Saturday, June 19, 2010

Homeland Security Sweet Homeland Security


Well, we are home safely. Alanna and I both arrived at our respective parents' doorsteps on Monday following two plain rides, much waiting, and the frustrating bureaucratic theft of a large bottle of duty-free spirits. With regards to our online adventures we're an entire country behind so we'll keep the posts coming and everyone can just pretend we're still very far away.

you never saw this...

Monday, June 14, 2010

Diss the Cook

A while back I was watching a late-night talk show on which Tom Cruise was a guest. It was one of the episodes where they wheel out a portable kitchen counter and summon a celebrity chef, who bangs together a pre-conceived dish in a minute flat just in time for the credits to roll. As is common, once Wolfgang Puck or whoever got cooking, Tom Cruise naturally joined in to 'lend a hand'. I'm sure he was well-intentioned, but it became evident early on that, from the apprehensive and awkward way he prodded whatever was sauteeing in his assigned fry-pan, Tom Cruise is a guy who does not do much of his own cooking. And me on the couch thought, “If I am ever famous enough to go on Leno, and Wolfgang Puck is a guest the same night as me, I will grasp that spatula like a pro and totally own those aubergines and everyone on their respective couches will say, hey, will you look at that Scott guy, he really knows his way around a kitchen, he doesn't have a personal chef or anything, he's just a normal person!” and my books/albums/fitness videos will consequentially sell like hotcakes.

But in rural Uganda we are not just 'normal people'. We are the bourgeois: we are people who have enough spare time and money to care about things like 'anti-oxidants' and 'the blogosphere' and 'oscar-buzz'. As in,

“Hey, have you heard? The fruit of the baobab tree is absolutely packed with anti-oxidants. It is the next super-food. It is the next goji berry.”
“Really? Huh. That is good to know, because two baobab fruits are all I have eaten in the past twenty-four hours. Also, I live in a building the size of your guest bathroom.”

Anyway, this is all pertinent to when, at Lake Nkuruba Nature Reserve & Community Campsite just outside of Fort Portal, Uganda, Alanna and I decided to save a few bucks (literally, like, two dollars) and cook our own dinner the final night. There wasn't a public kitchen, just the staff one for the camp's restaurant, but we asked if we could use it to cook some pasta and Jane, the timid, smiling young woman in charge kindly agreed. She led us into a small chamber with a rough concrete counter along one wall. The counter had two holes in the top with bars across like prison windows. The walls were covered in probably an inch of soot. There were no 'appliances', per se, just a few metal utensils and a yellow jug, presumably full of cooking oil.

Now I do fancy myself as knowing my way somewhat around a kitchen, and I've done much cooking in less-than-lavish conditions, such as on camping trips and the like, and over our time in Africa Alanna and I have concocted some very good meals in all kinds of ill-equipped and unconventional facilities. But when I stepped into that room, all of a sudden I was Tom Cruise. Except I was worse than Tom Cruise, because I'm sure that, in a pinch, he'd at least know how to turn the stove on.

Jane was kind enough to help. After adding some fresh firewood, she used a small plastic bag and a few splashes of liquid paraffin (not cooking oil in the jug after all) as fire-starter. She then left us alone in order to split more logs outside. As we watched the plastic sputter and smoke over the firewood, it occurred to me that this is the way in which much of the food we'd been eating over the past months has been cooked – beautiful flatbreads, tender fish, intricate curries – all produced over what most westerners would identify as 'an incinerator'.


And there was more. We filled a pot and brought water to a boil (really quickly, I might add) and got our pasta cooked. But then, how to remove it from the flame? This was a problem. There were some oily pieces of cardboard folded into what seemed like potholders, but of course they'd just catch fire. The solution was easy: Jane, intuiting our helplessness, simply reached down bare-fingered and plucked the pot off the stove. I guess if you've been cooking this way since you were six years old, you can do that kind of thing.

