Cairo really is amazing, but it is endlessly exhausting as a woman. You can't walk down the street without getting laughed at by other women and stared at or approached by men. We've tried to be respectful and wear long skirts, tunics that cover our and hint of shape in our shoulders, breasts, elbows and asses, and head scarves to cover our hair, but men still call at us salaciously and blow kisses and women still think we're a joke. Other tourists that we see wear tank tops and shorts that befit the hundred-degree weather while we sweat it out like suckers, trying to be respectful and modest in sleeves. It's not worth the effort! I'm surprised by how much I've liked Cairo, but it is truly exhausting to even walk down the street. A walk to lunch becomes a battlefield. You bat off tours on your left trying to sell ankhs and postcards and tours to the pyramids, and lewd men on your right who think that you're automatically lascivious because of your white skin and their impressions of Western women that have been formed by Hollywood movies.
But every time I'm about to write off Cairo to the cat-callers, tours and pushers, Egypt finds a way to surprise me. After a short and frustrating day of errands, a cabdriver bought each of us a strand of jasmine flowers to wear around our necks as a gift. It was such a genuinely sweet move; we were taken totally off-guard.
Yesterday we visited the Citadel, a fortification built in the 12th and 13th century that circles around the most beautiful mosque I have ever seen. Words will not do it any justice. All marble flooring, globe lighting and chandeliers like the ballroom in Beauty and the Beast. I have never seen a place of worship remotely like it. Today we visited the two synagogues that linger in Cairo as the final relics of a 4000-year Jewish history in Egypt. One of them has been restored and lives among a number of Churches and Nunneries in a very touristy part of town. The other is actually around the corner from our hostel, is heavily fortified by fifteen to twenty policemen at all times, and is in a pathetic state. It is kept by donations but receives no visitors. The custodian wears a cross around her neck and doesn't know the first thing about Judaism. (Cutely, she pointed to the Bima and said "this is the Meeba!") The Torah is out on the Bima covered in a sparkly cheap market scarf, and the whole synagogue hasn't been properly dusted in probably a decade. It's a very sad state to see the remnants of the Egyptian Jewry dusty and in disrepair.
This evening we took a brief felucca jaunt around the Nile from one tip of Cairo to the other. It was lovely and relaxing, but we wound up having to fight the felucca captain to pay what we rightfully negotiated. It was rather symbolic of our time in Cairo: a bittersweet mix of lovely experiences and frustrating people.
Tomorrow we take a bus to Eilat to hang out on the Red Sea for a few days!
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Of Pyramids and Men
Today we went to the Pyramids at Giza!
It was rather anticlimactic, to be honest. You're driving down the highway and all of a sudden...BAM! Pyramids! It doesn't make any sense! I suppose I always imagined that you have to trek through the desert to the pyramids, but there they are literally next to homes and cafes.
So we traipsed around the desert a bit and batted off touts like flies. A word of advice for those looking to travel to the pyramids: don't worry about being nice. I've been surprised by how genuinely nice most Egyptians are--they really get an unfair rap as far as global stereotypes go--but the touts and the pyramids are enough to drive a girl insane. They have all kinds of clever tricks to sucker you into paying them for various goods, services and exploitations. They insist that they are employees of the government and that their jobs are to provide tours; they tell you that they're getting married soon and don't want tips, but perhaps a bit of help toward their wedding...? They promise a camel ride for only 10 egyptian pounds (about $1.80) until they get you out to the desert...then demand 50 pounds to return.
The pyramids were quite interesting though. We entered the Great Pyramid (Cheops) and climbed up to the Great Chamber. We had to go in shifts because no cameras were allowed and I wasn't about to leave my camera with the guards there, so Janis and Hillary climbed first while I waited outside. When it was my turn to enter, I climbed straight up and sat around the Great Chamber for a few minutes in thought. When I decided to leave, I noticed a purse on the wall by the exit. You have to stoop to exit, so I stooped and noticed two pairs of feet atop each other moving around the passageway. I totally caught a couple having a quickie in the pyramid.
We stayed around Giza until the evening and paid extra to see the Pyramids Sound and Light Spectacular. We met up with a traveler along the way, a crunchy writer from New York on a quest to find his bliss, and the four of us stayed for the show. It was the silliest thing I have ever attended. With the Sphinx as narrator, you learn random bits and pieces of Egyptian history through a very dated light show set to soaring orchestral music. The Sphinx is voiced by a man who must have been trained as a Shakespearean performer. He offered a very truncated and skewed history of the great Egyptian dynasties, suggesting that the pyramids were built by devout, eager volunteers and not Jewish slaves. Words cannot do justice to the silliness of this spectacular. It was very reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz.
Now a bit on Egyptian men. In the last two and a half days I have been told (always uninvited, of course) by countless Egyptian men that I am too much to handle and men around the world will not want to marry me. This is because I negotiate prices and am outgoing and friendly. The Egyptian guide who took us through passport control warned the Egypt-side driver about me; he was worried that I would "start a revolution" and convince all of the women in our group not to get on the bus. A tour guide who let us sit on his air conditioned bus at the pyramids today told me that men will not marry me because I talk too much. Luckily, I don't think that my love life will suffer terribly if it lacks Egyptian men.
It was rather anticlimactic, to be honest. You're driving down the highway and all of a sudden...BAM! Pyramids! It doesn't make any sense! I suppose I always imagined that you have to trek through the desert to the pyramids, but there they are literally next to homes and cafes.
