Thursday, December 31, 2009

The View From 12 Days Away

Today was my last day of work.

You know how when you're a kid, waiting for Christmas or your birthday or whatever to come is absolute torture? And when it finally does come, no matter how awesome it is and how much icecream cake you eat, you're always left feeling just a little let down? Well, today was nothing like that. Leaving my office at five o'clock with no plans to return feels like what I'd been waiting my whole life to do. The walk home was one big choreographed dance party.



(Full disclosure: I left at 2, took the bus and didn't technically see any animated birds,
but everything else you see here is
a pretty accurate depiction of my experience.)


I was thinking about writing a post about all the things I am thankful for regarding this job, lessons I have learned over the past 16 months toiling in an office, pretending to be genuinely thrilled by the very act of showing up to work in pantyhose every day. But then I remembered who I am (a cynical ex-office worker) and that plan clearly went up in smoke.

Then I began writing a list of petty, small annoyances about this place that I won’t miss (the sound of the photocopier jamming, the awkward elevator rides, the curt tone of one person in particular) but then I decided to live and let live. It's over. And no matter how much I want to pour bleach in the coffee maker or pay tribute to the Office Space printer smash scene, I've decided to keep my dignity intact. I am moving on and up and all of those platitudes.

I am going to Africa. Holy [long chain of expletives redacted for the protection of innocent eyes and ears everywhere]. It's been in the works for months (years?) and with just twelve days to go, my mind is beginning to panic. In a good way -- I am positively panicking. The Africa that has eluded me for so long is finally within striking distance and I could not be happier.

It is often suggested (by people more poetic than I) that Africa gets under your skin and into your blood. Which is to say that once infected (choice words, my dear) with the beauty of the land and the affection of its people, it is difficult to distance yourself from it -- literally or figratively.

Although this trip will be my first experience of Africa, already I am enraptured by this amazing and utterly unique continent. The excitement, the uncertainty, the element of risk -- it fascinates me. It represents so much freedom from the conformity and monotony of life as I know it. It represents freedom from plodding to work in the drizzling rain to sit around and watch the time tick by, day after day after day after day.

But I must remind myself that I am romanticizing it too much. At the mere mention of Africa, my eyes brighten, then glaze over as I look longingly into the distance (invariably east), thinking only of sweeping savannas and uninterrupted blue skies. Worried voices mention something about corruption, violence, disease, but I need look no further than photos of African children laughing and chasing cars, to convince myself that they have been deceived, that this is a wonderful, euphoric place. At my core, I know that their concern is warranted -- there is greed and suffering and poverty here too, just as there is anywhere in the world.

I've been thinking a lot about what I want from this trip, a justification for a year's worth of obsessive budgeting and planning and eager anticipation. Do I want an "authentic" African experience? What does that even mean? Is it the life experience of a typical black African, something I could never have, something I wouldn't even want if I could? I suppose that is about as authentic as you can get: a rather miserable experience that international aid organizations, doctors, politicians and volunteers are working hard and spending billions of dollars annually to improve.

Whether it's what I want or not, it's not something I'll ever get. The closest I'll get is an experience manufactured to keep me within a safe viewing distance of the authenticity I'm after. Because I'm white. Because I can afford bottled water, and malaria tablets, and a flight out of there when things turn ugly. Like it or not, mzungu, you've got it made.

We are all visitors, whether we're there for three weeks or three generations, and we're all asking ourselves whether we're doing the right thing, or the wrong thing, or the right thing in the wrong way, and finally we settle -- albeit uncomfortably -- on "our intentions are good". We mean well, and though it might not always seem like enough, it's all we can do.

In the end, I know that we will return home affected -- changed by what we've seen, struggling to describe our experiences to ourselves and to others. Right now, I tell people that I am travelling to Africa to experience it -- to run with shoeless children, to bear witness to incomprehensible poverty and injustice, to hear the stories that break hearts and then heal them. But I know that it won't take long for me to want to change it. And bleak and preemptive as it may be, I think that the ultimate discovery of this trip might be that I cannot change very much.

But who knows what we'll see, and what sense (if any) we'll make of it. These are just thoughts rattling around in my skull as I try to anticipate the upcoming changes in my circumstances and perspective. For now I'm happy to be officially unemployed and about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. Tomorrow (figuratively, for now) is another country.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Merry Christmas from the Both of Us


(Maggie would also like to express a rather sullen holiday greeting)

Having just had my first Skype conversation (with my mother in the next room), I feel compelled to take a moment to write a word of gratitude to the Internet. Are you there Internet? It's me, having my mind continuously blown by your greatness.

Thanks to the magic and wonder of the Internet, I can post words and images here, and within minutes have them read by faraway friends and family, some of whom I haven't seen since I was *this big*, some of whom sent me incredibly generous donations to my travel fund, some of whom I hardly know or have never even met. Thank you for your interest and support; it means the world to us.

So wherever you are, and whatever you're doing, happy holidays and we look forward to sharing our journey with you in the very, very -- 18 days very -- new future.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Fear and Loathing

Moments ago, I opened up my Internet Explorer browser to see this feature story on the Globe and Mail website: Canadian Couple Attacked in South African Nature Reserve. And then I scrolled down and read a about the 737 that overshot the runway in Jamaica, jostling and bloodying passengers before skidding to a halt, metres from the Carribean Sea. "This does not bode well," I said to my co-worker.

My first thought was something along the lines of "Oh god, more fodder for the fire, I'm going to spend the holidays futilely talking my way out of the 'Africa is dangerous' spiel." But once I'd finished rolling my eyes at what I tend to dismiss as Westernized sensationalism, I decided to see what the South African papers were saying about the story. As it turns out, in the Mail and Guardian – a paper that dedicates an entire section to "Crime" – there was not a single mention of the story. Why? Because stuff like this happens all the time. As it turns out, the helicopter that airlifted the Canadians to hospital was diverted from an area just outside of the reserve, where it was attempting to airlift another body.