For the fifteen minutes it took for our fusili to cook, Alanna and I alternated going into the kitchen to stir the pot with a fork. This solicited chuckles from Jane and the two other camp employees lounging outside – We weren't sure why exactly, but by now we're accustomed to mystery amusement on our behalf. Earlier in the day we walked down the road to a small town, and got some chuckles from a group of girls after we said hello, and I thought, why are you laughing at me? You are the one walking down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere with a big wooden bench balanced on your head! But that's the way it goes when you don't speak the language. Anyway, cooking in the kitchen, it wasn't until we'd gone and drained the pasta together (that was too funny) that the other woman, whose English was a little better than Jane's, informed us that it was of course the fact we were cooking together – that I was participating at all – that was amusing. She then went on a short, lighthearted yet still fairly serious diatribe against the frustrations of gender roles in Uganda, much to the embarrassment of the man present, who had to leave. “You go and iron all the man's shirts, and then he wears one for two minutes and fwit!– he throws it on the floor,” she explained. She told us how much she admired the way we did things. I said something to the effect of, “we cook together, we clean together, we laugh together...” and this garnered whoops of laughter and a high-five between the two women.

So the chuckles we get on the street are possibly just along the lines of, ha ha, look at that man and woman, walking down the street like equals, what a hoot! And if I were offended by that, well, I'd have to be a barbarian, wouldn't I?

----

CRIME!

We haven't wanted to jinx anything by saying so, but since by the time this entry hits the press we'll be in the air on the way home so I think we can put it out there – over all this time in Africa we have not once felt in danger or experienced firsthand any the criminality that is supposed to be so prevalent here. We've certainly been out and about, and I think Alanna and I both expected at least something, whether it be some bills disappearing out of a back pocket or a small border-post bribe. But over the course of the whole trip, we'd been getting by scot-free.

Until Lake Nkuruba Nature Reserve & Community Campsite, that is...

Little did we know.



This is Aldrin. He speaks very little English and is maybe the offspring of one of the camp employees. On our first day at Lake Nkuruba he wandered over to where we were playing cards. Once we were finished, we tried to entertain him for a while – I attempted to teach him the names of the face cards, and then let him balance cards on my head, which he found utterly hilarious. I then handed over the entire pack, and he busied himself moving them in and out of the box and dealing them onto the table. Then he left with the cards and disappeared into the reception office.

And we saw neither him nor the cards...

Ever Again.



Aldrin!!!



Note: his name may not be Aldrin. His name may be some other name that we misheard through a thick Luganda accent as Aldrin when we asked Jane what his name was. Adrian, maybe.
We sure hope his name is Aldrin though.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Lake Bunyonyi

Back from Murchison Falls NP we picked out a new hotel in Kampala, same price as our previous one but with a slightly less hectic location. At least, we thought it would be the same price – the only double they had available was the “ultra luxe” suite. It was still just $35 for the room, so we said what the heck. The “luxe” touches comprised of thick tasselly curtains, three free bottles of water, a single terrycloth bathrobe, and a shiny bedspread. There was a small TV hung from the ceiling but it didn't work. Not exactly presidential caliber, but I did feel a bit out of place scrubbing my undies in the sink.

Kampala Balla

We left Kampala a second time for Kabale, way down south near the Rwanda border, our final destination being the nearby Lake Bunyonyi. Our method of travel was the Post Bus, a daily transit service offered by the Uganda postal system. It was an eight-hour trip, and we stopped at every single post office along the way as well for any roadside Jack who stuck his arm out, but as far as bus rides go it was not so bad. After a night in Kabale we caught a cab to the lake ten kilometers out of town. The road passed alongside several small rock quarries where groups of men and young boys were literally making gravel by hand – manually rolling boulders down from an exposed cliff face and chipping them into golf-ball-sized pieces with a hammer and chisel, some perched on piles as tall as themselves. They didn't look like they were working that hard.


