Culture

Overland To Dar es Salaam

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Virtually no cars on the road; only trucks and buses and a few vans. The people seem like they don’t see many overlanders; some-mostly women and little children wave-sometimes with thumbs up; occasionally an adolescent will give us the finger; many children hold out their hands and come running-obviously having gotten handouts in the past.

No one wants their picture taken. Most will turn their backs or rub the thumb and forefinger together indicating they want money if they see you with a camera. Most feel that it is a violation to have their picture taken and they will all want to be paid at least a couple dollars. One roadside young man threatened to throw a bag or oranges at Bob when he was trying to take a picture while we were riding along in the truck.

The kids are playing a Bobby Marley tape “Get up, stand up, for your rights…” Marley’s anniversary of his death was this week and there was a huge party at the Africa House in Zanzibar-lots of Rastifarians (or wannabes) here.

Bring T Shirts or any other cool clothes that young people in the States wear for trading with the local guys-you could come away with virtually any arts and crafts pieces you ever wanted. There is no money to buy anything Francis says. Even the locals go to a seller and offer 50 cents for a dollar item, he says. So if they can swap what they have with you that is how they get their clothes. Saw a Cliff Richards T-shirt while we were stopped at a roadside gas station. Cliff Richards! Cliff Richards! I yelled at the guy…I know him…in Tempe Arizona! He just laughed.

Sign seen over a business by the side of the road: Camp David Resort

Fields along here are not the small one acre parcels tilled by each family. These are full of rice and sisal-part of a large corporation. Huge fields of corn are all hand tilled.

I love to see the children so proud of themselves in their school uniforms running along side the road after school.

Truck Camp in Dar
As we drove into Dar at sundown, we almost choked on diesel fumes and charcoal smoke rising up from all the dinner fires. Worse than Bangkok where people at least wear surgical face masks. The truck drove to the car ferry for the ride across the bay to the uphemistically named truck camp-Mikadi Beach Resort it is called-for our first view of the Indian Ocean. Then, hot and sweaty, we dove for the wonderful outdoor showers enclosed in tile and green plants-the cold water feeling glorious. Our meal is cooked tonight by the Mikadi Camp Restaurant-wonderful white fish roasted in foil, salads and the ubiquitous french fries. We had to pay the bartender $1 to plug in our electronics.

The next day, while waiting fot the ferry back across the bay to Dar I could look down at the little Abdallah shop selling an odd collection of hair products, Fanta, water, rope, twine, a bicycle tire, empty plastic jugs and eggs. A few feet away a young kid was selling live chickens from a basket tied to the back of his bicycle. Another fellow is pushing along a bike with huge yellow water jugs tied to the top and sides; Another bike has a huge basket of coconuts. A black Malcolm X T shirt worn by a young guy in dreads.

I see what I think is resentment in the eyes of many who look up at us-the healthy, well-fed, big, well-dressed, well-endowed, well-educated…rich..,.on the ferry three Muslim men are looking at the truck-an older one talking animatedly to a younger one….the more he talks the more distressed his friend looks..wish I could be a little bird…It occurs to me that they have to bad-talk the west so they won’t lost their young ones to it…Bob would say I am just making an assumption based on paranoia…but the Muslim is not an authority on the West, I think to myself. I want to speak for myself. I don’t want him interpreting my life to anyone and yet we in the West do that all the time to “the Others.”

I’ll be darned if I can remember anything, except breakfast, that George has cooked for us so far on this overland trip!

Maasai Warrior Tribe

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Beautiful tall Masaii men and women still maintain their tribal lifestyle and religion-wearing red to keep the lions away from their cows. They live in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania. The cow is the practical and spiritual focus of their lives. The religion is animistic-they see God in everything.

The women build the houses, gather the firewood, cook and take care of the children. Every day the woman walks five miles for water and firewood.
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The man tends the cattle and keeps the lions away. The man eats alone and she hides while he is eating. The Maasai only eat meat, milk and drink hot blood-but they do not eat any wild game.

A boy is cirumsized at about age 16. If he cries out he cannot get married because it means he is not a man. Women used to be circumcised (clitorectomy) also but Francis says that has stopped in the Maasai tribe.

The man can have more than one wife. Some believe if the live in a house they will get sick so they live in the bush and make fire with sticks. They use no medicine or hospitals. If they die they just throw them in the bush, Francis says.