And then (because I'm a masochist) I decided to read the comments and reactions of the readers. There was the usual idiocy of people praising Apartheid and people suggesting that the victims could have defended themselves had they been properly armed, but there were also a few that I feel bear repeating. Comments which I don't entirely agree with, but which for one reason or another struck a chord with me as this whole 6 months in Africa thing becomes increasingly tangible.

"Let's face it -- this isn't a "one-off" attack. Caucasians in South Africa have been targeted as part of a "reverse-apartheid" for years, and if you're not obviously African, in my opinion, you should not go -- there are many safer, beautiful places to visit. It's not worth risking your life over."

"This is one of the reasons I left SA to come and live in Canada, and why I will not return with my family until the SA government gets tough on crime and Mugabe-- the risks of traveling there are very real and very high (we had our car broken into the first night that we were in Cape Town several years ago, and on the same trip my wife was accosted on a train)."

"Is there no hope and future for that continent? The birth place of homo sapian seems to be rushing into utter chaos and anarchy. A shiver goes down my spine if Africa is only a preview for the rest of the worlds future."

I am not dissuaded and I'm not afraid, but I am sobered. "The risks of travelling [to Africa] are very real and very high" and that is something that I need to be reminded of. I am going to encounter people there who are well-versed in xenophobia, people who despise me for my skin colour, my gender, my affluence. I am going to encounter people there who have nothing, people who are desperate. Despite what I may have said in the past, this is not the same as travelling to Europe or Australia. This is travelling to a place where women are more likely to be raped than learn how to read. This is a place where you can be killed for your camera, your cell phone, those fake pearl earrings that cost you $8 at Claire's. This is not the same thing.

"Why Africa?" It's still a question I get asked a lot, and while once I fumbled my words - landscapes, people, animals? - now I am constantly improving my answer, responding with a conviction I once lacked. I am going to Africa because I strongly oppose the fear of difference that has seized societies worldwide, from the right-wing evangelicals in North America, who make their life's work the denial of gay rights, to the autocratic regimes of leaders like Mugabe, who systematically rape women to maintain a hegemonic rule that is destroying Zimbabwe.

I think that a lot of the problems in our world stem from fear - fear of change, fear of difference, fear of losing the ability to define one's country, religion, self. When you travel, you become more exposed to the world; and when you are more exposed to the world, you understand it a little better than you did before; and when you understand it better, you fear it less. To realize that, sometimes you have to put yourself in uncomfortable, perhaps even dangerous situations. Certain experiences are worth the risk; I'm inclined to think that this is one of them.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Oreo Cookies and the African Disposition

*Alanna and I have got under a month left here on planet Normal Life, so I figured it was about time I showed my e-face on what has been up to this point a single-user (though lovely) weblog. As Alanna has been doing a great job of writing about things that actually exist (i.e. real information, facts, maps and graphs and numbers etc.) I've figured it's up to me to write about things that don't exist (i.e. half-baked theories, things that may well be very incorrect, etc). So here goes:

Early in our Africa-related internet-perusals Alanna and I came across this video of a man conducting Kiswahili lessons via youtube:

Basically, it's a man standing in the middle of his wife's kitchen, plucking up objects seemingly at random and naming them in Kiswahili – the catch being that the majority of the objects in his kitchen he proclaims as having "no Swahili word." He also complains about his kids leaving globes everywhere ("what are these things doing here, in the cooking place?"), and at the end pulls out a giant yellow sign to plug his travel website, which he calls "Kenya's official website."

Anyways, Alanna and I found the video pretty funny. I've tried describing it to a few people but it doesn't really translate, so to speak. But in doing so I got to thinking about why exactly I found it funny, and got to worrying that the humour I saw in the video comes from a place of condescension or even benign racism. Alanna and I talked about it and I decided that this isn't true, because for the same reasons I find Mr. Mutooni to be funny, I also find him to be awesome. He's awesome in a way that (to generalize and over-simplify) I've noticed many Africans to be, and in a way that as a Canadian I find enviable.

For me, the humour in the video stems from its amateurishness, and Mr. Mutooni's lackadaisical attitude towards presenting himself on video: he is somewhat unprepared, the kitchen is cluttered, and the camera-person (I'm assuming his wife) endlessly fidgets with the camera (and whispers "peanut butter" when Mr. Mutooni can't remember the name of the jar he's holding – hilarious!). And you'd think that, when conducting a Kiswahili language lesson about kitchen objects, one would make sure the objects that one picked up would, y'know, actually have Kiswahili names.

But that's what makes him so great! If it were a typical North American conducting a similar lesson, he would have adopted a phony on-camera persona, maybe cleaned up, rehearsed, and basically tried to make himself seem cooler, and therefore different, from the person he actually is. And through one of the great Paradoxes of Youtube, the video would have been dull, not to mention I wouldn't have remembered a single new word (as I did with Mr. Mutooni's video: kisu! Knife!).

Though Mr. Mutooni is not typical: perusing his other videos we learn he's a smart, opinionated man who is obviously passionate about his culture, language, and the promotion of Africa and Kenya as tourist destinations (though I'm pretty sure he lives in New Jersey, I'm not sure what is up with that). And it is Mr. Mutooni's lack of need to put up any fronts, to depict anything to the world other than his true self, which I find admirable. Lately there has been a focus in North American culture on personal branding, and in the most superficial of meanings, what with Twitter and iPhone and all the requisites. Yet I seem to find such great examples of people of the African Continent being so comfortable and confident in their own identity, regardless of how others may see them. And it is funny, a lot of the time: dudes doing quasi-traditional dance in front of a giant suburban hedge to a Soulja Boy parody, for example. But it is also fantastic, because there's no whispers of 'trying too hard', or being 'ironic' – it's just untainted pride and fun, which I feel is tougher to achieve in this 'western' world of ours.

Not to mention it's strangely comforting, being Kenya-bound myself, knowing that out of an entire kitchen, the Swahili only have words for about six things. If I've got a hankering for broccoli, all I'll need to say is "broccoli," and that is a huge load off my shoulders.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Addendum

Remember a while back when I wrote this post about why Africa is the way it is? And about how part of that has to do with its treatment by the media? And how I had that distorted map illustrating news coverage by continent?