Lake Bunyonyi is a low-key spot with a good reputation among people who like to do quiet things. Our accommodation of choice was Byoona Amagara, a backpacker-targeted community-centric lodge set on a small island. The resort offers a free shuttle to the island in the form of a dugout canoe – at a dock on the mainland we were met by a young man named Justice who lugged our bags into a heavy-looking hollowed-out section of eucalyptus, steadied the thing as we got in, and handed us each a paddle. The ride took just shy of an hour, and as we chatted (World Cup, Canadian weather, et cetera) I envisioned waking the following morning unable to lift my arms.


Do the P.A.D.D.L.E.

While it's nobody's first vision of Africa, Lake Bunyonyi is a truly beautiful place, set among steep hills cultivated in dense terraces right down to its squiggly shore, quaint and endlessly green. Byoona Amagara is located on tiny Itambira Island, one of many in the lake, which it shares with a small village and about a billion birds. We slept in a 'bio-dome', a geometric thatched structure open on one side to a private deck and a more-than-adequate view the lake beyond. The place is apparently owned by a guy in New York who donates all profits to the local community. Everything runs off solar panels, and they somehow have enough juice to screen nightly movies, at a dollar a head, from an impressive catalogue. We watched The Aviator and The Constant Gardener. Not exactly feel-good movies but there wasn't much of a need, now was there?


The first two days on the island were a bit dreary, which meant warm beer (no sun ergo no fridge) and lots of cribbage. But when it brightened up we rented one of the dugouts to explore the nearby islands. I am no stranger to a canoe, and with Alanna's credentials we were fairly positive of our ability to manoeuver. But it was not until we'd drifted into the lake just far enough to come within view of the Byoona Amagara dining terrace that Alanna in the rear discovered that the physics of a dugout are completely backwards from its fiberglass equivalent and we could do nothing but spin in circles like city-slicking novices. We (royal 'we') eventually got it figured out, though not without some concentration. Watching twelve-year-olds float by straight as an arrow while barely touching their paddle to the water was a bit hard to take.



We ventured ashore on Bwama Island, Itambira's neighbour and a former mission and leper colony. The small island is dotted with blue-roofed brick buildings reminiscent of those of Livingstonia in Malawi. The island is home to both the primary and secondary schools for the area, and arriving on shore we came across what is labeled in blue paint as the 'Bwama School Bus':

"the keel on the bus goes..."

Our guidebook mentioned Bwama as worthy of exploration, but we felt half as though we were wandering through someone's backyard. Any surface of the island not covered in pathways or buildings was almost entirely surrendered to crops of potato, maize and banana, save for an undulating soccer pitch beside the primary school. We visited during a spring break of sorts, and without kids running around it was very difficult to tell whether the school buildings were abandoned or not. Windows were boarded up, there was childish graffiti scrawled over the walls and a sombre lack of furniture. The primary school's exterior was decorated with various decisive slogans in bold black paint: AIDS KILL, ABSTAIN FROM SEX, VIRGINITY IS HEALTH, STAY AWAY FROM BAD GROUPS and DO NOT ACCEPT GIFTS, which confused us, but probably means something along the lines of don't take candy from strangers, which is no doubt more of a problem here, seeing as kids have a habit of demanding that very thing from every white person they see.



The secondary school operates in the buildings of the former lepers' hospital, equal parts historic-charming and plain old run-down. Again, the place had an aura of having been empty for decades rather than weeks, but our paddler Justice later confirmed than students were to be returning in only a few days' time.



But other than the one fitness activity to remind us how out-of-shape we were (isn't backpacking around Africa supposed to be a workout?) we easily passed the days reading our books, throwing ourselves off the beautiful dock and eating Byoona Amagara's (mostly) delicious foods. And while Alanna and I are both very bored by the majority of birds (I say if it's not bigger or brighter than a fire hydrant, it ain't worth identifying) but the little Bunyonyi birds were actually pretty cool, some with long ribbon-tails up to a foot in length and often six or seven species occupying the same bush. Still doesn't mean I needed to know their names.