So we traipsed around the desert a bit and batted off touts like flies. A word of advice for those looking to travel to the pyramids: don't worry about being nice. I've been surprised by how genuinely nice most Egyptians are--they really get an unfair rap as far as global stereotypes go--but the touts and the pyramids are enough to drive a girl insane. They have all kinds of clever tricks to sucker you into paying them for various goods, services and exploitations. They insist that they are employees of the government and that their jobs are to provide tours; they tell you that they're getting married soon and don't want tips, but perhaps a bit of help toward their wedding...? They promise a camel ride for only 10 egyptian pounds (about $1.80) until they get you out to the desert...then demand 50 pounds to return.
The pyramids were quite interesting though. We entered the Great Pyramid (Cheops) and climbed up to the Great Chamber. We had to go in shifts because no cameras were allowed and I wasn't about to leave my camera with the guards there, so Janis and Hillary climbed first while I waited outside. When it was my turn to enter, I climbed straight up and sat around the Great Chamber for a few minutes in thought. When I decided to leave, I noticed a purse on the wall by the exit. You have to stoop to exit, so I stooped and noticed two pairs of feet atop each other moving around the passageway. I totally caught a couple having a quickie in the pyramid.
We stayed around Giza until the evening and paid extra to see the Pyramids Sound and Light Spectacular. We met up with a traveler along the way, a crunchy writer from New York on a quest to find his bliss, and the four of us stayed for the show. It was the silliest thing I have ever attended. With the Sphinx as narrator, you learn random bits and pieces of Egyptian history through a very dated light show set to soaring orchestral music. The Sphinx is voiced by a man who must have been trained as a Shakespearean performer. He offered a very truncated and skewed history of the great Egyptian dynasties, suggesting that the pyramids were built by devout, eager volunteers and not Jewish slaves. Words cannot do justice to the silliness of this spectacular. It was very reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz.
Now a bit on Egyptian men. In the last two and a half days I have been told (always uninvited, of course) by countless Egyptian men that I am too much to handle and men around the world will not want to marry me. This is because I negotiate prices and am outgoing and friendly. The Egyptian guide who took us through passport control warned the Egypt-side driver about me; he was worried that I would "start a revolution" and convince all of the women in our group not to get on the bus. A tour guide who let us sit on his air conditioned bus at the pyramids today told me that men will not marry me because I talk too much. Luckily, I don't think that my love life will suffer terribly if it lacks Egyptian men.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Trip to Cairo
I have been a terrible blogger. All apologies. My Mayanot trip was so exhausting that I had no energy to blog, but suffice it to say the trip was incredible. Some highlights included jeeping in the Golan Heights, Tzfat--one of the most holy cities in the world for Jews--in which we learned about Kabbalah, rafting the Jordan River, spending Shabbat at the Kotel, camel riding in the Negev with local Bedouins, and of course getting caked in mud at the Dead Sea.
Pictures later!
I am currently in Cairo, Egypt, after an exhausting 20-hour trip yesterday from Jerusalem. This post is about that trip:
Janis, Hillary and I paid a tour company to drive us from Jerusalem to Cairo, a 12-hour or so bus tour including time spent crossing the border at Taba in the south. We spent a bit more money than I had wanted to spend but we figured it would ensure that Janis, who holds dual citizenship with Israel, would be able to pass without too many problems, and that we wouldn't have to negotiate taxis from the Egypt side of the border to Cairo, 7 or so hours away. The day's events went as followed (this is almost entirely reproduced from my travel notebook):
8:15 am, we arrived at the central bus depot, which is where the tour company told us to catch our bus. We discover that they meant another bus station somewhat down the road and are told to wait at a nearby gas station for them to pick us up.
8:50 am, a 7-passenger van arrives trying to usher us in. Driver and assistant do not speak English. The gas station attendant helps us ask if this is our "bus" to Cairo and promises we'll be safe.
We worry that we may have been kidnapped when we notice that the bus is driving Eastward toward Tel Aviv and not South to the border. Turns out that we were being driver to the company's Tel Aviv offices to pay in cash.
11 am, back on the road toward Eilat. Our van's A/C doesn't work and the three magnetic board games that we bought to pass our time turn out to be bereft of magnets.
4 pm, arrive in Eilat and discover that the two Chinese passengers and the one Korean girl in our van don't have visas or border fee vouchers from the company. They negotiate on the phone for half an hour with the tour company. The company, it seems, told that them that they could arrange visas at the border and that the border fees were included in their prices just like ours were.
5 pm, After fooling around the duty free shop still waiting on the Chinese and Korean passengers in our van, we cross the passport control. It is like a movie. The officer is sitting behind the counter painting his visa stamp with what smells like rubber cement, a burning cigarette flopping out of his fat mouth. Signs warn "no smoking." He does not know how to process my visa, and the tour company representative instructs him how to do his job.
6 pm, the three asian passengers have officially made it through to Egyptian soil, but the Chinese are not allowed to leave passport control. We should have been on the road two hours ago.
7:30 pm, they decide to release the Chinese couple. Passport control never questioned them or searched their bags, but apparently detained them for nearly 4 hours because sometimes Chinese people enter Egypt to illegally sell things on the street. So they kept our van for four hours to decide, I guess, without any inquiry, whether or not the Chinese couple was trying to sell burned DVDs.
12 am, we stop just beyond the Suez Canal for dinner at a rural restaurant of sorts.
2:30 am, we arrive in Cairo after a twenty hour day.
The moral of this post is: don't book with Mazada Tours in Tel Aviv.