Well, today I found something even better.

(via)

My love for graphs like this one almost makes me happy that the sociology department now requires me to take a course in quantitative analysis. Almost.

According to this researcher, "*Unhappy thoughts means some combination of foreign aid, immigration and refugees, civil war and guerrilla warfare, terrorism, 'war crimes, genocide or crimes against humanity' (all one category), famine, drought, or AIDS." Also, "Over the whole period, this collection of negative topics averaged 28% of total articles on the continent."

I wish our news would stop filling our heads with these unhappy thoughts. I wish I could tell someone I'm going to Africa, and have them say, "Wow! You're going to have so much fun!" and not, "Wow! You're going to get yourself killed!" But I have my doubts that the New York Times is ever going to create a tag called Happy Thoughts. People just wouldn't take them seriously.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

It's All About the Benjamins, Baby: Take Three

Part Three: In which you suddenly have $12,000 in your bank account and are about to set off on a life-changing adventure

This is the part where I channel my inner Jillian Michaels and tell you that “I know this isn’t easy, but if I’m going to make big promises to you, I’ve got to give you a [financial formula] that’s going to deliver the results that you want and deserve” (pretty good, hey? I swear I’ve got that whole work-out memorized). Basically, saving money is just like working toward any other goal. You want to get fit? You jump around with Jillian Michaels for half an hour every day. You want to get good grades? You spend your weeknights holed up in the library. You want to save money and travel the world? You follow this guide and I promise, you will.

Money is not some big, scary thing that is by nature out of your control. In fact, money is one of the few things in life over which you have almost complete control. I don’t understand people who are so afraid of seeing their account balance, that they crumple up their ATM receipts and lament the day their statement comes in the mail. Sure, we all succumb to impulsive, frivolous spending every now and then, and there’s definitely a sort of sting that comes with dealing with the aftermath in the form of a Visa bill, but to actually be afraid of a number? It’s absurd. Get to know those numbers - the more conscious of them you are of them, the more they seem to grow.

The message is simple: anyone can do this. Yes, Scott and I were fortunate in that we had supportive families and decent(ish) jobs, but it is my belief that long term travel is well within anyone’s reach. All it takes is determination and a willingness to make a few short-term sacrifices. Before you know it, you too will have $12,000 in the bank and be jetting off to an exotic locale, whilst your unenlightened co-workers continue to toil at their desk jobs, bemoaning their dismal finances, feeding their addictions to caffeine and shoes.

Plus, saving for travel is just so much more fun than saving for the standard stuff like a new computer or car or a down payment on a townhouse. Life should be about the experiences, not the stuff, that you have. Learn to put that philosophy into practice, and just about everything becomes a whole lot more enjoyable.

That’s about all the motivational Jillian Michaels speak I can conjure up at the moment, but rest assured that I’ll keep you posted on how we handle our funds on the road (something I’m more than a little anxious about) and whether or not all this scrimping and saving turns out to actually be worth it (anyone care to speculate?) Thanks for tuning in, I’ve had an unusually good time writing this, and may have just discovered my true calling as a financial advisor.

Ha. Ha.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

It's All About the Benjamins, Baby: Take Two

Part Two: In which you are horrified by how much your latte habit is costing you

Welcome to the second installment of How to Save Money and Travel the World, with your host and financial expert, Alanna Hardinge-Rooney. In our last episode, I showed you how to create a realistic and precise budget for your future travels. Today, I will show you how, with a little practice, patience and potting soil, you can grow money on trees!

If only. In reality, when it comes to saving your cash, there ain’t no such thing as a get rich quick scheme or easy money – just hard work and determination. Look at what you’re spending your money on now, perhaps even track your finances for a couple weeks, and see what you can do without. Chances are, you’ll be surprised by how excessive your lifestyle has become, and how easy it is to cut back on things you’re better off without.

Tip number one: get cookin’. As a downtown cube dweller, I developed an unfortunate taste for bought lunches. This is fine if those lunches are going on the company credit card, but if you’re footing the bill, this habit has got to stop. Even seven bucks once or twice a week adds up to $50 a month – two days of traveling in Africa. Find recipes that appeal to you, make a shopping list, and go buy a week’s worth of food. Make large portions so that you can bring left-overs as lunches, eliminating the need to pop out for an overpriced sandwich or salad. At the supermarket, try to save anywhere you can – go for the generic brand, buy in bulk, pay attention to what’s on sale – but don’t buy food that doesn’t excite you. No matter how focused on the prize you are, no one can sustain themselves on oatmeal, Kimchi and K.D. for eight months without losing it.

No coffee. This doesn’t really apply to Scott or I, but from observing others, I’ve learned that the Starbucks addiction is an affliction of many. At our office, endless tea and coffee is provided for free, and most people still make frequent coffee runs downstairs (returning with disposable paper cups – oh, the horror!) This is total madness. You might as well be throwing your money in a landfill. If you really can’t live without your grande extra-hot no-whip soy caramel macchiato, treat yourself to one every now and then, but certainly not everyday and for goodness’ sake, bring your own mug!

Shopping. Working downtown, I have developed a new appreciation/abhorrence for consumer culture. People congratulate one another when they purchase things. Things they don’t need. Things that waste money, support exploitation, harm the environment. You do not need those shoes. You do not need that handbag. You do not need those Rock & Republic jeans, that Benefit lip gloss, that gaudy Juicy Couture charm bracelet. When you’re hiking Mount Meru, you’ll laugh to yourself how ridiculous you were, how little any of that matters. If you really can’t keep your debit card in your wallet for more than a few days, hit up your local thrift store, or head for an outdoor store, where you’ll find some stuff you can actually use on the road.