They make a beer called Hadsa out of honey. They sleep on the skin of an animal. They eat birds and baboons. The Chief wears the skin of a baboon,. Children go to school from age 7 through 7th grade by law in Tanzania. If they are not in school there is trouble, Francis says. The 122 tribes in Tanzania are allowed to intermarry and that is why we are not fighting each other, Francis says. Tribes are Christian, Muslim and Animist. They can marry Whites, Francis says.

To the Sarangeti

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A week before picking Bob and me and another 3 people up in Nairobi, the WorldWide Adventure Company had taken about 15 others across the Masi Mara into Rwanda to see the Gorillas. Their stories made us sorry we didn’t go…”we were 2 meters away from them…they were so relaxed…and peaceful. The gorillas were completely comfortable with us being there…”

Our first day out the kids were hyper as hell from being stuck in the mud for two days after seeing the gorillas. I threatened to abandon the truck as soon as we got to Dar es Salaam but earplugs got me through. The second day was better…our good natured trip leader talked the kids out of the Michael Jackson tape. Our guide, Rod is South African; the crew-Kenyans. George is a great cook and James-a good driver. The truck is a great way to see Africa because you sit up high and can see all over.The luggage and kitchen stuff is underneath the seats…accessible from outside.

As the truck was moving through the Kenyan/Tanzanian border a young kid wanted $100 American for his little hand-carved giraffes; we all laughed and he yelled up at us “I want to be the Bill Gates of Africa!” then quickly added, “I am just joking!”

Stayed the first night at Namanga Camp where Bob discovered a small pretty Maasai woman named Eunice tending the small camp store. Eunice gave me my Maasai name-Milanoi. We exchanged addresses and she promised to make me a necklace with my Maasai name and send it to my home. (I never got it of course.) She refused to take money for the necklace or the postage so I gave her a silver ring. But in the morning she didn’t give me my 20 shilling change for a Fanta I drank the night before and then the other shoe dropped. She asked me to send her clothes, shoes (size 4) earrings and nail polish and clothes for her 9 year old son. Our expectations of cultural exchanges so different…we hate feeling “used” under the pretenses of friendship. Extend that to our Aid programs world-wide. Who is used by whom?

Arusha

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In Arusha the truck parked for an hour outside an internet cafe so we all climbed down the five-step vertical ladder to a hundred outstretched hands.

Saw a westerner (Brit) sitting by himself at a sidewalk table so I joined him. He had been in the country eight years trying to make a go of a business but had given up and was going back to the UK. He said you can’t make it if you are honest….hands out all over Africa, he said, all the way from the little kid in the street to the top.

Remembered a taxi driver in Nairobi: “80% of the businesses are owned by the Indian minority and they are very very rich,” he spat! I told him what the taxi driver had said and he said, oh, that’s the way it is all over Africa. Fills an economic need for the country but the Africans never get an opportunity to learn the skills they need for self-sufficiency.

Search For Truth In Egypt

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Cafes and Food
You can have what Bob calls “mystery meat,” which in Egypt is called kebab-lamb or chicken sliced from a vertical spit-very good in pita bread. Kofta is ground meat peppered with spices, skewered and grilled. You can find delicious spit roasted chicken. Tagen is a stew cooked in a deep clay pot with onions, tomatoes and rice or cracked wheat. Stuffed cabbage leaves are called mahshi karumb. Fried fish is great. Kushari is tiny noodles, tomato juice, lemon and onions looking somewhat like a soup.

We were welcomed into one empty cafe and graciously given the best seat upstairs near a window where we could look out on the street while eating kushari, a “traditional Egyptian dish” as the proprietor called it. He gives us an idea that if we could get away from the sellers that the Egyptian people would be wonderfully hospitable and gracious. We were touched.

In certain cafes men sit, play backgammon and smoke sheesha pipes.

Luxor
No knobs on anything in the hotel. Had to lift the toilet lid to figure out how to flush and while leaning over the toilet tank the fan blades from the fan above fell off and konked me on the head before bounding into the tub. Lonely Planet uses Budget, Mid Range and Top End for classifying hotels and this was a MidRange which I think is a pretty good gauge of the local economy. Takes money they don’t have to clean and repair.

Ongoing Search for Truth
When I was in college, ironically, a book by the great theologian Martin Buber called “I and Thou” gave me my first understanding about bridging the gap between the “I” and the different “thou.”

