the reason the bus was so late leaving was that she and her fellow travelers had asked the bus to wait for them in the morning so they would have time to climb up to the limestone terraces!

We passed through a small village with children lined up by the sides of the road with musicians playing some music and waving some flags. Echo told us that young men spend two or three years in the army and they are welcomed back home this way because their army service is considered very important to the country.

Mobbed at Yangshuo

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Southern China Guangxi Province
Tuesday Nov 26, 2002
At Yangshuo we were mobbed by women selling hotel rooms. I stayed with the backpacks while Bob and Jana looked at a few rooms. We chose one with a veranda overlooking the main tourist walkway in the shop and cafe area.

Yangshuo is a small village set up against beautiful limestone pinnacles called karsts that jut straight up out of the ground…some lit up beautifully with green lights at night. There are two mainstreets…one being the main artery leading to Guilin and the other, Xi Jie, is known as �Foreigner Street� because it is a pedestrian mall lined with Western style cafes, hotels and tourist shops free from bicycles, traffic and the infamous Chinese tractors.

Later, Jana and I took a walk for several hours with Esther, our tour leader, to Moon Hill Village and Moon Mountain, so-called because the mountain has a moonshaped hole in it at the top. Esther fixed us a lunch of egg and tomato, pork and vegetables and rice at her home in the village. We visited with a group of Chinese middle school children and they eagerly let us take their pictures.

Esther had a hard life. She said her educated parents-her father taught college in something like engineering-were killed during the Cultural Revolution (as many of the elite educated were) when she was five At the time there was also much starvation. The family had seven children…one died as a baby…which left three girls and three boys. Her younger brother and she were kept in an orphanage and had to workhard as a child…no school…she kept apologizing for �no education.� She said her husband was 67-much older than she-and that he doesn�t treat her well-plays cards and drinks. She said he is very angry with her because she bore him three daughters and no sons. They have three
daughters…her two oldest are in college in Guilin and her youngest, who we met, is in middle school.

After lunch Esther walked us out to the highway and flagged down a very mini bus for us which we took for ten cents the few miles back to Yangshuo.

In the meantime Bob had rented a bicycle and rode around the area by
himself…being lost most of the time.

Wednesday November 27
Jana and Bob went on a bike ride to Moon Mountain with Mo She Feng-another guide. They rode on the opposite side of the valley from the walk the daybefore. At 42 years old She Feng (the given name is written behind the family name) was in great shape. She cooked three dishes…egg and tomato, pork and vegetables and rice. After lunch they crossed the highway and climbed the 800 plus steps to the arch of Moon Hill. Raining on the way up, the steps were very slippery but at the top there was a 360 degree view of the whole amazing valley full of karsts.

That night we ate dinner at an open-air restaurant in a street market outside the tourist area…marveled at the tubs of live fish andtables of cut up meat and vegetables that were thrown into huge woks for stir-fried dishes. The tables were covered with cloths that were then covered again with thin clear plastic. When the diners were finished a new piece of clear plastic was put over the cloth as is also done in some other countries.

Thursday November 28
We had T shirts made with our email monikers…mine said Laughingnomad China 2002-2003 in English on the back and in Chinese on the front. Jana�s moniker is �Gaia (earth) Traveler.� We laughed about some of the shirts hanging on the walls like �Minnie Mao� with a picture of Mao Tse Tung! Another had a list of things in Chinese and English that Chinese people shouldn�t do to the foreigners like �Don�t Spit� and �Don�t Use Foreigners to Practice English.�

Ate that night at a used buy/trade book shop/cafe that was owned by a nice young Chinese guy with excellent English who seemed to attract young Chinese guys who wanted to practice their English. Bob bought a couple used books-�The Sheltering Sky� by Paul Bowles who died recently in Tangier Morocco and �Riding the Iron Rooster� (train trips across China in the 1980�s) by Paul Theroux.