Entertainment. Prepare for your social life to take a bit of a hit. Seven dollar pints at the bar is just not economical. Restaurant are out of the question. Even an $8 movie on a rainy Sunday afternoon is one night’s accommodation up in smoke. What to do? Invite people over, host a potluck, play board games, have a dance party in your living room. Take this time to do some of those projects you’ve been putting off, pick up a new hobby, learn a new language. Go to the library. Seriously – if you’re anything like me, the library will keep you entertained indefinitely. Read some historical fiction, memoirs, journalism from the areas you’ll be visiting. Check out some guidebooks, look at their map collection, plan your route. Rent movies – for free! I cannot endorse the library enough, and though the prospect might not excite you now, replacing your bar nights with staying in to read, will save you hundreds, nay thousands of dollars.

Your place and your stuff. What are you going to do with it? Keep it or let it go? Unless you’ve got an amazing apartment with impossibly low rent, I say let it go. Pocket your damage deposit, sell your lumpy couch and unsightly shelving unit, and purge your closet of things you never wear. Inevitably some things will remain: a box of winter clothes you won’t be needing for a while (hooray!), a mattress, a stereo, a few kitchen appliances. Unless you really have no other option, do not rent a storage space. Ask your parents to store it, see if your friends will baby sit your house plants or CD collection. This will save you money – like, $500 or so – so it’s worth seeking out all your options, even if it means that you’re stuff ends up strewn all over the city (or in our case, two different land masses!)

There are a million ways to save your money. The main thing is figuring out where you can cut costs and sticking to your budget. I guarantee that once you’ve started saving, and seeing what opting out of things like salon dye-jobs and Starbucks lattes does for your account balance, living on the cheap almost becomes a fun competition with yourself to see how much you can save. Not to mention the added benefit of knowing you’re doing something good for the planet and society. Minimalism for the win!

Thursday, November 26, 2009

It’s All about the Benjamins, Baby: A Money-saving Odyssey in Three Parts

Alternately titled: Alanna Fancies Herself a Financial Expert

When it comes to frequently asked questions (besides that which has already been discussed), the thing that most people want to know about our trip is how can we afford it? Did a wealthy great aunt bequeath her estate to us? Did we set up a meth lab in our apartment? Did we invest our savings in Google and Whole Foods?

No, no, no, and it wasn’t gambling or a gift from God, either. The truth is much simpler: we got jobs and we saved. We decided to do something and we did it.

On paper, it doesn’t really add up. Our pay cheques are really quite paltry, the cost of living in this city is insane, and one of us just wrapped up four years of university that certainly wasn’t cheap. And yet, we’ve managed. We have more money in the bank than ever before, and we still treat ourselves to things like fancy cheeses and a bottle of (cheap, Chilean) wine more than we probably should.

The funny thing is, almost without exception, the people who ask us how we can afford it make far more money than we do, yet they are seemingly baffled by the perceived costs of a trip such as ours. This leads me to believe that there is a misconception about the costs of international travel. Sure, you could easily blow our six month budget on a six week (or even six day) African safari, spending your days tracking wildlife on private reserves and your nights in five star resorts and lodges, but you don’t have to. There are other options. Not all travel is prohibitively expensive.

A lot of travel blogs I’ve come across go into great detail about their budgets – what they estimate the costs of their trip will be, covering everything from airfares to camping equipment to immunizations. While this is absolutely fascinating for people who love crunching numbers and scrolling through Excel spreadsheets (i.e. accountants), it didn’t really do a whole lot for me. I haven’t spent a lot of time researching the cost of a bowl of mealie pap in Umtata or the cost of a dorm bed in Mwanza, nor do I think that that sort of precision is necessary, or particularly helpful to those in the process of drafting travel budgets.

I do, however, see the value in sharing some of my own money-saving tips and emphasizing how attainable long term travel really is. I honestly think that anyone (yes, anyone) can start at this point, with an empty wallet and bank account, and in less than a year be taking off for an extended period of vagabonding. If you have credit card debt, a hefty student loan, or a minimum wage job, you’re going to have to work a little harder, but I still think you can do it. Let the penny pinching begin!

Part One: In which the only math skills you need are addition and multiplication

Step one is an obvious one – decide where you want to go. Break out the old atlas (or use Google Maps, if that’s how you want to be) and have a good look at what’s out there. Since we’re talking about long term budget travel, there are a few places that you can pretty much forget about right away – mainly, Europe. Don’t let me crush your dreams of Paris and Berlin and Milan, but if you’re headed there thinking a few grand is going to cover several months of living and traveling expenses, think again. Your $35/night hostel bed in Amsterdam could buy you three or four days of beach bumming in Guatemala or Malawi. If you really want to stretch your travel dollar, you can cross off Western Europe, North America, Japan and even Australia, from the get-go, leaving yourself plenty of fascinating destinations to choose from. Travel Independent has a great section for wanderlusters trying to decide where to go and what to see.

Next, purchase a ticket. There’s a ton of information out there about this, and from what I’ve read, what it boils down to is this: air travel is expensive. There are certainly some deals to be had, and if you spend some time getting creative with your dates and pricing a variety of different airlines and ticketing agents, you just might get one of them. Most airlines will let you book fares up to eleven months in advance, and some of the best deals become available well in advance of departure. However, I would caution against becoming too caught up in getting the lowest fare. You might find that you end up having to pay several hundred dollars more because you were banking on fares dropping and they didn’t. Also, having a ticket purchased well in advance is one less thing you have to worry about as your departure approaches, and a great incentive to start saving for other parts of your trip.

Which brings us to all those other parts of your trip. Before you even get on that plane, you’re going to be doling out some cash – and no small sum either – on some rather pesky but totally necessary details like insurance and immunizations and equipment. If you don’t have a passport, you’ll need to get one. It will be the best $85 you’ve ever spent. Depending on the length and itinerary of your trip, you could be spending anything from a couple hundred to a couple thousand on travel insurance. We’re going with World Nomads, where a comprehensive six month international package costs $355. Another non-negotiable is immunizations and drugs. Unfortunately, few of these are covered by MSP or your employer’s insurance policy. It is possible to keep costs down to some extent by paring down the number of shots you get and by choosing cheaper or generic drugs (i.e. don’t get Malarone) but keep in mind that it’s your health in the balance, and $100 for a vaccine that could save your life? Sounds like a pretty good investment to me.