Cairo is wonderful though. We spent the day in the Islamic Quarter haggling for scarves and tunics and climbing minarets and smoking hookah and drinking tea.
Pictures later!
I am currently in Cairo, Egypt, after an exhausting 20-hour trip yesterday from Jerusalem. This post is about that trip:
Janis, Hillary and I paid a tour company to drive us from Jerusalem to Cairo, a 12-hour or so bus tour including time spent crossing the border at Taba in the south. We spent a bit more money than I had wanted to spend but we figured it would ensure that Janis, who holds dual citizenship with Israel, would be able to pass without too many problems, and that we wouldn't have to negotiate taxis from the Egypt side of the border to Cairo, 7 or so hours away. The day's events went as followed (this is almost entirely reproduced from my travel notebook):
8:15 am, we arrived at the central bus depot, which is where the tour company told us to catch our bus. We discover that they meant another bus station somewhat down the road and are told to wait at a nearby gas station for them to pick us up.
8:50 am, a 7-passenger van arrives trying to usher us in. Driver and assistant do not speak English. The gas station attendant helps us ask if this is our "bus" to Cairo and promises we'll be safe.
We worry that we may have been kidnapped when we notice that the bus is driving Eastward toward Tel Aviv and not South to the border. Turns out that we were being driver to the company's Tel Aviv offices to pay in cash.
11 am, back on the road toward Eilat. Our van's A/C doesn't work and the three magnetic board games that we bought to pass our time turn out to be bereft of magnets.
4 pm, arrive in Eilat and discover that the two Chinese passengers and the one Korean girl in our van don't have visas or border fee vouchers from the company. They negotiate on the phone for half an hour with the tour company. The company, it seems, told that them that they could arrange visas at the border and that the border fees were included in their prices just like ours were.
5 pm, After fooling around the duty free shop still waiting on the Chinese and Korean passengers in our van, we cross the passport control. It is like a movie. The officer is sitting behind the counter painting his visa stamp with what smells like rubber cement, a burning cigarette flopping out of his fat mouth. Signs warn "no smoking." He does not know how to process my visa, and the tour company representative instructs him how to do his job.
6 pm, the three asian passengers have officially made it through to Egyptian soil, but the Chinese are not allowed to leave passport control. We should have been on the road two hours ago.
7:30 pm, they decide to release the Chinese couple. Passport control never questioned them or searched their bags, but apparently detained them for nearly 4 hours because sometimes Chinese people enter Egypt to illegally sell things on the street. So they kept our van for four hours to decide, I guess, without any inquiry, whether or not the Chinese couple was trying to sell burned DVDs.
12 am, we stop just beyond the Suez Canal for dinner at a rural restaurant of sorts.
2:30 am, we arrive in Cairo after a twenty hour day.
The moral of this post is: don't book with Mazada Tours in Tel Aviv.
Cairo is wonderful though. We spent the day in the Islamic Quarter haggling for scarves and tunics and climbing minarets and smoking hookah and drinking tea.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Resurrection!
I'm back! Get out the Easter ham.Really though, I leave for the big Middle East trip on Sunday.
Itinerary: Israel with Birthright for ten days-->Israel with Janis and Hillary for a while-->Egypt-->Israel again I think-->Jordan (to pretend I'm Indiana Jones for a couple of days)-->Israel some more.
Travel tips, wishes and addresses are welcome!
xoxo gossip girl
Monday, December 21, 2009
The End
It is my last day in Kenya, my last day in Africa, and the last day of my great travel adventure. I took the train back from Mombasa to Nairobi last night, and it was even better the second time around. I woke up in the morning and saw an ostrich grazing on the plains outside my window.
Yesterday I toured Kaya Kinondo, a community-based tourism initiative that I had really been looking forward to. Kaya translates to 'home,' and a Kaya is essentially an ancestral forest village for the Mijikenda people; Kaya Kinondo is one of only a few left in the entirety of Africa, and it belongs to the Digo tribe. It is no longer inhabited, but the forest is preserved and has a number of indigenous and rare species, including a 600 year old cycad! I saw a couple of colubus monkeys and a bushback antelope, but the forest itself was by far the most impressive component of the experience. It is a coastal forest, and very obviously was once ocean bed itself, as evidenced by the mass coral formations all across the forest floor. The only downside to the experience was that I was supposed to have been guided around the forest by a tribal elder; instead, I was guided by a 20-something year old horndog named Gabriel who kept getting a little too close for comfort. I know that East Africans are a touchy-feely people, but when I feel your facial stubble in the nook of my neck, I think you've gone too far.
My train arrived in Nairobi shockingly on time this morning at 10, and I didn't really have enough to do to fill my day. (My flight leaves at 11:45 pm this evening and the Nairobi Airport is close to my idea of hell, so I'm trying to kill as much time as possible in the city...and I don't have a hotel room or anything for today so I needed to stay out.) I took a matatu (crampy bus) to the National Museum, which was a great idea. On the ride, I realized that we were passing the slum-I-mean-neighborhood in which I had stayed my first time in Nairobi last summer. It is just as scary and shitty as I remember, which I suppose is reassuring in that it means I wasn't hallucinating last summer.
