Friday, July 12, 2013

Out of Africa



My ILF co-workers and me at my going away party
It’s true, I’m out.  I wrapped up everything in Lira, danced the night away with my co-workers, settled my account with Peace Corps and jumped on a bus out of Uganda to start my “COS (Close of Service) Trip.”
The busiest street in Lira
The purpose of a “COS Trip” (a trip taken immediately after finishing with Peace Corps before returning to the US) is to get your head out of Peace Corps and ready for the readjustment that awaits you state side.  These trips range from one week vacations to multi-month treks.  Some people circumvent the globe, but most people leaving Uganda go to Asia and travel in groups.
After being in Uganda for 3 years, I needed more than the normal COS trip. I needed a trip that would take me out of my comfort zone and force me to start readjusting to the US before I got there.  Once I combined this agenda with my desire to see more of Africa, the answer was obvious: overland trip to South Africa (not obvious?  Well, let me explain…). 
Me and my 2 Peace Corps Program Managers
I knew I would be traveling alone (everyone else leaving at the same time as me was flying directly home…something I was not ready for) which steered me away from traveling to a very unfamiliar setting.  I wanted to let go of Uganda gradually while at the same time get a small sense of each country and its people as I passed through.  So I went via public transport the whole way, adjusting and readjusting my itinerary to correct for miscalculations, various dangers and personal whims.  At the end of the day, I traveled 217 hours (the equivalent of 9 days) on public transport (buses and minibuses of various conditions and levels of crowdedness) through 7 countries taking me from Uganda to South Africa in 7 weeks.  In this final blog entry, I want to give you a sense of what the trip and each country was like (the good, bad and ugly) and show you some places I visited.
The Itinerary
May 17-19 Kenya
Kenya is similar to Uganda, but more organized.  History of violent election aftermath and crime in Nairobi (also nicknamed Nai-robbery), but I didn’t encounter either.
Imagine going by these guys
and this guy
While you're on this....

·         12 hr bus from Uganda
·         2 hrs within Kenya
·         Hell’s Gate NP (where you bicycle through a game park…with the animals all around you)
·         Nairobi (most organized in-city public transport in East Africa and very helpful people)


  May 20-25 Tanzania
Very beautiful landscape, very aggressive men, buses that like to break down
Hyena in NgoronGoro

Zebras and Wildebeests in NgoronGoro
          6 hr bus from Nairobi 
 ·         Arusha (terrible but necessary pit stop.  Here, I got a Tanzanian sim card (for my phone) with the help of a crowd of Masai men)
·         3 hr minibus to NgoronGoro Crater
·         NgoroGoro Crater (kinda like Jurassic park, but with wildebeests instead of dinosaurs)
My Mt. Meru Hiking Group: 3 Germans, 1 Italian, 1 Israeli, the ranger and me
Me and my hiking buddy Mor at summit of Mt. Meru...we are freezing
·         Mt. Meru (3 days, we reached the summit  (4,565 meters high (14,977ft), 5th highest mountain in Africa) at sunrise on the last day.  In other words, we started hiking at 1am on the 3rd day and finished the day at the bottom of the mountain at 5pm…climbing into a bus the next day was not an easy task.)
·         10.5 hr bus towards the Rwandan border (spent much of this time suspended in the air as the driver raced over the speed bumps)

The view from the summit of Mt. Meru at sunrise (Kilimanjaro in the distance and clouds below)
  May 25-30 Rwanda

Having a beer at Hotel Rwanda
1994 Genocide: Interhamwe (Hutus) killed 1,000,000 Tutsies, neighbors killing neighbors.  Afterwards, the government asked the survivors to forgive one another and today, no one discusses the matter (people don’t say the word “genocide” as a rule).  The city of Kigali is very safe and clean, but the undercurrent of repressed emotions is just overwhelming.
·         7 hr bus/minibus to Kigali
·         Genocide Memorial Museum (absolutely amazing and incredibly moving)
“If you must remember, remember this…the Nazi’s did not kill 6 million Jews…nor the Interhamwe kill a million Tutsies, they killed one and then another, then another…genocide is not a single act of murder, it is millions of acts of murder”
         -Stephen D. Smith, Executive Director, Aegis Trust, 2004
·         Hotel des Mille Collines (Hotel Rwanda)—slightly disturbing atmosphere, seemed as if nothing had changed from before the genocide except that there was now a small memorial erected for the staff members who were killed
May 31-June 8 Uganda
·         11 hr bus to Kampala
·         5 hr bus within Uganda
·         Good people and a little R&R
June 9-11 Tanzania
·         28 hr bus to Dar Es Salaam (very clean feeling city since it’s on the coast, but a lot of crime)
·         Stayed with a cousin I never knew I had
·         Wonderful visit with a friend of a friend who runs a craft shop called Njiana 
      Heard an interesting story about how after the slave trade was abolished in Tanzania, the slave traders dug a tunnel from the coast of Tanzania all the way out to Zanzibar (where slavery was still legal) under the Indian Ocean (46 miles).