Another potentially major expense to consider is that of clothing and equipment. If you’ve done much traveling before, you can probably save most of your shopping dollars, but if you haven’t, you might surprise yourself with just how fast the money goes, even if you’re just picking up the essentials. Item number one on your list should be a backpack. You’re going to want something comfortable and small. Seriously – there’s nothing you’ll need for six months on the road that won’t fit in a forty litre pack. You might also want to buy some clothes to go in that pack. It’s probably not in your best interest to invest in a whole new khaki wardrobe, but a few high-quality outdoorsy items probably aren’t a bad idea. Besides that, you might want to think about purchasing things like a sleeping liner, a mosquito net, a head lamp, a travel alarm, and a caseload of DEET insect repellant (especially if you cut costs by opting out of anti-malarials).

Once you’ve added up your pre-trip expenses (which probably total somewhere in the $2500 – 3000 range) you can start estimating your on the road costs. This basically looks like this: accommodation + food + transportation + activities = don’t be totally distraught, you can do this! Honestly, staying in hostels, making most of your own meals, taking local transportation and steering clear of expensive tourist activities, you can travel in most countries (barring those listed above) for under $30 a day. You can plug your locations into this Travel Budget Calculator, and it will give you a rough estimate of how much you’ll need. Keep in mind that this doesn’t take into account costly one-off activities like shark diving and elephant riding, so any figure you come up with should be considered as a minimum. You’re going to want to add at least another thousand (or two, or three) to that number if you want to partake in such activities, or if you’re easily seduced by drink specials and full moon parties.

Altogether these things add up to a pretty sum, but think about what you’re getting – food, shelter, transport, fun – all in some of the most incredible places on the planet. In all likelihood, your on the road budget isn’t going to be much higher than your at home budget – the only significant difference being that you’re not going to have any income (unless you put a ‘donate’ icon on your blog, but you won’t see any of that here). No matter if your budget is $5000 or $20 000, it’s not as daunting as it seems. Stay tuned for part two, in which I reveal just how much the average office worker spends at Starbucks in a week, and show you how to turn your caffeine cash into a rewarding experience abroad!

Monday, November 16, 2009

Home and Away

Here’s the thing about me: I like to think about travel. A lot. I like to plan, I like to budget, I like to fantasize, and yeah, when it comes time for the actual travel part, I like that too. But I find that I get so excited by overseas travel that I rarely give much thought to doing the same here in Canada.

I spent most of my adolescence wishing I was anything but Canadian. Give me the cobblestone streets and sidewalk cafes of Europe, or the colourful lanterns and bustling markets of the Far East any day. Give me a foreign accent, a chic sense of style, the talent to play an obscure instrument, and life would be infinitely more interesting. In a city like Vancouver, where just about everyone seems to be from somewhere else, I’m left feeling seriously lacking culture wise.

But as devoid of culture as Canada may be (don’t take that too seriously) it sure is beautiful. Unfortunately, when you’re born into a place where mountains collide with sea, where you can escape into verdant rainforests on a whim, or plunge into a clear, cool lake in the summertime, you can’t help but take the natural beauty that surrounds you for granted. It’s home. It’s comfortable. And regardless of how stunning it may be to those who haven’t spent their lives here, it’s not nearly as exciting as, say, Africa.


That said, every now and then I’m shaken out of my complacency, my indifference for this place. Every so often I see what they see – the blues and the greens and the vastness of it all. My world gets blown wide open and I appreciate, seemingly for the first time, how utterly spectacular the landscapes I’ve become so accustomed to really are.

One of my favourite parts about travel is seeing how even the most mundane things are different in other countries – items in the grocery store, street signs, public transport – things that make walking down the street an eye-opening adventure. But as exciting as that experience can be, it doesn’t come close to truly opening your eyes to the things you see every day, and coming to realize that no matter where you go and what you see, this place you call home? Is the place you want to keep coming home to.


Photos taken on a recent trip to Sechelt, British Columbia. Thanks to Ron and Diane for hosting us and showing us the beauty of the Sunshine Coast.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Pourquoi Africa?

So the last time I tried to explain this, I opened my mouth (or should I say, web browser) and the entire history of Africa came spilling out (okay, maybe not the entire history, but all the important bits anyway). And while it’s all good and nice to put this trip into a historical context, I still feel as though I owe everyone a more personal explanation. This is a blahg, after all – you wouldn't be here if you weren't looking for a little voyeurism.

I find it a bit odd that I can’t remember the exact moment that we decided to do this. I’m constantly impressing Scott with my uncanny ability to recall exact details about obscure events, like what I wore on our third date or how much our electrical bill was back in March, yet as I wrack my brain to come up with the definitive tipping point of this trip, I draw a blank. Did we just wake up one morning, look at each other and say, “Let’s go!”? Did we carefully weigh the pros and cons of various destinations, deciding finally on this one? Did we scribble down where we most wanted to go, fold it up, and on the count of three, lo, we both wanted to go to Africa? I can’t remember.

There was always an assumption that once we finished school (or in my case, gave up) we’d get jobs, make some money, suit ourselves up like a North Face ad and set off for New Zealand or Western Europe or some such place. It’s what twenty-somethings with liberal arts educations, crappy customer service jobs, and a yearning for more do – they go abroad, meet like-minded fellow-travelers, get drunk on hostel-sponsored pub crawls, and supposedly find themselves. It sounds like a good time, but we eventually decided that it wasn’t for us. If we were going to spend our life’s savings (not much) on a trip across the world, then damned straight, we were going to do it right.

One of the major catalysts for me was a growing desire to escape. A year and a half in the so-called Real World had given me a rather disdainful attitude toward conventional adulthood in North America. I hated the 8 to 5, the 40 hour work week, the daily commute, consumerism, television, celebrity culture, Swedish furniture, apartment rent. And two weeks annual vacation? Puh-leeze! It’s a big world out there, and two weeks isn’t nearly enough time for me to see it, meet it, eat it, and get up close and personal with it. The economy is in the toilet, everyone’s on anti-depressants, and the view from my cubicle? Particle board. Asylum blue. A calendar marked up with things like Tax Seminar and Boss’s Day. There’s so much more to the world than what I can see from here.