Anyway, the National Museum was really quite beautiful and far different from what I had expected. It reminded me a bit of the Teylers Museum in Haarlem in the Netherlands, not in that it is also a century and a half old (because it is not) but because it is sort of a mish-mosh of natural history, archeology, and items of general interest to those who like Kenya. There was a lovely, though out of place (this would count under the 'items of interest' category, I suppose), exhibit of photographs taken by children no older than 9 years old. Most of the photos were taken by children either in Kenya or China (it resulted of a partnership with a school in Beijing) but there were several from other parts of Africa, one from Argentina and one from the US as well. They were really sweet and poignant. Most of the photos depicted "my family" or "my market" and it spoke deeply to the cultural and socioeconomic differences worldwide seeing these responses through their eyes. There were also, inexplicably, four photographs of children at the Grandma Obama orphanage near Kisimu.
After the Museum I walked back to town with a nice muzungu I met who had been born in Zimbabwe (though I suspect he had actually been born in Rhodesia...). I then walked to Uhuru Park, which is just this massive, lush park in the middle of the city, and sat there for about an hour. There is a massive tribute to Daniel Arap-Moi in the park...a huge statue that looks sort of like a fist holding a walking stick bursting out of a volcano. I think that's what they were going for, though. I noticed that the Serena Hotel-Nairobi was just behind the park and I still had a lot of time to kill so I thought, let's see what it's like!
The Serena, for those of you who don't know, is a collection of massive and fancy hotels that pop up all throughout East Africa, and I suspect the rest of the world as well, and rooms there start at about $425 a night, which is my month's rent before utilities. I took a seat by the poolside an ordered a gin & tonic, which surprisingly cost less than a week worth of groceries. I spent an hour or so by the pool, and they even treated me to complimentary bar snacks. Then they brought the bill. They had charged me for a double, which I did not order, and somehow an additional shot of gin costs more than the first. I complained, as I am wont to do, and they settled everything for me and I paid only for the shot I ordered. However, during that debate I noticed a shower in the bathroom by the pool. Now, I am not a hobo. But I had not showered since before the Kaya Kinondo excursion, seeing as I had had to check out of my hotel that morning and there are no showers on an overnight train with a squat toilet that opens to the tracks. So I decided to take my revenge on the Serena for their $6 gin and tonic (which is really quite reasonable...I'm just cheap) by using their shower facilities. I thought it quite acceptable; they assumed I was a guest at the hotel because I am white, and I didn't let on to the contrary. So I snagged a bathrobe hanging conveniently on the wall and took a shower for the first time in a day and a half. Boy, the Serena treats their guests right.
I'll be back in New York tomorrow afternoon around 1 local time. Jeez.
Yesterday I toured Kaya Kinondo, a community-based tourism initiative that I had really been looking forward to. Kaya translates to 'home,' and a Kaya is essentially an ancestral forest village for the Mijikenda people; Kaya Kinondo is one of only a few left in the entirety of Africa, and it belongs to the Digo tribe. It is no longer inhabited, but the forest is preserved and has a number of indigenous and rare species, including a 600 year old cycad! I saw a couple of colubus monkeys and a bushback antelope, but the forest itself was by far the most impressive component of the experience. It is a coastal forest, and very obviously was once ocean bed itself, as evidenced by the mass coral formations all across the forest floor. The only downside to the experience was that I was supposed to have been guided around the forest by a tribal elder; instead, I was guided by a 20-something year old horndog named Gabriel who kept getting a little too close for comfort. I know that East Africans are a touchy-feely people, but when I feel your facial stubble in the nook of my neck, I think you've gone too far.
My train arrived in Nairobi shockingly on time this morning at 10, and I didn't really have enough to do to fill my day. (My flight leaves at 11:45 pm this evening and the Nairobi Airport is close to my idea of hell, so I'm trying to kill as much time as possible in the city...and I don't have a hotel room or anything for today so I needed to stay out.) I took a matatu (crampy bus) to the National Museum, which was a great idea. On the ride, I realized that we were passing the slum-I-mean-neighborhood in which I had stayed my first time in Nairobi last summer. It is just as scary and shitty as I remember, which I suppose is reassuring in that it means I wasn't hallucinating last summer.
Anyway, the National Museum was really quite beautiful and far different from what I had expected. It reminded me a bit of the Teylers Museum in Haarlem in the Netherlands, not in that it is also a century and a half old (because it is not) but because it is sort of a mish-mosh of natural history, archeology, and items of general interest to those who like Kenya. There was a lovely, though out of place (this would count under the 'items of interest' category, I suppose), exhibit of photographs taken by children no older than 9 years old. Most of the photos were taken by children either in Kenya or China (it resulted of a partnership with a school in Beijing) but there were several from other parts of Africa, one from Argentina and one from the US as well. They were really sweet and poignant. Most of the photos depicted "my family" or "my market" and it spoke deeply to the cultural and socioeconomic differences worldwide seeing these responses through their eyes. There were also, inexplicably, four photographs of children at the Grandma Obama orphanage near Kisimu.
After the Museum I walked back to town with a nice muzungu I met who had been born in Zimbabwe (though I suspect he had actually been born in Rhodesia...). I then walked to Uhuru Park, which is just this massive, lush park in the middle of the city, and sat there for about an hour. There is a massive tribute to Daniel Arap-Moi in the park...a huge statue that looks sort of like a fist holding a walking stick bursting out of a volcano. I think that's what they were going for, though. I noticed that the Serena Hotel-Nairobi was just behind the park and I still had a lot of time to kill so I thought, let's see what it's like!