More recently cross cultural writers have been writing about the concept of “the stranger” describing our fear of the “different” as a genetically built-in survival response mechanism that is a healthy one when used to keep ourselves safe, but if we are not aware of our subtle responses on this level and let it operate when it is inappropriate then we can be very damaging to each other. Ahdaf Soueif writes in English and the theme of her autobiographical novel “In The Eye Of The Sun” is the notion of foreignness. Her latest novel “The Map of Love” was shortlisted for UK’s Booker prize.

Thinking about all this reminds me of an experience I had years ago when managing a student foreign exchange program. I gave a party for all the exchange students in my home and wanted to include some older students to provide perspective so I went to a local private University and was referred to three foreign students who happened to be from Saudi Arabia. While inter-viewing them I was told by one that our culture and our values were “ugly” to the Muslim “as if you took a lid off a garbage can and looked in!” The way he said it made me shiver. I didn’t invite two of them to the party even after they complained that American were not friendly and that as students here for the last two years they had never been invited into anyone’s home. If not to the party, I should have invited them to my home. The third did come to the party, cooked a fantastic chicken dinner for the students and is my friend in Salem still.

A Felluca Ride Up The Nile

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In Aswan, a felluca, an ancient sailboat of the Nile, is a common means of transport up and down the Nile River. It has a broad canvas sail and the boat itself has a shallow deck upon which are thick cotton covered pads to sit on and watch the dark waters of the Nile slide by in the hot dry desert wind during the day and to sleep on at night. Two gracious Nubian men in flowing jalabayas sailed the boat-one at each end-and cooked for us in a tiny area on a small propane stove.

The first afternoon, the wind became too strong and tangled the sails. Was amazing to see one small, lithe Nubian scoot up the mast to untangle the sail.

Before leaving Aswan, we sailed to nearby Kitchener Island where about 12 Nubian young girls-secondary school students studying to be teachers- surrounded us laughing and talking and asking questions-practicing their English. I love your sweet soft faces I said…oh thank you very much they said laughing. Then “I love you,” one said, probably coming from a lack of vocabulary to be able to say anything else.

A couple years ago I saw a contemporary rendition of the opera “Aida” in which a Nubian princess was captured by the Egyptian army. The music was composed by Elton John and the historical revision sympathetically illustrated the plight of the Nubians. After their lands were submerged under water when the High Dam was built, most Nubians today occupy the lowest paying jobs.

We sailed the Nile with six other people for an incredibly beautiful and langorous two day trip to Edfu. We were joined by a young couple from Milan Italy, another young couple from Paris and two friends-one from the Czeck Republic and the other from Slovakia. The two from Czech and Slovakia had just spent a year and a half in Israel as nannies and were relieved to be out of the country…not because of the danger from the Palestinians but because they didn’t care for the Israelis.

English has truly become the international language. Everyone on the felluca was fluent-the French girl saying that her generation was quite happy with English but that her parents and older sister still resented it.

The first evening over dinner we traded information and honest understandings about the foreign policies of our respective countries. The French girl described her insights into the story of “Chocolat” and the French guy talked about the 35 hour work week and how it has not created more jobs-just means that more work is now done in less time.

The Italian and French couples had a lot in common and were planning to meet again the night we got off the felluca-and I imagine they will remain friends-a wonderful thing that could not have happened a generation ago-the upside of globalism and a common language.

Driving & Cueing in Egypt

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Drivers have immense patience with each other-each car gives way to the others like a million fish in a school swimming this way and that…narrowly missing one another but gracefully swerving away in time…implicit cooperation you would never see in the States.

No one would steal anything from you, the tour operator says, except for the occasional pickpocket. I suspect he is right-we never worried a bit about our things.

Told a tout, when he asked why we went to Islamic Quarter instead of Cairo Museum, that we wanted to experience live people-not dead ones…way of saying we wanted to get a feel for contemporary Egypt. We sorta did…

Tucked away amid the modern urban area of Cairo lies one of the world’s oldest Islamic cities, with its famous mosques, madrasas, hammams and fountains. Founded in the 10th century, it became the new centre of the Islamic world, reaching its golden age in the 14th century. It is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The style of cueing in line is very different than in the US where we frown on people crowding in or even acting like they want to be first in line as being a very selfish thing. The jostling is incredible so we just usually sit and wait until everyone gets off the plane or bus or train and then we get up and go.

Diplomacy Egyptian Style

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As westerners we are not used to the constant demands for “baksheesh” (tipping) that make you want to blow your stack…and then they want you to be happy about it! Salaries and wages are so low that baksheesh becomes an essential means of supplementing incomes-so for a cleaner in a one or two-star hotel who might earn only about $35 a month tipping becomes the mainstay of the income.