Fresh crayfish from the lake figures prominently on the Byoona menu.

On the fifth day Justice paddled us back to the mainland and we were very sad. After another night in Kabale we discovered that the only bus that would take us to our next destination left at two thirty in the morning and we were even sadder. But Bunyonyi was the solitude we'd been waiting for, hard to beat on all counts, and worth an insufferable bus trip to the moon and back.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Safari!

After aborting our island jaunt, we caught a minibus to Kampala, Uganda's capital. We'd been seriously craving a quiet lakeside retreat, and (at the time) pretty crushed the Banda Island thing had fallen through. The prospect of returning to another crazy capital city was not an appealing one. On top of it all, our shorts were still sopping wet from having had to wade back to the beach when we canceled on the boat trip.

And then we reached downtown Kampala. The streets were jammed in a category of gridlock I had not thought possible. The density of people, vehicles and shops were beyond what we'd experienced so far, there was mud everywhere, and it was bloody hot out. It was as if the world had conspired to affirm for us one fact: you don't want to be here! I personally had conceded to never reaching anywhere clean and quiet ever again in my entire life, but as our minibus once again became wedged in a sea of its brethren, Alanna announced we were getting off and heroically led us straight to our hotel, which was magically (to me at least) not that far away.


It turns out our accommodation (and the main minibus rank) is situated at the heart of Kampala's 'wholesale district', an especially cramped and hectic part of town. Though our hotel was perfectly adequate, leaving the building we'd often have to dodge men charging along the sidewalk with stacks of mattresses on their heads, or hefting giant industrial bags of plastic sandals off the back of a truck. The rest of the city wasn't so bad, and we came to enjoy Kampala, returning to it two more times between our excursions into rural Uganda.

View from our balcony.

Our first such outing was a three-day safari package to Murchison Falls National Park run by Red Chilli Backpackers, a hostel in the Kampala suburbs. It's advertised as 'budget' and is obviously geared towards the backpacker crowd, and the price, though not an absolute steal, was appealing. What they reserve for the small print is that meals aren't inclusive, which tops up expenses somewhat. Also, Murchison Falls National Park is a seven-hour drive away from Kampala, which, there and back, tends to cut into that oft-quoted 'three days'.

Day one was, inevitably, mostly driving. We stopped for a split-second tour of the falls themselves – said to be the 'most powerful' in the world. Here the entire Nile river squeezes through a six-meter-wide gap in the rock. But, mostly driving. I read an entire Nick Hornby novel.


Red Chilli operates a rest camp within the park, where we spent two nights in a double safari tent. The camp is unfenced, and a family of warthogs browses the property on a regular basis. After dark, hippos leave the cool of the Nile river to forage on land, and apparently wander the camp once lights are out. We didn't see any but other guests encountered a few on a late night trip to the toilet. By the way, the Nile begins in Uganda, how is this not common knowledge?




Day two we went on a morning game drive through the park and then a fantastic little boat ride up the Nile to see Murchison Falls from the water. The game drive was much what I'd expected a safari to be. We drove it in the same minibus we'd ridden from Kampala – the whole roof conveniently pops up, allowing us to stand and enjoy a 360-degree view of our surrounds. We had a guide in the vehicle spotting animals for us, though the knowledge he offered didn't go very far beyond each animal's average weight and lifespan.

aboard the ferry across the Nile



I was pleasantly surprised at the density of animals in the park – I'd expected a pocket of buffalo here, some antelopes over here, but it was pretty much nonstop animals wherever we were: plenty of buffalo, warthogs, giraffe, and a wide variety of brownish antelopey animals ranging from the goat-sized duiker to the large and dunce-looking Jackson's hartebeest. We saw a single elephant, and a lion from just about as far away as a lion can be while still being categorized as 'seen'. No leopard, darnit.