The Serena, for those of you who don't know, is a collection of massive and fancy hotels that pop up all throughout East Africa, and I suspect the rest of the world as well, and rooms there start at about $425 a night, which is my month's rent before utilities. I took a seat by the poolside an ordered a gin & tonic, which surprisingly cost less than a week worth of groceries. I spent an hour or so by the pool, and they even treated me to complimentary bar snacks. Then they brought the bill. They had charged me for a double, which I did not order, and somehow an additional shot of gin costs more than the first. I complained, as I am wont to do, and they settled everything for me and I paid only for the shot I ordered. However, during that debate I noticed a shower in the bathroom by the pool. Now, I am not a hobo. But I had not showered since before the Kaya Kinondo excursion, seeing as I had had to check out of my hotel that morning and there are no showers on an overnight train with a squat toilet that opens to the tracks. So I decided to take my revenge on the Serena for their $6 gin and tonic (which is really quite reasonable...I'm just cheap) by using their shower facilities. I thought it quite acceptable; they assumed I was a guest at the hotel because I am white, and I didn't let on to the contrary. So I snagged a bathrobe hanging conveniently on the wall and took a shower for the first time in a day and a half. Boy, the Serena treats their guests right.
I'll be back in New York tomorrow afternoon around 1 local time. Jeez.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Kenyan Adventures
Hello!
I am currently sweating my skin off on Mombasa, the second largest city in Kenya and an island on the Indian Ocean.
Kenya has been lovely so far. I spent two days in Nairobi, took the overnight train to Mombasa Wednesday evening, and I will be here until tomorrow, when I will take the overnight train back to Nairobi.
Firstly, Nairobi has really grown on me. They sell fresh popcorn on the street for 10 ksh a bag (about 12 cents), and that alone is enough to win me over. They also spice their food in Kenya, which is a nice pick-me-up from the terribly bland Rwandan cuisine. Wednesday I had the most lovely and touristy day. I hired a driver for the day and went first to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which is an elephant and rhinoceros orphanage. Yes, I said orphanage. From 11-noon every day, visitors are invited to watch them feed the baby elephants (yes, I said baby elephants) and pet them and watch them play with each other. The youngest were three months old; the oldest less than two years. I died. They are just big fat dusty lumps of adorable. They take to the orphanage caretakers as surrogate mothers and follow them around, play with them, even try to wrestle with them. It is just heart-squashingly adorable. After the elephant orphanage, my driver wanted to take me to a Masaai marketplace. I have never seen so many masks in my life. The market collects African masks from all over the continent, including many antiques and old bronze pieces. They were breathtaking. Outside the shop I met a Maasai warrior named Julius who is 23. The shopkeep said, "you're a single girl, he's a single boy, and you are both tall--you make a great match!" and urged me to marry him. I gracefully declined, and continued on to Giraffe Manor, a Rothschild giraffe preservation and education center that allows visitors to feed the giraffes by hand! I did, and was french-kissed by a lady giraffe as thanks for lunch.
The overnight train from Nairobi to Mombasa was awesome, by the way. You do travel through Tsavo National Park, but at about 2am, so it is impossible to try to spot animals unless the train breaks down (which it apparently often does). I managed to score my own room, which was nice because I would not want to have shared that closet-sized compartment with a stranger. The views are absolutely beautiful. You leave Nairobi just at sundown, and as the train winds out of the city, the bright lights of the Central Business District trick you into thinking you're in New York. There are a lot of shantytowns and slum shacks along the train tracks, though I suppose that is standard in developing countries. When you wake up in the morning, there are hundreds of children lining the fields along the tracks waving at the muzungus. All in all, it is a hell of a colonial throwback. At dinner on the train I sat with three railroad employees--one was the conductor, one his assistant, and one a guard. The guard, Francis, engaged me in a two hour discussion about the duties of a father and raising daughters and why it was good that I did not accept the Maasai warrior's marriage proposal.
The train arrived in Mombasa just before 10 am (practically on time!) and I checked into my hotel, which is in the heart of town and acts like a four-star hotel despite costing $50 a night. I'm talking glasses of juice and cold towels at check-in. My hotel also has this hilarious calypso cover-band that plays on the hotel patio every night and is loud as hell. I can hear them from my balcony overlooking the city. Oh, did I mention my room has a balcony overlooking the city? I must have forgotten that part. My first day in Mombasa, naturally, I walked down the road to Fort Jesus and to see the Old Town.
Fort Jesus was built by the Portuguese in 1593 after Vasco de Gama "discovered" Mombasa. It has, throughout history, alternatively been occupied by both the Portuguese and Arabs. It is now mostly in ruins, but totally cool. It overlooks the Indian Ocean (as any good island fort should) and gets great breezes, an important consideration in Mombasa life, since this is the most oppressively hot place I have ever been. Yes, it's worse than New Orleans in July. Old Town is pretty slummy, to be honest. It's not like what I imagined it to be, which I suppose falls more in line with my expectations of Zanzibar's Stone Town. Old Town is definitely interesting though, and has some incredibly intricate wooden doors. I also found this quaint little Indian tea shop with the best Indian sweets I've ever had! While wandering Old Town, I ran into the two American students that I met in Gisenyi in November! It really is a small world.
Yesterday I went on a day excursion to Wasini Island to go snorkeling on the coral reefs. It was incredible. We took a very long drive to a pier, then a motorized dhow around the Indian Ocean chasing bottlenose dolphins for a while. Eventually we anchored off the coast of a beach island and snorkeled for about an hour and a half. I saw rainbow fish that literally looked like the ones in that children's book (mom, you know what I'm talking about). And angel fish! And weird massive white fish that looked kind of like fat baby crocodiles bred with catfish. And clowfish! (One of the tour operators made me promise to try to catch him a "Nemo" when I snorkeled.) It was just lovely. What impressed me most was the massive variety of types of coral that existed on this reef. It was just breathtaking.