So why Africa, then? Because we want to discover another planet located on Earth. The one we know is nice enough – mountains and ocean and skyscrapers and sushi spots – but we crave change. We want something that’s going to smack us in the face, offend us, challenge us, inspire us, ask tough questions, demand real answers, not give us an easy ride. A friend described Africa as “the Holy Grail of travel” and until recently I agreed with her that it was something you worked towards as a traveler, testing the waters first with jaunts to Germany and Costa Rica, gradually adding to your experience, heading for Indonesia or Ukraine, India or Peru. Then and only then, with a well-worn backpack and a sun-creased face, did you attempt Africa.

But we're throwing caution to the wind because 'gradual' isn't really our style . It’s not that we don’t want to see those other places – we do – it’s that we’d much rather do the ‘hard traveling’ now, and save the cushier destinations for our golden years. It seems that with age, you become accustomed to certain luxuries that you are less and less willing to give up. At 22 and 23, the luxuries we're giving up are few, and we’re happy to do so in the name of adventure and thriftiness. We figure Africa is a good destination for people with limited funds, open minds, and agile bodies. The French Riviera, on the other hand, is arguably better visited with a thicker wad of cash, a sophisticated mind, and what’s the difference if you’re agile or not when your main activity is sunning yourself on the balcony with a glass of Pinot Noir? It just makes sense: Africa is for now, beyond that comes later.

So your question then? Pourquoi Africa? The best answer I can give you is this: We want to see the world, and we've decided to make Africa our first stop.

That, and there's penguins at the beach.

(via)

Thursday, October 22, 2009

War and Peace: the Africa edition

Preface: When I set out to write this, I wanted to give some sort of justification for choosing Africa (of all places!) as a travel destination. I also wanted to quell some of the concerns about the risks of traveling in Africa, as I have yet to tell someone about my plans and not have them respond by informing me of how dangerous it is. (It’s dangerous. I know.) In the end, this piece accomplishes neither of those things. It does, however, accomplish lengthiness, and if you happen to have a keen interest in colonial African history, you just might make it through to the end. If not, I’ve included a few pictures (and a video!) that do a pretty good job of summing it up the main points.

* * * * * * * *

Tell someone you’re going to Africa for an extended period of time and you’ll invariably be met with gasps of awe and concern. Awe because it sounds enviably romantic and adventuresome, and concern because it sounds troublingly risky and unusual. Why would you go to Africa when you could go to Europe and gape at ornate architecture and gorge on chocolate croissants? Why would you go to Africa when you could go to Koh Phangan and work on your tan and sip from coconuts? But mostly, when given the choice between a place characterized by relative security and one besieged by corruption, violence and political paralysis, why on earth would you choose the latter?

These are not easy questions to answer. Initially, I tried to assuage their fears (and my own) by seeking out success stories─ things that would shed some light on the Dark Continent, things that would make everyone sleep better. When people mentioned the genocide in Rwanda, I would tell them how resilient and progressive the country has proven to be: their roads and transportation network are lauded as some of the best in Africa, their parliament is the only one in the world where women hold the majority (56%), and their strict ban on plastic bags and mandatory monthly cleanup day qualify them as leaders in the fight against environmental destruction.

It has been my experience, however, that people aren’t interested in listening to success stories. Africa as a peaceful place is a pretty tough sell when you’re dealing with people whose ideas of the continent are informed solely by a very one-sided and negative media image. And I couldn’t really blame them, either. Try as I might to hone in on the positive, I found it hard to ignore the news stories highlighting the volatility of the continent that flashed in my periphery– warning signs that cautioned against taking an overly idealistic view. True, there are huge swaths of the continent that are peaceful, where farmers tend to their crops, children go to school, and life has achieved a level of normalcy we don’t readily associate with Africa. But it is also true that between 1990 and 2007, Africa accounted for 88% of the world’s conflict death tolls, 9 million refugees have been internally displaced and 12% of the continent’s children have been orphaned. Indeed, hell has seized parts of the continent, and there’s no sense in ignoring that millions of people have been, and continue to be, killed by bullets, machetes, hunger, bad water and disease.

So, rather than brushing off people’s insistence that Africa showcases humanity at its absolute worst and trying to convince them otherwise, I decided that a far more interesting and worthwhile effort would be to concede that they just might have a point. I can chalk it up to biased media coverage, dated stereotypes and the sheer physical distance that separates their landmass from ours, or I can admit to myself what I already know, and try to understand why it is that 5.4 million people were killed in the Congo, why 800,00 in the Rwandan genocide and why nearly 400,000 in the recent Darfur conflict. The question I wanted to answer was a simple, but difficult one: Why is Africa the way it is? What instigates these conflicts and enables them to continue? And why isn’t anyone paying any attention to them?

Over the past several months, my reading material has been almost entirely limited to books about Africa. Guidebooks, history books, memoirs– anything I could get my hands on that would give me some insight into this diverse and complicated continent that until fairly recently, I knew very little about. One of the main themes that surfaced in nearly all the works was that of war and conflict. Unlike the wars I learned about in school, where I knew the contributing causes, what was at stake, and which side came out on top, with Africa, the causes and outcomes of war were not always so clearly defined. Even after having read 500 plus pages on the Rwandan genocide, I still didn’t really understand what triggered the massacre.

It seems to me that when it comes to Africa, journalists have a tendency to dumb down complex realities for their western readers. I don’t know whether this is because it’s easier to get the story and get out, or if it’s because they’re actually worried about alienating readers by delving too deep into the issues. Regardless, news in the western world is about front pages and headlines, not lengthy explanations and background information. Rather than describing the historical and cultural complexities of a conflict, it is much easier to call it chaos and be done with it.