Crazy bus ride on Princess Muro (note the writing back of the conductor's t-shirt: hot pink with a princess crown at its center...it takes a very confident man to wear this)
·         Crazy 14 hr bus ride down to Mbeya (southern TZ, near the Malawi Border) on “Princess Muro” bus—vomiting neighbors, 2 hour traffic jam, pulled over on the side of the road to fix an overheated radiator only to have another Princess Muro bus pull over in front of us and start to smoke, causing its passengers to leap out of the windows and crowd onto our bus…spent the last 2 hours on the bus standing up in a crowded aisle…please don't let my public transport stories scare you.  The ridiculousness of public transport in Africa just makes me laugh and lets me feel a bond with the locals around me.  It gave an added dimension to my travels and spice to my life.
June 12-17 Malawi
Malawi is the country that Bob Marley would have created, had he gotten the chance: incredibly relaxed and helpful people, a crazy network of Rastafarians, and pictures of Bob Marley everywhere (even pinned over a picture of Jesus…).  If you want to go to Africa for the first time, I highly recommend going to Malawi.
Lake Malawi at Cape Maclear
Lake Malawi
Tea Plantation (we were not allowed to take photos inside the factory because it was not exactly up to health regulation standards)
A fisherman at sunrise on Lake Malawi
Kayaking on Lake Malawi (the water was so blue it looked like something out of a Pixar movie, but don't be fooled by the blueness of it all, the wind was incredibly strong that day)
·         9 hr bus into Malawi
·         Amazing hospitality of some friends of a friend
·         Took a tour of a Tea Plantation with an anthropologist who has worked in Malawi for 14 years
·         Traveled down Lake Malawi, kayaking and swimming in the Lake as I went (clearest water I’ve ever seen with a colorful and diverse population of tropical fish)
·         Encouraged corruption in a foreign currency exchange shop in order to get Mozambique currency
·         19 hrs on bus/minibuses within Malawi, half of which was spent standing up in very crowded aisles

 June 18-26 Mozambique
Mozambique is a very large country, recovering from a long civil war that crippled its economy.  While I was there (unbeknownst to me until the end of my visit), the opposition group killed 2 civilians, injured 5 and blocked the North-South road in an effort to destabilize the government.  I was safe (having gotten down to the southern coast the day before the activity began), but was forced to go south into South Africa rather than north into Zimbabwe as originally planned.  There are no night buses so most long distance buses leave at 4am…check in at 330…Amazing seafood and fabric.
The Indian Ocean
With the help of my bargaining skills and good timing, I got to rent this beach house right on tofo beach for 2 nights at the same price as a dorm bed in a backpacker's place

Tofo Beach
·         3 hr stop and go minibus from Malawi
·         7 km motorcycle ride across the border into Mozambique
·         2 hrs to northern town of Tete, where since the hotels are exceedingly expensive and my bus was to leave at 4am the next morning, I spent the night here watching kung fu movies with the bus park guys and sleeping on the bus 
·         12 hr bus down to the southern coast of Mozambique the day before rebel activity blocked the road
·         Tofo (clean beach and the Indian Ocean—never seen such a beautiful ocean: turquoise blue and clear view to the bottom)
·         Maputo (friendliest African capital city I’ve ever been in.  Ended up spending an extra day here and did not mind at all.)
·         23 hr bus/minibuses additional travel within Mozambique
Maputo's Train Station, designed by Gustave Eiffel (the architect of the Eiffel Tower)
June 27-July 3 South Africa
South Africa has gone through a long and well publicized movement from the Apartheid era to its present state (similar to our Civil Rights Movement with Nelson Mandela at its head).  It is a very westernized country and so was my last stop in my pre-US readjustment journey.  I was there during a busy time: Mandela was said to be in a critical state and Obama was visiting.

Table Mountain, Cape Town: my last hike of the trip
Statues of the 4 South Africans who have won Nobel Prizes (Cape Town)
Lion's Head (and tail) (Cape Town)
View from the top of Table Mountain
One of the 2010 World Cup Stadiums (Cape Town)
The Limestone Mine on Robben Island where the Political Prisoners worked and in the foreground, the pile of stones started by Nelson Mandela at the prisoners' reunion (each prisoner at the reunion added a stone, each of different size and color, seen as a monument to unity through diversity)
·         11.5 hr bus to Pretoria
·         Pretoria (This is the capital of SA—not overly busy and quite small for a city, former center of Apartheid rule)
·        19 hr bus to Cape Town
·         Cape Town (Very beautiful.  Good food, good hiking and the ocean…really, everything you want on a vacation wrapped into one town.  Nelson Mandela and a number of political prisoners were held on Robben Island just off the coast of Cape Town—Mandela for 18 years in solitary confinement.)
      20 hr bus to Johannesburg
·         Joburg (Very big and busy.  Interesting tidbit: to flag down public transport in Joburg, you have to know the right hand signal (like a gang sign) to get the right taxi to stop). 
Our guide on Robben Island, a former political prisoner on the Island
Nelson Mandela's Cell in Solitary Confinement where he spent 18 of his 27 year jail sentence
Penguins! (Robben Island)
Me with my bags getting on the last (and nicest) bus
The trip was ridiculous in every sense of the word.  Ridiculous in the speed I traveled at, the means I traveled by and most of all ridiculous because of the stories I left it with.
  In my mind, there are three reasons to travel: to relax, to see something(s) you always wanted to and to get stories.  The first and third rarely coincide just like comfort and adventure rarely go together.  For me, stories were the priority.  To go outside of your comfort zone is to have an adventure and adventures always yield stories…always.  I know this type of trip is not for everyone but for me, it was perfect.
The hotel room Qatar Airways put me up in
I flew Qatar Airways home (with an 8.5 hour layover in Doha during which I was put up in a very nice hotel), arriving home in time to see the fireworks celebrating America’s Independence.  I am happy to be home in the US.  I’m moving to Indiana on August 6th, but I hope to see all of you at some point and exchange stories. 
Thank you for following my blog these last three and a half years.  It’s been a pleasure for me and hopefully not too boring for you.


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