A group of baboons kept us entertained as we waited for the ferry to take us back across the river to the camp. In the morning we'd been advised to keep our bagged lunches out of sight, as the baboons will take them away from you. Monkeys are a source of much amusement and adoration obviously, but up close, once one gets a sense of a baboon's size and the way its shoulder muscles pump when it walks, 'tree-climbing humanoid pit bull' becomes the appropriate description.

Uh, buddy, you may not realize this, but, uh...

In the afternoon our group returned to the river and boarded a small double-decker catamaran for a river cruise. Our guide for the river trip was more informative that the game drive man, and over the course of the two-hour trip to the falls we passed some buffalo, a good number of crocs and more hippos than anyone could hope for.


Now I know 'once in a lifetime' is a term thrown around generously when discussing any number of African experiences, but I believe it is safe to say that no one reading this – or even the friends of people reading this, for that matter – knows anyone who's seen what we witnessed. Halfway up the river we passed a full-blown dead hippopotamus, bright pink and bobbing ribs-up in the water. Better than a leopard tenfold in my books.

Thar she decays

But missus hippo-corpse doesn't win the trophy for most photographed moment – no, such an honour could only be bestowed on when the Red Chilli motorboat intercepted us mid-cruise to heroically replenish the much-depleted beer cooler. While it seemed totally awesome at the time, the photo isn't that great and I won't include it here.

Returning down the river we came across a big daddy elephant grappling with some branches right at the water's edge. On our trip we haven't seen as many elephants as I'd expected, given that they're dangerously overpopulated in some areas, but even one alone was pretty breathtaking. Not only are they huge and majestic and all that, but there's something in the way they move about that I as a human can identify with. Whereas many monkeys share more body language in common with squirrels than people (to the untrained eye at least), I feel like if I were trapped in an elephant's body I would act basically the same as the elephants we've seen. Which is comforting, for whatever reason. Anyway, this elephant seemed a bit grumpy.


On day three on the way back to Kampala we stopped for some 'Rhino tracking' at Siwa Rhino sanctuary. In my mind, I saw this as sneaking through the jungle on the heels of a guide who'd be busy analyzing snapped twigs and rolling balls of dung between his fingers. But because the rhinos in the park are under 24-hour scrutiny, it was more like a guy in green fatigues radioing his buddies in the bush and us marching directly to the animal. Our guide was no doubt a rhino expert, and probably had much interesting information to convey, but most of this was directed at the handsome Dutch couple at the front of the line and we couldn't hear anything. We reached the rhino and met two more armed rangers who until our arrival had been lounging on a mattress in the shade with some snacks. The rhino too was installed under a tree, pup at her side, the day being too hot for either animal to move more than an occasional ear. We couldn't get too close, and the animals were difficult to see in the mottled shade. But what can you do. Everyone hung around, took photos, asked a few questions, and then we turned around and trudged back. Personally I was just as excited by the trio of frogs I discovered miraculously living in the water tank of a toilet back near the parking lot.


We'll never really know whether our money could have been spent on something less hit-and-miss, but we had fun, and I don't think we realize how lucky we were to have an entire park to ourselves for a game drive – my impression of the more popular parks in South Africa or Tanzania is that they get, er, busy. We briefly discussed doing another safari in Kenya, but both agreed that unless we doubled our budget, we'd find ourselves doing much the same thing. Maybe on a next trip we'll be financially stable enough to do some magical ten-night refuge in the Serengeti – but until then, the geckoes hunting moths around hotel lightbulbs will keep me just as happy.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Into Uganda

The Night Boat

From Zanzibar, we chose to return to Dar Es Salaam via the night boat, a ferry that leaves the island at 10pm, sits offshore for a few hours and then sails overnight to Dar Es Salaam for a 6am arrival. In theory, this meant we could sleep during the voyage and save on a night's accommodation. Our seats were comfortable enough, but due to several factors, it didn't go as planned.

