New Year’s Eve in Marsabit, with Wingman and Bear

Defeated, Going Back South

Moyale: The Border Town From Hell

moyale kenya is ugly. not only is it ugly, but it’s really boring. not only is it ugly and boring but the food tastes like crap. not only is it ugly and boring and the food bad, but also it wasn’t at all where we wanted to be, but we were stuck there for three days. we didn’t have a visa for ethiopia and the ethiopian state doesn’t let you buy a visa at the border, doesn’t respond to or accept any pressure from consulates or any possible higher authorities, and the border guards seem almost glad to send people away, 36 hours by cargo truck back down to nairobi…

after days of trying every possible option we could think of, fair and foul, to get into ethiopia (some of which was hilarious and other parts that were just either insane or sad) we finally gave up. here mohamed and i are sitting sipping our horrible tasting camel-milk tea, and our faces show clearly our exhaustion and frustration and sense of defeat…

furthermore, by moyale i realized that i was sick of kenya and the racial/ethnic climate there. these are some notes about it from my journal:

and I am a “mzungu” here.

white man, foreigner, outsider.

parents hold their infants up over their heads,

saying,

“look, it’s a mzungu.”

old enough to speak for themselves,

kids come running up to me shouting it,

or make a song of it:

“how are you mzungu?! how are you mzungu?!”

what can i say about this place?

why do I expect to be welcome here?

and if I am welcome, why should i be seen as less or more than a mzungu?

just two years ago, kikuyus killed luos by the thousands,

and vice versa.

each saw the other as a type of outsider,

mzungu.

and i, mzungu for sure,

would say that kenyans killed kenyans,

and it was horrible.

but what do i know?

Through the Desert By Cargo Truck

Nairobi

nairobi is hectic, and almost reminds me of an apocolyptic city, so full of dirt roads and grey buildings and so on, and people constantly moving everywhere. i couldn’t ever love it, but there were some good things about it, like the fact that it’s legitimately a “24 hour” city, has way less desperation than south africa, or at least less of a glaring difference between rich and poor, and there’s a really lively culture of public transport, which is hard to describe or believe…

in nairobi we stayed with david (from couchsurfing) and his girlfriend and friends. they were incredibly sweet to us.

this is david’s neighborhood:

david’s friend desmond calls the neighborhood “semi-poor.” then he explains to me what it means to be “semi-poor.”

he says,

“semi-poor means we will never go up,

but can slide down at any time…”

in a “semi-poor” slum in nairobi

the little “luxuries” of daily life

become clear through their absence.

no mosquito net to keep malaria away,

no fan to reduce the heat,

no spices to improve the taste of food cooked on a propane stove,

with water carried up six flights of stairs

because the running water hasn’t been working recently,

“since seven years.”

and in a whole apartment building, housing hundreds of families

there appear to be no windows at all.

“there are windows on one wall”

i’m reassured.

but this is david’s dream home:

all of david’s friends were excited to greet us and cooked us a tasty meal. it was an unusual and unusually pleasant thing to do on christmas night…

mohamed was acting silly as usual…

and wanted to take khat, a local herb/drug that helps keep you awake for many hours, but not for mo…

getting ready for our ethiopia journey, we took david to eat ethiopian food in the ethiopian neighborhood of nairobi. we all loved it…

on the way back to cape town, a couple weeks later, we stayed with another couchsurfer, carol, who was also incredibly hospitable, and also staying at the house was a funny and intelligent irish guy named simon, who spent some time wandering the city with us, and helped us find a hot shower after days in a flat with no running water…

With the Panthers in Africa

Zanzibar: Stonetown

Zanzibar: Another day in paradise?

Dar Es Salaam

Into Africa…

I’m off today for east Africa. According to most South Africans (and they’re probably basically right, in a funny way) “Africa” begins north of the South African border. So, I guess this will be sort of like my first real immersion into “Africa.”

I fly with Mohamed to Dar es Salaam. From there we go to meet Libby on the island of Zanzibar (she is two weeks ahead of us). We will travel up through Tanzania and Kenya to Ethiopia, before flying home again around the 11th of January.

There are only two known fixed points: The United African Alliance Community Center (just outside Arusha, Tanzania, started and maintained still by a couple from the Black Panther Party in Kansas City, living in exile in Africa since 1970) and a guided hike through the mountainous terrain of Ethiopia

Wish us well…

Updates will come here as internet access allows…