After snorkeling we had lunch on Wasini Island, and took a tour of the (very poor) town there. I wanted to visit these Slave Caves that were used during Portuguese and Arab times to hold slaves before shipping them to Zanzibar, but everyone else on my tour was tired so I missed out. But it was just a beautiful day.
One more thing about Kenya before I sign off for the post: they LOVE Dolly Parton. Now, I know that country music is popular in East Africa. I've heard Jimmy Buffet and indistinguishably country music playing in markets in Uganda and Rwanda. But Kenya takes it to a whole other level. My hotel has been playing non-stop Christmas music since my arrival, which makes sense. What does not make sense is that every morning during breakfast hours, they play the same five Dolly Parton Christmas songs on repeat. I now know all of the worlds to "Christmas to Remember" (I do quite like the "we'll make this"/"springtime bliss" and "Christmas to remember"/"in the middle of December" double-rhyme, though) and "Hardy Candy Christmas" (excuse me if these aren't the accurate titles--they are merely educated guesses based on learning all of the lyrics) which I'm pretty sure is just a breakup song and not actually about Christmas.
I am currently sweating my skin off on Mombasa, the second largest city in Kenya and an island on the Indian Ocean.
Kenya has been lovely so far. I spent two days in Nairobi, took the overnight train to Mombasa Wednesday evening, and I will be here until tomorrow, when I will take the overnight train back to Nairobi.
Firstly, Nairobi has really grown on me. They sell fresh popcorn on the street for 10 ksh a bag (about 12 cents), and that alone is enough to win me over. They also spice their food in Kenya, which is a nice pick-me-up from the terribly bland Rwandan cuisine. Wednesday I had the most lovely and touristy day. I hired a driver for the day and went first to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, which is an elephant and rhinoceros orphanage. Yes, I said orphanage. From 11-noon every day, visitors are invited to watch them feed the baby elephants (yes, I said baby elephants) and pet them and watch them play with each other. The youngest were three months old; the oldest less than two years. I died. They are just big fat dusty lumps of adorable. They take to the orphanage caretakers as surrogate mothers and follow them around, play with them, even try to wrestle with them. It is just heart-squashingly adorable. After the elephant orphanage, my driver wanted to take me to a Masaai marketplace. I have never seen so many masks in my life. The market collects African masks from all over the continent, including many antiques and old bronze pieces. They were breathtaking. Outside the shop I met a Maasai warrior named Julius who is 23. The shopkeep said, "you're a single girl, he's a single boy, and you are both tall--you make a great match!" and urged me to marry him. I gracefully declined, and continued on to Giraffe Manor, a Rothschild giraffe preservation and education center that allows visitors to feed the giraffes by hand! I did, and was french-kissed by a lady giraffe as thanks for lunch.
The overnight train from Nairobi to Mombasa was awesome, by the way. You do travel through Tsavo National Park, but at about 2am, so it is impossible to try to spot animals unless the train breaks down (which it apparently often does). I managed to score my own room, which was nice because I would not want to have shared that closet-sized compartment with a stranger. The views are absolutely beautiful. You leave Nairobi just at sundown, and as the train winds out of the city, the bright lights of the Central Business District trick you into thinking you're in New York. There are a lot of shantytowns and slum shacks along the train tracks, though I suppose that is standard in developing countries. When you wake up in the morning, there are hundreds of children lining the fields along the tracks waving at the muzungus. All in all, it is a hell of a colonial throwback. At dinner on the train I sat with three railroad employees--one was the conductor, one his assistant, and one a guard. The guard, Francis, engaged me in a two hour discussion about the duties of a father and raising daughters and why it was good that I did not accept the Maasai warrior's marriage proposal.
The train arrived in Mombasa just before 10 am (practically on time!) and I checked into my hotel, which is in the heart of town and acts like a four-star hotel despite costing $50 a night. I'm talking glasses of juice and cold towels at check-in. My hotel also has this hilarious calypso cover-band that plays on the hotel patio every night and is loud as hell. I can hear them from my balcony overlooking the city. Oh, did I mention my room has a balcony overlooking the city? I must have forgotten that part. My first day in Mombasa, naturally, I walked down the road to Fort Jesus and to see the Old Town.
Fort Jesus was built by the Portuguese in 1593 after Vasco de Gama "discovered" Mombasa. It has, throughout history, alternatively been occupied by both the Portuguese and Arabs. It is now mostly in ruins, but totally cool. It overlooks the Indian Ocean (as any good island fort should) and gets great breezes, an important consideration in Mombasa life, since this is the most oppressively hot place I have ever been. Yes, it's worse than New Orleans in July. Old Town is pretty slummy, to be honest. It's not like what I imagined it to be, which I suppose falls more in line with my expectations of Zanzibar's Stone Town. Old Town is definitely interesting though, and has some incredibly intricate wooden doors. I also found this quaint little Indian tea shop with the best Indian sweets I've ever had! While wandering Old Town, I ran into the two American students that I met in Gisenyi in November! It really is a small world.