Minimal Diplomacy
Waiter on the train as we were returning to Cairo, asks Bob “Are you happy?” “That much,” says Bob with a show of hands about two feet apart…There just is minimal diplomacy as we know it unless you are insulated in a four or five star hotel. But the older eccentric Brit eating with us in our hotel restaurant has been coming here every year for six years…and was here during the massacre in Luxor. You just have to realize they are trying to survive, he says, and that the people are living in a benign dictatorship that colors the cultural fabric.

At the airport, as we were walking up to the doors we thought we were home free. But as soon as the door opened there were two uniformed and armed police facing us. One yelled “what are you doing here!” With our bags it was obvious that we were tourists so the question was confusing. At that point, Bob retorted angrily that we were just trying to get into the airport! They let us go.

Cultural Attitudes and Mores
Is your husband looking for new wife, says the tour operator…want to trade your wife for a camel he says then to the young Irish guy visiting with his shy new Japanese wife on their honeymoon…your husband is a lucky man…if he finds new woman you just kill him and put him in the Nile.

In the souk (market) I said “see you later Alligator,” to a seller. “Here it’s not ‘After While Crocodile,’he replied. “it’s ‘In the Nile Crocodile’.” We laughed! Water is sprinkled on the streets to keep the dust down…making mud…as I walked down the street.

What are you looking for…nothing, I don’t need anything…I am just looking to appreciate…if I buy that it will just sit in my house…are you Egyptian he asked. No, I said, American…he said you think just like an Egyptian…what do you need. Nothing, I have husband and children and a house…what are you looking for…nothing…I have nothing, he said, what color do you want? Blue I said…how big do you need it…infinite size, I said not realizing what kind of game I was playing with him. Then…I have something you have never seen, he said…come look…

Young man wants to buy my shoes…with those shoes I could get dressed up and go to the disco and find a woman…!

After the souk, dodging 6 lanes of honking cars not traveling in any one lane, we cross the street for orange juice while a truck full of soldiers passed by waving and blowing kisses…also men sitting idle…not seeming to mind I was with a man…your husband is a very lucky man…to Bob again are you looking for new wife?

Later in Aswan I heard from a vendor…would you like a banana…just 30 minutes….

On the train on the way back to Cairo from Luxor…here is a flower (looked like a dandelion but smelled like a gardenia) realizing the server had to have gotten off the train at the last stop to get it…can be very charming but no clue about western sensibilities or boundaries…and I suspect they don’t care to know.

I read that even Egyptian women, who would not otherwise, wear the higab (Islamic scarf) outside the home to protect themselves from the same harassment. It is not really intimidating but just a nuisance, like a mosquito buzzing in your ear, Lonely Planet says. You can swat it away and keep it at a distance, but it’s always out there trying to get in your ear. The problem is, according to one Egyptian man, that for every 10 women approached, one will say yes. The Dutch woman on the train behind me said that her brother who travels a lot, has come across a lot of Egyptian men who hook up with Western women.

Images of Egypt

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All we have to offer regarding Egypt are images.Very little understanding. We were open; wanted to understand, feeling generous and happy. Smiling. Saying hello to everyone. Thinking we were making friends…now we have only flashes of ambiguous feeling…

When Americans think of poverty they think of India…or Africa. Poverty here is endemic…makes Mexico look like downtown San Francisco…tourism is all they have and after the massacre of tourists in 1997 in Luxor, tourism in Egypt was decimated. The sellers are desperate to sell and the consequent harassment of tourists is unparalled by anything we have ever experienced.

As if this were not enough, Egypt being essentially a police state anyway, has added to the misery. There are police everywhere trying to protect you and individual travel between most cities are not allowed unless as part of a caravan accompanied by a police car and with a policeman in each car. Tourists are only allowed to travel on three of several trains a day from Luxor to Cairo and there are always 5-6 policemen accompanying the first class (misnomer) cars.

On the train returning from Luxor north to Cairo a young Dutch couple was sitting behind us. The fellow had gotten up to stand at the end of the car for awhile but was immediately yelled at and sent back to his seat by the police. As he was continuing to utter expletives, I turned around and said “You have to laugh or you will go crazy in this country!” With a look that could kill he said, “Oh, I am wayyyyy behond that” as he shot himself in the head with his finger. An alternative would be to fly from Cairo to Aswan or Luxor and back.