While we ate we visited with some young Chinese students who pulled up their chairs to our table and wanted to practice their English. Then two guys from
Montreal came in and told us the run-down on Lijiang and Tiger Leaping Gorge
that we will visit soon.

Hanoi

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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September 24 2002
Bob left Hanoi right away on the train for Sapa near the Chinese border to do some trekking among the colorful minority villages and then to spend three days in Halang Bay learning to kayak. We are traveling separately until we join a friend in Hong Kong on November 20 when the three of us will spend two months in China before going back to the US after the first of the year. Bob is presently somewhere between Hanoi and Saigon and I will meet him in Saigon on Monday for a flight to Phnom Penh Cambodia.

Flying into Hanoi felt very strange after watching years of television during the “Vietnam” War in the 6.s and 70.s. (The “Vietnam War” is called the “American War” here.) The first night in Hanoi I ate a dinner of pork with pepper sauce and french fries, a wonderful break from the Burmese and Thai food, on the deck of a popular cafe while watching the lights reflect off Hoan Kiem Lake near the Old Quarter.

I stayed at a small charming hotel called the “Classic Street Hotel” in the Old Quarter which is full of narrow winding streets with tunnel or tube houses so called because their small frontages hide very long rooms that were developed in feudal times to avoid taxes based on the width of the frontage onto the street. At the time they were only two stories high but over the years stories have been added so the buildings are now very narrow and very tall.

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My cozy little room had a little veranda where I could stand and watch the busy street scene below.
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I loved my little neighborhood for the five days I was there…early mornings the same ladies in the same clothes and cone hats came to sit on the street below me with their big shallow baskets to sell small silvery fish and vegetables…one morning a young woman at a street stall angrily chewed the heck out of one of the women for some reason and chased her away…every day in the early afternoon I ate a huge bowl of duck noodle soup for about 30 cents at a food stall down the street….sitting on a little plastic stool at a two foot high wooden table with my knees under my chin……the same old man and his wife with kind faces welcoming me like old friends each day.

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Across the street was the A to Z Queen Cafe which was a kick-back comfortable budget backpacker hotel with dorm beds for $2.50 a night and free internet if you bought something at the bar…otherwise you donated a few dong via honor code in the little plastic boxes sitting on top of each terminal. Every night the guest house showed a war movie to the mostly young males from around the world, many of whom are Israeli by the way. An Israeli guy told me that every young man has to spend three years in the military…and then they take off to travel to clear their heads.

Nearby was a street market where the women did all the selling and the men sat on the sidewalks drinking whisky and playing board games. As I walked by, the women laughed when I gestured and said to them…look…you work…they play…

Down the narrow street and around the corner the local street kids pestered you to buy postcards…just buy from me today…I am lucky you are my first sale today so I can buy some food…old ladies glided along in slippered feet carrying two fruit-filled baskets one on each side of them that was balanced like a pair of scales across their backs with a long flexible blade of bamboo who wanted to sell you exotic fruit…pumalos that have to be picked a few days before it is eaten so it has time to “forget the tree,” custard apples, durian so stinky it is forbidden in the hotels, green dragon fruit, guavas, jackfruit, longan, lychees, mango-steen, rambutan, starfruit and juicy persimmons.

Then you could escape all this by ducking into the Tamarind Cafe & Fruit Juice Bar where the Handspan Adventure Travel Company sold tickets to Halong Bay and Sapa in the back. Bob took a three day excursion to incredible Halong Bay and claims it is one of the very best experiences of all time. Here you were sure to find fellow foreign travelers to trade stories with…not just a few of whom…to my amazement…or maybe just never noticed before…were women traveling alone. In happy solidarity I invariably urged them on…

Taunggyi…Last Frontier of Burma

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Taunggyi is the official end of the line for east-bound foreigners in Burma–at least if you are travelling by road. Beyond Taunggyi lies a world of black-marketeers, ruby miners, insurgent armies and opium and methamphetamine warlords. Because it functions as a conduit for smuggled goods from Thailand, China and India, this is one of Burma’s most colorful towns. Long-haired smugglers in army fatigues down the street alongside turbaned hill tribe people and sleek-suited Chinese businesspeople. An abundance of black-market consumer goods is displayed in the Taunggyi market.