Yesterday I went on a day excursion to Wasini Island to go snorkeling on the coral reefs. It was incredible. We took a very long drive to a pier, then a motorized dhow around the Indian Ocean chasing bottlenose dolphins for a while. Eventually we anchored off the coast of a beach island and snorkeled for about an hour and a half. I saw rainbow fish that literally looked like the ones in that children's book (mom, you know what I'm talking about). And angel fish! And weird massive white fish that looked kind of like fat baby crocodiles bred with catfish. And clowfish! (One of the tour operators made me promise to try to catch him a "Nemo" when I snorkeled.) It was just lovely. What impressed me most was the massive variety of types of coral that existed on this reef. It was just breathtaking.
After snorkeling we had lunch on Wasini Island, and took a tour of the (very poor) town there. I wanted to visit these Slave Caves that were used during Portuguese and Arab times to hold slaves before shipping them to Zanzibar, but everyone else on my tour was tired so I missed out. But it was just a beautiful day.
One more thing about Kenya before I sign off for the post: they LOVE Dolly Parton. Now, I know that country music is popular in East Africa. I've heard Jimmy Buffet and indistinguishably country music playing in markets in Uganda and Rwanda. But Kenya takes it to a whole other level. My hotel has been playing non-stop Christmas music since my arrival, which makes sense. What does not make sense is that every morning during breakfast hours, they play the same five Dolly Parton Christmas songs on repeat. I now know all of the worlds to "Christmas to Remember" (I do quite like the "we'll make this"/"springtime bliss" and "Christmas to remember"/"in the middle of December" double-rhyme, though) and "Hardy Candy Christmas" (excuse me if these aren't the accurate titles--they are merely educated guesses based on learning all of the lyrics) which I'm pretty sure is just a breakup song and not actually about Christmas.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Ghetto Safari and Other Adventures
Hello from Nairobi, Kenya.
I like it a lot more than I did when I visited for a day last year.
It really is spectacular that as I drove away from the airport I could see giraffes grazing just off the highway in Nairobi National Park.
My last few days in Rwanda were just gorgeous. Friday I recorded the rap as planned, and played a jeopardy-style game with the students to assess what they had learned. After the class, I gave them all little gifts (mostly bubbles and hairclips) and a few of the girls (my favorites--i'll admit it) gave me a present! I almost cried! They gave me a little plastic ring with a red stone. It was the sweetest thing in the world! As we left the "classroom" behind the FVA office, the girls invited me to go back to their school (Remera Catholique) with them for dance practice. Obviously I went. I don't think I've ever enjoyed walking to Kimironko so much in my life. I walked with a group of 15 teenage girls who swarmed around me and urged me to speak Kinyarwanda and dance with them. Other pedestrians just watched us and laughed. I couldn't have had more fun if I had tried. Dance practice was lovely. They rehearsed the traditional welcome dance for me, and integrated me into the song. After, the did "plays," which is basically an improv exercise that they perform for each other. Most of the plays had to do with a cute girl and a boy checking out her butt. Then they got together and collected pocket change for association, just as the PLWHA Association I worked with in Kanombe does. It was so sweet. They played association! It's like if we played labor union in high school.
So, I promised tale of a ghetto safari, and here it is: Rwanda has one real safari park, though it's nothing to speak of in terms of the rest of the continent. Akagera National Park is only about two hours outside of Kigali though, and relatively cheap, so it sounded like a great deal! All of the volunteers who were around this weekend (me, Rachel, Jamie and Thanh) decided to wake up at 3:30 am and go on safari. Hijink number one: the drawstring of my sweatpants broke and instead I wore flowery leggings on safari. (I thought it looked quite "smart," as they say in Rwanda.) Hijink number two (the most major of all the hijinks): we decided to rent a taxi to take us on safari, and Rachel was charged with finding a taxi driver outside of Ndoli's, a local shop. We managed to snag the worst taxi in Rwanda. The driver, Alphonse, was a sweet guy, but he was a very bad negotiator; Rachel brought him down from 60,000 rwf for the day to 37,000 with very little effort. He also forgot to pick us up, and Rachel called him and wound up speaking to his girlfriend to remind him to come get us at 4:30 in the morning. The taxi's windshield had two large webbed cracks, the left mirror had fallen off--not the whole mirror apparatus, mind you, but just the mirror itself. The mechanics beneath the mirror were still in place. Rachel later discovered a hole covered by a pillow behind the backseat. The trunk had a hole in it somewhere, and everything we brought was therefore covered in red dust. The car was half-gone before we got to the park, and we quickly realized that our safari would probably be its death knell. We did manage to see a number of giraffes, zebras, impalas, other antelopes whose name I don't recall, vervet monkeys, olive baboons, buffalo and hippos, incredibly, without trekking very deep into the park. The poor, decrepit taxi was a trooper on the off-roading, though, and managed to survive at least the drive home. Every other group on safari was, of course, in a massive 4X4. When we stopped for our picnic lunch (peanut butter sandwiches, peanuts, a few cheddar pringles and some rank cookies) we attempted to befriend some of the other safari-ists in the hopes that they would take pity and invite us into their massive cars. It didn't work.
My last day in Kigali was immense. I visited the Centre Sante for lunch with Zena and the other nurses, then bought a mattress for one of the Association women, strapped it onto my back with twine, and hopped on a moto to Kanombe. I really thought that I would fall off, but hoped that the mattress would at least catch my fall. I survived, incredibly. My favorite Association member, Paul, met me and we walked to the woman's house to bring her the mattress. After I gave it to her, I gave her son my kazoo. They were really excited by the kazoo, and fairly complacent about the mattress. I wound up staying there for about an hour and helping her shell beans. Then I met Zena at the Centre Sante again, because she told me she wanted to take me out on the town. We had dinner in Union Trade Center and then I met her younger brother, who lives with her and kind of takes care of her. She has had a couple of operations, and is due for another in January, and he looks after her. He is a wonderful man. We had a long talk after Zena went home, and he even invited me to go with the whole family to Gisenyi the next time I go to Rwanda.