Not only are media reports of Africa incomplete, but they are also hard to come by. In 2000, Vigil Hawkins completed a study of some of the major western media outlets, surveying what percentage of their media focus fell where. The table above illustrates the proportions of coverage allotted by the BBC. Africa, he found, did not even figure in 10% of the coverage. According to Hawkins, “the death toll from the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is literally one thousand times greater than that in Israel-Palestine, yet it is the latter that is the object of far greater media coverage … [and where] the intricacies and nuances of the conflict, political situation and peace process are almost obsessively analyzed and presented … [African] conflicts are frequently brushed off and dismissed as being chaotic, or worthy of some vague pity or humanitarian concern, but rarely of any in-depth political analysis.” Too often, it seems that Africa just isn’t worth the trouble.

Oversimplified and distorted media coverage makes understanding African conflicts difficult, and the majority of westerners don’t have the time or motivation to question what they read and hear when it comes to something so seemingly removed from their day-to-day realities. This does not make the question “Why is Africa the way it is?” unanswerable, it just makes addressing it more difficult. Despite simplistic media messages, Africa’s problems do not stem exclusively from political corruption, human rights abuses and lawlessness– these are but symptoms of some of the underlying causes.

One of the most glaring factors influencing Africa today is the lasting impact of European colonialism. Often westerners take an attitude that suggests, “yes, we did some bad things, but it’s been a long time, and they’re worse off now than they were then.” While in some cases, this might ring true, it is hardly debatable that colonialism has had devastating consequences across Africa– consequences that are not overcome overnight.

The way that Africa was carved up, as colonial powers ruled and then abandoned Africa, had the effect of gathering many different of ethnicities and cultures under a nation that did not reflect, nor have the ability to accommodate, such diversity. A nation is a group of people you are born into or feel you belong to. The nations that were arbitrarily determined by the Europeans were neither of these things, and with the way colonialists exploited a largely self-manufactured difference, it’s hard to imagine that they thought they were actually helping Africans.


In many areas of the continent, colonial administrations did not have sufficient personnel or resources to adequately govern the territory, thus necessitating a reliance on locals to run them. Europeans selected who they wanted to have in power, dividing people into categories based on characteristics that had previously held little to no significance. One example of this can be seen in Rwanda, where prior to the arrival of the Belgian colonists, the country’s two main ethnic groups (the Hutus and the Tutsis) lived more or less in harmony. When the Belgians came, they gave the power to the Tutsi, believing that their lighter skin and more delicate features made them superior to their darker-skinned Hutu counterparts. This fuelled Tutsi resentment, contributing in part to the eventual genocide in 1994.

Not only did the Europeans exploit arbitrary differences, but they created them. One of the most profound and lasting impacts was the implementation of Tribalism. Based on very premature assumptions, colonialists supposed that just as they belonged to different nations, with distinct cultures and common languages, so too did Africans belong to different tribes. This, however, was not always the case. The notion of tribalism was largely a European construct designed to serve European interests. In fact, the Zulus of South Africa as a separate ethnic group only came into being in 1870; the Solis of Zambia only became Solis when they were told they were, in 1937.

Despite this, many people dismiss colonialism as a reason for Africa’s problems. “They’ve been handed independence and look what they’ve done with it,” they say. The fact is that colonialism grasped the continent for close to four centuries, and its effects cannot be overcome so quickly. In the words of Bob Geldof, “Consider the extent to which the Second World War of just six years has pervaded the consciousness of our developed world for two generations and imagine how four centuries of enslavement might have seized the entire social and cultural ethos of an undeveloped continent.” The damage caused by colonialism has become entrenched in African societies across the continent. The extent to which it permeates all facets of life makes it a difficult thing to forget or move forward from.

Here is a 10-minute film clip that shows how colonialism continues to affect current struggles, using Uganda as an example.



The film that this clip has been taken from (Uganda Rising) is excellent, heart-wrenching
and highly recommended. You can view it in its entirety on YouTube by clicking here.


It’s also worth noting that many African countries have only achieved independence from colonial powers in the past few decades. The newest independent nations include Eritrea (1993), Namibia (1990) and Zimbabwe (1980). Not to mention the most obvious colonial legacy of all, apartheid in South Africa ended just fifteen years ago. These nations are new, they have had little opportunity to establish themselves and develop a national identity. My own country, Canada, has been an independent nation for over 140 years, and we’re still grappling with how to accommodate our two linguistic groups– English and French– in a way that is accepted by all. Given the way that Africa was divided up, with little regard to existing ethnicities, languages and cultures (of which there are several thousand) it should be no surprise that developing stable nation-states is proving difficult.

Another legacy of colonialism has been that of the single party state. It was introduced by Europeans as the only method of effective method of governance and control in places that were characterized by a great diversity of interests. Dictatorships were implemented. Widespread poverty and oppression proliferated. And when the Europeans pulled out and granted their colonies independence, it’s true that things did get worse. Between 1960 and 2003, 107 African leaders were overthrown, two-thirds were murdered, jailed or forced into exile. Just three retired on their own accord, and not one was democratically voted out of office.

Colonialism also had a devastating impact on the Africa’s economy. For four centuries, Europeans siphoned Africa’s wealth of resources, from rubber to diamonds to oil to people. It has been argued that even independence served the interests of the former colonialists more than it served the interests of Africans. According to former Tanzanian president Julius Nyere, “It seems that independence of the former colonies has suited the interests of the industrial world for bigger profits at less cost. Independence made it cheaper for them to exploit us. We became neo-colonies.” In many ways, international trade agreements and economic policies have effectively picked up where colonial arrangements left off, whereby many nations have been forced to concentrate on export to stay afloat. Institutions like the World Bank and the IMF loan developing countries money, which encourages them to increase their export, often at the expense of service programs and education. This, combined with ongoing limited rights to land, has severely curtailed African development.

Colonialism is a big contributor to why Africa is the way it is. It planted the seeds for conflict, and manipulated industries in ways that have had long-lasting and detrimental effects on development. But there are other factors as well, such as the proliferation of weapons in Africa following the Cold War, when major powers like the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union saw a viable and profitable dumping ground for arms they no longer needed. The propagation of these small arms has no doubt fuelled many recent conflicts. The table below demonstrates the west’s complicity to conflicts in the developing world (shown in blue).