In the market we see two Buddhist nuns asking for donations from the vegetable vendors followed by a young girl in a white T-shirt with Jesus (Heart) You on the front. I particularly liked the military green combat hat with a pirated Nike label which was very popular. An Indian in a military hard hat explained to us that we could get “free” pastry at the tea shop. Guys with camoflage jackets and military green Chinese issue tennis shoes are everywhere. On a second floor alley I was carrying some chicken and rice in a sack when two small raggedy boys came up to me so I gave them my chicken. They ran off tickled to death. A few minutes later they appeared again and handed me my 1000 kyat bill that I had forgotten that I had dropped into the bag. So we took the bill and gave them back 500 kyat (about 40 cents) and you would have thought they were just handed a fortune.

On our way out an old man came up to me and spoke in excellent English. He used to be a teacher he said and just wanted to talk. San Francisco, San Francisco he laughed. (People always seem to mention San Francisco for some reason when we tell them we are from America.) Good city! Then he cautioned me against buying any of the rubies two traders were trying to offer me. “Glass,” he said, “glass!”

Mothers make a big deal out of having their babies see us. They beam if we pay any attention at all to the small ones or take their pictures-almost like it is good luck for the child. We are a symbol offreedom-freedom they long for and hope to have sometime in their lifetime.

On the way back to our Chinese owned hotel called New Paradise that night we stopped at the Coca Cola Restaurant with pigs ears and pig brains on the menu and spent 20 minutes trying to get the waiter togive us some sugar for Bob’s ice tea. Think about it. How do you explain “sugar” to someone who doesn’t understand a word of your language nor you theirs?

Continuing along the street that evening, I asked a young guy at a betelnut cart to make me some betel chews that are made with small chunks of dried areca nut wrapped in a betel leaf smeared with lime paste. Some may contain flavoured tobacco (Indian snuff) peppermint and other spices. Experienced chewers can hold betel cud in their mouths for hours without spitting. An alkaloid in the nut produces mild stimulation and a sense of well being. The chewed nut stains the teeth dark red and leaves the streets everywhere running with blood-red spit.

Table Mountain & District 6

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The geographical configuration of the city of Cape Town at the foot of Table Mountain is as beautiful as everyone has said it is. We took the cable car to the top of the mountain on a clear beautiful day. We rented a car and took a ride down to the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town isn’t actually on the tip of the Cape) about 20 miles down the peninsula where Bob hiked up to the lighthouse to get a good view of the Atlantic on one side and the Indian Ocean on the other.

Music
The epic documentary by American Lee Hirsch, “Amandla! A Revolution in four Part Harmony,” had its first South African outing on June 16 at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. The film that earned two awards from the Sundance Film Festival describes the arc of the ANC’s resistance to apartheid from 1948 to the moment when Nelson Mandela dropped the first black vote into the ballot box in 1994 via the music that gave shape and direction to the war on apartheid. It has been entered for the US Academy awards. It will be showing in the States.

District Six
We visited the museum where a former Indian occupant expained that 60 to 70 thousand people-freed slaves, immigrants, labourers, merchants and artisans-used to live in the one and a half square km district spread along the flank of Table Mountain south of the center of Cape Town. In 1975 District Six was officially declared an area for white people only and bulldozed flat. All that remains now is a grassy area…but “they” had gotten rid of the Blacks, Colored and other undesirables that lived on the edge of the city…

The museum was established in 1992 to commemorate the destruction of the area and the sense of loss has been sensitively captured by the many artifacts donated by the ex-residents.

The Cannon is on Signal Hill right behind our apartment and is fired off every day at noon and makes your heart jump out of your skin. Started in the 1800’s we are told, when the English withdrew after the English/Boer War. They fire off the cannon 21 times at important times or when important dignitaries visit the city.

