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

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…

Hiking and Biking: Mohamed & I Near Simonstown

After studying the map a bit, Mohamed and I decided on a funky little hike, starting from Glencairn train station (which is one north of the last stop, Simonstown). Turns out the area we walked through is a strange quasi-military, quasi-petro-chemical area, and a couple hundred meters up there’s this funky little valley neighborhood, which almost looks like it’s in a crater, because it’s surrounded by mountain on all sides. Here’s their neighborhood park:

The neighborhood gives way to a section of national park, which is relatively small and flat, but a nice walk nonetheless. I loved this solitary tree in the distance:

Then, once we were back on the paved round, I decided, characteristically, that it might be fun to go off of the paved road and any clear path. It looked like it might be a faster way down to Simonstown, also. Turns out it was quite a mess of a scramble, in really fierce winds:

Fortunately, after about 30 minutes of wacky scrambling, we stumbled upon this amazing old cannon, which was a ton of fun to play around on and under (and then we were also back to the paved road, which was also a relief):

* by the way, the top picture was taken with the thought in mind that there really ought to be a photograph taken of mohamed that is good enough to please his future wife…

Mohamed Comes to Cape Town (By Way of ‘Europe’)

Mohamed lives in Johannesburg now. It was stretching the rules a bit to take him to the “Europe” space atop Signal Hill, which is usually reserved only for moments when people are either headed towards or arriving from Europe, the continent. Nonetheless, we decided that even though Mohamed had been in South Africa for a couple of months, it was still his first time in Cape Town, and before coming to South Africa, he had been living in Europe. Anyway, we had a nice time at “europe…”

The Worst City in the World: A Grand Finale (Mugging)

On our second to last day in Jo’Burg, libby and i decided to ditch our car and ride the train into downtown Johannesburg. Everyone had said that the downtown area was really dangerous and that the trains weren’t safe, but we won’t to try and prove them wrong, and to let the speed and the density of the city revive our sense of hope.

It worked for a while. We had a blast on the train, and stepped out into downtown feeling really optimistic. We took in all the small vendors and the people moving about with a sense of wonder and appreciation. We knew that the inner city had been completely abandoned by white people since the end of fascist “influx controls,” but it felt refreshing to be in a space that was both totally African and also very very alive.

We made our way to a beautiful little park, that was full of life. We strolled along, and talked at length about how much we enjoyed the atmosphere. We sat down and took two photographs, one of this amazing huge chess set and the people playing and spectating, and one of a father and his children:

Five minutes later, we left the park, and starting walking along a small street, with much less people on it. After less than half a block of walking, we were surrounded by six guys, who grabbed at us, pushed us against the wall, and demanded that we give them everything we had. I told the man I was going to give him some money, so he backed off and let me slowly hand him a small bit of cash. Meanwhile, three guys were yanking at Libby’s purse and eventually ripped it off of her as she screamed for them to not take her passport. Then, they ran off, back into the park we had just been loving. We ran behind them, screaming for help, but there were no police nearby and no citizens seemed willing to help at all. Three guys came up to us after a few minutes and told us that they wanted to help us, and that we should follow them back into the park. But yet another man told us that these three were scam artists, too, and out to hurt us, so we made our way quickly back towards the train station.

The muggers didn’t hurt us, took only a bit of cash from me, and libby’s purse (which had many valuables – phone, ipod, etc. and most notably all forms of ID and our rental car key, which cost us R1500 to replace) but the bureaucratic details of restoring one’s identification and bank cards, as well as the more gnawing sense of living in a distasteful society, a distrustful, and even hateful society, lingers still…

The Worst City in the World: Monuments #2 (Overly-Optimistic Anti-Apartheid Symbolism)

On a nearby hill, the new government is constructing a “freedom park,” which is meant to serve as a symbolic explanation of the nature of the new state, in the same way that the Voortrekker insanity symbolized afrikaner nationalism. Mohamed called freedom park a “monument to everyone in South African that died violently.” It did seem that way a bit, as virtually everyone, on both sides of every war since colonization (and even internal wars between different indigenous nations) were included and memorialized. The message being conveyed (only partially believably) is of a diverse and unified South African nation that is looking to reconcile itself to its past. On a third hill, nearby, lies the presidential estate, so we were repeatedly told by our tour guide that the freedom park is bridging the new government and the old in a peaceful harmony. Strange.

anyway, we were carted around and shown the place. The metal “reed” garden is also the place where speeches and concerts and such are held:

Another section of freedom park is a place for spiritual ritual and prayer. There are nine stones, each donated from the different provincial governments of the new country:

There is also, weirdly, a place for dignitaries and “royalty” to sleep and have meetings when they’re in town:

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any photographs of the huge series of walls with names carved in it to commemorate those who died in the wars. It is a hugely controversial part of the freedom park construction process, and new names are constantly being added or removed. One group that is *not* included on the wall are white conscripts in the apartheid military. Apparently they’re pissed for not being recognized for their “contribution” to the new South Africa. They’ve even apparently built a little shit-eating counter-monument across the street from freedom park (but we couldn’t find it). Considering the fact that the soldiers’ “contribution” to the new South Africa was to try to stop it from coming to life through violence, I don’t mind that they’re not being memorialized.