Firstly, there is the issue of air-conditioning. I am perplexed about how the bodies of Africans work. Seeing as they stroll around in dress pants and sweaters in the kind of heat us Canadians can barely endure in shorts and tshirts, I would assume their systems are accustomed to warmer temperatures. But whenever there is an opportunity for air-conditioning, they really crank it, and seem to delight in icy-cold air that Alanna and I, again with our minimal clothing, find it hard to fall asleep in.

Secondly, Africans will happily fall asleep anywhere, irrespective of comfort level or surrounding distractions. (This is easy to explain, once you've seen the conditions under they're expected to take their naps as toddlers – Africa babies spend much of their day strapped to their mothers' backs with an expertly knotted sheet or blanket, and we've seen children dozing peacefully in this manner while their mothers hoe patches of soil on a hillside.) As we were getting settled, a TV at the front of the ferry treated us to a martial arts film, and we assumed once it ended bedtime would officially roll around. But they kept coming, at substantial volume, one after another (one of which, for those who care, featuring the gratuitous toplessness from a former high school classmate), throughout almost the entire night. And everyone slumbered on regardless.

Finally, it was a very rocky journey. Alanna and I both have fairly sturdy stomachs, but even I was feeling the quease. Alanna had to visit the bathroom, and in the morning described it rather nightmarishly as this chaotic, vomit-coated chamber full of angry squatting women.

So anyways, we arrived in Dar Es Salaam at sunrise with barely any sleep at all, which was too bad.


Uganda

The crowned crane, Uganda's national bird.

From Dar Es Salaam we caught a plane (again with the frigid air) to Entebbe, Uganda, bypassing what we saw as a week spent in iffy busses over bad roads. Entebbe is notable as the site of the 1976 hostage-rescue raid by the Israeli army during Idi Amin's reign, dramatized in The Last King of Scotland. It was therefore a historically poignant introduction to a country, but not surprisingly the airport was a pretty standard airport – though apparently there are still a spray of bullet holes in the command tower.

Prior to guidebook blurbs, our knowledge of Uganda amounted to its depiction in Last King of Scotland (the book of which Alanna and I have since read) and the excellent documentary War Dance, exploring the lives of refugee-camp children as they prepare for a national dance competition. And this is Uganda for most people – if your mind doesn't immediately come to rest on the horrors of Idi Amin regime, then you may instead think of the more recent bloody civil conflicts, such as the atrocities committed by the super-evil Lord's Resistance Army. Or the AIDS epidemic, or the general hunger, poverty and malaise associated with much of the continent. 'Tourist Mecca!' does not rank high on the list.

But the country has been stable and relatively peaceful since the 80's, and our airport shuttle led us through trim suburban greenery on our way to the hostel, past roadside flowerbeds and within view of Lake Victoria's sparkly shores. A far cry from the smog and grit of Dar Es Salaam – not to mention whatever pitiful dustbowl I'd had in mind. (One would think we'd have moved beyond the whole 'exceeded expectations' schtick, but apparently not.) Most African countries have a bigger middle-class than one would imagine, and Entebbe came across as a clean, comfortable town, quiet and cool. On our walk into town we passed a squad of jogging soldiers – public singing in Africa, whether it comes out of a church or from a mass of buff sweaty army dudes, always inspires a potent envy – and were introduced to Uganda's healthy population of marabou storks, teenager-sized and pretty disgusting.

We also became acquainted with a new (questionable) mode of transportation, the motorcycle taxi, or boda-boda. At African borders, the two countries' respective posts are often separated by a wide no-man's land, and the name comes from their origin shuttling passengers between the two posts, border-to-border. Like minibusses, boda-bodas are often painted bright colours and decorated with Christian or Muslim (or nonsense) expressions. Also like minibusses, they appear in varying states of roadworthiness. The accident rates for these things are appalling, but everyone uses them: businessmen, the elderly, and many mothers, who use them as a school-bus system. Women always ride in dignified side-saddle fashion, although we read an amusing newspaper article recently about 'hot-blooded' drivers blaming the wandering hands of their female passengers as a leading cause of collisions. Helmets for both driver and rider are supposedly the law.