I have been so lucky to meet such incredible people on this trip. Rwanda is the most beautiful place I have ever been in terms of landscape and physical beauty, but it also contains some of the most warm and wonderful people I have ever had the pleasure to meet. I can't wait to go back to Rwanda!
But in the mean time, I will make the most of this week in Kenya. I have the whole day in Nairobi tomorrow, then at 6 I take the overnight train to Mombasa! I can't wait. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but the train passes through Tsavo National Park (where the infamous man-eating lions once lived) and I think another game park as well!
I like it a lot more than I did when I visited for a day last year.
It really is spectacular that as I drove away from the airport I could see giraffes grazing just off the highway in Nairobi National Park.
My last few days in Rwanda were just gorgeous. Friday I recorded the rap as planned, and played a jeopardy-style game with the students to assess what they had learned. After the class, I gave them all little gifts (mostly bubbles and hairclips) and a few of the girls (my favorites--i'll admit it) gave me a present! I almost cried! They gave me a little plastic ring with a red stone. It was the sweetest thing in the world! As we left the "classroom" behind the FVA office, the girls invited me to go back to their school (Remera Catholique) with them for dance practice. Obviously I went. I don't think I've ever enjoyed walking to Kimironko so much in my life. I walked with a group of 15 teenage girls who swarmed around me and urged me to speak Kinyarwanda and dance with them. Other pedestrians just watched us and laughed. I couldn't have had more fun if I had tried. Dance practice was lovely. They rehearsed the traditional welcome dance for me, and integrated me into the song. After, the did "plays," which is basically an improv exercise that they perform for each other. Most of the plays had to do with a cute girl and a boy checking out her butt. Then they got together and collected pocket change for association, just as the PLWHA Association I worked with in Kanombe does. It was so sweet. They played association! It's like if we played labor union in high school.
So, I promised tale of a ghetto safari, and here it is: Rwanda has one real safari park, though it's nothing to speak of in terms of the rest of the continent. Akagera National Park is only about two hours outside of Kigali though, and relatively cheap, so it sounded like a great deal! All of the volunteers who were around this weekend (me, Rachel, Jamie and Thanh) decided to wake up at 3:30 am and go on safari. Hijink number one: the drawstring of my sweatpants broke and instead I wore flowery leggings on safari. (I thought it looked quite "smart," as they say in Rwanda.) Hijink number two (the most major of all the hijinks): we decided to rent a taxi to take us on safari, and Rachel was charged with finding a taxi driver outside of Ndoli's, a local shop. We managed to snag the worst taxi in Rwanda. The driver, Alphonse, was a sweet guy, but he was a very bad negotiator; Rachel brought him down from 60,000 rwf for the day to 37,000 with very little effort. He also forgot to pick us up, and Rachel called him and wound up speaking to his girlfriend to remind him to come get us at 4:30 in the morning. The taxi's windshield had two large webbed cracks, the left mirror had fallen off--not the whole mirror apparatus, mind you, but just the mirror itself. The mechanics beneath the mirror were still in place. Rachel later discovered a hole covered by a pillow behind the backseat. The trunk had a hole in it somewhere, and everything we brought was therefore covered in red dust. The car was half-gone before we got to the park, and we quickly realized that our safari would probably be its death knell. We did manage to see a number of giraffes, zebras, impalas, other antelopes whose name I don't recall, vervet monkeys, olive baboons, buffalo and hippos, incredibly, without trekking very deep into the park. The poor, decrepit taxi was a trooper on the off-roading, though, and managed to survive at least the drive home. Every other group on safari was, of course, in a massive 4X4. When we stopped for our picnic lunch (peanut butter sandwiches, peanuts, a few cheddar pringles and some rank cookies) we attempted to befriend some of the other safari-ists in the hopes that they would take pity and invite us into their massive cars. It didn't work.
My last day in Kigali was immense. I visited the Centre Sante for lunch with Zena and the other nurses, then bought a mattress for one of the Association women, strapped it onto my back with twine, and hopped on a moto to Kanombe. I really thought that I would fall off, but hoped that the mattress would at least catch my fall. I survived, incredibly. My favorite Association member, Paul, met me and we walked to the woman's house to bring her the mattress. After I gave it to her, I gave her son my kazoo. They were really excited by the kazoo, and fairly complacent about the mattress. I wound up staying there for about an hour and helping her shell beans. Then I met Zena at the Centre Sante again, because she told me she wanted to take me out on the town. We had dinner in Union Trade Center and then I met her younger brother, who lives with her and kind of takes care of her. She has had a couple of operations, and is due for another in January, and he looks after her. He is a wonderful man. We had a long talk after Zena went home, and he even invited me to go with the whole family to Gisenyi the next time I go to Rwanda.
I have been so lucky to meet such incredible people on this trip. Rwanda is the most beautiful place I have ever been in terms of landscape and physical beauty, but it also contains some of the most warm and wonderful people I have ever had the pleasure to meet. I can't wait to go back to Rwanda!
But in the mean time, I will make the most of this week in Kenya. I have the whole day in Nairobi tomorrow, then at 6 I take the overnight train to Mombasa! I can't wait. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but the train passes through Tsavo National Park (where the infamous man-eating lions once lived) and I think another game park as well!
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