The Dunes & Sarus Guest Farm

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June 10, 2002
After a night camping near Sesriam, everyone else is up at 5:00 to go hiking in the Dunes. No coffee and no “breaky” (breakfast). These are the largest Dunes in the world Rod says. I stay in camp by myself and the silence is heaven! The truck returns at noon and we are out of there.

The garbage collectors come around while I sit on a park bench trying to catch up on my journal with my computer. One fellow comes over to look at the computer screen and asks what I am doing. I tell him I am telling my friends back home about Africa. He suddenly leans down closer and looks intently at my screen. Then he wants to know how much the computer cost. He just shook his head and said “very expensive, very expensive” as he walked away leaving me to feel the incredibly deep gulf that was just created between us.

In Swakopmund Rod bought a dark brown sheepskin at a game skin shop which he is wearing around his shoulders. I tell this large man he looks especially intriguing with his stocking cap, dark glasses and bare feet!

The Sarus camp site has a little communal building with kitchen sink and wood stove. Expecting a cold night most of the campers sleep on the floor in the building. Bob and I run Rod out of the “caravan” (little trailer). I note that we call “caravans” trailers and Rod notes that we have gone from “Truck Trash” to “Trailer Trash!” That’s about it, I laughed!

In the evening after dinner Fi and Sarah read my Malawi story on the computer and, laughing, we remember some of the funnier moments of the trip.

Victoria Falls & Rafting The Zambezi In Zambia

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Sun May 25, 2002
Up at 5:30 for the sunrise micro-light (motorcycle with wings) ride to view the falls and the geologic formation left by them over thousands of years. The half hour ride is breathtaking…the falls have cut their way back in a zig-zag fashion four or five times.
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A short way down the river is the bridge where people can scare themselves silly with bungee jumping; there are a variety of other activities that the tour companies can soak you for…Bob and I choose an all-day raft trip down the Zambezi River.

Zambezi Raft Trip
Normally the rafts put in at the bridge by the Falls that crosses the Zambezi River into Zimbabwe. The water is low this time of the year so our lean and experienced black African river guides had to drive us to a put-in point down the river. One guide, who will accompany us in a kayak says he has competed in kayaking events all over the world.

The mile walk straight down a 45 degree angle branch ladder to the water nearly killed me; had to turn around and go down backward the last third of the way. Bob had gone on ahead of me-the bastard I think to myself-and a long-haired guy from Hong Kong lets me balance on his shoulder the last 100 yards…am so grateful to him…you did it yourself he says…I just helped a little bit he said graciously…bless his heart. If I had known the walk down was like this I would never have gone rafting! Then had to walk around one rapid and Bob almost fell into some gooky ooze crawling over the rocks.

However back in the river, the rafts were small, we all paddled as we hit a few good rapids and had a good time. One boat flipped with a load of tourists from the Zimbabwe side. Up bobbed my Hong Kong friend that the kayak couldn’t reach and I nearly unhinged his wrist pulling him into our boat…use the collar of the life vest next time the river guide says to me. I tell my friend from Hong Kong that now we are even-we have saved each other-and we giggle.

The route back up to the top of the gorge was nearly as bad a killer as the route down. I was the straggler…even with the climber’s breathing technique…the river guide following me to make sure I didn’t croak..guzzled a Fanta at the top in near desperation and groaned when I heard that the Lorelle and the others who took the power boat trip were lifted out by helicopter!

Buffalo Steak Dinner
That night we drove into Livingstone town about 15 minutes away and ate a buffalo steak dinner at a pub that is owned by one of the safari tour leaders. On the way we stop at a pharmacy so Lorelle can get some “mozi” repellant and Bob bought a skin drum for $3 from one of the young guys selling things at the side of the truck while we wait. Funny how this selling goes-he didn’t want a drum but every time he said no the guy would come down and then finally Bob figured what the heck…now we have to send it home.

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.