In Entebbe we visited the Wildlife Education Center, a facility the locals call a 'zoo' though it is in fact a rehabilitation center and sanctuary for injured or rescued animals (the difference amounting mainly to the quantity of guilt one feels in attending). While it wasn't cheap – twenty bucks a pop – it was a most gratifying animal experience. We were able to gaze at most of the creatures you'd hope to see in Africa, including lions, rhinos, crocs, deadly snakes, and a ton of monkeys and chimps. And while one's typical zoo experience involves staring at a bored, lonely, motionless animal, these primates were active. They put on a show. We watched a group of red-tailed monkeys, and then an island of rescued chimps, for the better part of two hours. We were so, so happy. As icing on the cake, a troupe of vervet monkeys – a species we're almost not excited about anymore – wanders freely about the property, and are more comfortable with human presence than we're used to, letting us get very close.


red-tailed monkeys

Vervet monkey, chimps in the background.


At the WEC we went on a 'nature walk', basically a short dark tunnel through the hugest, creepy spiderwebs, populated by equivalently huge and creepy spiders.

Camels!

This group of Australopithecus were rescued in Mombasa. They're allowed to hunt certain kinds of protected antelope because "it's part of their culture" and "they've been doing it for literally millions of years."

Our plan after Entebbe was to visit the Ssesse archipelago in Lake Victoria, hoping for a similar experience from we'd had on Likoma in Malawi. We made it all the way onto the boat before turning back. We'd wanted to get to a specific place – Banda Island – and the men in charge of the boat headed there were dubiously vague about departure time, price, and trip length. The first quote was a ten-hour voyage, but once hearing we weren't interested, the man somehow let us barter him down to two hours, and then an hour and a half. If only it were always that easy. Not to mention the route has an unconvincing safety record – Phillip Briggs, our most trusted guidebook author, says he straps himself to a big plastic jerrycan every time he makes the trip. Plus there was a guy hassling us for money after carrying us both into the boat unsolicited. It just seemed like an all-round bad idea. We'd already created our share of not-fun boat memories for the trip, so we relocated all our valuables and electronics into chest pockets, waded to shore, and gave Banda Island a pass.


Which was fine, because someone else told us later the place was crap anyway.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Jambiani

The morning we left Stone Town for the legendary beaches of Zanzibar's east coast, it rained. For the next three days, it rained. On the fourth day, the sun shone through and we caught a glimpse of what we were beginning to think we might only see on postcards, but mostly our beach holiday was characterized by rain, at times heavy, giving way to light showers and drizzle in the afternoons, with a 90% chance of an evening thundershower. Or y'know, just plain old heavy rain.


Needless to say, there was a lot of Toto singing going on.

We had known going into this that we would be visiting Zanzibar in the low season, a period known – quite aptly as we would find out – as 'the long rains'. Hailing from the Pacific Northwest, we figured we knew what rain was and how to deal with it (brellies, wellies, Gore-tex and the like), but I think it's safe to say that Africa has redefined our concept of wet weather. When it rains, it pours. And as for that rain jacket you've been toting around for three and a half months thinking that you can't send it home because you'll be happy you have it when the rainy season comes? The fact is that no matter how water-proof you manage to make yourself, when the rains come, there's really no avoiding getting wet, soaked, saturated to the bone. This is no pina coladas and getting caught in the rain, this is a tall glass of more-than-you-bargained-for and getting caught unprepared.



Jambiani village is stretched over a few kilometers of coastline, and is described by Lonely
Planet as “a sunbaked and somnolent collection of thatch and coral-rag houses”. (The writers of Lonely Planet seem to have an affinity for the word 'somnolent' and will use it any chance they get, regardless of whether or not it actually applies – in this case, unlike Dar Es, it does). Arriving in Jambiani in the rain, we were met with the definition of somnolence: boarded-up shops, empty streets, women and children huddled under leaky awnings – everything wet, everything grey, everything not looking at all like the postcards.