According to this table, 71 per cent of reported arms exports come from the USA, Russia, France, the UK and China. Incidentally, these five countries are also the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The hypocrisy is maddening. How can we simultaneously champion peace while profiting from an industry that kills people in such a direct and obvious way? We are inhibiting our own mandates for peace, acting in a way that renders success impossible.

The legacy of colonialism, the West’s continued support for exploitive regimes, the proliferation of arms, and policies that maintain dependency and poverty have had the cumulative effect of turning many African countries into what some have dubbed “failed states,” characterized by chaos and suffering. In 2001, Tony Blair called the state of Africa, “a scar on the conscience of the world.” As deeply offensive as this statement is to Africans, many of whom have worked very hard and made great progress to overcome incredible obstacles, I think it speaks to why Africa is the way it is, and why its problems are in many ways our problems.

In researching and writing this piece I have developed a better understanding of Africa and the ideas (both founded and unfounded) that people have about it. I have come to accept that Africa does have many problems, and that these problems re-enforce one another. Surprisingly, learning about war and conflict has not made me apprehensive about traveling to Africa. More so than the stories of hope and resiliency, it has eased my fears. There may be madness, but there is logic to it. Africans are not irrational beings, resorting to primeval violence at the slightest provocation; they resort to conflict because they feel as though they have no other choice. They have been exploited for centuries and they want things to change. And in many places, they have. Great strides towards peace and reconciliation have been made in the past few decades, and I think more than anything we will be struck by just how safe and welcomed we feel. Africa is an exceptionally diverse continent, with unparalleled natural beauty and fascinating people– to be turned off by its turbulent history and a handful of scare stories, would mean missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime.

Contact

In preparation for our six month journey through the developing world, we decided that there was one luxury that we weren’t going to give up: the ability to contact anyone, anywhere, at any time thanks to a little phenomenon called the Internet (Have you heard of it? It’s going to be huge!) And so we bought this:

Our 2.6 pound pride and joy

We named it Rafiki (less because Alanna is compelled to humanize everything, and more because Microsoft asked us to), and treat it with all the love and affection of a (very small, very sleek, and extremely capable) child. We love it like McAdams love(d) Gosling.

Anyhow, all of this is to say that you can contact us! In Africa! Assuming there are some wi-fi hotspots in some of the hot spots visit, we will be updating this blog on a semi-regular basis as well as checking the following email addresses:


Send us dispatches from your part of the world, pictures of your pets doing funny things, and any grammatical advice you may wish to impart (seriously, does the period belong inside or outside of the parentheses? You’d think for someone who doesn’t know, I’d play it safe and limit my usage of the finicky bracket, but what can I say? My life is full of afterthoughts).

We will do our best to get back to you in a timely manner, but understand that connections will be spotty, electricity will not always be available and, oh yeah, we’ll be on the trip of a lifetime and might be too busy riding elephants and dancing with lemurs to respond. But we’ll do our best. We love you all.

Route

I had lofty ambitions of creating a highly accurate and interactive map with lots of buttons and fancy features for all you armchair travellers out there… but alas, even Google Maps is too technical for me. Luckily for you, I still know my way around a little program called MS Paint. Behold!

Oh, the places we'll go!
(Click to enlarge)

A thing of beauty, am I right? Getting those jagged international borders juuuust right was no easy task using the pencil tool, but I think you’ll agree that the results are of almost textbook quality.

The blue line is our intended path of overland travel. Starting in Cape Town, we’ll make our way along South Africa’s East Coast (beaches! surfing! penguins!), with a detour into the highlands of Lesotho (the kingdom in the sky) before continuing up the Wild Coast (where we’ll be staying in a treehouse!) to Durban. Then, it’s on to Jo’burg where we hope to catch a bus to the Zimbabwe border and onward to Bulawayo and Victoria Falls, where, resisting the urge to bungee jump, we’ll cross the bridge into Zambia.

From Zambia, we’ll be mostly in transit, but will be making stop-overs in Livingstone and Lusaka before entering Malawi. Once in Malawi, we’ll be spending the bulk of our time lakeside, popping our malaria pills with our pawpaw and waiting for the weekly ferry to come.

Relaxed and rejuvenated, we’ll head to Tanzania and the narrow alleyways and exotic scents of Zanzibar. We’ll then travel inland toward the lusher landscapes of Rwanda and Uganda, where we will most likely decide against doling out $500 for a gorilla permit (chimpanzees are reportedly about a tenth of the cost… and ten times the fun!) From there, we will travel west along the equator, through the tree dotted plains and deep valleys of Kenya, ending up on the island of Lamu― a paradisical place where donkeys are the main mode of transport. Finally, our last leg brings us to Nairobi, six months and more than 2500 miles later.

About

This is the story of a boy and a girl and 2547.51 miles of possibilities.

Note our prominent chins.

A few of you may know the large-handed guy as Scott, who three years ago met and fell instantly in love with a blue-eyed, freckle-faced girl named Alanna. They drank beer, danced until closing and walked home in the rain. He gave her a dollar bill ring, she gave him a piece of beach glass, and it was official.

They've since graduated from university (well, Scott has anyway), found the perfect apartment in the city (which will soon belong to someone else– tear!) and made scads of money doing jobs that they loooooved (j/k).

Recently, they've decided to leave their first-world comforts behind and travel all the way to Cape Town, South Africa, with hopes of making it to Nairobi, Kenya by summertime. That's where the 2547.51 miles comes in. 2547.51 miles of elephants, lions, savannas, sunsets, millet beer, deep-fried beetles, Pygmies, poisonous snakes, mosques, Massai, malaria, and mountains... or so they've been told. Truthfully, they have no idea what lies ahead.

This blog serves as a means of keeping in touch with the folks back home (hi mom, dad, Grandma Diane and Maggie!) and as a cautionary tale of what happens when unruly hair gets unrulier (or in Scott's case, when greasy hair gets greasier). Don't let our poor hygiene ruin your ideas of world travel!