Tourism has come back up in Luxor since the massacre and we felt completely safe but the country is still reeling from the effects of the massacre and 9/11.

In an interview of several high-end hotel employees in “HE” magazine (Egypt’s GQ) one manager said “for the money they pay us, we insulate our guests from everything they want to be insulated from.” I read this when we first arrived and scoffed at the people who don’t want to be exposed to the ordinary person on the street in a country. After all, isn’t this why we are traveling-to find out how the heart beats on the streets? However next time I visit the middle east I will join a tour group.

Santorini & Sifnos

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As the ferry approached the island through the caldera you see a red-brown black and pumice grey terraced cliff face that looms hundreds of feet above the water with brilliant-white buildings with blue trim reflecting the Aegean Sea hanging off the side. But all those beautiful buildings hanging off the cliffs of Santorini, as it turns out, are all hotels, boutique shops, cafes and restaurants with a few blue domed Byzantine churches mixed in.

Walked into a cafe for breakfast of coffee and pastry the first morning to the sounds of Portland’s own Pink Martini playing on the stereo. While walking around the town-Bob in his perennial shorts-we passed a group of Spanish teenagers and one was heard in English “look at that guy-he’s wearing shorts-makes no sense! Do you think it made any impression on Bob?

After exploring the island’s archaelogical and historical sites and lying on black sand beaches there was not much else to do unless you were twenty years old and wanted to spend all night in the discos-so we ferried it six hours to another, smaller island-Sifnos.

Sifnos
At the harbor port of Kamares we took a bus the five miles up a windy road to Apollonia where we checked late into the Sifnos Hotel-tired and hungry. There was only one other patron in the hotel, a French publisher who returns to the island every spring. Apostolos, the hotel proprietor, welcomed us each with an Ouzo. Then he treated the French woman and Bob and I with Mezedhes (appetizers) and we sat for the next two hours eating and talking culture and politics. This is what I had been waiting for! Marie, the French publisher was reading the memoirs of Edward W. Said the professor at Columbia University whose books are popular reading these days for an understanding of the middle east.

Apollonia is an amalgam of three very charming hilltop villages with connecting white-washed buildings with flower-draped balconies lining immaculate narrow marble footways. The people actually live and work here and one gets the feeling this is how they prefer things. The shops are only open during the summer so most of the locals have other work the remainder of the year, Apostolos says.

Sifnos is 16km by 8km-great for walking-so Bob took off the next day for a five hour walk following a trail with one great view after another along the way up to an acropolis with a church and some ruins from 600BC. Almost the entire island was terraced 2-3000 years ago when the islanders supported themselves with agricultural products but since the advent of tourism and vehicle ferries the walled terraces now mostly grow yellow and white daisies and blood-red poppies and support the lonely burro and the goats. It is interesting that the people built their town in and around the many ruins; Greece taking for granted its antiquity.

This island has given us a welcome respite from noise and activity; none of the shops were open yet and their owners were painting, sweeping, repairing all over-preparing for the summer-eager and hopeful.

Apostolos says the Greek Orthodox church is very powerful in Greece-and very conservative-legislating every aspect of family life which is the all-important institution next to the church. Families stay together always-even if/when children move away there is almost daily contact, he says. Marie, the French lady said that yes, the Greeks seem open and friendly but there it stops-they are very clannish and no one on the outside gets into the inner circles. She and Apostolos recommend reading “Three Summers” by Margareta Liberaki published also in English.

Women
My sense about the young women I have seen especially in the less developed countries of Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Greece is that they are a pretty savvy lot. Nothing will hold them back now!

As there was a strike on the day we planned to take the ferry back to Athens, we asked Apostolos if we could have the hotel room for the afternoon. “Of course, of course,” he says, “life is simple, life is simple!” When we were ready to leave, he gave us each a going away drink of Ouzo. I don’t want to leave this place…I am grateful for this journey; I have learned these ways so far to say thank you: Greek-efsharisto, Spanish-Gracias, French-merci, Portuguese-obrigado/a, Italian-grazie.

Back in Athens, I sat in the internet cafe with a young Anglican priest from Britain who was bicycling his way to Haifa Israel. Not worried, he said. The other fellow, was a UN Police Observer from South Bend, Indiana stationed in Kosovo making 90,000 a year. He was in Athens on leave. Meeting people like this is one of the reasons I like going to Internet cafes.