We had hired a car and driver in Stone Town to tour us around our beachfront accommodation options in Jambiani, and hopefully score us a deal. The first place we went was a lovely 2-bedroom suite, with bathroom, kitchenette and private yard that usually went for $80/night. It was offered to us for $40, but as we didn't really need that much space, and $40 is still a little more than we're used to paying, we decided to move along. In total, we visited five places, two of which were closed for the season, two of which were open for business but completely vacant, and one of which won our vote with free breakfast, wireless internet and imitation Vache Qui Rit cheese. I'm pretty sure I can withstand just about any meteorological condition nature can conjure up if there's cheese to be had – especially if that cheese is packaged in cute little wedges and contains what is probably 150% of your annual recommended intake of saturated fat.

Despite appearances of being shut for the season, on our walk through town we met numerous people who invited us into their homes/restaurants and offered their services as tour guides, dhow captains, taxi drivers and in the case of Mr. Fruit, deliverers of fresh Zanzibari produce. In search of a place to eat lunch one afternoon, we passed the 'Karibu Restaurant' – a pile of saturated plywood and moldy thatch topped by a family of goats. Naturally, we figured Karibu Restaurant was no more, and continued along on our search for food. It was only on our way back to our hotel that we met the restaurant's proprietor, Hassan, who informed us that he was very much open for business and urged us to let him cook us dinner. Unable to say no to home-cooked fish masala, we gave him a few dollars to buy seafood, and promised to return at seven.

As it turns out, Karibu Restaurant is undergoing an extensive renovation thanks in part to the generous donations of travellers from all over the world who have eaten Hassan's food over the past 15 years. Therefore, we were welcomed (or Karibu-ed) into the family home, and seated in a makeshift nook decorated with faded photos of satisfied customers and a deflated beach ball inexplicably hanging from the ceiling. Unusually for Africa, the food was delivered to our table very promptly, and in copious quantities. We had each ordered a serving of curry, one with rice, one with chapati, and Hassan had cooked us an additional eggplant dish “as a gift” – he did not want us to leave hungry. The food was delicious, but far too much for two people, no matter how hungry. Apparently, huge portion sizes are a point of pride at Karibu Restaurant, where you eat, as the sign states, “antil you say Hassan please don't kill me with food”. Hassan is also quite proud of the fact that a photo of his sign exists somewhere on the Internet, and I suppose I should write to tell him that now it exists twice – with all this publicity, he should expect a big turn-out for his re-opening.




The following day, we awoke to a welcome change of scenery: what once had been dark and grey and dismal had given way to vivid blues, greens and the whitest sand I have ever seen. The Lonely Planet is in fact spot-on with their description of the sea's “ethereal shade of turquoise” and with the sun finally shining, we hurriedly pulled on our swim suits for the first time since Likoma and made a beeline for the water. Unfortunately, the ocean we encountered was not at all like the ocean we were expecting – at home, you are rewarded for a bold dive into the depths with invigorating refreshment, in Tanzania, you just end up feeling sticky, and even more uncomfortably hot than before. It's not luke-warm, it's just plain warm, and with the long tides, getting out to dive-able depths would likely take you hours of wading through thigh-deep bathwater. It was probably one of the least satisfying dips I've ever taken, but the scenery was indeed some of the most memorable.





So that was our vacation from our vacation – a little disappointing, slightly more indoor reading than we may have counted on, but enough colourful characters and subtle adventures to make the rather expensive cab ride worthwhile. Plus, being the only patrons to an entire stretch of resort accommodation, willing to brave less-than-ideal conditions for the promise of cheaper prices and an empty stretch of sand, we were made to feel like the intrepid travellers we like to imagine we are. And there's no shaking that feel-good feeling of being someone's first customer in weeks – never a waiter more happy to see you. Of course, we tipped generously, our travel egos reaching critical mass.